His Own Shadow

[pins_and_wheels]

Title: His Own Shadow - part IV
Author: pins_and_wheels
Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
Warning: AU, dark, non-con, beta-less
Length: 40k and growing, this part is 6k
Pairing: Kai/Taemin (main), Key/Taemin, one-sided Minho/Taemin, Jinki/Taemin
Summary: Taemin loses a part of himself he doesn't know how to hold on to.


part III

~ *** ~

Dance for Taemin the day he finally returns is, in a word, disastrous. He knew before he went that it would be bad - all week he had to concentrate just in order to sit up straight; there wasn’t a chance he could go from that to achieving enough articulation in his feet to pull off the complicated dance steps he and Kibum had planned out for their most recent routine.

But it’s worse than bad.

As soon as the music first cues him to move, Taemin is barely able to recognize his own reflection. Stiff legged and sloppy armed, the troubled looking boy posing as him inside the mirror is as much of a stranger as the one last week in the boys’ bathroom had been. He wonders if this one, too, might break free from the glass to help stalk him into a speedier decent down his already steep decline into insanity. The sight of himself is nauseating.

Taemin doesn’t make it passed warm-up drills. His movements are so tortured that Kibum isn’t even mean about it; he simply pulls him to the side and tells him to take the rest of the day off.

“Go home - try to relax. When’s your mom getting back?”

He lies and say he knows; says she will be back that night, when truthfully he still has no idea. His mother’s been strangely uncommunicative, pushing back her return flight and forgetting to tell him, returning only every other one of his calls, cutting their conversations short. It’s the sort of thing he would’ve worried about a week ago, when he still had the luxury of being bothered by normal things. As it is, he’s placed it low on his list of immediate concerns.

Key doesn’t look entirely comfortable letting him walk home unsupervised. He suddenly seems to have noticed his younger friend’s ungainliness, leading Taemin by the elbow to the stairwell, squinting confusedly at the dancer’s feet as if he was trying to understand a foreign language.

Eventually, he raises his eyes to the dark bags underneath Taemin’s.

“After yesterday - I shouldn’t have let you come. You’re not well.”

Taemin isn’t about to argue. He feels awful. Not so much because he had made a complete and utter fool of himself in front of his friends and fellow dancers, although that didn’t help.

Dance was his way to burn off excess anxiety; he depended on it, especially during periods of high stress.

Never before had Taemin more need of a coping mechanism, when suddenly he found his ripped out from underneath him.

After Kibum is gone, while Taemin is deciding between the flight of stairs going up and the one going down, Choi Sulli appears beside him. She’s sneering - a look that is particularly ugly on such a pretty face - and Taemin greets her with an already exasperated huff. The younger girl never had anything nice to say to him and, judging by her expression, Taemin notes, today would be no different.

He kneels and rifles through his duffle for a sweatshirt, hoping she’ll grow bored of being ignored and drift by.

No such luck.

“Taemin-unnie.” Her voice is sticky sweet, Taemin’s surprised she doesn’t choke on it.

The younger girl had never liked Taemin - Kibum said it was jealousy over Taemin’s looks, the blonde thought she was just foul tempered. But after his hyung had spectacularly dumped her best friend, Krystal, Sulli’s animosity had turned aggressive.

She worked very hard to bully him.

“That back there, in practice - you were trying to imitate a grand-mal seizure, right?”

He can see her smirk through her shadow hanging over him, which is dark in the well-lit hall. Taemin smothers the irrational stab of jealousy and stands. She’s tall for a girl, but Taemin’s taller.

“Do you want something, Sulli?”

She snorts, and flips her hair. “Not having to witness a performance that painful again would be nice.”

“Well, I’m leaving. Wish granted.”

She’s put off by the fact that Taemin is not, and stares at him, frustrated, as he pulls his arms through an oversized cotton sweater. He sends her an odd look before ducking his head through the neck. It’s obvious she’s trying to think of a disparaging parting word. Before she can come up with one though, he stands, bids the most genuine and angelic smile he can muster and slips through the door into the stairwell.

Up it is.

Taemin isn’t ready to go home - every time he walked passed his living room couch was re-traumatizing, and the air had reverted back to the over-ripe quality that came from all the anxiety he excreted throughout endless hours of skulking.

Automatically, his feet to carry him to his old practice spot, the rooftop. He feels like it’s possible that if he goes somewhere he once danced well, muscle memory might kick in and his feet could possibly regain some coordination.

It’s a long shot - but after such an abysmal practice he’s willing to try anything.

He’s distracted, searching through his bag for his ipod dock. It isn’t until he has the heavy metal door propped open with his hip that he looks up - and, by then, he thinks he almost should have anticipated the sight that greets him; to find his phantom stalker, seated with his eyes shut, leaning against a large steel vent.

Posed as he is, he seems so normal, as though he had been waiting on Taemin.

As though, late for their date, tired of waiting for the blonde, he’d drifted off to sleep.

The boy isn’t moving and, loose and relaxed as he is, appears completely docile. Taemin isn’t sure how long he’s frozen in the doorframe, but it’s enough time to finally absorb the image of his stalker.

They look a bit alike. Taemin had noticed it before, but now that he had a moment to really compare their appearances, he recognizes a lot of himself in the other boy. His features are pretty and delicate like Taemin’s - full of fine lines not so often found in boys - but he’s bigger all over; taller, broader, more toned. Taemin thinks the other boy wears their looks better, and feels a sense of injustice.

Then he hopes that the fact the boy is disturbingly good-looking will stop occurring to his muddled brain in what feels like an endless loop; nothing at the moment could be less relevant.

He’s not sure of the age - or if ghosts even had ages - but he figures the other boy can’t be much older he is, somewhere in his late teens. Perhaps, if the other hadn’t existed in order to haunt him, Taemin imagines they might have been friends.

It’s the first time he really thinks to look at him, in a way that’s more than just furtive glances in the hopes to see nothing at all or the horrified gawking that usually followed. For nearly a minute Taemin drinks his appearance up, silent and perfectly still, surprisingly serene.

But the composure he had been lulled into while analyzing the boy is broken the moment he stirs.

His eyes open, already fixed on Taemin.

It’s obvious he hadn’t actually been asleep; there’s no drowsiness about his movements when he rises, and it makes Taemin feel stupid for not having fled when he had the chance. He combs his fingers through his thick mop of dark hair, and Taemin watches them, recalling the way they felt so recently around his neck.

The ghost begins the short walk over, but drifts to a stop when the blonde holds up his hands. They look so weak, his arms, his wrists, his fingers are all so thin, trembling - Taemin rather feels as if he's brandishing two pale pink tulips to ward the boy off.

He begs, “Please. Don’t.”

“Do you know who I am?”

Taemin shakes his head; not to say no, but again, because he means, don’t.

“I’m-”

“Please. Just-” Taemin covers his ears. He doesn’t want this - he doesn’t want the burden of whatever this boy’s story is; he doesn’t want to help him or to be hurt by him any longer.

He doesn’t want to know his name.

“Please, I need you to leave me alone. I can’t help you. Don’t follow me.” He backs out of the door again, closing it all but a crack. The sliver of himself still visible shivers under the boy’s gaze, and, like a little kid pleading with the monster in his closet, Taemin has to shut his eyes when he whispers, “Just stay here, okay? Please.”

Taemin’s are the only footsteps he takes with him on the walk home. It’s a relief, but he’s not naïve enough to think it will last.

~ *** ~

Taemin is masturbating - because he’s seventeen and it’s the sort of thing he does a lot.

Although, it’s true; lately he’s been off his usual schedule. His hands feel clumsy; the joints in his fingers feel thick and arthritic. It’s been well over a week since he’s wanted to touch himself - the lingering sense of an audience at his back has had a dampening effect on his libido - and it’s almost as though he’s forgotten precisely how to go about it. In the beginning, he picks at his clothes, talking himself into taking them off before he does so.

However, once he’s started, he gets into it - because he’s seventeen and it’s the sort of thing he’s really into.

He keeps his moans quiet, more like whimpers, really, not trying to imagine any one thing in particular. He’s completely relaxed; at ease with the knowledge that his nosey mother isn’t about to burst through his bedroom door and offer to make him a pre-dinner snack.

Not that he would have hesitated had she been home. She’s caught him so many times since middle school when he had first started jacking off that the scene for them has almost become routine (“Oh sorry, hun. Let me know when you finish up in there. Nana’s on the phone.”).

But not that day. Taemin had indulged himself and stripped down to nothing, taking his time to wind himself up with little touches - circling his navel with a finger of one hand while squeezing a generous amount of his favorite vanilla scented body cream into his palm. He’s been using the brand almost exclusively for this purpose for so many years now, he’s managed to condition himself so that the smell of vanilla in almost any form he finds arousing.

He works beads of precum into the head of his erection; things are smoother now, he’s in his rhythm. In preparation, his legs retract.

He tries to imagine how his body would appear to someone playing with it.

Small, probably. He was too skinny for his own liking, and he didn’t think the look could be very attractive to anyone else. Even his thighs - he strokes one, gauging its firmness - though toned from dancing, were still narrow as reeds. The sides of his ribs were constantly fluttering up from under his skin, he had a waist fit for a bracelet and complexion as white and soft as a child’s. Features not bad in themselves, but completely unfitting of his gender.

Taemin sighs, and wraps his penis in a tight hold, then huffs.

He was built like a woman; that’s what they would think.

They would wonder why the woman beneath them was wearing a cock.

He shuts his eyes and lets his mind wander to places more pleasant. Big hands on his thighs, his cock nudging the warm-soft-wet back of someone’s throat. Being held down. Having his limbs twisted this way and that, like they were made of pipe cleaners, folding him. Butterfly kisses at the back of his knees, down to the very base of his spine and then pressure - he can practically feel it against his insides.

He’s so wrapped up in the scraps of dirty thinking inside his head that he’s only numbly aware when his body starts to move with direction he isn’t giving. His back goes from flat and writing against his sheets to arched over a firmer surface, legs parted rather than parting - he knows this on some level, but the burn is so undoing that he can’t take the logical next step that would give those facts meaning.

It isn’t until it occurs to Taemin that it is impossible for him to desperately claw his sheets, grip his hair and work his cock roughly, manhandling - almost painful, for him to realize something is very off. His instinct is to leap forward and defend himself, but his limbs are uncooperative, managing nothing more than to bunch and release spasmodically. Even his sense of sight fails him, opening his eyes he finds himself unable to move his gaze from where its been pinned to the ceiling, only just barely able to make out a shadowy void at the edge of his vision that might be in the shape of another person.

His heart is stuck in a race between terror at being assaulted in his own home and mind-bending fuck at receiving the best handjob of his life. There’s too much to feel at once - tight grip around his cock, a warm wetness circling his belly button, and a slick finger near, no, in his ass. He wants to protest. Taemin wants the experience to either stop or finish, wants himself to finish, but the best he can muster is some deeply pathetic whining. He thinks he hears a low, rumbling voice and whatever it says feels like a response - he’s too far gone to try to understand.

“Say it. Say my name.”

And then he’s coming harder than the fist against his mouth can contain, crying out in a broken desperate voice that he would be mortified by if he had room to feel anything but scalding euphoria from his lower stomach, balls, chest, cock, from the tips of his fingers.

He still can’t see anything, but now it’s because his eyes are closed
- he feels completely, violently drained.
There’s a soothing sensation making its way across his chest; a tongue, he realizes, and is frightened. The surge of panic is enough to coax his eyelids apart again. Just a millimeter or so of separation, just enough to assuage his fears and lull his nerves back down again into postcoital bliss because, he sees,
there’s nothing at all to be afraid of, he sees,
there’s nothing there but himself, he sees,
it’s just himself

- dark eyed and smirking, leaning over his chest, licking the cum off his skin and sucking his nipples. So, alone, he’s assured, he falls asleep.

~ * ~

As he promised his mother, Taemin does make it to school Monday - physically, at least. His mind is somewhere else, much to the annoyance of his teachers, more than one of who call on their usually attentive student for thoroughly off base answers at best and vacant staring at worst.

Taemin lasts until lunch without incident but it’s only halfway through the day and he already feels at the end of his tether. For once, he’s glad he doesn’t have the period with Kibum, so the older boy doesn’t have to watch him watch his food, entirely unable to eat almost anything. He chokes down some chocolate milk, but only so it can slosh around in his stomach threateningly.

Taemin’s thoughts are pulled away form his unhappy guts when he realizes he’s making eye contact with a pair of bobbing brown ones on the other side of the cafeteria.

He blinks.

They’re still there, though, and getting closer; it takes Taemin an inappropriate amount of confused squinting before he can place a name to the face.

Lee Jinki is definitely looking at him. He’s weaving through the lunch crowd with his eyes trained on Taemin, smiling gently. Taemin knew the older boy had a reputation for being friendly to a fault, but approaching a stranger as though he were a dearly held dongsaeng seemed a little much. He glances behind him discretely, but, as he knew there would be, there’s only a stretch of paneled wall.

Taemin tries to mold a smile in return because he doesn’t know what else to do, but it feels pretty painful on his face. He knows it probably doesn’t look much better, so he lets it melt back into neutral.

Lee Jinki wears a short sleeve button-up that accents the muscles in his arms, tucked into fitted kakis, the cuffs of which are in want of a good three inches. His face is covered by a cascade of toffee fringe and glasses with clear, thick rims.

The look is stylish, but Taemin is 99% sure it’s not done on purpose.

He’s huffing and wheezing. When he collapses onto the bench across from Taemin, the sounds he makes reminds the dancer of an old armchair full of rust and squeaking springs. It’s bizarre noise coming off such youthful face.

He doesn’t greet Taemin - as though that was their usual table and they were in their usual seats, as though sitting together were a part of their everyday routine. Like answering the phone, “hi, it’s me,” there is so much familiarity in the way he offers Taemin the extra strawberry ice cream cup on his tray. The blonde shakes his head, no thanks, and subconsciously scans his memory for signs of the other boy.

He comes up with almost nothing.

He remembers standing in back of a music class in middle school, noticing the brunette sang with a voice pulled straight from heaven, a sun rays gently parting clouds kind of voice. Noticing his hair looked soft, and that he tripped more often than he didn’t. Other than that, nothing.

Taemin watches Lee Jinki assemble his lunch across from him. It is an enormous meal, perhaps the equivalent of what Taemin would eat over the course of an entire day; there would quite literally not be enough room in his tiny body to at once cram the amount that the older boy had piled in front of him.

He has two yogurts, which he stirs vigorously after peeling back their plastic flaps. He cracks apart his wooden chopsticks, crumbles the wrapper and then proceeds to painstakingly pick every thin strip of meat out of his metal bowl of bibimbap, depositing them into small paper cup at the corner of the tray, there for that purpose alone. He squirts out packets of kochujang - three of them - mixes his rice dish and sets it aside. Lifting the wilted top bun of what is either a very sickly hamburger or a tofu patty, he plucks out a few rings of onion, crowning them atop the meat he had earlier discarded. He peels two tangerines and skins a pear, dicing it and setting the chucks next to the orange segments, which are beside a tiny hill of blueberries.

He goes through the motions of preparing his lunch so fluidly - it takes him all of six minutes to complete - Taemin knows it’s the same process he’s practiced hundreds of times before. A fellow creature of habit, then.

Taemin understands what it is to be comforted by the familiarity in patterns, how easy it is to live life on repeat - and, more recently, he knows how horrible it feels when the ritual is interrupted.

Jinki eats for ten minutes straight (backwards - sweets first) with his eyes trained on his fingers.

The younger boy wonders if he’s been forgotten.

As he considers clearing his throat - trying to determine if it’s something people do in real life or if it only happens on TV and in movies - Jinki comes up for air.

“Never have time to finish.” He manages in explanation between bites. Taemin purses his lips and sways to show some understanding, but really, he thinks, trying to cram three lunches into one would logically create a bit of a time crunch.

The table is very quiet once the senior has cleared most of his food, and Taemin finds he prefers the sound of noisy swallows to the sudden (awkward) silence.

“So.”

Taemin tentatively returns the smile.

“So?”

Jinki’s looking at him oddly - gaze open, thick, caterpillar eyebrows doing their best to arch, nodding ever so slightly - it seemed to Taemin to say please, continue as though picking up from an earlier conversation.

Seeing as Taemin had never spoken to the older boy before in his life, the look is very off-putting.

Friendly, to be sure. But also weird.

“I see you’ve misplaced your Shadow.”

Taemin turns the words over in his head a few times before he’s sure he has them in the right order. They still don’t make sense.

“You see...My…?” Taemin blinks slowly, eyes falling to the blank stretch of bench and floor beside their table, where the shape of him should have rested.

“Shadow. Are you going to eat that?”

Wordlessly, Taemin passes over his granola bar.

“Thanks. You sure?” Jinki checks, wrapper already discarded and cranberry oat bar floating a centimeter before his mouth. The sound of eating rejoins them as soon as Taemin nods.

“So, you can see that I don’t…” The blonde was having a very hard time trying to wrap his head around the idea that he is, perhaps, not completely insane. “I’m not - you really…?”

His sense of relief is clouded by a more encompassing sense of confusion, and the combination makes it difficult to string together words.

“Sure - people with Shadows can see other peoples’ Shadows. Or lack there of, in your case.”

A voice in the back of his head, tells him that maybe it isn’t a matter of his sanity being reaffirmed, but just that he’s been targeted by someone likewise addled. Between the two of them, the older boy definitely seems like a bigger nutcase.

“…Doesn’t everyone have a shadow?”

“Sure, everyone’s got a shadow. But only a few of us have Shadows, you know? SHAhhdows.”

Well, then.

“Shhah…what? What?”

“Capital-S. Shadows.”

“…And, so that’s…that’s a thing?”

“No one ever explained this to you?” Jinki asks. His smile is pitying.

“No. Who would?” Taemin shakes his head, because, honestly, was this even a real conversation?

“It’s a hereditary condition; I think at least one parent must have a Shadow. Unless, I dunno, maybe it could skip a generation or--”

“My dad’s dead, so,” Jinki blanches and opens his mouth - people always felt compelled to apologize for his loss, but Taemin wished they wouldn’t. It just gave him the responsibility of reassuring them everything was okay.

“I’m so sor--”

“It’s fine,” he recites, “it happened before I was born. But I wouldn’t know if he had - if he was like us, with this shadow business. My mum never mentioned anything.”

“Well, then I’m glad I said something.” He motions to Taemin’s missing piece, “When did he leave?”

Taemin considers the empty ground around his feet; they look lonely without their usual grey border. All the same, Taemin found it very hard to think of such a thing as a he. “Tuesday night, I think. I didn’t notice immediately. Just that…”

Taemin struggles to put his feelings into words - the whole conversation feels more like a dream than a lunch block, digesting dizzying bits of information like pills on an empty stomach. The florescent lighting is too harsh, and for the first time not casting an impression on the space around him makes Taemin question whether he is truly there at all.

“I don’t get it. Everything has felt wrong for days.”

Jinki reaches over and places his big hand near Taemin’s clasped ones on the table, not quite touching, but it’s a comforting gesture all the same.

“I know what you mean. Like you’re trailing footprints in the snow that your feet don’t quite fit, and the strides keep getting wider and wider and wider...” He nods understandingly, but Taemin is still a few pages behind. “Until it takes energy just to move forward at all.”

Taemin shakes his head, worse than that. “I feel like I woke up Wednesday with my skin inside out. I thought I was going crazy. I really thought--”

“You’re not, you’re fine. Well, not fine but you’re not losing your mind, okay? You’ll be good as new when your Shadow comes back.” Jinki finally does take his hand, just long enough to give it a quick squeeze, and when he speaks again his voice has lowered, as though he were asking something very private, “Do you know why he left you?”

“No.” For some reason, Jinki’s question makes Taemin’s heart sting. “No. I don’t understand any of this.”

It would, after all, be difficult to know why something had left him when he hadn’t even been aware he had it in the first place.

Taemin clutches his forehead and Jinki deems it a good opportunity to finish what’s left of his food, giving the blonde time to collect himself. Taemin can't watch him eat any longer. He hasn’t felt hungry for four days now - too caught up in the insanity he can sense looming like a thundercloud to feel anything except acute anxiety.

What the older boy was saying made sense in some way - in a nonsensical sort of way. It fit nicely with the rest of the pieces that made up what had become a very puzzling reality for Taemin. He could now account for his missing silhouette and the boy that had been haunting him.

He finds the idea funny; that the problem wasn’t an apparition had been following him around, but that it hadn’t been following him around enough.

A crazy explanation, but if it were true than it would attest to Taemin himself not being completely crazy.

Apparently answers did nothing to help his appetite, because the sight of the pile of food beneath his gaze on the table and, worse, the smell of it - a tangy twist inside his nose of fermented fish guts - was only making him sick. He swallows down bile, thick in the back of his throat.

He’s relieved when Jinki disappears the last bite of bibimbap, his eyes considering Taemin as he chases it with a grape juice. The box advertises as organic, Taemin’s never seen the likes of it before in their cafeteria. He is charmed by the idea that Jinki brought the thing from home.

“You know,” Jinki begins again, after sucking air for a minute through the tiny straw, “honestly, it’s odd to see you without your Shadow. He wore himself unusually close to you.”

“What do you mean?” Taemin leans forward, curious for any information on how his secret other half used to act.

But Jinki appears a bit nervous, casting a glance around before continuing.

“He was…I don’t know how to put it…”

“Put it anyway.”

Taemin normally wouldn’t be rude to a hyung, but he was tired of feeling like his organs had rearranged themselves. His stomach didn’t belong at his feet, his heart had no room to beat in his throat and it was hard to work out what in the world was what with a brain that had flipped upside-down.

Taemin didn’t have time for patience if there was a chance Lee Jinki could put any part of him right again.

“I guess, you could say he seemed kind of edgy. Stuck real close, you know? Always right up against your back. Like, he’s possessive you or something.”

“Possessive?”

“I don’t know - that’s how it came off. He always riled mine up, that’s why I’ve never talked to you before. He really didn’t like when I got close. I thought it was weird, but maybe that because my Shadow’s pretty aloof.”

Taemin feels the urge to apologize - it was sounding a lot like his Shadow was an asshole.

“All I mean to say is that given how attached he was, I’m surprised he’s left you.”

“But it happens right? It doesn’t mean it’s - I mean, he’s - it doesn’t mean he’s gone for good?”

“Oh, no. It’s very normal - happens to everyone now and then. You see, I’m a strict vegetarian.” He bobs a thumb to the small pile of fruit carcasses on his tray; “And my Shadow can’t stand it. Drives him nuts, so sometimes he takes off.”

“He told you that? He talks to you?” Taemin gives Jinki’s shadow a subtle glance where it sits on the floor beside them at the table. It turns to him, a slow and sloth-like twist of its neck, and he half waves before he can stop himself. He probably looks mad, and the gesture is not returned.

“'Talk' would sort of be a stretch.” Jinki looks down at his sullen extension as well, then leans in closer to Taemin, “He’s not the most articulate Shadow in the world, to be honest. But he grumbles like a bear whenever I’m cooking tofu, so I figured it out.”

Taemin frowns - the whole system seemed to him very ill conceived.

“So…so we don’t automatically get along with them? We’re not necessarily well matched, is what you’re saying? That doesn’t make any sense - I mean, they’re our shadows, right? Don’t we sort of own--”

“Don’t--!” Jinki throws his upper body over the table and smacks a hand to Taemin’s mouth, expression thoroughly scandalized. They look together, noticing Jinki’s Shadow had cast itself wider, sifting agitatedly and Taemin could swear that he saw sudden distinction in its features. He could make out sharp muscle definition on its arms and chest - more impressive than that of the boy across from him - and, oddly enough, a perfectly spherical head, with two oblong projections fixed atop. A shimmer over the top half of it; a fine glowing fuzz. It was a bit frightening. “Do not finish that sentence. They don’t like to be disrespected and they can make life very difficult for us. Understand? You have to be cautious.”

“Yeah, okay. Sorry.” Taemin gives the floor a quick nod-bow, sending out a prayer that no one else in the room chose that moment to look their way, “Sorry, Jinki-ssi’s shadow-”

“Tokkinhyung.”

“Tok-?”

“Tokkinhyung. His name. Tokkinhyung.”

“Right.” He looks again, the bizarre head extensions taking on new meaning. “Sorry, Tokkinhyung.”

His Shadow settles and Jinki passes a relieved grin over to Taemin, as though they had just barely scraped by without a detention.

The older boy checks his watch, “I’ve got a few minutes left, but I really should go soon. I’m always late to bio-chem - Professor Im threw a beaker at me Monday.” The brunette touches a spot above his ear, tenderly. “It was plastic, but still.”

Taemin feels his body deflate, he can’t stop himself - he’s more confused now than when the conversation started and when it had started he’s been almost certain he was going crazy.

“To answer your question -” Jinki continues, beginning to stack his and Taemin’s waste onto his lunch tray, “about shadows and their casters being compatible-”

“Casters-?”

“Yes, that’s us, that’s what they call us. Casters, masks, tethers, husks - there’re a lot of names.”

Taemin shakes his head, and mumbles, “Of course there are.”

“The way it works is that casters and Shadows have one or two things that bind them together - something really important, the sort of thing you would use to describe yourself, you know?”

Jinki shakes his empty crisps bag, peering into it and then upending the remaining crumbs into his mouth.

“Sure, I guess.”

“Like, whatever makes you you. A passion. But aside from that, our shadows can be as different from us as the next person. I think, actually, they tend to be more unlike us than anyone else. Mine’s sort of a slouch-”

“And so they leave sometimes? Just like that.” Taemin’s voice comes out more distraught than he wants it to, but the idea that what is happening to him is entirely voluntary - that an extension of him grew frustrated enough to just up and leave - is sort of messing with his sense of self. He’s not some adolescent girl who hates everything about everything she is. That his Shadow would self-amputate because he found Taemin that unbearable must say something awfully pathetic about him as a person.

“Yeah, sometimes they leave, but it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Tokinhyung, for instance. Whenever he gets it into his head to leave, all I have to do is order an extra-large, extra-crispy bucket of fried chicken and by the time I’ve reached the bottom of it he’s reattached himself.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Jinki shrugs and smiles handsomely, “No fancy rituals or anything like that. He’s just trying to assert his role, I think. Remind me why he’s needed. You should ask my mum if you’re really curious, she knows better than I do. She’s sort of an expert.”

Jinki makes the event sound like something trivial, but Taemin considers all the wrong turns his life had taken recently - all the disturbing dreams he'd been having outside of sleep, of the nightmare his life had become.

He thinks that while maybe it didn't have to be a big deal for everyone, that for him it very much was.

“But what if-have you ever heard,” Taemin fumbles and drops the sentence. He feels more than a little embarrassed to admit his Shadow’s been hazing him, like some common schoolyard bully.

“Crap! I’m late - gotta go! Good luck with everything, I’m sure you’ll figure it out!” He pitches his knapsack over his shoulder, not bothering to zip it shut, and tips precariously with the weight as he backs away from the table. “If you need help or whatever just call me. He’ll be back, though - I’m sure - real soon.”

Jinki tears out of the cafeteria, running full speed into a door that is meant to be pulled open.

Taemin watches him go with a growing sense of numbness. He’s too overwhelmed to think any one coherent thought in particular, settling on general befuddlement; how was he supposed to take Lee Jinki up on his generous offer to just call when he didn’t even have his number.

Then, like an ice cube sliding down the back of his shirt, Taemin notices Tokkinhyung is still there.

The creature's form is in a crouch on the ground right beside him, and Taemin stiffens when he realizes how close they are. If it had breath to breathe, he would be feeling moist exhalations against the exposed skin of his arm.

Suddenly, it braces a very solid hand against the table; Taemin has to stare.

The hand is enormous; the knuckles are thick and poorly formed. He can see its fur again, more clearly this time, though; it’s patchy, and Taemin feels as if he can make out each and every follicle on Tokkinhyung’s graying skin. Lee Jinki’s Shadow’s nails are the size of o-baek won coins, but square and brown.

Taemin imagines a pair of those big paws could tear him in two.

Message sent.

He doesn’t allow his gaze to follow the arm the rest of the way up, closing his eyes until the hair on the back of his neck tells him the Shadow has gone.

~ *** ~

A/N: Not a spectacularly edited chapter, but it's one of the first I wrote for this thing so I'm sick of it.

I wish I felt this story was improving as it progresses, but I actually feel the opposite is happening. Which sucks. I'm trying to bring the next parts up to some sort of standard I can feel okay about. They're resisting me, so the next update may take longer.

Comments and criticism welcomed, as always. They mean a lot.

part V