everyone hail to the pumpkin song; sebaek [1/2]
Title: Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin Song
Rating: PG? PG13 for graphic description of Halloween monsters?
Pairing: Sehun/Baekhyun, tiny weeny Jongdae/Jongin, even tinier weenier broken!Jongdae/Zitao
Wordcount: 15k~
Warning: crack, epic fail horror, cringe-worthy fluff, minor mentions of bullying, racial slurs and physical violence, severely unbetaed
Disclaimer: EXO members and/or former members do not belong to me. The Nightmare before Christmas does not belong to me. All the OCs in this fic are not real people, they're completely made up.
Summary: Baekhyun's unbelievable romance with the prince of the Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch.
Notes: y'all thought i was gonna publish the baekyeol fic but no, watch me as i laugh mercilessly and publish a big chunk of crack c: second part of this will be published tonight or tomorrow morning idk. (the baekyeol fic too will come tonight or tomorrow morning i promise c:)
- this fic is a giant The Nightmare Before Christmas reference. i don't regret anything.
- ofc the title and the lyrics come from This is Halloween. ofc.
- i didn't really care about research as i wrote so don't expect accuracy. expect gross inaccuracies.
- this is probably silvia's fault. no, wait, it's 100% silvia's fault.
- happy halloween even if i don't exactly believe in halloween.
I am the “who” when you call “who’s there?”
I am the wind blowing through your hair
The letters quiver, shrink and fade away under the incessant September rain. Baekhyun watches them slip down the gutter and sink in the deep puddle at the side of the road, lost in the reflection of stormy, gray clouds.
The rain seems to laugh at him, its incessant pitter patter sounding like giggles against the already wet ground. The boys around him laugh even harder.
Baekhyun wishes he could punch them, one by one, until his knuckles hurt and their faces hurt more, but there’s too many of them and he’s alone. They would crush him. His notes are gone anyway and there’s nothing he can do about it. He should just leave.
He gets up, ignoring the smirks, the knowing grins and the snickering, loud jests in a language he can still barely understand, even after three months in this terrible, unfriendly city. He shakes his head, trying to exclude the foreign words from his mind. He doesn’t want to understand what they’re saying. He doesn’t want to focus. He doesn’t want to hear anything anymore.
“Going away already? Why don’t you play with us a little more?”
He doesn’t remember his name. He has dark hair and dark eyes and a strong jaw. His fists are even stronger. It’s such a cliché to be bullied by the captain of the football team, like in any American high school drama. Baekhyun would laugh at the irony, but then he remembers this fucker just threw his Analysis II notes down the storm drain and he’s more than capable to throw Baekhyun down there with them too.
The smirk dies on his lips, but it doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Are you having fun, loser?”
Someone pushes him from behind once, twice. The third time, he loses his footing and ends up on the wet ground, splashing on one of the tiny puddles dotting the street. The water is cold and dirty, freezing both his hands and knees.
“Come on, why don’t you say anything? Are you too stupid to talk back?”
There’s a whistle, followed by more laughter. The boy laughs. The rain laughs. The wind rises suddenly. It seems to be laughing too, so Baekhyun gives up and laughs with them all. He laughs until he has no breath left. The others have stopped and he’s the only one who’s still laughing, hiccupping in fake, sour cheer. When he stops to regain his breath, everyone stares at him as if he’s grown another head.
“Hey, what’s so funny, chinaboy?”
He replies in his own language.
“It’s Korean, buddy. Ah, you’re so stupid and you don’t even know.”
“Did you just insult me? Did this little shit insult me?”
Baekhyun stands up on shaky legs, slowly, and puts a hand on the guy’s shoulder. Nathan, he thinks his name is Nathan. Captain of the football team and local bully. Currently quite confused about why the boy he’s bullying is patting his shoulder like that.
“You’re so funny, my friend,” says Baekhyun, in English this time, and before Nathan can protest that no, it’s not funny unless he’s the one laughing and that they aren’t by any means friends, Baekhyun punches him with all the strength he can muster. He closes his eyes and tighten his fist and he hears Nathan’s nose crack under it.
Baekhyun is not a good fighter. Jaehwan was a good fighter, back when they still attended Seungri High, and also Amber was a good fighter. Myungsoo didn’t even need to fight to get what he wanted. Baekhyun was just the kid lucky enough to live in their shadows, the one who smiled a lot and wasn’t really anyone’s enemy. He wasn’t the type to raise his hands on anyone. Until the States, that is.
The impact surprises him too. Nathan falls back, staggering, and his friends freeze, gaping like fishes, unable to believe what just happened.
Nathan looks up at him, holding his nose, his face twisted into an ugly mask of rage and disbelief. He stares at Baekhyun’s hand, still wet from the rain but not from blood. Baekhyun hopes Nathan didn’t break anything, but he can’t stay long enough to check, not when he’s just signed his death sentence with that own hand. He turns on his heels and does the only logical thing he can think of. He runs.
“Catch that son of a bitch and make him spit blood!”
This time, Baekhyun doesn’t need to stop and focus to know what those words mean. He’s already running. Away, the fastest he can.
He runs through the park and in front of the high school where a couple of students send him curious glances and then promptly look away when they spot Nathan and his cronies. He doesn’t stop there. He keeps running, further and further, dashing in front of the oldest houses of the town, in the direction of the fields. The rain drips down his neck and arms, drenching the collar of his shirt and gluing messy strands of hair to his forehead. His white sneakers squeak against the mud. He’s already left the dark, paved roads of the city for the dusty, mucky trails that lead to the countryside, when something whispers in his ear.
They’re gonna catch you...
The space seems to dilate in front of him and suddenly the road feels endless, the horizon unreachable, and the thumping of sneakers against the asphalt pressing him forward is deafening. They’ll find him. They’ll find him and they’ll punch him and kick him and tomorrow at school everyone will know. Everyone already knows.
On your right...
Baekhyun sees it by chance, out of the corner of his eyes. An old fence, a rusty gate. Behind the bars, only a pumpkin patch. He almost runs past it, but the wind screams in his ears, throwing a handful of dried leaves at his face. He turns around. The rain laughs but the wind whispers.
Hurry up, they’re coming, it seems to say. The world shakes when he puts his hand on the gate and watches it gently fall open with a strangled cry of disuse and blight. Before he steps inside, he watches back. Behind him, the world broaden in nervous ripples. It feels scary and hostile. Loud.
In front of him, the little pumpkin patch surrounded by tall, dark fences, is creepily still and quiet, like a miniature world protected by a spell. Like uncharted territory. Like fairytales, nightmares and wonderlands.
Baekhyun hesitates, strangely reluctant to set foot inside, as if a single step would trigger a curse. The wind roars and pushes him, slamming the gate close at his back with an ominous, deafening clang.
Baekhyun trips on a root, sways on the spot feeling extremely silly and finally collapses on the wet ground, among giant, orange pumpkins and dust. He breathes harshly, big gulps of air filling his lungs. It’s cold enough that he can feel the cold inside his chest, an icy pressure. His spleen hurts. The footsteps don’t stop at the gate and their echo slowly disappear.s Being alone is fucking fantastic.
Baekhyun doesn’t know for how long he stays there, collecting his breath, fighting back the tears. The pumpkin patch is strangely quiet, almost eerie. The wind is not raging loudly, the rain is not falling here. A shiver runs through his back.
“Who’s there?”
No answer comes from the dark sky. The sun has set, somewhere behind the thick curtain of clouds. The twilight is cold and dreary. Baekhyun gets up and pats his wet pants. It’s time to go home, before his mother starts worrying.
As soon as he turns, he hears it again, a voiceless whisper against his hair, the softest breath of wind.
He turns around so quickly his head hurts, but the field is still empty and desolated. There’s no one in sight. The only inhabitant of the frozen land is a scrawny-looking scarecrow, his jacket waving softly in the lightest wind. Baekhyun is quite sure scarecrows cannot talk.
“Who’s there?” he repeats, again, and it comes out as a little choked scream, almost a squeal.
Just me.
For a moment, Baekhyun thinks he’s hallucinating. Because he keeps hearing a voice. It’s the same voice that told him to run, that pointed the pumpkin patch to him and told him to hurry up and get inside. It’s thin, not as if it’s a thin voice, but as if it’s coming from a faraway place. It’s like a whisper travelling through dark corridors. Once again, he looks around and finds absolutely nothing.
He dashes towards the gate and tries to wing it open, but it doesn’t budge.
“Why me? Why me?” he mutters, feeling all the sweat freeze on his back. “Why not Nathan or one of his buddies?”
Why him, he wonders. Why not him, I think. Why would I choose someone else?
Baekhyun backs off slowly, but he trips and falls. Again. The pumpkins only stare, silent witnesses of this bizarre nightmare.
“Who are you?” he shouts to the wind. And the wind talks back, blowing through Baekhyun’s hair.
“I am the owner of this land. And who are you?”
“I’m Baekhyun. Just. Byun Baekhyun.”
“What a strange name,” answers the wind, quizzical and amused. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Baekhyun doesn’t understand whether all of this is a dream or reality. He feels quite confused, but he decides to go with the flow. Better going crazy and talking to the wind than ending up in Nathan’s hands. Especially now that Baekhyun has decided to break his nose.
“My name is not strange, it’s a foreign name,” he complains. The funniest thing is not that he’s talking to the wind, or that the wind is talking back, but that he’s talking to the wind in Korean. And the wind is talking back in the same language.
“Foreign? What’s foreign? Everything here is mine, don’t you know?”
Baekhyun laughs. “Everything? I don’t think so. I don’t.”
The voice sounds quite upset. “Everything, I said! Everything on this land belongs to me, and that includes you too.”
“But how can I belong to someone else if I only belong to myself?”
“You don’t,” says the voice, matter-of-factly. “Don’t you owe me for saving you? The moment you stepped through the gate you entered my domain, so now you must belong to me.”
A cold shiver runs down Baekhyun’s back.
“But I didn’t step on my own. You pushed me!”
The wind pretends not to hear that.
“What if I don’t want to belong to you?”
The wind laughs.
“You’re funny. They usually don’t have the gut to ask this kind of question. If you don’t want to be mine you can leave, I won’t stop you. But they’re still looking for you, those guys.”
Baekhyun listens anxiously to the sound of Nathan’s goons coming to beat him into a bloody pulp, but he hears nothing.
“Don’t worry, they won’t find you here. They can’t hurt you while you’re in this realm.”
Baekhyun steals a look at the gate, expecting to see them appear any moment now. But no one arrives.
“I told you,” says the voice. “No one enters my father’s domains unless I let them. I like you, you’re smart, Baekhyun, you’re welcome here. But Nathan Stiller? Mh, no no. That guy doesn’t have permission. He used to be a nasty kid, chasing cats and shooting little birds with his slingshot. He used to ask trick or treat and do the trick even after receiving the treat. And he stole candies from the smaller children. I don’t like him at all.”
“Oh, he hasn’t changed, I can assure you,” replies Baekhyun, and the wind laughs.
“I know, I know.” The pumpkins and the scarecrow seem to know solemnly at his words, like loyal subjects. “I think you can go now, Byun Baekhyun. They gave up on chasing you.”
Baekhyun gets up and bows, to no one. He feels strangely embarrassed and he’s sure that, somewhere in some other world, the wind is still laughing at his shyness.
“Wait, you never told me who you are.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like you’ll be able to come back here.”
“But you told me I was welcome here.”
“But you told me you don’t want to be mine. I own anything in this world so you can’t come unless you’re mine too.”
Baekhyun has a feeling the wind is still playing with him. He should be scared, he should be exhausted from the effort of keeping up with a reality in which he talks with spirits through the wind in spooky pumpkin fields. He just feels a little mocked.
“Tell me your name, at least,” he begs, as a powerful gust of wind pushes him towards the gate.
The wind snickers and the gate opens slowly. Baekhyun tries to resist, but he falls over the edge and he finds himself standing at the side of the road, under the incessant rain.
The fence is gone, the gate is gone, the scarecrow is gone too. The pumpkin patch is still there, but it’s lost the patina of magic, the sheer immobility of a place outside of time. It’s just a common pumpkin patch.
It could have all been a dream, but...
I have many names, but you can call me Sehun. Go, Baekhyun who can’t be owned by the wind, I’ll make sure to see you off safely.
It’s the last gust of wind - after that, there’s only rain, rain everywhere, cold, obnoxious September rain - but Baekhyun can feel its whisper until he reaches the entrance of his house. Somewhere, he knows, Sehun is still looking at him.
Round that corner, man
Hiding in the trash can
Something’s waiting now to pounce
The following day at school is terrible. Baekhyun’s head hurts and the English chatter does nothing to ease his headache. In class, he sees one of Nathan’s minions glaring at him from the back rows and he does his best to ignore him, but the pressure of his sneer is constant and it makes him misspell in front of the entire class. He recovers graciously and both the teacher and Simone, one of the girls sitting in the first row, smile at him, warm and encouraging.
Baekhyun appreciates the thought. He wonders whether he should say something to them. About his missing notes, about the boys waiting for him on his way back to the school. He decides it’s not wise.
The town his parents decided to move in is drowsy, dusty. A little countryside town in the middle of nowhere. Baekhyun’s father works in the human resources for a Korean firm in the city, thirty minutes of car away. They decided to rent a big but not expensive colonial house in the hinterland to save the money a tiny flat in the city would’ve costed. Baekhyun thinks the city would’ve been better. He thinks the people in the city would’ve been better. To his family, to his mother who doesn’t speak English and to him, who’s still struggling with it.
He would’ve liked to stay in Seoul, but his brother was already attending university and Baekhyun was only sixteen. “It’s just for six months,” had said his mother. “We’ll be back soon, darling.”
“Then we could’ve let dad go alone,” he wanted to say, but he couldn’t.
Baekhyun misses everything, from the food, to the smells, the sounds of the city. Seoul was dirty, but in a more buzzing, colorful kind of way, like the messy room of a student who doesn’t have enough time to clean up. This town is simply old, like the room of an elder woman. There’s dust everywhere and it smells like prejudice and suspicion. And the strong cologne of her spoiled, mean nephew.
Nathan Stiller and his gang - yesterday he didn’t even know this dude’s first name and now he even know his last, thanks to Sehun - are waiting for Baekhyun in front of the gas station. Most of them are too young to smoke, but that doesn’t seem to deter them from trying. Baekhyun has never smoked. Actually, this whole thing started because he refused to smoke with them. Pack rules, he thinks, he should’ve just accepted the cigarette and choked on it and they would’ve laughed and everything would’ve been fine. Probably.
Or maybe not. Baekhyun has never been the type who do what people say peacefully. He doesn’t like to fight, but he’s not a pushover. He puts on his best smile and walks towards the group.
“Nathan, buddy.”
Nathan punches him in the stomach. Well, fuck. It’s not like he wasn’t expecting it.
They drag him in the back alley behind the laundromat, Jacob and Matthew at his sides, Michael behind him, to block every escape route.
Baekhyun closes his eyes. It’s going to hurt, he knows, and it’s not going to matter in the end. He only has three months left, it’s not like this hellhole will be his future. His future is Seoul, Korea. His friends are all waiting for him at home.
“Aren’t you going to get on your knees and apologize?”
Baekhyun snorts. “The hell I am,” he replies, in Korean, and Nathan’s eyes flash with anger. It might be just Baekhyun’s imagination, but his nose does look a little crooked. It probably has more to do with an incident during a game than Baekhyun’s punching abilities, but still he can’t help but feeling a little proud. He punched that fucking face, he really did.
“So you smile, hm? You must be having the fun of your life, little shit!”
He raises his fist, ready to hit.
The punch never lands on Baekhyun’s scrunched up face. He opens his eyes to find Nathan and Matthew staring at something in the corner, behind the trashcan. There’s... there’s a face, lurking from the darkness. The face of a man. He opens his mouth to show pointy teeth and an evil grin. Then he emerges from the darkness, holding a knife, ready to pounce on them. Nathan screams first.
The alley empties before he can blink. They left him alone, Baekhyun realizes, they left him alone in the hands of a psycho serial killer who hides behind trashcans and is now walking slowly towards him and...
The man explodes into a soundly, amused laugh.
“Oh my, look at them, such losers! Are you alright, little one?”
“Me? Uh, I...”
“Look at you, you’re really tiny. The prince was right.”
And something immediately lights up inside Baekhyun. “The prince? Do you mean Sehun?”
“Sehun? Is that the name he gave you?”
It’s strange, Baekhyun must admit. Sehun is a Korean name. The name of one of his friends from kindergarten, he seems to recall.
“Is that not his real name?”
The man, red hair, dark eyes, tall and looming, wearing a long, long coat and holding a long, long butcher’s knife, laughs again, but Baekhyun does not feel threatened. It’s a fond, warm laugh.
“I think you wouldn’t be able to pronounce his real name. It’s just a whisper in the wind.”
“So do you know him?”
He drops the knife to sit on the trashcan, taking a moment to pet a skinny straw cat.
“I do, I do. Who do you think sent me here to save your sorry ass?”
Oh, the strange man was sent here by Sehun. To save Baekhyun.
“Oh, really? Can he do this?”
“Sehun can do many things during this time of the year, now that All Hallow’s Eve is close and the gate is almost open. But you still should be careful. Why did you follow those guys here? Have you got no sense of self-preservation, little one?”
Baekhyun scoffs at the nickname. Ok, he might look a little short, but only because this person is quite tall. A car brakes at the end of the hallway, its headlights lighting up the darkness of the alley for a moment.
“What’s your name anyway?” Baekhyun asks, but the man has disappeared.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Still here.”
The voice comes from the darkness. Baekhyun turns towards the trashcan again, squinting at the farthest corner, shielded by the lights of the street. If he looks hard enough, he can still see the outline of the man’s long coat, the tiniest sparkle of red coming from the knife in his hand. It’s bloodstained, he realizes.
“What are you?” he asks. He should be afraid. He should be running away, but...
“I am... Uhm, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you.”
“Are you some kind of ghost? Is Sehun a ghost?”
The voice from the darkness laughs.
“He is not a ghost. He is a prince, the prince of the Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch. As for me, maybe I’m a ghost, maybe I’m not. I have many names, but in your language... I supposed you could call me Chanyeol.”
Chanyeol, another name from Baekhyun’s childhood.
“I know this name and I know Sehun’s name.”
“The names are not important. Just like the language. We are creatures of the Holy Night and we speak every language, we know every name. The one who doesn’t know anything is you.”
“Well, I would know things if you just told me!”
“Ah, I would but I don’t think I’m really allowed, little one. Besides, I have a previous engagement today. I’m expected under the stairs to meet an old friend…”
His voice, deep and booming, sounds thinner and thinner, as if coming from a faraway place. Baekhyun is tempted to step in the darkness and follow it. He has so many questions, but something stops him. The wind rises.
The man in the darkness, Chanyeol, grins. “Remember to thank him. And be kind to him. Yesterday night, at supper, he only talked about you. I think, he really...”
The wind howls and covers his words. When it falls, Chanyeol is gone. Someone else has come in his place.
“Why were you so rude? We were talking.”
The wind doesn’t answer with words this time. He slips cold hand inside Baekhyun’s shirt and makes him laugh.
“Stop that, don’t be a brat.”
Baekhyun walks home in silence, waiting for Sehun to talk to him, but the wind only howls. So Baekhyun talks. He tells him about his home in Seoul, about Samcheong-dong and its colorful little coffee shops and traditional houses. He tells him about his brother and his friends and when he was in the Music club and the end of the year exhibition, when he sang girl group songs in the gym in front of the rest of the school.
“You can’t talk back, can you?”
The wind blows, miserable.
“It doesn’t matter. Thank you for helping me today, Sehun-ah.”
I am the one hiding under your stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
October drags itself lazily between carved pumpkins and a cold, ugly drizzle that turns the streets into a brown marsh of mud and rain.
Baekhyun doesn’t really get the Halloween fever. Korea was all about costume parties and Halloween themes candies in coffee shops and bakeries, but people here are really serious about celebrating the night of the spirits. All the school is talking about the big Halloween party at Old Ben’s, behind the hill. Even Nathan, who literally spent six weeks chasing Baekhyun just because he was bored, leaves him alone in favor of spending his free time with his minions planning for the big party.
“Will you come?” asks Simone, the girl from Baekhyun’s English Literature class who always lets him use her notes. She says she likes to help, but Baekhyun suspects she’s only after the extra credit. Well, he doesn’t really care whether she’s nice to him out of obligation or goodness of heart. She’s nice to him and she’s probably the only one, so he kinda likes her.
“To the Halloween party, I mean!”
Baekhyun just shrugs. He doesn’t even know where or what the Old Ben’s is. She insists.
“Oh, it’s an old, abandoned farm. Technically, it’s private property but Benjamin Stiller doesn’t mind if we use it to party.”
Baekhyun frowns at the name and Simone quickly explains it to him. “He’s Nathan’s grandpa. So don’t worry, he won’t report us for drinking cheap beer and listening to electronic music on his land.”
Oh, Nathan’s grandfather. That rings a dangerous bell in Baekhyun’s head and he shakes his head, politely.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea...”
“Because of that thing between you and Nathan?” She blinks and she looks really cute, with her blue eyes and blonde hair and freckles. Really, really cute. “Nathan is better than you think, but you know... boys will be boys. I’m sure he’ll get tired of bothering you in a few days.”
Baekhyun has to fight to keep the smile on his face when his muscles are desperately trying to get him to frown. He doesn’t think Nathan will get tired of him in a few days and he didn’t like the way she shrugged, as if Baekhyun was blowing things out of proportions. It’s just for a moment but he really feels like she’s trying to say Baekhyun is the one at fault.
“Anyway, I’m not invited.”
She smiles and the moment is gone.
“I’m inviting you now. We could go together.”
He mumbles something that could be a yes, a no or a I’ll think about it later, and leaves.
The thing is, Baekhyun really needs to go. He needs friends. He needs people who will stand up to Nathan if he tries to make Baekhyun kneel on the snow while he punches him or something equally infuriating. The thing is, he’s not sure he can find that kind of friends in this city.
He feels a pang of guilt at the last thought. Technically, he has found friends in this city, even if they’re strange and mysterious and never talk back. Not many people can take the credit for being friends with a prince of a magical pumpkin kingdom, after all.
The wind is gone today, but Baekhyun still talks to it. He does it, from time to time, always opening Sehun is listening. Sehun helped him, Sehun cared for him, Sehun noticed Baekhyun’s existence, unlike everyone else in his school.
“Do you think I should go?” he asks, to no one. Sehun had said everything in his realm belongs to him, so Baekhyun can only hope his realm includes this city too. He hopes Sehun is listening.
The wind, as usual, doesn’t answer. It hasn’t talked to Baekhyun since that first day, but other, bizarre, things have started to happen. When Baekhyun looks closer and carefully at the dark corners, inside the broken window of abandoned houses, through the ajar doors of small closets, he can almost see things. Things crawling, observing, things whispering.
They’re not hostile, just waiting. Their tiny eyes seem to follow him in a way that makes him feel guarded, not chased.
At night, he holes up in his room and looks up for ghost stuff on the internet. He still doesn’t know what Sehun is and, no matter where he looks for, the name Sehun doesn’t appear anywhere related to ghosts and supernatural stuff. Of course it doesn’t, it’s a Korean name. The name of a childhood friend. But why does he use it? It’s kinda maddening.
He opens his window to let the cool autumn breeze inside. It sweeps all the papers on his desk until they’re landing softly on the floor.
“Why can’t I find you anywhere?” asks Baekhyun, softly. Mostly to himself.
The alarm clock marks the end of the day. Baekhyun watches the twenty-three fifty-nine turn into a number that’s all zeros. He gets up, forcing himself to walk down the stairs and into the mostly silent house. He hits the light and opens the fridge, fetching a glass of cold milk and a packet of cookies to go with it.
He leaves his glass in the empty sink and turns to get back, but as soon as he’s out of the kitchen he feels someone’s presence at his back. He freezes.
A hand clamps on his shoulder, and he feels something moving and crawling right where the stranger is touching him. He looks down and it’s not a hand, it can’t be a hand when its fingers are made of... snakes. Ok, this just calls for a scream. He tries, but the stranger just pulls him into the black hollowness that lies under his stairs. The darkness swallows both him and his scream, closing on his body like a set of jaw ready to chew him.
Baekhyun keeps thrashing and screaming until the monster lets him go. He turns, ready to fight, to dash, whatever, he just doesn’t want to die like this, and then he realizes the monster is not a monster. (Just like Chanyeol wasn’t a monster.)
It’s a boy. He looks quite confused and hurt, covering his ears with his hands. Baekhyun looks twice to make sure. He still has snakes instead of fingers. Amazing.
“Are you done with the shrieks? I swear, you could give the banshees a run for their money.”
He has the nerve to look offended, as if grabbing Baekhyun with his creepy hand, scaring him to death and throwing him into a...
“Where the hell are we?”
It’s so black and silent. Every sound is muffled, even Baekhyun’s own voice. Only in a corner, very far away, Baekhyun can still see a light. He realizes it’s the light of the kitchen. He forgot to turn it off. Now he couldn’t turn it off even if he wanted.
“Do you want to kill me?”
The boy tilts his head, looking a bit dumbfounded. He’s extremely pale. A spider falls from his hair and down his striped sweater and he puts his back on his hair. “Not now, can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, my little friend here is curious. We don’t get many guests in this humble house under the stairs.”
He speaks funnily, like a kid who doesn’t know many words. He’s quite creepy but he doesn’t look evil. He doesn’t look like he wants to feed Baekhyun to his spider pet, and that’s a good thing too.
“Are you a friend of Sehun?” he asks, slowly, because that’s the only thing that makes sense.
“Sehun?” He frowns. “Aaaah, Sehun. The prince. Of course,” he giggles. “Well, we’re not really friends. I’m just a loyal subject of the kingdom, after all.”
“The Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch?”
“The Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch, of course. The prince is always so nice to me. You see, I’m different from the others. I never go out and I feel a little left out at times, but the prince is nice.” He nods to himself, satisfied with his own logic.
“What’s your name?” asks Baekhyun, warily.
“I don’t think you can pronounce it, but you can call me Yixing, if you like. And you’re Byun Baekhyun,” he says, before Baekhyun can tell him his own name. “Don’t look so surprised, I’ve been living under these stairs for a long, long time. I actually live under every set of stairs in the world, but I especially liked this house because it’s both close to the entrance of the kingdom and also previously abandoned. Until your family moved here, of course.”
“Have you been spying on us?”
Yixing shakes his head, repeating the word slowly.
“Spying? Spying? No, oh no. Or maybe yes, a little. But, you see, I’ve lived here long before you arrived. I’ve lived here since this house was built, to be honest. And my life is so boring, only the prince and that terrible wolf sometimes visit me. Wait, and The Trashcan Man came here a few days ago, to bring me the plans for Hallows’ Eve night. And sometimes the Monster Under The Bed, but not really often. We can’t really leave the Shade, especially if there are humans around.”
The more he talks the more nervous Baekhyun becomes.
“The Monster Under The Bed? What is the Shade? There are more like you? And what exactly are you?”
Yixing shakes his head, looking a little worried.
“No, no, I can’t reveal the secrets like this. I can’t even bring you here, in the Shade. I only did it because the prince asked. A personal favor. From a friend.” His eyes widen. “Oh! So maybe you were right and we really are friends.”
His lips open in a timid smile.
“This is for you,” he says. He hands Baekhyun a letter. “From the prince.”
Baekhyun eyes it warily. The letter is heavy, solid in his hands. It smells like dried leaves.
“Now you really have to go, the Shade is not the best place for a human.”
“Wait, but you haven’t answered my questions!”
Baekhyun tries to protest, but the light of the kitchen, that previously seemed so far and unreachable, is getting closer at an unbelievable speed, while the dark path leading to it contracts and shrinks, disappearing under Baekhyun’s eyes.
“It was a pleasure talking with you, Byun Baekhyun who came from the other side of the world.”
“Wait! Can I talk to you again?”
“Maybe, someday. If you wish, leave a cup of milk and cookies under the stairs for this lonely Hallow. Goodbye!”
Baekhyun finds himself panting harshly in front of the kitchen. The light is on. He thinks about turning it off, but the fright of being dragged into the darkness is still alive in him.
Before he goes back upstairs, he leaves a glass of milk and a chocolate bar under the stairs.
The letter is too heavy for his content. Too formal. Too elegant.
Inside, only a little message.
I think you should go.
I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
Baekhyun skypes Myungsoo from the past. It’s Tuesday in Korea, but the States are still lagging thirteen hours behind. It’s early afternoon for Baekhyun and the morning of a new day for Myungsoo.
“So, what’s new?”
“It’s always raining,” says Baekhyun, in-between a fit of coughs. “It sucks.”
Myungsoo adjusts his uniform. He woke up earlier only to chat with Baekhyun for a few minutes before he has to leave for school. It’s stupid, but seeing his disgustingly attractive face makes Baekhyun feel both at home and the farthest away from it.
“Are you going to cry on me? Did you miss me that much?”
Baekhyun pretends he’s not sniffling. There’s so much he wants to tell Myungsoo and at the same time there’s so much he can’t tell Myungsoo. He could talk about Nathan Stiller and Matthew Jackson and, what were the names of the others again? He doesn’t remember.
But it would be useless. Myungsoo can’t help him. He would only worry for Baekhyun, and then he would tell the others and they would worry even more.
He talks about Simone Myers and her invitation and Myungsoo winks.
“Been there for two months and already scoring up dates with cute girls? You’re the hot stuff, Hyunie.”
Baekhyun is in the middle of telling him that no, he doesn’t swing that way and Myungsoo should know that better than anyone, when the window rattles and slams against the wall, swung open by a strong gush of wind. Chaos invades the room, as Baekhyun’s notes fly everywhere. He can barely hear Myungsoo snickering at him as he runs to the window, trying to close it - it must be quite an amusing sight, him fighting against an invisible enemy - until he just gives up and waits for it to be done.
The wind falls, only to rise again when Baekhyun tries to close the window, and in the end he leaves it open.
“What the hell was that?” asks Myungsoo, when Baekhyun finally comes back in front of the screen with a sigh. “Did a typhoon happen inside your room?”
“I told you, it’s fucking cold. You never believe me!”
“Wait ‘til I tell the others. Baekhyun has s-sized tornadoes in his room, they won’t even believe me.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” snorts Baekhyun.
“Well, still more believable than you going out with girls. Or is this... what was her name?”
“Simone.”
“Is Simone special?”
“Actually, I’m just using her to get an invitation. There’s someone else I’m hoping to meet at the party, though I’m not sure he will be there.”
“Oh... Oh, Baekhyun. I thought you would never forget me, but you’ve already found someone else. So, who is the lucky boy?”
Baekhyun opens his mouth, thinks about it and closes it again. It’s a little awkward to tell his best friend about Sehun when Sehun is there in the room with him, listening. But in the end Baekhyun doesn’t really care. Sehun is probably dying to know what Baekhyun thinks of him anyway.
“Actually, I don’t know much about him. But he helped me a lot with stuff at school. He’s nice and he looks cool.”
“He’s nice and he looks cool? Where are the juicy details, Baekhyun? Tell me something more!”
“He’s very mysterious.”
Myungsoo looks a bit confused.
“Mysterious as in Jaehwan kind of mysterious?”
Baekhyun scoffs. “Jaehwan is not mysterious, he’s just an asshole. During his good days.”
“You still liked him.”
That’s true, too. The window slams again and Myungsoo watches it, perplexed.
“If it wasn’t stupid I’d say the weather is jealous of you.”
Baekhyun laughs it off, feeling a little nervous and more than a little annoyed. Maybe he needs to have a little chat with Sehun. He says goodbye to Myungsoo, reminding him it’s late and he still needs to go to class, and takes his sweet time into putting his notes in the right order.
“You know,” he says, feeling a little stupid talking to thin air. “There’s no need to be a brat about this. You were the one who told me to go to the party with her.”
Another gust of wind sends all the notes he had just rearranged flying again.
“I’ll have you know that this is kindergarten level.”
They run away when he tries to catch them.
“I just told my best friend you’re nice, but this is not playing nice, Sehun.” He thinks he hears the wind laugh. He’s a brat. A total brat. Nice and cool, yes, whatever.
Just like it arrived, Sehun’s presence disappears, and Baekhyun is left alone to collect his stuff from the floor, again. He falls on his knees and starts rummaging under the bed to find the last page of his World History essay, still fuming.
“First he tells me to go out with Simone, then he doesn’t want me to go out with Simone, and now he even gets mad because my past boyfriends were mentioned. What a tool!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” says a bored voice, and at the same time a dark hand hands Baekhyun the missing page.
Baekhyun screams. It’s not his fault, ok, he screams and he curses and he hopes his mother didn’t hear him because, first, he’s not supposed to curse and second, there’s someone under his bed and Baekhyun has seen enough horror movies with Jaehwan to know where this is going.
“Can you please calm down? Ah, you’re so loud.”
“No, no no no please no. That’s my bed, that’s... I sleep on that thing. How am I supposed to sleep on that thing knowing you’re there? How? Can you tell me please?”
“I could sleep on the bed with you if that makes you feel safer.”
“Are you even allowed to sleep on a bed? I know who you are, you can’t fool me! You’re the Monster Under The Bed and I’m not having a conversation with you, nope. I refuse.”
“Are you sure?” The voice sounds really amused now.
Someone knocks at the door and the dark, clawed hand disappears under the bed again before the door opens and Baekhyun’s mother peeks inside.
“Is everything alright, honey? I’ve heard you talk to someone.”
“Don’t worry, ma. I was just skyping Myungsoo.”
“Just don’t be too loud.”
When the door closes again, Baekhyun collapses on the chair and stares warily under the bed, expecting the tiny monster to come back anytime now.
“I’m here, if you’re looking for me!”
He almost screams again and the creature almost laughs in his face.
“What the fuck is your problem? Do you get off on scaring people like that?”
“Mh, it’s funny that you’re asking because yes, actually I do.”
It’s a boy, another boy. He has dark, big eyes and a heart-shaped mouth and he’s kinda tiny to be a monster. He probably senses Baekhyun’s doubts because he smiles and shows long, pointed teeth.
“I’ll never be able to sleep under that bed again.”
“It’s your problem, not mine. Though I must say I don’t inhabit your bed specifically. I haunt every bed in the world.”
That’s not reassuring at all.
“Then why did you decide to visit mine specifically? Don’t you have a million other beds to haunt?”
The boy frowns. “You weren’t this rude to Trashcan and the Staircase boy.”
“There’s a limit to how many times I can be scared in a week without going crazy and I think you’ve just underhandedly overstepped the mark.”
“You’re not cute at all. What was the prince thinking?”
That, at least, calms Baekhyun down a little. “So Sehun thinks I’m cute?”
The boy blinks and his eyes glow red. Baekhyun takes a step back, scared, and the boy explodes in giggles.
“Oh my, I wish you had a real bed in that place you came from. I would haunt the fuck out of you for years, your reactions are priceless.”
“When I’m done with this semester, I’m moving to Japan and sleeping on a futon for the rest of my life. What’s your name, anyway?”
“I don’t think you can-”
“Pronounce it, yes, I know, what is your Korean name then?”
“I’m Kyungsoo.”
Baekhyun hesitates. His mother raised a polite son but he feels a little stupid saying ‘nice to meet you’ to the Monster Under The Bed.
“So,” he says, awkwardly, “you enjoy scaring children?”
“Teenagers, too. They’re funnier, because they think they’ve outgrown me.” His eyes rakes over Baekhyun with a knowing smirk.
“I thought you couldn’t go out of the Shade.”
Kyungsoo’s eyes become sharp and glow red again.
“Be careful of using words you don’t know, Byun Baekhyun. That Staircase kid talks too much.”
But Baekhyun wants to know. He wants to find his way to the pumpkin patch and talk to Sehun again.
“Don’t fret it,” says Kyungsoo. “You will see him soon enough, but you can’t visit the Pumpkin Patch again. You’ve already stepped inside the Shade twice, if you’re not careful it’ll swallow you, and the prince won’t be happy.”
“Would Sehun do something that puts me in danger? He doesn’t sound like the type.”
“And you’ve known him for... how long?”
To that, at least, Baekhyun can’t rebut.
“Listen to me, kid. The prince likes many things. Sweets and ghost puppies and the light of the moon. He likes dead leaves and blowing curses in the ears of unaware teenagers. He likes to dance and he likes to laugh. He’s not evil. None of us are.” He thinks about it, frowning. “Ok, almost all of us. But the point is, no matter how much he likes you, you belong to different worlds. Play by the rules and you won’t get hurt.”
“And what if I want to meet him? Or can I only talk with the wind and never get an answer?”
“You’ll meet him, if you wait.”
“But when?”
Kyungsoo blinks. It’s a bit creepy because his eyes glow red every single time he does it, turning a slightly confused gaze into a bloodthirsty glare.
“On All Hallows’ Eve, of course. Are you stupid? He even went out of his way to give you that letter, of course he wants you to go to that party so you can meet him!”
“Yes but...”
“No buts. I actually don’t care about your star-crossed pg romance. I only came here to say one thing.” He looks at Baekhyun in the eyes. He’s so short but he also looks so threatening. “It’s not fair that Staircase boy gets milk and cookies and I don’t.”
“What? Really? What are you, twelve?”
“Don’t be a brat. I’ve been alive since the first bed was invented and I can hold grudges for a long, long time.”
“What should I do?” cries Baekhyun. “Feed the entirety of your kingdom? I’m just a poor student.”
“This, too, is your problem, not mine. Milk and cookies, Byun Baekhyun, or you’ll never be able to sleep again, bed or not.”
He crawls under the bed and his red glowing eyes are the last thing of him that disappear into the shadows.
part two
Rating: PG? PG13 for graphic description of Halloween monsters?
Pairing: Sehun/Baekhyun, tiny weeny Jongdae/Jongin, even tinier weenier broken!Jongdae/Zitao
Wordcount: 15k~
Warning: crack, epic fail horror, cringe-worthy fluff, minor mentions of bullying, racial slurs and physical violence, severely unbetaed
Disclaimer: EXO members and/or former members do not belong to me. The Nightmare before Christmas does not belong to me. All the OCs in this fic are not real people, they're completely made up.
Summary: Baekhyun's unbelievable romance with the prince of the Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch.
Notes: y'all thought i was gonna publish the baekyeol fic but no, watch me as i laugh mercilessly and publish a big chunk of crack c: second part of this will be published tonight or tomorrow morning idk. (the baekyeol fic too will come tonight or tomorrow morning i promise c:)
- this fic is a giant The Nightmare Before Christmas reference. i don't regret anything.
- ofc the title and the lyrics come from This is Halloween. ofc.
- i didn't really care about research as i wrote so don't expect accuracy. expect gross inaccuracies.
- this is probably silvia's fault. no, wait, it's 100% silvia's fault.
- happy halloween even if i don't exactly believe in halloween.
I am the “who” when you call “who’s there?”
I am the wind blowing through your hair
The letters quiver, shrink and fade away under the incessant September rain. Baekhyun watches them slip down the gutter and sink in the deep puddle at the side of the road, lost in the reflection of stormy, gray clouds.
The rain seems to laugh at him, its incessant pitter patter sounding like giggles against the already wet ground. The boys around him laugh even harder.
Baekhyun wishes he could punch them, one by one, until his knuckles hurt and their faces hurt more, but there’s too many of them and he’s alone. They would crush him. His notes are gone anyway and there’s nothing he can do about it. He should just leave.
He gets up, ignoring the smirks, the knowing grins and the snickering, loud jests in a language he can still barely understand, even after three months in this terrible, unfriendly city. He shakes his head, trying to exclude the foreign words from his mind. He doesn’t want to understand what they’re saying. He doesn’t want to focus. He doesn’t want to hear anything anymore.
“Going away already? Why don’t you play with us a little more?”
He doesn’t remember his name. He has dark hair and dark eyes and a strong jaw. His fists are even stronger. It’s such a cliché to be bullied by the captain of the football team, like in any American high school drama. Baekhyun would laugh at the irony, but then he remembers this fucker just threw his Analysis II notes down the storm drain and he’s more than capable to throw Baekhyun down there with them too.
The smirk dies on his lips, but it doesn’t go unnoticed.
“Are you having fun, loser?”
Someone pushes him from behind once, twice. The third time, he loses his footing and ends up on the wet ground, splashing on one of the tiny puddles dotting the street. The water is cold and dirty, freezing both his hands and knees.
“Come on, why don’t you say anything? Are you too stupid to talk back?”
There’s a whistle, followed by more laughter. The boy laughs. The rain laughs. The wind rises suddenly. It seems to be laughing too, so Baekhyun gives up and laughs with them all. He laughs until he has no breath left. The others have stopped and he’s the only one who’s still laughing, hiccupping in fake, sour cheer. When he stops to regain his breath, everyone stares at him as if he’s grown another head.
“Hey, what’s so funny, chinaboy?”
He replies in his own language.
“It’s Korean, buddy. Ah, you’re so stupid and you don’t even know.”
“Did you just insult me? Did this little shit insult me?”
Baekhyun stands up on shaky legs, slowly, and puts a hand on the guy’s shoulder. Nathan, he thinks his name is Nathan. Captain of the football team and local bully. Currently quite confused about why the boy he’s bullying is patting his shoulder like that.
“You’re so funny, my friend,” says Baekhyun, in English this time, and before Nathan can protest that no, it’s not funny unless he’s the one laughing and that they aren’t by any means friends, Baekhyun punches him with all the strength he can muster. He closes his eyes and tighten his fist and he hears Nathan’s nose crack under it.
Baekhyun is not a good fighter. Jaehwan was a good fighter, back when they still attended Seungri High, and also Amber was a good fighter. Myungsoo didn’t even need to fight to get what he wanted. Baekhyun was just the kid lucky enough to live in their shadows, the one who smiled a lot and wasn’t really anyone’s enemy. He wasn’t the type to raise his hands on anyone. Until the States, that is.
The impact surprises him too. Nathan falls back, staggering, and his friends freeze, gaping like fishes, unable to believe what just happened.
Nathan looks up at him, holding his nose, his face twisted into an ugly mask of rage and disbelief. He stares at Baekhyun’s hand, still wet from the rain but not from blood. Baekhyun hopes Nathan didn’t break anything, but he can’t stay long enough to check, not when he’s just signed his death sentence with that own hand. He turns on his heels and does the only logical thing he can think of. He runs.
“Catch that son of a bitch and make him spit blood!”
This time, Baekhyun doesn’t need to stop and focus to know what those words mean. He’s already running. Away, the fastest he can.
He runs through the park and in front of the high school where a couple of students send him curious glances and then promptly look away when they spot Nathan and his cronies. He doesn’t stop there. He keeps running, further and further, dashing in front of the oldest houses of the town, in the direction of the fields. The rain drips down his neck and arms, drenching the collar of his shirt and gluing messy strands of hair to his forehead. His white sneakers squeak against the mud. He’s already left the dark, paved roads of the city for the dusty, mucky trails that lead to the countryside, when something whispers in his ear.
They’re gonna catch you...
The space seems to dilate in front of him and suddenly the road feels endless, the horizon unreachable, and the thumping of sneakers against the asphalt pressing him forward is deafening. They’ll find him. They’ll find him and they’ll punch him and kick him and tomorrow at school everyone will know. Everyone already knows.
On your right...
Baekhyun sees it by chance, out of the corner of his eyes. An old fence, a rusty gate. Behind the bars, only a pumpkin patch. He almost runs past it, but the wind screams in his ears, throwing a handful of dried leaves at his face. He turns around. The rain laughs but the wind whispers.
Hurry up, they’re coming, it seems to say. The world shakes when he puts his hand on the gate and watches it gently fall open with a strangled cry of disuse and blight. Before he steps inside, he watches back. Behind him, the world broaden in nervous ripples. It feels scary and hostile. Loud.
In front of him, the little pumpkin patch surrounded by tall, dark fences, is creepily still and quiet, like a miniature world protected by a spell. Like uncharted territory. Like fairytales, nightmares and wonderlands.
Baekhyun hesitates, strangely reluctant to set foot inside, as if a single step would trigger a curse. The wind roars and pushes him, slamming the gate close at his back with an ominous, deafening clang.
Baekhyun trips on a root, sways on the spot feeling extremely silly and finally collapses on the wet ground, among giant, orange pumpkins and dust. He breathes harshly, big gulps of air filling his lungs. It’s cold enough that he can feel the cold inside his chest, an icy pressure. His spleen hurts. The footsteps don’t stop at the gate and their echo slowly disappear.s Being alone is fucking fantastic.
Baekhyun doesn’t know for how long he stays there, collecting his breath, fighting back the tears. The pumpkin patch is strangely quiet, almost eerie. The wind is not raging loudly, the rain is not falling here. A shiver runs through his back.
“Who’s there?”
No answer comes from the dark sky. The sun has set, somewhere behind the thick curtain of clouds. The twilight is cold and dreary. Baekhyun gets up and pats his wet pants. It’s time to go home, before his mother starts worrying.
As soon as he turns, he hears it again, a voiceless whisper against his hair, the softest breath of wind.
He turns around so quickly his head hurts, but the field is still empty and desolated. There’s no one in sight. The only inhabitant of the frozen land is a scrawny-looking scarecrow, his jacket waving softly in the lightest wind. Baekhyun is quite sure scarecrows cannot talk.
“Who’s there?” he repeats, again, and it comes out as a little choked scream, almost a squeal.
Just me.
For a moment, Baekhyun thinks he’s hallucinating. Because he keeps hearing a voice. It’s the same voice that told him to run, that pointed the pumpkin patch to him and told him to hurry up and get inside. It’s thin, not as if it’s a thin voice, but as if it’s coming from a faraway place. It’s like a whisper travelling through dark corridors. Once again, he looks around and finds absolutely nothing.
He dashes towards the gate and tries to wing it open, but it doesn’t budge.
“Why me? Why me?” he mutters, feeling all the sweat freeze on his back. “Why not Nathan or one of his buddies?”
Why him, he wonders. Why not him, I think. Why would I choose someone else?
Baekhyun backs off slowly, but he trips and falls. Again. The pumpkins only stare, silent witnesses of this bizarre nightmare.
“Who are you?” he shouts to the wind. And the wind talks back, blowing through Baekhyun’s hair.
“I am the owner of this land. And who are you?”
“I’m Baekhyun. Just. Byun Baekhyun.”
“What a strange name,” answers the wind, quizzical and amused. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Baekhyun doesn’t understand whether all of this is a dream or reality. He feels quite confused, but he decides to go with the flow. Better going crazy and talking to the wind than ending up in Nathan’s hands. Especially now that Baekhyun has decided to break his nose.
“My name is not strange, it’s a foreign name,” he complains. The funniest thing is not that he’s talking to the wind, or that the wind is talking back, but that he’s talking to the wind in Korean. And the wind is talking back in the same language.
“Foreign? What’s foreign? Everything here is mine, don’t you know?”
Baekhyun laughs. “Everything? I don’t think so. I don’t.”
The voice sounds quite upset. “Everything, I said! Everything on this land belongs to me, and that includes you too.”
“But how can I belong to someone else if I only belong to myself?”
“You don’t,” says the voice, matter-of-factly. “Don’t you owe me for saving you? The moment you stepped through the gate you entered my domain, so now you must belong to me.”
A cold shiver runs down Baekhyun’s back.
“But I didn’t step on my own. You pushed me!”
The wind pretends not to hear that.
“What if I don’t want to belong to you?”
The wind laughs.
“You’re funny. They usually don’t have the gut to ask this kind of question. If you don’t want to be mine you can leave, I won’t stop you. But they’re still looking for you, those guys.”
Baekhyun listens anxiously to the sound of Nathan’s goons coming to beat him into a bloody pulp, but he hears nothing.
“Don’t worry, they won’t find you here. They can’t hurt you while you’re in this realm.”
Baekhyun steals a look at the gate, expecting to see them appear any moment now. But no one arrives.
“I told you,” says the voice. “No one enters my father’s domains unless I let them. I like you, you’re smart, Baekhyun, you’re welcome here. But Nathan Stiller? Mh, no no. That guy doesn’t have permission. He used to be a nasty kid, chasing cats and shooting little birds with his slingshot. He used to ask trick or treat and do the trick even after receiving the treat. And he stole candies from the smaller children. I don’t like him at all.”
“Oh, he hasn’t changed, I can assure you,” replies Baekhyun, and the wind laughs.
“I know, I know.” The pumpkins and the scarecrow seem to know solemnly at his words, like loyal subjects. “I think you can go now, Byun Baekhyun. They gave up on chasing you.”
Baekhyun gets up and bows, to no one. He feels strangely embarrassed and he’s sure that, somewhere in some other world, the wind is still laughing at his shyness.
“Wait, you never told me who you are.”
“Does it matter? It’s not like you’ll be able to come back here.”
“But you told me I was welcome here.”
“But you told me you don’t want to be mine. I own anything in this world so you can’t come unless you’re mine too.”
Baekhyun has a feeling the wind is still playing with him. He should be scared, he should be exhausted from the effort of keeping up with a reality in which he talks with spirits through the wind in spooky pumpkin fields. He just feels a little mocked.
“Tell me your name, at least,” he begs, as a powerful gust of wind pushes him towards the gate.
The wind snickers and the gate opens slowly. Baekhyun tries to resist, but he falls over the edge and he finds himself standing at the side of the road, under the incessant rain.
The fence is gone, the gate is gone, the scarecrow is gone too. The pumpkin patch is still there, but it’s lost the patina of magic, the sheer immobility of a place outside of time. It’s just a common pumpkin patch.
It could have all been a dream, but...
I have many names, but you can call me Sehun. Go, Baekhyun who can’t be owned by the wind, I’ll make sure to see you off safely.
It’s the last gust of wind - after that, there’s only rain, rain everywhere, cold, obnoxious September rain - but Baekhyun can feel its whisper until he reaches the entrance of his house. Somewhere, he knows, Sehun is still looking at him.
Round that corner, man
Hiding in the trash can
Something’s waiting now to pounce
The following day at school is terrible. Baekhyun’s head hurts and the English chatter does nothing to ease his headache. In class, he sees one of Nathan’s minions glaring at him from the back rows and he does his best to ignore him, but the pressure of his sneer is constant and it makes him misspell in front of the entire class. He recovers graciously and both the teacher and Simone, one of the girls sitting in the first row, smile at him, warm and encouraging.
Baekhyun appreciates the thought. He wonders whether he should say something to them. About his missing notes, about the boys waiting for him on his way back to the school. He decides it’s not wise.
The town his parents decided to move in is drowsy, dusty. A little countryside town in the middle of nowhere. Baekhyun’s father works in the human resources for a Korean firm in the city, thirty minutes of car away. They decided to rent a big but not expensive colonial house in the hinterland to save the money a tiny flat in the city would’ve costed. Baekhyun thinks the city would’ve been better. He thinks the people in the city would’ve been better. To his family, to his mother who doesn’t speak English and to him, who’s still struggling with it.
He would’ve liked to stay in Seoul, but his brother was already attending university and Baekhyun was only sixteen. “It’s just for six months,” had said his mother. “We’ll be back soon, darling.”
“Then we could’ve let dad go alone,” he wanted to say, but he couldn’t.
Baekhyun misses everything, from the food, to the smells, the sounds of the city. Seoul was dirty, but in a more buzzing, colorful kind of way, like the messy room of a student who doesn’t have enough time to clean up. This town is simply old, like the room of an elder woman. There’s dust everywhere and it smells like prejudice and suspicion. And the strong cologne of her spoiled, mean nephew.
Nathan Stiller and his gang - yesterday he didn’t even know this dude’s first name and now he even know his last, thanks to Sehun - are waiting for Baekhyun in front of the gas station. Most of them are too young to smoke, but that doesn’t seem to deter them from trying. Baekhyun has never smoked. Actually, this whole thing started because he refused to smoke with them. Pack rules, he thinks, he should’ve just accepted the cigarette and choked on it and they would’ve laughed and everything would’ve been fine. Probably.
Or maybe not. Baekhyun has never been the type who do what people say peacefully. He doesn’t like to fight, but he’s not a pushover. He puts on his best smile and walks towards the group.
“Nathan, buddy.”
Nathan punches him in the stomach. Well, fuck. It’s not like he wasn’t expecting it.
They drag him in the back alley behind the laundromat, Jacob and Matthew at his sides, Michael behind him, to block every escape route.
Baekhyun closes his eyes. It’s going to hurt, he knows, and it’s not going to matter in the end. He only has three months left, it’s not like this hellhole will be his future. His future is Seoul, Korea. His friends are all waiting for him at home.
“Aren’t you going to get on your knees and apologize?”
Baekhyun snorts. “The hell I am,” he replies, in Korean, and Nathan’s eyes flash with anger. It might be just Baekhyun’s imagination, but his nose does look a little crooked. It probably has more to do with an incident during a game than Baekhyun’s punching abilities, but still he can’t help but feeling a little proud. He punched that fucking face, he really did.
“So you smile, hm? You must be having the fun of your life, little shit!”
He raises his fist, ready to hit.
The punch never lands on Baekhyun’s scrunched up face. He opens his eyes to find Nathan and Matthew staring at something in the corner, behind the trashcan. There’s... there’s a face, lurking from the darkness. The face of a man. He opens his mouth to show pointy teeth and an evil grin. Then he emerges from the darkness, holding a knife, ready to pounce on them. Nathan screams first.
The alley empties before he can blink. They left him alone, Baekhyun realizes, they left him alone in the hands of a psycho serial killer who hides behind trashcans and is now walking slowly towards him and...
The man explodes into a soundly, amused laugh.
“Oh my, look at them, such losers! Are you alright, little one?”
“Me? Uh, I...”
“Look at you, you’re really tiny. The prince was right.”
And something immediately lights up inside Baekhyun. “The prince? Do you mean Sehun?”
“Sehun? Is that the name he gave you?”
It’s strange, Baekhyun must admit. Sehun is a Korean name. The name of one of his friends from kindergarten, he seems to recall.
“Is that not his real name?”
The man, red hair, dark eyes, tall and looming, wearing a long, long coat and holding a long, long butcher’s knife, laughs again, but Baekhyun does not feel threatened. It’s a fond, warm laugh.
“I think you wouldn’t be able to pronounce his real name. It’s just a whisper in the wind.”
“So do you know him?”
He drops the knife to sit on the trashcan, taking a moment to pet a skinny straw cat.
“I do, I do. Who do you think sent me here to save your sorry ass?”
Oh, the strange man was sent here by Sehun. To save Baekhyun.
“Oh, really? Can he do this?”
“Sehun can do many things during this time of the year, now that All Hallow’s Eve is close and the gate is almost open. But you still should be careful. Why did you follow those guys here? Have you got no sense of self-preservation, little one?”
Baekhyun scoffs at the nickname. Ok, he might look a little short, but only because this person is quite tall. A car brakes at the end of the hallway, its headlights lighting up the darkness of the alley for a moment.
“What’s your name anyway?” Baekhyun asks, but the man has disappeared.
“Hey, where are you?”
“Still here.”
The voice comes from the darkness. Baekhyun turns towards the trashcan again, squinting at the farthest corner, shielded by the lights of the street. If he looks hard enough, he can still see the outline of the man’s long coat, the tiniest sparkle of red coming from the knife in his hand. It’s bloodstained, he realizes.
“What are you?” he asks. He should be afraid. He should be running away, but...
“I am... Uhm, I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you.”
“Are you some kind of ghost? Is Sehun a ghost?”
The voice from the darkness laughs.
“He is not a ghost. He is a prince, the prince of the Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch. As for me, maybe I’m a ghost, maybe I’m not. I have many names, but in your language... I supposed you could call me Chanyeol.”
Chanyeol, another name from Baekhyun’s childhood.
“I know this name and I know Sehun’s name.”
“The names are not important. Just like the language. We are creatures of the Holy Night and we speak every language, we know every name. The one who doesn’t know anything is you.”
“Well, I would know things if you just told me!”
“Ah, I would but I don’t think I’m really allowed, little one. Besides, I have a previous engagement today. I’m expected under the stairs to meet an old friend…”
His voice, deep and booming, sounds thinner and thinner, as if coming from a faraway place. Baekhyun is tempted to step in the darkness and follow it. He has so many questions, but something stops him. The wind rises.
The man in the darkness, Chanyeol, grins. “Remember to thank him. And be kind to him. Yesterday night, at supper, he only talked about you. I think, he really...”
The wind howls and covers his words. When it falls, Chanyeol is gone. Someone else has come in his place.
“Why were you so rude? We were talking.”
The wind doesn’t answer with words this time. He slips cold hand inside Baekhyun’s shirt and makes him laugh.
“Stop that, don’t be a brat.”
Baekhyun walks home in silence, waiting for Sehun to talk to him, but the wind only howls. So Baekhyun talks. He tells him about his home in Seoul, about Samcheong-dong and its colorful little coffee shops and traditional houses. He tells him about his brother and his friends and when he was in the Music club and the end of the year exhibition, when he sang girl group songs in the gym in front of the rest of the school.
“You can’t talk back, can you?”
The wind blows, miserable.
“It doesn’t matter. Thank you for helping me today, Sehun-ah.”
I am the one hiding under your stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair
October drags itself lazily between carved pumpkins and a cold, ugly drizzle that turns the streets into a brown marsh of mud and rain.
Baekhyun doesn’t really get the Halloween fever. Korea was all about costume parties and Halloween themes candies in coffee shops and bakeries, but people here are really serious about celebrating the night of the spirits. All the school is talking about the big Halloween party at Old Ben’s, behind the hill. Even Nathan, who literally spent six weeks chasing Baekhyun just because he was bored, leaves him alone in favor of spending his free time with his minions planning for the big party.
“Will you come?” asks Simone, the girl from Baekhyun’s English Literature class who always lets him use her notes. She says she likes to help, but Baekhyun suspects she’s only after the extra credit. Well, he doesn’t really care whether she’s nice to him out of obligation or goodness of heart. She’s nice to him and she’s probably the only one, so he kinda likes her.
“To the Halloween party, I mean!”
Baekhyun just shrugs. He doesn’t even know where or what the Old Ben’s is. She insists.
“Oh, it’s an old, abandoned farm. Technically, it’s private property but Benjamin Stiller doesn’t mind if we use it to party.”
Baekhyun frowns at the name and Simone quickly explains it to him. “He’s Nathan’s grandpa. So don’t worry, he won’t report us for drinking cheap beer and listening to electronic music on his land.”
Oh, Nathan’s grandfather. That rings a dangerous bell in Baekhyun’s head and he shakes his head, politely.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea...”
“Because of that thing between you and Nathan?” She blinks and she looks really cute, with her blue eyes and blonde hair and freckles. Really, really cute. “Nathan is better than you think, but you know... boys will be boys. I’m sure he’ll get tired of bothering you in a few days.”
Baekhyun has to fight to keep the smile on his face when his muscles are desperately trying to get him to frown. He doesn’t think Nathan will get tired of him in a few days and he didn’t like the way she shrugged, as if Baekhyun was blowing things out of proportions. It’s just for a moment but he really feels like she’s trying to say Baekhyun is the one at fault.
“Anyway, I’m not invited.”
She smiles and the moment is gone.
“I’m inviting you now. We could go together.”
He mumbles something that could be a yes, a no or a I’ll think about it later, and leaves.
The thing is, Baekhyun really needs to go. He needs friends. He needs people who will stand up to Nathan if he tries to make Baekhyun kneel on the snow while he punches him or something equally infuriating. The thing is, he’s not sure he can find that kind of friends in this city.
He feels a pang of guilt at the last thought. Technically, he has found friends in this city, even if they’re strange and mysterious and never talk back. Not many people can take the credit for being friends with a prince of a magical pumpkin kingdom, after all.
The wind is gone today, but Baekhyun still talks to it. He does it, from time to time, always opening Sehun is listening. Sehun helped him, Sehun cared for him, Sehun noticed Baekhyun’s existence, unlike everyone else in his school.
“Do you think I should go?” he asks, to no one. Sehun had said everything in his realm belongs to him, so Baekhyun can only hope his realm includes this city too. He hopes Sehun is listening.
The wind, as usual, doesn’t answer. It hasn’t talked to Baekhyun since that first day, but other, bizarre, things have started to happen. When Baekhyun looks closer and carefully at the dark corners, inside the broken window of abandoned houses, through the ajar doors of small closets, he can almost see things. Things crawling, observing, things whispering.
They’re not hostile, just waiting. Their tiny eyes seem to follow him in a way that makes him feel guarded, not chased.
At night, he holes up in his room and looks up for ghost stuff on the internet. He still doesn’t know what Sehun is and, no matter where he looks for, the name Sehun doesn’t appear anywhere related to ghosts and supernatural stuff. Of course it doesn’t, it’s a Korean name. The name of a childhood friend. But why does he use it? It’s kinda maddening.
He opens his window to let the cool autumn breeze inside. It sweeps all the papers on his desk until they’re landing softly on the floor.
“Why can’t I find you anywhere?” asks Baekhyun, softly. Mostly to himself.
The alarm clock marks the end of the day. Baekhyun watches the twenty-three fifty-nine turn into a number that’s all zeros. He gets up, forcing himself to walk down the stairs and into the mostly silent house. He hits the light and opens the fridge, fetching a glass of cold milk and a packet of cookies to go with it.
He leaves his glass in the empty sink and turns to get back, but as soon as he’s out of the kitchen he feels someone’s presence at his back. He freezes.
A hand clamps on his shoulder, and he feels something moving and crawling right where the stranger is touching him. He looks down and it’s not a hand, it can’t be a hand when its fingers are made of... snakes. Ok, this just calls for a scream. He tries, but the stranger just pulls him into the black hollowness that lies under his stairs. The darkness swallows both him and his scream, closing on his body like a set of jaw ready to chew him.
Baekhyun keeps thrashing and screaming until the monster lets him go. He turns, ready to fight, to dash, whatever, he just doesn’t want to die like this, and then he realizes the monster is not a monster. (Just like Chanyeol wasn’t a monster.)
It’s a boy. He looks quite confused and hurt, covering his ears with his hands. Baekhyun looks twice to make sure. He still has snakes instead of fingers. Amazing.
“Are you done with the shrieks? I swear, you could give the banshees a run for their money.”
He has the nerve to look offended, as if grabbing Baekhyun with his creepy hand, scaring him to death and throwing him into a...
“Where the hell are we?”
It’s so black and silent. Every sound is muffled, even Baekhyun’s own voice. Only in a corner, very far away, Baekhyun can still see a light. He realizes it’s the light of the kitchen. He forgot to turn it off. Now he couldn’t turn it off even if he wanted.
“Do you want to kill me?”
The boy tilts his head, looking a bit dumbfounded. He’s extremely pale. A spider falls from his hair and down his striped sweater and he puts his back on his hair. “Not now, can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, my little friend here is curious. We don’t get many guests in this humble house under the stairs.”
He speaks funnily, like a kid who doesn’t know many words. He’s quite creepy but he doesn’t look evil. He doesn’t look like he wants to feed Baekhyun to his spider pet, and that’s a good thing too.
“Are you a friend of Sehun?” he asks, slowly, because that’s the only thing that makes sense.
“Sehun?” He frowns. “Aaaah, Sehun. The prince. Of course,” he giggles. “Well, we’re not really friends. I’m just a loyal subject of the kingdom, after all.”
“The Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch?”
“The Kingdom of the Pumpkin Patch, of course. The prince is always so nice to me. You see, I’m different from the others. I never go out and I feel a little left out at times, but the prince is nice.” He nods to himself, satisfied with his own logic.
“What’s your name?” asks Baekhyun, warily.
“I don’t think you can pronounce it, but you can call me Yixing, if you like. And you’re Byun Baekhyun,” he says, before Baekhyun can tell him his own name. “Don’t look so surprised, I’ve been living under these stairs for a long, long time. I actually live under every set of stairs in the world, but I especially liked this house because it’s both close to the entrance of the kingdom and also previously abandoned. Until your family moved here, of course.”
“Have you been spying on us?”
Yixing shakes his head, repeating the word slowly.
“Spying? Spying? No, oh no. Or maybe yes, a little. But, you see, I’ve lived here long before you arrived. I’ve lived here since this house was built, to be honest. And my life is so boring, only the prince and that terrible wolf sometimes visit me. Wait, and The Trashcan Man came here a few days ago, to bring me the plans for Hallows’ Eve night. And sometimes the Monster Under The Bed, but not really often. We can’t really leave the Shade, especially if there are humans around.”
The more he talks the more nervous Baekhyun becomes.
“The Monster Under The Bed? What is the Shade? There are more like you? And what exactly are you?”
Yixing shakes his head, looking a little worried.
“No, no, I can’t reveal the secrets like this. I can’t even bring you here, in the Shade. I only did it because the prince asked. A personal favor. From a friend.” His eyes widen. “Oh! So maybe you were right and we really are friends.”
His lips open in a timid smile.
“This is for you,” he says. He hands Baekhyun a letter. “From the prince.”
Baekhyun eyes it warily. The letter is heavy, solid in his hands. It smells like dried leaves.
“Now you really have to go, the Shade is not the best place for a human.”
“Wait, but you haven’t answered my questions!”
Baekhyun tries to protest, but the light of the kitchen, that previously seemed so far and unreachable, is getting closer at an unbelievable speed, while the dark path leading to it contracts and shrinks, disappearing under Baekhyun’s eyes.
“It was a pleasure talking with you, Byun Baekhyun who came from the other side of the world.”
“Wait! Can I talk to you again?”
“Maybe, someday. If you wish, leave a cup of milk and cookies under the stairs for this lonely Hallow. Goodbye!”
Baekhyun finds himself panting harshly in front of the kitchen. The light is on. He thinks about turning it off, but the fright of being dragged into the darkness is still alive in him.
Before he goes back upstairs, he leaves a glass of milk and a chocolate bar under the stairs.
The letter is too heavy for his content. Too formal. Too elegant.
Inside, only a little message.
I think you should go.
I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red
Baekhyun skypes Myungsoo from the past. It’s Tuesday in Korea, but the States are still lagging thirteen hours behind. It’s early afternoon for Baekhyun and the morning of a new day for Myungsoo.
“So, what’s new?”
“It’s always raining,” says Baekhyun, in-between a fit of coughs. “It sucks.”
Myungsoo adjusts his uniform. He woke up earlier only to chat with Baekhyun for a few minutes before he has to leave for school. It’s stupid, but seeing his disgustingly attractive face makes Baekhyun feel both at home and the farthest away from it.
“Are you going to cry on me? Did you miss me that much?”
Baekhyun pretends he’s not sniffling. There’s so much he wants to tell Myungsoo and at the same time there’s so much he can’t tell Myungsoo. He could talk about Nathan Stiller and Matthew Jackson and, what were the names of the others again? He doesn’t remember.
But it would be useless. Myungsoo can’t help him. He would only worry for Baekhyun, and then he would tell the others and they would worry even more.
He talks about Simone Myers and her invitation and Myungsoo winks.
“Been there for two months and already scoring up dates with cute girls? You’re the hot stuff, Hyunie.”
Baekhyun is in the middle of telling him that no, he doesn’t swing that way and Myungsoo should know that better than anyone, when the window rattles and slams against the wall, swung open by a strong gush of wind. Chaos invades the room, as Baekhyun’s notes fly everywhere. He can barely hear Myungsoo snickering at him as he runs to the window, trying to close it - it must be quite an amusing sight, him fighting against an invisible enemy - until he just gives up and waits for it to be done.
The wind falls, only to rise again when Baekhyun tries to close the window, and in the end he leaves it open.
“What the hell was that?” asks Myungsoo, when Baekhyun finally comes back in front of the screen with a sigh. “Did a typhoon happen inside your room?”
“I told you, it’s fucking cold. You never believe me!”
“Wait ‘til I tell the others. Baekhyun has s-sized tornadoes in his room, they won’t even believe me.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” snorts Baekhyun.
“Well, still more believable than you going out with girls. Or is this... what was her name?”
“Simone.”
“Is Simone special?”
“Actually, I’m just using her to get an invitation. There’s someone else I’m hoping to meet at the party, though I’m not sure he will be there.”
“Oh... Oh, Baekhyun. I thought you would never forget me, but you’ve already found someone else. So, who is the lucky boy?”
Baekhyun opens his mouth, thinks about it and closes it again. It’s a little awkward to tell his best friend about Sehun when Sehun is there in the room with him, listening. But in the end Baekhyun doesn’t really care. Sehun is probably dying to know what Baekhyun thinks of him anyway.
“Actually, I don’t know much about him. But he helped me a lot with stuff at school. He’s nice and he looks cool.”
“He’s nice and he looks cool? Where are the juicy details, Baekhyun? Tell me something more!”
“He’s very mysterious.”
Myungsoo looks a bit confused.
“Mysterious as in Jaehwan kind of mysterious?”
Baekhyun scoffs. “Jaehwan is not mysterious, he’s just an asshole. During his good days.”
“You still liked him.”
That’s true, too. The window slams again and Myungsoo watches it, perplexed.
“If it wasn’t stupid I’d say the weather is jealous of you.”
Baekhyun laughs it off, feeling a little nervous and more than a little annoyed. Maybe he needs to have a little chat with Sehun. He says goodbye to Myungsoo, reminding him it’s late and he still needs to go to class, and takes his sweet time into putting his notes in the right order.
“You know,” he says, feeling a little stupid talking to thin air. “There’s no need to be a brat about this. You were the one who told me to go to the party with her.”
Another gust of wind sends all the notes he had just rearranged flying again.
“I’ll have you know that this is kindergarten level.”
They run away when he tries to catch them.
“I just told my best friend you’re nice, but this is not playing nice, Sehun.” He thinks he hears the wind laugh. He’s a brat. A total brat. Nice and cool, yes, whatever.
Just like it arrived, Sehun’s presence disappears, and Baekhyun is left alone to collect his stuff from the floor, again. He falls on his knees and starts rummaging under the bed to find the last page of his World History essay, still fuming.
“First he tells me to go out with Simone, then he doesn’t want me to go out with Simone, and now he even gets mad because my past boyfriends were mentioned. What a tool!”
“I couldn’t agree more,” says a bored voice, and at the same time a dark hand hands Baekhyun the missing page.
Baekhyun screams. It’s not his fault, ok, he screams and he curses and he hopes his mother didn’t hear him because, first, he’s not supposed to curse and second, there’s someone under his bed and Baekhyun has seen enough horror movies with Jaehwan to know where this is going.
“Can you please calm down? Ah, you’re so loud.”
“No, no no no please no. That’s my bed, that’s... I sleep on that thing. How am I supposed to sleep on that thing knowing you’re there? How? Can you tell me please?”
“I could sleep on the bed with you if that makes you feel safer.”
“Are you even allowed to sleep on a bed? I know who you are, you can’t fool me! You’re the Monster Under The Bed and I’m not having a conversation with you, nope. I refuse.”
“Are you sure?” The voice sounds really amused now.
Someone knocks at the door and the dark, clawed hand disappears under the bed again before the door opens and Baekhyun’s mother peeks inside.
“Is everything alright, honey? I’ve heard you talk to someone.”
“Don’t worry, ma. I was just skyping Myungsoo.”
“Just don’t be too loud.”
When the door closes again, Baekhyun collapses on the chair and stares warily under the bed, expecting the tiny monster to come back anytime now.
“I’m here, if you’re looking for me!”
He almost screams again and the creature almost laughs in his face.
“What the fuck is your problem? Do you get off on scaring people like that?”
“Mh, it’s funny that you’re asking because yes, actually I do.”
It’s a boy, another boy. He has dark, big eyes and a heart-shaped mouth and he’s kinda tiny to be a monster. He probably senses Baekhyun’s doubts because he smiles and shows long, pointed teeth.
“I’ll never be able to sleep under that bed again.”
“It’s your problem, not mine. Though I must say I don’t inhabit your bed specifically. I haunt every bed in the world.”
That’s not reassuring at all.
“Then why did you decide to visit mine specifically? Don’t you have a million other beds to haunt?”
The boy frowns. “You weren’t this rude to Trashcan and the Staircase boy.”
“There’s a limit to how many times I can be scared in a week without going crazy and I think you’ve just underhandedly overstepped the mark.”
“You’re not cute at all. What was the prince thinking?”
That, at least, calms Baekhyun down a little. “So Sehun thinks I’m cute?”
The boy blinks and his eyes glow red. Baekhyun takes a step back, scared, and the boy explodes in giggles.
“Oh my, I wish you had a real bed in that place you came from. I would haunt the fuck out of you for years, your reactions are priceless.”
“When I’m done with this semester, I’m moving to Japan and sleeping on a futon for the rest of my life. What’s your name, anyway?”
“I don’t think you can-”
“Pronounce it, yes, I know, what is your Korean name then?”
“I’m Kyungsoo.”
Baekhyun hesitates. His mother raised a polite son but he feels a little stupid saying ‘nice to meet you’ to the Monster Under The Bed.
“So,” he says, awkwardly, “you enjoy scaring children?”
“Teenagers, too. They’re funnier, because they think they’ve outgrown me.” His eyes rakes over Baekhyun with a knowing smirk.
“I thought you couldn’t go out of the Shade.”
Kyungsoo’s eyes become sharp and glow red again.
“Be careful of using words you don’t know, Byun Baekhyun. That Staircase kid talks too much.”
But Baekhyun wants to know. He wants to find his way to the pumpkin patch and talk to Sehun again.
“Don’t fret it,” says Kyungsoo. “You will see him soon enough, but you can’t visit the Pumpkin Patch again. You’ve already stepped inside the Shade twice, if you’re not careful it’ll swallow you, and the prince won’t be happy.”
“Would Sehun do something that puts me in danger? He doesn’t sound like the type.”
“And you’ve known him for... how long?”
To that, at least, Baekhyun can’t rebut.
“Listen to me, kid. The prince likes many things. Sweets and ghost puppies and the light of the moon. He likes dead leaves and blowing curses in the ears of unaware teenagers. He likes to dance and he likes to laugh. He’s not evil. None of us are.” He thinks about it, frowning. “Ok, almost all of us. But the point is, no matter how much he likes you, you belong to different worlds. Play by the rules and you won’t get hurt.”
“And what if I want to meet him? Or can I only talk with the wind and never get an answer?”
“You’ll meet him, if you wait.”
“But when?”
Kyungsoo blinks. It’s a bit creepy because his eyes glow red every single time he does it, turning a slightly confused gaze into a bloodthirsty glare.
“On All Hallows’ Eve, of course. Are you stupid? He even went out of his way to give you that letter, of course he wants you to go to that party so you can meet him!”
“Yes but...”
“No buts. I actually don’t care about your star-crossed pg romance. I only came here to say one thing.” He looks at Baekhyun in the eyes. He’s so short but he also looks so threatening. “It’s not fair that Staircase boy gets milk and cookies and I don’t.”
“What? Really? What are you, twelve?”
“Don’t be a brat. I’ve been alive since the first bed was invented and I can hold grudges for a long, long time.”
“What should I do?” cries Baekhyun. “Feed the entirety of your kingdom? I’m just a poor student.”
“This, too, is your problem, not mine. Milk and cookies, Byun Baekhyun, or you’ll never be able to sleep again, bed or not.”
He crawls under the bed and his red glowing eyes are the last thing of him that disappear into the shadows.
part two