TVXQ | Thirteen Moons Later | Yunho/Jaejoong | 02
→ Warnings: AU, My Girlfriend is a Gumiho Fusion. Romance.
→ Within twenty minutes of meeting Jaejoong, Jung Yunho sprints off the edge of a cliff and breaks his neck. Which, from most perspectives, is quite morbid indeed, and under different circumstances, this would be a very different story. But this is not a ghost story (though there are ghosts) nor is it a sad one (necessarily). If you see it through to the finish, you might even get a happy ending.
First Chapter
Thirteen Moons Later
Part I: Harvest Moon [02]
One of his more horrid part-time job experiences occurred the summer in his first year of high school when Yunho, fresh out of school and eager for some extra cash, offered to watch over his neighbor’s pets while the family went on vacation. Fully expecting some kind of orientation, he showed up on the scheduled day only to find the key under the welcome mat and a note on the kitchen counter reading, very cheerfully, ‘don’t let them die!’.
(Okay that wasn’t what it actually read, but whatever they did write wasn’t any more helpful, okay?)
Two missing sparrows, three cats yowling from hunger, and a mysterious guinea-pig shaped lump in the family python later, Yunho had called up the family bubbling with apologies and uncontrollable sobbing. He had been lucky that time; all it ended up costing him was time and stress. But that feeling of despair, standing in the middle of a zoo with no clue where things were, what to do, or how to do it? He was feeling it again right at this very moment.
Admittedly, it was hard to associate this butterfly-chasing simpleton as the bloodthirsty liver-eating beast from the horror stories of his childhood, but Gumiho were known to be cunning tricksters as well. What if this was all an act? Was it better for his life to be in the hands of an evident fool or a secret mastermind?
“Jung Yunho.” The voice broke into his thoughts and Yunho looked up to find Jaejoong standing in front of him, staring imploringly into his eyes. “I’m hungry. Buy me some meat.”
“Um,” Yunho stammered. He had hoped they could make it to the train station while it was still early before the rest of the population awoke from their post celebration hangovers. Dressed the way he was and looking the way he did, Jaejoong would undoubtedly attract attention they didn’t need. “Can you wait just a little bit? I’ll get you anything you want from the bread store at the station.”
“But I’m hungry right now and I don’t like bread,” Jaejoong protested earnestly, before sidling closer and lowering his voice. “And I know I said I wouldn’t eat you, but you have to know, I can’t control myself when I need food.”
“R-right,” Yunho held his hands up in a pacifying gesture as he took one giant inconspicuous step back. “How about this? The longer you wait, the better the quality of beef I’ll get you. What do you think, can you wait?”
Jaejoong pursed his lips, expression unreadable. “The beef has to be really good then.” He said insistently.
Yunho thought of the cost of quality beef and forced himself to nod in agreement. Apparently satisfied, Jaejoong pivoted on his heel and resumed walking, faster than before and more focused too. Yunho breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe that was the only trick he needed: just keep Jaejoong fed.
//
The good news was he managed to get himself and his fellow traveler back to Seoul with little to no mishaps, except for the brief moment when the food cart passed by for the third time and Jaejoong looked as though he was going to cave into his hunger and Yunho secretly hoped he wouldn’t because he literally spent his last won on the train ticket and wouldn’t have been able to buy anything to save his sorry ass even if Jaejoong was in a particularly carnivorous mood.
Unfortunately, that meant he had to pay up later and he hadn’t quite counted on Jaejoong’s monstrous appetite for all things beef. He’d have to pull out his credit card for this one and then spend, oh what, the rest of his life paying it off?
The waitress smiled indulgently at Jaejoong as she passed by. Yunho had fed her some line about taking his cousin out to celebrate after his stage debut and she had bought into it, though not before complimenting the quality of the costume and “My, don’t those ears look realistic”. They would have to do something about those ears. When Yunho tried to broach the subject though, Jaejoong’s inhalation of food came to a screeching halt.
“What about my ears?” he asked dangerously.
“Can you make them…” Yunho made a vague hand motion “…go away somehow?”
Jaejoong glared at him, as though he were offended. It was the single strongest reaction he’d manage to draw so far and the vehemence of Jaejoong’s “No!” caught him off guard.
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them,” Yunho said quickly, alarmed. “It’s just that humans don’t have them and if you keep waving them around all the time, people are going to stare and that’s…not a good thing.”
Jaejoong’s ears flattened and his face tightened. For a second, inexplicably, he looked as though he were going to cry. “I won’t make them go away,” he mumbled, holding the rice bowl up to his face.
“I don’t have anything against them,” Yunho said quickly, and before he can think of a lie, blurted out. “They’re…they’re really cute.”
Jaejoong threw him a suspicious glare and held him under it for so long Yunho began to squirm. Then, out of the blue, Jaejoong smile at him, shy and sweet, and the sight of it nearly reduced Yunho to a giant cooing girl-which of course didn’t happen because he was a man. But surely, such an innocent face couldn’t be linked to a mastermind in any way.
At least, he thought as much until the bill came.
//
By the time he finally stumbled through the front door, the sun was setting and he found himself woefully behind on the schoolwork he had come back early for-and that wasn’t taking into account his immediate need for a nap or the extra addition to his little household.
Yunho lived in one of the student apartments just south of the main campus, tiny hovels of efficiently spaced one-bed-one-bath rooms with a communal kitchen two buildings away, a communal Laundromat next to that, and nothing else. His apartment was, by design, meant for only one person and therefore not very guest-friendly. He didn’t have a television, a coffee table, a couch, or even extra chairs. He had a small mattress he slept on, a small desk he studied on, a small water heater in the corner he kept his food in, and that was it.
“So what do you do for fun around here?”
Jaejoong had made a bed for himself out of a pile of Yunho’s (clean) clothes and was stretched out across the floor, looking impossibly comfortable and settled. He had, with little convincing, changed into something a bit more casual. Yunho was in the process of moving the surprisingly weighty white robes, with all its bells and ribbons, when Jaejoong walked back in looking startlingly normal in a plain t-shirt and a pair of his old gym shorts. Even with the ears and that face, Jaejoong could probably fit in if he tried.
He was a Gumiho, Yunho reminded himself. That wasn’t a good thing.
“I don’t really have fun,” he admitted aloud to answer Jaejoong’s question. Between his responsibilities toward school and work, there wasn’t time for much else. Occasionally, he would let Heechul drag him out and sometimes Kangin let him off early out of sheer pity, but most nights he spent bent over a book.
“Ehh?’ Jaejoong rolled over, an expression of surprise etched on his face. “But I thought the human world was supposed to be exciting.” Maybe for you, Yunho thought glumly. Jaejoong cocked his head. “Where I’m from, it’s not fun at all. There’s a day and a night, but time doesn’t have meaning because nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes.”
“So you came into the human world just for fun? Are there more of you?” Yunho asked, somewhat incredulously. The thought of multiple Jaejoongs was…worrying.
“Not really,” Jaejoong made a face. “Most of them leave before the full moon is over, if they bother to come out at all.”
“Oh.” The knowledge was only a small consolation. “Then why are you here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jaejoong’s face twisted to the side in annoyance, and if his tails had been visible, they would probably be lashing out too. “My friend was supposed to meet me, but he never showed up,” he said with all the righteous anger of someone who had been stood up. “What a jerk, see if I ever sneak out to play with him again.”
“Sneak out?” Yunho repeated faintly. It was one thing to think he was dealing with a child, it was another to actually be dealing with a child. He suddenly had a horrible mental image of Papa and Mama Gumiho showing up at his door to drag their disobedient son home-and for some reason or another, Papa Gumiho was wielding a club.
Jaejoong’s face reddened and he looked away shiftily. “We’re not supposed to leave until we’ve come of age,” he said and his hands unconsciously rise to pat his hair down. He added quickly: “But no one cares, really!”
“Won’t your parents mind?” Yunho ventured.
Jaejoong stared at him blankly. “What are ‘parents’?”
Suddenly, his head jerked up and his ears stood to attention, alert at the top of his head. Jaejoong jumped to his feet, as though possessed, and Yunho rolled back on his chair instinctively. “I smell something,” he breathed.
“What do you smell?” Jaejoong ignored Yunho and stalked over to the glass door dividing the inside of the apartment from the small balcony Yunho used for drying clothes. He slid the door open and Yunho’s eyes widened as Jaejoong climbed onto the railing, graceful and composed. “Wait, Jae-“
And then he was gone.
//
Jaejoong bounded after the shadowy figure, trailing it into the trees of a nearby park. Normally, he could keep up the chase for hours at a time, but without his fox-bead, his energy exhausted faster than normal. “Yah, stop running!” he complained loudly, collapsing peevishly onto a sturdy branch.
His companion landed on a nearby tree and sniggered loudly. “You so slow, Jaejoong-hyung. Did you get fat? Do you need to lose weight?”
“Yoochun, you bastard,” Jaejoong sniffed. “I come out all this way for you and you make fun of me. Where were you last night?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I waited for two hours and the only thing I saw was some disoriented human who needed a nap.” The other shrugged, and then peered closer at where Jaejoong was sitting. “Where’s your bead?”
“I left it with a human for safekeeping,” Jaejoong replied with deliberate nonchalance. “He gave me his name so I saved his life. Aren’t I responsible?”
“You always did live life on the wild side,” Yoochun snorted, and then smiled widely. “Don’t worry, hyung. When the time comes, if the human doesn’t want to give it back, I’ll help you take it.”
Jaejoong frowned. “I can handle my own human.”
“Of course.” Yoochun said agreeably. A beat, and then he asked, with a similar indifference: “Is Junsu with you, by any chance?”
“I knew it!” Jaejoong jumped to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at Yoochun. “I knew you had an ulterior motive for calling me out, you troll.”
“Only a quarter on my mother’s side,” Yoochun whined, holding his hand over his heart mockingly. “Besides, what’s the value of having a master plan if it doesn’t succeed? Worthless!”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Jaejoong shrugged. “Junsu hasn’t come of age yet.”
“Neither have you,” Yoochun retorted, eyeing Jaejoong’s ears. “How many centuries has it been by now?”
“It’s none of your business,” Jaejoong snapped, covering them from sight with his hands. “I don’t know why everyone cares so much. They’re my ears. I’ll decide when I want to get rid of them.”
Yoochun held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. He glanced back at the moon, one day into its wane. “So how long are you going to stay this time?”
“I think…for a while, this time.” Jaejoong said slowly. Yoochun glanced at him questioningly and the corner of Jaejoong’s lips curved upward. “It’s just…I found an interesting human.”
“Oh?” Yoochun’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve always said that humans are boring, what changed your mind?”
“I don’t know…” Jaejoong thought about his strange human with the high-pitched screams and wary looks; how he lost a coin under the ticketing booth and thrown a fit before he fished it back out; how he had offered Jaejoong clothes and told him his ears were cute. His smile widened. “I can’t explain it, but I like this one. So I think I might stick around and play with him for a little bit.”
“Is that so?” Yoochun’s forehead wrinkled and his face took on a more thoughtful expression. Jaejoong licked his lips, his restless legs giving away his apprehension. Then, very light, Yoochun reached out and brushed his fingertips lightly against the sides of Jaejoong’s ears. Jaejoong leaned into the touch gladly, his entire body relaxing in contentment. “Be careful, hyung.”
“I always take care of my toys,” Jaejoong replied, trying for a scowl and achieving only a half-hearted pout.
“I wasn’t talking about your human.”
Then what? Jaejoong thought about asking, but then Yoochun caressed the length and sides of Jaejoong’s ear firmly with the palm of his hand, and Jaejoong stopped thinking entirely.
[ tbc ]
Notes:
+ If any of you have ever watched Spirited Away, that’s what I imagine Jaejoong’s world to be.
→ Within twenty minutes of meeting Jaejoong, Jung Yunho sprints off the edge of a cliff and breaks his neck. Which, from most perspectives, is quite morbid indeed, and under different circumstances, this would be a very different story. But this is not a ghost story (though there are ghosts) nor is it a sad one (necessarily). If you see it through to the finish, you might even get a happy ending.
First Chapter
Thirteen Moons Later
Part I: Harvest Moon [02]
One of his more horrid part-time job experiences occurred the summer in his first year of high school when Yunho, fresh out of school and eager for some extra cash, offered to watch over his neighbor’s pets while the family went on vacation. Fully expecting some kind of orientation, he showed up on the scheduled day only to find the key under the welcome mat and a note on the kitchen counter reading, very cheerfully, ‘don’t let them die!’.
(Okay that wasn’t what it actually read, but whatever they did write wasn’t any more helpful, okay?)
Two missing sparrows, three cats yowling from hunger, and a mysterious guinea-pig shaped lump in the family python later, Yunho had called up the family bubbling with apologies and uncontrollable sobbing. He had been lucky that time; all it ended up costing him was time and stress. But that feeling of despair, standing in the middle of a zoo with no clue where things were, what to do, or how to do it? He was feeling it again right at this very moment.
Admittedly, it was hard to associate this butterfly-chasing simpleton as the bloodthirsty liver-eating beast from the horror stories of his childhood, but Gumiho were known to be cunning tricksters as well. What if this was all an act? Was it better for his life to be in the hands of an evident fool or a secret mastermind?
“Jung Yunho.” The voice broke into his thoughts and Yunho looked up to find Jaejoong standing in front of him, staring imploringly into his eyes. “I’m hungry. Buy me some meat.”
“Um,” Yunho stammered. He had hoped they could make it to the train station while it was still early before the rest of the population awoke from their post celebration hangovers. Dressed the way he was and looking the way he did, Jaejoong would undoubtedly attract attention they didn’t need. “Can you wait just a little bit? I’ll get you anything you want from the bread store at the station.”
“But I’m hungry right now and I don’t like bread,” Jaejoong protested earnestly, before sidling closer and lowering his voice. “And I know I said I wouldn’t eat you, but you have to know, I can’t control myself when I need food.”
“R-right,” Yunho held his hands up in a pacifying gesture as he took one giant inconspicuous step back. “How about this? The longer you wait, the better the quality of beef I’ll get you. What do you think, can you wait?”
Jaejoong pursed his lips, expression unreadable. “The beef has to be really good then.” He said insistently.
Yunho thought of the cost of quality beef and forced himself to nod in agreement. Apparently satisfied, Jaejoong pivoted on his heel and resumed walking, faster than before and more focused too. Yunho breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe that was the only trick he needed: just keep Jaejoong fed.
//
The good news was he managed to get himself and his fellow traveler back to Seoul with little to no mishaps, except for the brief moment when the food cart passed by for the third time and Jaejoong looked as though he was going to cave into his hunger and Yunho secretly hoped he wouldn’t because he literally spent his last won on the train ticket and wouldn’t have been able to buy anything to save his sorry ass even if Jaejoong was in a particularly carnivorous mood.
Unfortunately, that meant he had to pay up later and he hadn’t quite counted on Jaejoong’s monstrous appetite for all things beef. He’d have to pull out his credit card for this one and then spend, oh what, the rest of his life paying it off?
The waitress smiled indulgently at Jaejoong as she passed by. Yunho had fed her some line about taking his cousin out to celebrate after his stage debut and she had bought into it, though not before complimenting the quality of the costume and “My, don’t those ears look realistic”. They would have to do something about those ears. When Yunho tried to broach the subject though, Jaejoong’s inhalation of food came to a screeching halt.
“What about my ears?” he asked dangerously.
“Can you make them…” Yunho made a vague hand motion “…go away somehow?”
Jaejoong glared at him, as though he were offended. It was the single strongest reaction he’d manage to draw so far and the vehemence of Jaejoong’s “No!” caught him off guard.
“It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them,” Yunho said quickly, alarmed. “It’s just that humans don’t have them and if you keep waving them around all the time, people are going to stare and that’s…not a good thing.”
Jaejoong’s ears flattened and his face tightened. For a second, inexplicably, he looked as though he were going to cry. “I won’t make them go away,” he mumbled, holding the rice bowl up to his face.
“I don’t have anything against them,” Yunho said quickly, and before he can think of a lie, blurted out. “They’re…they’re really cute.”
Jaejoong threw him a suspicious glare and held him under it for so long Yunho began to squirm. Then, out of the blue, Jaejoong smile at him, shy and sweet, and the sight of it nearly reduced Yunho to a giant cooing girl-which of course didn’t happen because he was a man. But surely, such an innocent face couldn’t be linked to a mastermind in any way.
At least, he thought as much until the bill came.
//
By the time he finally stumbled through the front door, the sun was setting and he found himself woefully behind on the schoolwork he had come back early for-and that wasn’t taking into account his immediate need for a nap or the extra addition to his little household.
Yunho lived in one of the student apartments just south of the main campus, tiny hovels of efficiently spaced one-bed-one-bath rooms with a communal kitchen two buildings away, a communal Laundromat next to that, and nothing else. His apartment was, by design, meant for only one person and therefore not very guest-friendly. He didn’t have a television, a coffee table, a couch, or even extra chairs. He had a small mattress he slept on, a small desk he studied on, a small water heater in the corner he kept his food in, and that was it.
“So what do you do for fun around here?”
Jaejoong had made a bed for himself out of a pile of Yunho’s (clean) clothes and was stretched out across the floor, looking impossibly comfortable and settled. He had, with little convincing, changed into something a bit more casual. Yunho was in the process of moving the surprisingly weighty white robes, with all its bells and ribbons, when Jaejoong walked back in looking startlingly normal in a plain t-shirt and a pair of his old gym shorts. Even with the ears and that face, Jaejoong could probably fit in if he tried.
He was a Gumiho, Yunho reminded himself. That wasn’t a good thing.
“I don’t really have fun,” he admitted aloud to answer Jaejoong’s question. Between his responsibilities toward school and work, there wasn’t time for much else. Occasionally, he would let Heechul drag him out and sometimes Kangin let him off early out of sheer pity, but most nights he spent bent over a book.
“Ehh?’ Jaejoong rolled over, an expression of surprise etched on his face. “But I thought the human world was supposed to be exciting.” Maybe for you, Yunho thought glumly. Jaejoong cocked his head. “Where I’m from, it’s not fun at all. There’s a day and a night, but time doesn’t have meaning because nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes.”
“So you came into the human world just for fun? Are there more of you?” Yunho asked, somewhat incredulously. The thought of multiple Jaejoongs was…worrying.
“Not really,” Jaejoong made a face. “Most of them leave before the full moon is over, if they bother to come out at all.”
“Oh.” The knowledge was only a small consolation. “Then why are you here, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Jaejoong’s face twisted to the side in annoyance, and if his tails had been visible, they would probably be lashing out too. “My friend was supposed to meet me, but he never showed up,” he said with all the righteous anger of someone who had been stood up. “What a jerk, see if I ever sneak out to play with him again.”
“Sneak out?” Yunho repeated faintly. It was one thing to think he was dealing with a child, it was another to actually be dealing with a child. He suddenly had a horrible mental image of Papa and Mama Gumiho showing up at his door to drag their disobedient son home-and for some reason or another, Papa Gumiho was wielding a club.
Jaejoong’s face reddened and he looked away shiftily. “We’re not supposed to leave until we’ve come of age,” he said and his hands unconsciously rise to pat his hair down. He added quickly: “But no one cares, really!”
“Won’t your parents mind?” Yunho ventured.
Jaejoong stared at him blankly. “What are ‘parents’?”
Suddenly, his head jerked up and his ears stood to attention, alert at the top of his head. Jaejoong jumped to his feet, as though possessed, and Yunho rolled back on his chair instinctively. “I smell something,” he breathed.
“What do you smell?” Jaejoong ignored Yunho and stalked over to the glass door dividing the inside of the apartment from the small balcony Yunho used for drying clothes. He slid the door open and Yunho’s eyes widened as Jaejoong climbed onto the railing, graceful and composed. “Wait, Jae-“
And then he was gone.
//
Jaejoong bounded after the shadowy figure, trailing it into the trees of a nearby park. Normally, he could keep up the chase for hours at a time, but without his fox-bead, his energy exhausted faster than normal. “Yah, stop running!” he complained loudly, collapsing peevishly onto a sturdy branch.
His companion landed on a nearby tree and sniggered loudly. “You so slow, Jaejoong-hyung. Did you get fat? Do you need to lose weight?”
“Yoochun, you bastard,” Jaejoong sniffed. “I come out all this way for you and you make fun of me. Where were you last night?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I waited for two hours and the only thing I saw was some disoriented human who needed a nap.” The other shrugged, and then peered closer at where Jaejoong was sitting. “Where’s your bead?”
“I left it with a human for safekeeping,” Jaejoong replied with deliberate nonchalance. “He gave me his name so I saved his life. Aren’t I responsible?”
“You always did live life on the wild side,” Yoochun snorted, and then smiled widely. “Don’t worry, hyung. When the time comes, if the human doesn’t want to give it back, I’ll help you take it.”
Jaejoong frowned. “I can handle my own human.”
“Of course.” Yoochun said agreeably. A beat, and then he asked, with a similar indifference: “Is Junsu with you, by any chance?”
“I knew it!” Jaejoong jumped to his feet and pointed an accusing finger at Yoochun. “I knew you had an ulterior motive for calling me out, you troll.”
“Only a quarter on my mother’s side,” Yoochun whined, holding his hand over his heart mockingly. “Besides, what’s the value of having a master plan if it doesn’t succeed? Worthless!”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Jaejoong shrugged. “Junsu hasn’t come of age yet.”
“Neither have you,” Yoochun retorted, eyeing Jaejoong’s ears. “How many centuries has it been by now?”
“It’s none of your business,” Jaejoong snapped, covering them from sight with his hands. “I don’t know why everyone cares so much. They’re my ears. I’ll decide when I want to get rid of them.”
Yoochun held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. He glanced back at the moon, one day into its wane. “So how long are you going to stay this time?”
“I think…for a while, this time.” Jaejoong said slowly. Yoochun glanced at him questioningly and the corner of Jaejoong’s lips curved upward. “It’s just…I found an interesting human.”
“Oh?” Yoochun’s eyebrows lifted. “You’ve always said that humans are boring, what changed your mind?”
“I don’t know…” Jaejoong thought about his strange human with the high-pitched screams and wary looks; how he lost a coin under the ticketing booth and thrown a fit before he fished it back out; how he had offered Jaejoong clothes and told him his ears were cute. His smile widened. “I can’t explain it, but I like this one. So I think I might stick around and play with him for a little bit.”
“Is that so?” Yoochun’s forehead wrinkled and his face took on a more thoughtful expression. Jaejoong licked his lips, his restless legs giving away his apprehension. Then, very light, Yoochun reached out and brushed his fingertips lightly against the sides of Jaejoong’s ears. Jaejoong leaned into the touch gladly, his entire body relaxing in contentment. “Be careful, hyung.”
“I always take care of my toys,” Jaejoong replied, trying for a scowl and achieving only a half-hearted pout.
“I wasn’t talking about your human.”
Then what? Jaejoong thought about asking, but then Yoochun caressed the length and sides of Jaejoong’s ear firmly with the palm of his hand, and Jaejoong stopped thinking entirely.
[ tbc ]
Notes:
+ If any of you have ever watched Spirited Away, that’s what I imagine Jaejoong’s world to be.