✫
█ ✫ ECHO ··· ( ch 1 of ? )
█ pairing: ontae, with eventual implied jongkey
█ rating: pg-15+ ( rating may change - this chapter rated: g )
█ genre: a/u - supernatural - romance
█ summary:
Every troubled little boy could use an imaginary friend. But when a mysterious little boy appears in seven year-old Jinki's bedroom, his solitary lifestyle is turned eternally topsy-turvy.
✫ ··· author's note:
This fic is probably going to be a little on the long side. It's not going to be a novel or anything - there are going to be long gaps and things where a bunch of time passes and junk - but it's going to be a bit of a long ride. If you decide to give it a read, I hope you'll consider sticking with me until the end. ❤
··· ✫ ···
The first time it happened, he was seven.
It wasn't easy for Jinki as a boy. He was quiet - too quiet, as he never really spoke - and skittish of everyone. Even his teachers at school could do nothing to soothe the self-segregating little boy, and it wasn't long before the other children started to ostracise him completely. It wasn't that they were cruel to him, at least in a physical sense; they simply pretended he wasn't there. They had tried at first, offering to share lunch tables and play games at recess, but each time he would hold their gaze for a moment or two in complete silence, then break it cleanly and wander off on his own, as if he'd never even heard them at all.
As detached as he was, though, little Jinki obviously craved the camaraderie his peers shared. His eyes would follow the other kids around the schoolyard, watching them silently as they battled dragons and fought evil and had games of tag and imaginary families. Eventually, though, he would grow tired of watching, and would settle himself down in the book-nook in the far corner of the large rectangular classroom, piling all manner of books around himself like a fairytale fortress, and flipping slowly through each one in turn. The books seem to make him happier. It wasn't that he smiled while he turned page after page, or that he really showed an outward reaction to what he found inside them. It was more a change in the atmosphere around the normally lonely-looking little boy - as if the colours around him would suddenly get just a bit brighter, just a bit warmer.
A trick of the eyes - easily dismissed.
It was one lonesome night in July, long after he had been put to bed by his distracted umma, that Jinki first met Taemin.
He had been laying in his bed, the space-printed comforter pulled up under his arms and his hands at his sides on top of the stars. His eyes were glued to his ceiling, watching the patterns of light flicker and dance across the plain white paint from the headlights of passing cars through the gap in his curtains. It was past ten, but he hadn't been able to fall asleep at all. There wasn't a reason for it - he wasn't thinking about anything, and he wasn't forcing himself to stay awake. In fact, he was relatively tired, and wouldn't have been opposed to sleeping in the slightest. He simply couldn't. So instead, he lay motionless in his bed, arms at his sides on top of the covers, watching the light show above his bed and wondering how long it would take the sun to come up.
He sighed deeply to himself. This was pretty boring.
“Hello,” said a tinkling voice from across the room.
Jinki bolted upright, eyes wide with terror and surprise, and sought the source of the foreign sound. He found it sitting on the low cubbyhole shelf that housed his unused collection of space-themed toys - a gift from his mother to match his new room that she was dismayed to find he was completely and totally disinterested in. The little figure was looking at him, head tilted ever-so slightly to the side in the dim light of the street outside of Jinki's window, smiling amicably at him. Jet black hair cut in a round, bowl-shaped bob made the soft, pale face seem nearly paper white by comparison, and dark almond eyes glittered ever-so slightly as they stared at him. Milky legs dangled over the small square cubbies, bare feet nearly a foot from the floor. The small stranger was wearing an oversized, plain white hooded sweatshirt - it actually looked to be an adult's size, as the little frame it swallowed practically swam in the sea of extra fabric.
“W-who're you?” Jinki stammered in a barely audible voice, holding the figure's eyes with his own, “And h-how did you get... in my room?”
“I dunno,” claimed the voice in a jovial fashion, swinging his legs to and fro, “I just am. Funny, huh?”
Jinki eyed him suspiciously. Apparently he didn't find it quite as funny as his uninvited visitor.
“I'm Taemin,” he offered, grinning slightly wider, “What's your name?”
“...Jinki,” he replied, still eyeing the other boy cautiously.
After a few seconds of oddly relaxed silence, Jinki pushed the covers down a little so he could flick on the little lamp next to his bed. In the low yellowish light, Taemin's face was illuminated. He was very soft-featured - Jinki now wondered if he had assumed too quickly that the stranger was a boy at all. “Are you a girl?” he asked. Taemin gave him a reasonably affronted look, scrunching up his nose in a frown.
“Well that's not nice,” Taemin crossed his arms, pout turned on full blast, the sleeves flopping loosely over his hidden hands like oddly flat wings, “Of course I'm a boy, dummy!”
“Sorry,” Jinki shot off immediately, the warmth of mild embarrassment tickling his cheeks, “I was just - you do sorta look like a girl, you know.” And he was not a dummy.
“I don't think so,” he scoffed, though he was only mildly offended “But whatever.”
When silence descended on the two of them once more, and Taemin's boredom got the better of him and lead him to wander gingerly around Jinki's pristine bedroom, Jinki started thinking. He was mulling this situation over and over in his head, now that he was calmer and the stranger had a name and a face; it definitely wasn't normal for other kids to randomly, mysteriously appear in someone else's bedroom. The cartoonish star-and-planet curtains over the only window in his room were completely still, so the window wasn't open, and that meant it was more than likely locked - his umma was sort of insistent about stuff like that - so Taemin hadn't gotten in that way. But is was really, really impossible that he could've just walked in through his bedroom door. His room was the last room in the hall, and you had to go by his umma and appa's room to get here; umma was such a light sleeper that she woke up if Jinki got out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Besides, his umma would never let a kid she didn't know in the house without meeting his or her umma and appa first - something about weirdos and their weirdo kids.
So how on earth had Taemin gotten into his bedroom?
“You have so many toys,” the small boy offered, breaking the extended quiet between them - probably for the whole are-you-a-girl thing, Jinki suspected. He was holding a small model space ship in his hands, examining it with rapt attention like he'd never seen anything so wonderful in his life. “But they all look really new. Don't you play with them?”
“Not really,” Jinki shrugged, flicking the bedsheets off of his legs and padding over to where Taemin stood, “My umma buys all of it for me, but there's not really anyone to play with, so... I don't really use them.” Taemin's eyes flashed to his as he said this, but Jinki's eyes were cast down at the floor, as if it were suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. Taemin made a low sound in the back of his throat - the kind his umma made when she was frustrated with him - and replaced the space ship where he'd found it in one of the lower cubbies.
“So what do you do, then?”
“Huh?” Jinki asked, snapping his head back up to reality.
“For fun,” Taemin cracked him a small smile, “What do you do for fun?”
“Books,” Jinki answered immediately, his face suddenly brighter. He strode over to the wide, tall shelf adjacent to his bed, quickly skimming the spines and pulling out one he found suitable. “I read a lot. They're really interesting. Books can be anything, you know? And you can be anything when you read them. Like this one,” he offered the book in his hand to Taemin, who took it with mild reservation and observed the cover. Jinki puffed out his chest slightly before he spoke again, “This one is about pirates. There's like an island, and there's a whole load of treasure on it somewhere, and there's a bunch of different pirate ships all trying to find it before the others can. It's really awesome.”
“Pirates?” Taemin parroted, tearing his eyes away from the ship of the cover to glance at Jinki. The taller boy's face was split into a wide, excited grin, and Taemin laughed a little at the sight of it. “Cool.” He gave the book one last look before handing it back to Jinki, who took it back to his shelf and tucked it back in its place. Scratching absently at his arm, Taemin looked at the towering shelf. “How many have you got?”
“I dunno,” Jinki looked at the shelf as well, as if trying to count them, before concluding, “Lots. I've read all of them at least one time, though.”
“That's - ”
“Jinki?”
The two of them froze. “Crud,” muttered Jinki, sharing a wide-eyed glance with his forbidden guest, “Umma.”
“It's so late, aigoo,” they could hear his mother's light, slow footfalls approaching the door, her last word drawn out slightly in a slur of tired speech.
Jinki's face was darkening rapidly; he had no idea how mad his umma would get if she discovered he was 'harboring fugitives' at nearly eleven o'clock at night. Panic slowly flooding him from the ground up, Jinki motioned for Taemin to hide, but there was really nowhere for the boy to go. As Jinki made a grab for a book and dove as quietly as he could back into his bed, his mother opened the door. She was rubbing her temple with the heel of the hand not holding the door handle, and staring bleary-eyed but lovingly at her son.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” she cooed at him, threads of sleep grasping at her voice. Jinki had managed to prop his book open on his stomach, and looked at his mother sheepishly, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Readin', umma,” he answered softly, motioning to the book, “I couldn't sleep. I didn't mean to wake you up.”
“I thought I heard -” Jinki felt his heart squeeze for a moment, but his mother was already shaking her head slowly at her own thoughts, “The Seongs. They must've left their television on again.” She smiled at her son, gesturing to his book, “Finish that chapter, love, then go back to bed. Okay?” She blew him a kiss, and closed the door behind her.
“Okay, umma.” Jinki answered, and pretended to go back to his book. To his dismay he discovered it was upside-down; luckily his normally eagle-eyed mother had been too drunk with sleep to notice his possibly fatal mistake. Still, his chest was hammering out a drum line in full swing, and though it was starting to slow it had already started his ears ringing as he strained to hear her footsteps lead her back to the bedroom she shared with his father. He barely dared to breathe as he waited, the house finally settling back into silence before he dared to move again.
When he figured it was safe he tossed the book to the foot of his bed and crept as quietly as he could out of bed. “Taemin,” he hissed quietly to his silent bedroom, creeping around the perimeter in search of the boy, “I think it's safe to come out now.”
Jinki searched and searched his bedroom, looking in hampers, behind furniture, and even under his bed, but Taemin was nowhere to be found. Confused and a little desperate, Jinki wrenched back his ridiculous space cadet curtains and tried to lift the picture window, but it wouldn't budge - locked, just as he'd suspected earlier.
Just as easily as he'd arrived, Taemin was gone.
Feeling vaguely slighted, he slunk back into bed.
··· ✫ ···
Jinki turned restlessly on to his side, looking at the small digital clock by his bedside - ten sixteen. Exhaling sharply, he rolled on to his back again, trying to find the flickering headlights on his ceiling as interesting as he had the night before.
It was no good.
It wasn't that Jinki wasn't tired - in fact he was so tired his eyes hurt - but that he simply refused to let himself fall asleep again. He had done the unthinkable and unlocked his bedroom window, just in case.
In case of what, dummy, he thought to himself, He didn't get in that way last night anyhow.
Still, if just maybe it helped... He'd try it.
He'd try anything.
What seemed like moments later, he was sitting bolt upright in bed once more, and Taemin was grinning at him from the cubbyholes across from his bed.
“Sorry,” said the boy shamelessly, “I didn't know you'd be asleep.”
Jinki glanced at the clock once again - eleven fourty-seven - and laughed. “I was trying to not be, but it's pretty late.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Taemin watched his toes as he swung his legs back and forth, still grinning cheekily, “Oops.”
Jinki just smiled lopsidedly back at him.
✫ ··· Chapter Two
█ pairing: ontae, with eventual implied jongkey
█ rating: pg-15+ ( rating may change - this chapter rated: g )
█ genre: a/u - supernatural - romance
█ summary:
Every troubled little boy could use an imaginary friend. But when a mysterious little boy appears in seven year-old Jinki's bedroom, his solitary lifestyle is turned eternally topsy-turvy.
✫ ··· author's note:
This fic is probably going to be a little on the long side. It's not going to be a novel or anything - there are going to be long gaps and things where a bunch of time passes and junk - but it's going to be a bit of a long ride. If you decide to give it a read, I hope you'll consider sticking with me until the end. ❤
··· ✫ ···
The first time it happened, he was seven.
It wasn't easy for Jinki as a boy. He was quiet - too quiet, as he never really spoke - and skittish of everyone. Even his teachers at school could do nothing to soothe the self-segregating little boy, and it wasn't long before the other children started to ostracise him completely. It wasn't that they were cruel to him, at least in a physical sense; they simply pretended he wasn't there. They had tried at first, offering to share lunch tables and play games at recess, but each time he would hold their gaze for a moment or two in complete silence, then break it cleanly and wander off on his own, as if he'd never even heard them at all.
As detached as he was, though, little Jinki obviously craved the camaraderie his peers shared. His eyes would follow the other kids around the schoolyard, watching them silently as they battled dragons and fought evil and had games of tag and imaginary families. Eventually, though, he would grow tired of watching, and would settle himself down in the book-nook in the far corner of the large rectangular classroom, piling all manner of books around himself like a fairytale fortress, and flipping slowly through each one in turn. The books seem to make him happier. It wasn't that he smiled while he turned page after page, or that he really showed an outward reaction to what he found inside them. It was more a change in the atmosphere around the normally lonely-looking little boy - as if the colours around him would suddenly get just a bit brighter, just a bit warmer.
A trick of the eyes - easily dismissed.
It was one lonesome night in July, long after he had been put to bed by his distracted umma, that Jinki first met Taemin.
He had been laying in his bed, the space-printed comforter pulled up under his arms and his hands at his sides on top of the stars. His eyes were glued to his ceiling, watching the patterns of light flicker and dance across the plain white paint from the headlights of passing cars through the gap in his curtains. It was past ten, but he hadn't been able to fall asleep at all. There wasn't a reason for it - he wasn't thinking about anything, and he wasn't forcing himself to stay awake. In fact, he was relatively tired, and wouldn't have been opposed to sleeping in the slightest. He simply couldn't. So instead, he lay motionless in his bed, arms at his sides on top of the covers, watching the light show above his bed and wondering how long it would take the sun to come up.
He sighed deeply to himself. This was pretty boring.
“Hello,” said a tinkling voice from across the room.
Jinki bolted upright, eyes wide with terror and surprise, and sought the source of the foreign sound. He found it sitting on the low cubbyhole shelf that housed his unused collection of space-themed toys - a gift from his mother to match his new room that she was dismayed to find he was completely and totally disinterested in. The little figure was looking at him, head tilted ever-so slightly to the side in the dim light of the street outside of Jinki's window, smiling amicably at him. Jet black hair cut in a round, bowl-shaped bob made the soft, pale face seem nearly paper white by comparison, and dark almond eyes glittered ever-so slightly as they stared at him. Milky legs dangled over the small square cubbies, bare feet nearly a foot from the floor. The small stranger was wearing an oversized, plain white hooded sweatshirt - it actually looked to be an adult's size, as the little frame it swallowed practically swam in the sea of extra fabric.
“W-who're you?” Jinki stammered in a barely audible voice, holding the figure's eyes with his own, “And h-how did you get... in my room?”
“I dunno,” claimed the voice in a jovial fashion, swinging his legs to and fro, “I just am. Funny, huh?”
Jinki eyed him suspiciously. Apparently he didn't find it quite as funny as his uninvited visitor.
“I'm Taemin,” he offered, grinning slightly wider, “What's your name?”
“...Jinki,” he replied, still eyeing the other boy cautiously.
After a few seconds of oddly relaxed silence, Jinki pushed the covers down a little so he could flick on the little lamp next to his bed. In the low yellowish light, Taemin's face was illuminated. He was very soft-featured - Jinki now wondered if he had assumed too quickly that the stranger was a boy at all. “Are you a girl?” he asked. Taemin gave him a reasonably affronted look, scrunching up his nose in a frown.
“Well that's not nice,” Taemin crossed his arms, pout turned on full blast, the sleeves flopping loosely over his hidden hands like oddly flat wings, “Of course I'm a boy, dummy!”
“Sorry,” Jinki shot off immediately, the warmth of mild embarrassment tickling his cheeks, “I was just - you do sorta look like a girl, you know.” And he was not a dummy.
“I don't think so,” he scoffed, though he was only mildly offended “But whatever.”
When silence descended on the two of them once more, and Taemin's boredom got the better of him and lead him to wander gingerly around Jinki's pristine bedroom, Jinki started thinking. He was mulling this situation over and over in his head, now that he was calmer and the stranger had a name and a face; it definitely wasn't normal for other kids to randomly, mysteriously appear in someone else's bedroom. The cartoonish star-and-planet curtains over the only window in his room were completely still, so the window wasn't open, and that meant it was more than likely locked - his umma was sort of insistent about stuff like that - so Taemin hadn't gotten in that way. But is was really, really impossible that he could've just walked in through his bedroom door. His room was the last room in the hall, and you had to go by his umma and appa's room to get here; umma was such a light sleeper that she woke up if Jinki got out of bed in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. Besides, his umma would never let a kid she didn't know in the house without meeting his or her umma and appa first - something about weirdos and their weirdo kids.
So how on earth had Taemin gotten into his bedroom?
“You have so many toys,” the small boy offered, breaking the extended quiet between them - probably for the whole are-you-a-girl thing, Jinki suspected. He was holding a small model space ship in his hands, examining it with rapt attention like he'd never seen anything so wonderful in his life. “But they all look really new. Don't you play with them?”
“Not really,” Jinki shrugged, flicking the bedsheets off of his legs and padding over to where Taemin stood, “My umma buys all of it for me, but there's not really anyone to play with, so... I don't really use them.” Taemin's eyes flashed to his as he said this, but Jinki's eyes were cast down at the floor, as if it were suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. Taemin made a low sound in the back of his throat - the kind his umma made when she was frustrated with him - and replaced the space ship where he'd found it in one of the lower cubbies.
“So what do you do, then?”
“Huh?” Jinki asked, snapping his head back up to reality.
“For fun,” Taemin cracked him a small smile, “What do you do for fun?”
“Books,” Jinki answered immediately, his face suddenly brighter. He strode over to the wide, tall shelf adjacent to his bed, quickly skimming the spines and pulling out one he found suitable. “I read a lot. They're really interesting. Books can be anything, you know? And you can be anything when you read them. Like this one,” he offered the book in his hand to Taemin, who took it with mild reservation and observed the cover. Jinki puffed out his chest slightly before he spoke again, “This one is about pirates. There's like an island, and there's a whole load of treasure on it somewhere, and there's a bunch of different pirate ships all trying to find it before the others can. It's really awesome.”
“Pirates?” Taemin parroted, tearing his eyes away from the ship of the cover to glance at Jinki. The taller boy's face was split into a wide, excited grin, and Taemin laughed a little at the sight of it. “Cool.” He gave the book one last look before handing it back to Jinki, who took it back to his shelf and tucked it back in its place. Scratching absently at his arm, Taemin looked at the towering shelf. “How many have you got?”
“I dunno,” Jinki looked at the shelf as well, as if trying to count them, before concluding, “Lots. I've read all of them at least one time, though.”
“That's - ”
“Jinki?”
The two of them froze. “Crud,” muttered Jinki, sharing a wide-eyed glance with his forbidden guest, “Umma.”
“It's so late, aigoo,” they could hear his mother's light, slow footfalls approaching the door, her last word drawn out slightly in a slur of tired speech.
Jinki's face was darkening rapidly; he had no idea how mad his umma would get if she discovered he was 'harboring fugitives' at nearly eleven o'clock at night. Panic slowly flooding him from the ground up, Jinki motioned for Taemin to hide, but there was really nowhere for the boy to go. As Jinki made a grab for a book and dove as quietly as he could back into his bed, his mother opened the door. She was rubbing her temple with the heel of the hand not holding the door handle, and staring bleary-eyed but lovingly at her son.
“What are you doing, sweetheart?” she cooed at him, threads of sleep grasping at her voice. Jinki had managed to prop his book open on his stomach, and looked at his mother sheepishly, his heart hammering in his chest.
“Readin', umma,” he answered softly, motioning to the book, “I couldn't sleep. I didn't mean to wake you up.”
“I thought I heard -” Jinki felt his heart squeeze for a moment, but his mother was already shaking her head slowly at her own thoughts, “The Seongs. They must've left their television on again.” She smiled at her son, gesturing to his book, “Finish that chapter, love, then go back to bed. Okay?” She blew him a kiss, and closed the door behind her.
“Okay, umma.” Jinki answered, and pretended to go back to his book. To his dismay he discovered it was upside-down; luckily his normally eagle-eyed mother had been too drunk with sleep to notice his possibly fatal mistake. Still, his chest was hammering out a drum line in full swing, and though it was starting to slow it had already started his ears ringing as he strained to hear her footsteps lead her back to the bedroom she shared with his father. He barely dared to breathe as he waited, the house finally settling back into silence before he dared to move again.
When he figured it was safe he tossed the book to the foot of his bed and crept as quietly as he could out of bed. “Taemin,” he hissed quietly to his silent bedroom, creeping around the perimeter in search of the boy, “I think it's safe to come out now.”
Jinki searched and searched his bedroom, looking in hampers, behind furniture, and even under his bed, but Taemin was nowhere to be found. Confused and a little desperate, Jinki wrenched back his ridiculous space cadet curtains and tried to lift the picture window, but it wouldn't budge - locked, just as he'd suspected earlier.
Just as easily as he'd arrived, Taemin was gone.
Feeling vaguely slighted, he slunk back into bed.
··· ✫ ···
Jinki turned restlessly on to his side, looking at the small digital clock by his bedside - ten sixteen. Exhaling sharply, he rolled on to his back again, trying to find the flickering headlights on his ceiling as interesting as he had the night before.
It was no good.
It wasn't that Jinki wasn't tired - in fact he was so tired his eyes hurt - but that he simply refused to let himself fall asleep again. He had done the unthinkable and unlocked his bedroom window, just in case.
In case of what, dummy, he thought to himself, He didn't get in that way last night anyhow.
Still, if just maybe it helped... He'd try it.
He'd try anything.
What seemed like moments later, he was sitting bolt upright in bed once more, and Taemin was grinning at him from the cubbyholes across from his bed.
“Sorry,” said the boy shamelessly, “I didn't know you'd be asleep.”
Jinki glanced at the clock once again - eleven fourty-seven - and laughed. “I was trying to not be, but it's pretty late.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Taemin watched his toes as he swung his legs back and forth, still grinning cheekily, “Oops.”
Jinki just smiled lopsidedly back at him.
✫ ··· Chapter Two