SH 2013: for midnightplanets
For: midnightplanets
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: Nocturnes
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kai
Length: 8,700 words
Summary: "I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
Notes: Dear midnightplanets, thank you for the amazing prompt! Hope you enjoy the fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! Have a great 2014 ♡ ♡ ♡
2.
He tumbles into a neverending darkness.
3.
In most cases, if ever, one would expect shouting throughout the entire freefall. Joonmyun stops yelling twelve seconds in.
His lungs are not aching, not yet. He has trained far too long for his breath to give up so fast. No one can hear him, he reasons and it scares him how he even has time to think because three minutes in and he's still falling. Joonmyun watches the light from his apparent point of entry diminish as he races backwards into wherever.
Joonmyun’s mind races quickly like his fall. There is something awfully familiar about this plunge, like one of those recurring dreams he has all the time.
No, they are far too vivid for dreams, the suction of darkness twisted between flashes of knitted peacock feathers and crunches of bone, blue china, bone, skeletal columns.
The damp smell of earth is nauseating, mouthfuls of waterlogged soil, tiny clumps of organic matter floating up, pelting against his cheeks while he falls down. Joonmyun’s hands are outstretched and desperate as he clutches onto nothing. Four minutes. Five. Ten. He loses all sense of time or direction as his body falls deeper into the abyss.
And right now, he can say again, this is not a dream, the rush of air slapping against his cheeks, howling across the shell of his ear, fluttering at his eyelashes.
I’m going to die, Joonmyun thinks.
5.
He rouses to aching limbs and blurred vision.
Joonmyun pushes himself off the textured floor, crawls towards one of the dusty walls to help himself stand. The room is covered with floral paper to the ceiling, illuminated by a chandelier hanging in reverse from the ground. Joonmyun takes in the odd sight, fear now washed away by awe. He notices the walls punctured with whitewashed doors of different sizes.
This place is at a standstill. There is only his lone self and the quiet roar of wind through the gaping hole above him.
So it has to be one of the hundred doors surrounding him then. Joonmyun’s starting to develop this sudden, intense dislike for doors. How’d he get here? That’s right, through that wretched studio door. Joonmyun berates himself for not checking before he stepped into the darkness of the dance room. What were the odds?
“So much for practice,” he shrugs as he twists at a doorknob. Joonmyun likes to keep tabs on himself, searching his stage name up on Naver and Nate. The other members call it vain, masochistic and purposefully self-inflicting but he thinks of it as progressive monitoring.
“I hope you don’t take these seriously,” Jongdae had said, chin over Joonmyun’s shoulder, watching the upvotes and downvotes scroll past his eyes.
“Of course I do not,” Joonmyun lies. Of course he does, what are idols but the manifestation of what their fans want, what the general public expects. The comments had called for extra dance practice, not really prancing around some peculiar chasm.
He moves to the next door when he realises this one is rusted shut. Drags his feet across the floor, knees still weak and shaky. The process is painfully slow, almost like trying to walk again. Joonmyun bends his knees slowly, absentmindedly brushing his fingers on the copper doorknob. He’s been here before. Sort of. The tugging in his chest gets stronger.
"Down the rabbit hole," Joonmyun whispers, barely. It feels like a conflicting mix of epiphany and memory. And right then, the door he's at swings open under his gentle push.
7.
“What is that,” Sehun points towards the book in Joonmyun’s hand. Sehun is three years younger and demanding and always asking him questions. They are slumped together in the corner of their designated practice room. There are so many other new trainees but Joonmyun likes Sehun, has some good gut feeling about him.
“It’s a book,” Joonmyun replies. Well, obviously. “Alice in Wonderland. I have to read it for school but I think I like it so far.”
Sehun scoots a little closer to take a look at some of the pages. “It’s sorta strange. I feel bad for the main character at some points because she seems so lost in a nice place.” Wonderland isn’t exactly the ideal place for an escape but sometimes Joonmyun imagines getting lost there. Thrown into a land of talking flowers and rabbits and food that could finally make him tower over others for a change.
Joonmyun is about to share with Sehun the plight of Alice when Jongin bursts into the practice room, panting slightly.
“Sorry I’m late,” Jongin mumbles, tossing his sling bag into another corner. Jongin is two years younger and demanding and to some extent, intimidating despite his age. In the dance room he goes all serious, throwing energy in ways Joonmyun can’t. Fluid in every aspect. Tough footwork, merely baby steps for him. Expression, a whole catalogue of playful smirks and dark stares. Outside the dance room, he reverts back to shy high school boy, determined eyes peeking from behind thick black bangs.
Jongin’s whole existence is suffocating to Joonmyun for no good reason.
11.
Joonmyun’s fully convinced he’s veered off completely. Less than ten steps into an oversized garden and he comes across huge stalks of talking flowers. Whispering, wilted tulips are clearly gossiping in front of him, about him. A sleeping peacock lies nestled between the stalks. He has an inkling of his location but his mind screams impossible.
Curling a leafy arm over Joonmyun’s quivering shoulders, a pale fuchsia tulip leans over, blowing scent gently over his cheek. “You aren’t like us so surely you must be the one?”
“He can’t be. I mean he’s way too tiny to be of impact. He’s no bigger than a flower.” Joonmyun looks up at a red one, its petals slightly tattered at the edge. His involuntary pout threatens to spill over his lips. Height is especially not his favourite topic for discussion, much less between babbling tulips.
“He obviously isn’t the one,” an orange one snaps. Its colour is not sunset brilliant but muted and blotchy. These flowers are probably dying. Frowning, he tries to cut into their conversation but their roaring volume drowns him out. All the aggressive rustling of petals and leaves awakens the peacock from his slumber.
Immediately scrutinising the new object, the peacock steps up to Joonmyun, stares at him hard and long, and then whines, “We should just consult the absolute one.”
“I don’t think he has a clue where he is,” one yellow tulip says, pressing a leaf against Joonmyun’s chest. He looks down, away from the harsh stares of these flowers. “Poor thing, just look at him.”
“He could be the one,” Joonmyun glances up at the peacock. At least the peacock seemed to be nice. Forget criticism and praise. Talking flowers are trying to pass judgement on him even though they’ve just met him two minutes ago.
“Anyone could be the one if they wanted to,” another tulip yells from the back. And then there is more shouting and they soon forget about him standing right there, listening to them.
Joonmyun has no idea who or what they are referring to so he merely tiptoes away. The twenty odd tulips become so invested in arguing with each other that he has no problem sneaking out of their sight, veiled by their massive shadows.
13.
The more he tries to run away from those words, the more it makes him realise that they have always been true.
17.
Bright red against a white brick wall. Joonmyun is now sick and wary of doors, entrances, exits but he decides to test his luck when he sees this one.
19.
Behind his charismatic stage-ready exterior, Jongin is volatile and difficult to understand. Joonmyun tries. He really does. But after so many years, Jongin begins to slide between extreme ends of the spectrum, out of range, out of Joonmyun’s reach.
Jongin pushes and pulls, shoves away then tugs Joonmyun closer, then curls away, maybe shy, mostly embarrassed, when Joonmyun brushes gently against his arm. There is no consistency. Nothing predictable about them. When Jongin suddenly throws his arms over Joonmyun’s neck, he can’t help but inwardly gasp, quickly pulling the younger in, closing his eyes to savour the moment.
The loud pounding of his heart drowns out the screams of the fans as they twist a little around the stage, similar to how his own stomach twists when he remembers that they are no longer just Joonmyun and Jongin, but also Kai and Suho.
Joonmyun would rather Kai push him away than Jongin. The four of them continue to claw at each other for dominance in a silent sort of battle.
23.
Dense layers of shrub pulsate under Joonmyun, creeping over his chunky basketball shoes. When he turns around, the door from which he entered from is already shrouded with curtains of pale green foliage. There is something about the wisps of chlorophyll in this particular garden. Breathing around the synthetic material of his shoes. Pumping quietly and quickly, almost in sync with his palpitating heart.
Roses of yellow and grey bloom in his footsteps, mocking the print on his shirt, mocking his foreign existence. Joonmyun decides not to step any further because he doesn’t like the idea of crushing something so alive under his feet, then having something grow in his trace.
"I've been waiting for you," a voice creeps, sudden like the sneaking scent of musky rose. Clumps of roses sprout from his hair and he peels them off quickly. Joonmyun can see nothing through this mess of overgrown flora. "You're late for the garden party," it says again. "Your own birthday party."
"It isn't my birthday," Joonmyun responds with gentle apprehension, flickering yet another flower off the tip of his nose. At least he isn’t talking with himself again but he can’t see who’s talking to him anyway.
“What do you mean? It is your birthday everyday.” Shrubs pile and knot in front of Joonmyun, forming a chair for him to sit on. He does not deny the plants. “There is no need to celebrate such an occasion in multiples of three hundred and sixty five.”
And a figure draws closer, trudging through the vegetation. Trays carrying teapots, sweets and cake balance atop the person’s many hands. Joonmyun can’t make out his face, hidden behind layers of white, thick lace. “The garden knows you, but I don’t. Tell me who you are.” Lace Face pours him a cup.
“Suho,” Joonmyun says shortly. It’s only half a lie, deceptive and industrial imagery. Practiced and pushed every single day for two years. In front of the mirror, he goes over his script. He says it without any doubt to betray him.
It spreads the bone china porcelain around the table, waving teapots and plates out of nowhere, before seating itself opposite Joonmyun. “You may address me simply as White.”
“White,” Joonmyun repeats, trying to contain his trembling.
“Care for some cake, Suho?” offers White. Joonmyun can picture a beckoning smile behind the patches of lace.
Joonmyun shrugs. Honestly, he wants the way out of here more than he wants a mouthful of buttercream layered cake. “Uh, no. I’m not actually-”
Fists slam down hard onto the vine table, knocking tea out of their porcelain cups and some meringues off their silver trays. “Hungry? A poor excuse for your blatant avoidance of cake. Had it not been for your bright eyes, I would’ve thought you were walking dead trespassing through my garden.”
Joonmyun wants to counter but White’s words are strangely gripping. All this while Joonmyun had been moulding himself around others. What makes this any different? The figure tilts its masked head to the side. “Care for some cake, Suho?” it offers again. White gives no opportunity for Joonmyun to reject.
He takes a small bite out of it, letting the cream glide slowly over his tongue.
“Tell me more about yourself, Suho.”
“I’m lost and I need to get out of here,” Joonmyun swallows a bit of hot tea, doesn’t mean to be rude. He pretty much figures that he doesn't belong in this world with nonexistent laws of physics and plants more sentient than himself. Joonmyun sees no point in being indirect.
“Trespassers aren’t tolerated in the garden," White shifts closer, elbows pushing empty teacups off the table, smashed shards of stained porcelain. "Underland is crumbling, while my garden is thriving. The least you could do is to accept my hospitality."
29.
Just pervasive blackness before he jolts awake, drenched in perspiration, loud pounding in his ears. He grips wildly at his sheets. Presses his face into his pillow. Take me away from here, he shouts at the dark.
31.
Two slices of cake later and Joonmyun feels completely nauseous, saturated with creamed fat and sugar, drowning in sweetened tea. He’s about to explode, in the most literal sense, into a mess of flesh and churned up party food.
White drops him an ultimatum, stay in the garden or stay out forever, to wander in the wild unknown of Underland by himself, all alone.
37.
Joonmyun wakes up one day feeling like he just got tossed out of nowhere, body aching and throat parched. His pillow is uncomfortably wet. He drags himself to the washroom, squints at the mirror, notices a shock of crimson streaking from above his eye. It streams out quickly, deep red contrasting against the clean white of his sink.
41.
Joonmyun chooses the latter. He sees no point staying in the safe cocoon of White’s garden. He needs to find a way out of this place. Staying in the same place, Joonmyun reasons, is almost as bad as regressing.
He feels dwarfed by his surroundings, more than he does on a daily basis. Joonmyun is shorter by a good sixty percent of his group. Here he is sixty percent the height of a stalk of bellflowers. Inside the dusty cup of a purple flower, legs hanging out, lips in its habitual pout, he ponders his next step to take.
It doesn’t seem to matter though. Any concept of consequences seemed to be illusory here. Joonmyun has taken far too many missteps but there have been no repercussions whatsoever. Something could be waiting for him, dangerous, electrifying. Octopuses with wings. Another eloquent, tea loving creature. But he needs is to get out of here, back into the world he fell from, back to the mundane lights of the practice room.
Swirls of blue smoke rise in the distance. That means life somewhere behind the curtain of raspberry bushes. Someone he could ask for help, hopefully more useful than those talking flowers or White. Underland, he realises, is full of creatures that too are equally as lost in their own world.
43.
"You were yelling in your sleep."
Joonmyun looks up from his coffee and milk to see Jongin standing at the doorway of their dorm's kitchen. Jongin joins Joonmyun at the counter, eyes sleepy, hair messy.
"What were you dreaming of?" the younger asks. He scrunches his face and Joonmyun feels apologetic for the puffs under his eyes. "I mean, you were shouting loud enough to get me up. I have no idea how Jongdae slept through that."
"I don't know. It was all black," he swirls the coffee in his mug, dark like the vacuum of his dreams. He won’t tell Jongin about that tugging sensation on his limbs and the constriction of his subconscious set of lungs, each breath smaller and smaller in volume.
Jongin nibbles on his lips, eyes flickering from the nearly empty mug to the dirty kitchen counter to Joonmyun’s eyes, which he quickly averts when they meet.
"Don't worry about me," insists Joonmyun, eyebrows frowning gently.
“I won’t,” Jongin replies quietly, sliding off his seat. It isn’t all that convincing. He watches Jongin retreat to the washroom. Joonmyun can already hear Chanyeol's grunting and Minseok’s quiet voice bouncing off the walls, the click of the heater, buzzing shavers, morning sounds.
It’s another day, Joonmyun reminds himself, and he too slides off his seat, slides last night to the back of his mind.
47.
He runs, following the billowing clouds of blue, diving through stems and ducking under leaves until he reaches a purple tentage hoisted up by mushrooms. The same blue smoke lazes out of the entrance in large and slow tendrils.
The interior of the tent is lined with carpets and cushions so Joonmyun resorts to crawling in, not wanting to remove his basketball shoes. A huge worm, identically blue with the smoke, watches his every move, slowly exhaling fruit flavoured vapour. It wears a cape with its name, Absolut, embroidered all over.
“Absolut?” The worm rolls its eyes. It exhales blue in the direction of its cape, as if answering the question. Joonmyun takes two small steps back.
“Stop moving away,” the worm finally says between drawls of smoke. “Tell me your name.”
Quietly and still shaking, Joonmyun replies with his stage name.
“Try some,” Absolut wheezes, slithering up to him. Absolut thrusts a mouthpiece into Joonmyun’s hand after pushing him down into one of the plush pillows. Judging from his experience with White, the creatures of Underland absolutely hate any rejection of their questionable hospitality. “It’s been a last time since you had a trace of tobacco in your bloodstream, you pathetic thing. I can smell you.”
“I’m a singer,” Joonmyun explains, doesn’t know why he winces when he says that. “It’s not good practice for us to smoke.”
Joonmyun barely remembers himself fiddling with a lighter, menthol stick dangling from between his lips, as he inhaled burnt tar into his lungs. Extremely stressed, he had been back then, just before their comeback. That was just an alternative way of venting it, exhaling out all that fear and pent up anger he never knew he had. Absolut merely snorts, flashing his blackened teeth.
“In the book you were a caterpillar,” Joonmyun says, thinking out loud.
“You must be confused,” Absolut squints. “Caterpillars were generations ago. You don’t know what you are saying. You don’t belong here and it is obvious.” The worm’s voice is rough and true to his name, absolute. “I can smell you. Everyone else can smell you.”
Absolut vanishes behind a dense shroud but reappears quickly with a parchment scroll. His tiny hands, gloved in purple satin, pull open the scroll. For effect, it whips out monocle and sets it in front of his eye.
Joonmyun gulps. “What is it?”
“The name of this scroll evades me. A symptom of the sleepy haze cast over the land. Eighty seven percent of my fellow creatures have been inflicted with eternal drowsiness.”
“Well I did see a peacock dozing off under some tulips,” he nods.
“In approximately thirty seven minutes, I will collapse into a slumber. Hurry up and have some while I read this.”
Joonmyun brings the mouthpiece up, hesitantly pressing it against his flushed lips. He breathes in slowly through his mouth, letting the flavoured smoke descend into the cavity of his lungs.
“Underland now, Wonderland then,” Absolut recites poetically. Joonmyun appreciates the effort as a stage major but this is no time for theatrics. He tries to keep patient, slowly breathing out blue. “One, not from our world, will be able to save us. Goes by the name of Alice.”
“So Underland is looking for an Alice to save them,” Joonmyun summarises.
Absolut throws the scroll aside, picking up his tube and taking a large draw of smoke. “To put it simply, yes. It could be you. You have fulfilled the condition of being foreign. I just hope you haven’t met White or Red yet.”
Joonmyun gasps. “But I have.”
The worm shakes its upper half and does two more quick puffs. “Oh dear, oh dear. Smoke more boy. The both of them are enemies yet allies. They each want full control over Underland, but more importantly, would do anything to make sure there is no Alice. Was it White or was it Red. Don’t tell me you had their terrible cake.”
“Yes I did. White gave me a lot of that,” Joonmyun replies, painfully honest and Absolut is groaning. Just as Joonmyun’s about to inhale smoke again, something in the mountain of pillows starts to move.
A tanned hand peeks out, and then blond hair, and then Joonmyun sees Jongin’s face.
53.
“What is that,” Sehun points towards the matte screen of Joonmyun’s iPad. They’re seated at the back of the van, rest of the group nodding off during the long drive to the next fansign. Different genres of music leak out from their earpieces creating an oddly comforting white noise for Joonmyun to read in.
“I’m looking at dreams. Uh, the meaning of them,” Joonmyun shows Sehun a massive list of dream meanings, fingers scrolling through several paragraphs, curious interpretations of the subconscious mind. “These are more western though.”
Sehun looks over, raising a brow. “Like what?”
“Dreams about falling are actually common,” says Joonmyun.
“I don’t remember having one before. Actually, I rarely remember anything when I sleep.”
“There you go,” Joonmyun says. “Falling is an indication of anxiety and instability. Like a loss of control. A lack of balance.” This, Joonmyun reveals reluctantly. No, he’s pretty sure he’s got his life under control, planned down to the very minute. He recalls harder, tries to cough up some more detail but he only remembers all black.
59.
Jongin crawls from beneath the pillows, running up to Joonmyun and crushing him in the tightest, most surprising hug ever. "Joonmyun," Jongin murmurs, pressing his chest up against Joonmyun. "Finally, someone." Joonmyun hugs him back hard into the cushions, cards a hand through Jongin's rough, grey hair.
“Two minutes to speak.” Absolut cuts their reunion short, reminding them of the lack of time it has. It vanishes yet again behind a wispy cloud, giving them some mock privacy.
“How did you get here?” Joonmyun asks.
“I have no idea why I got up so early to practice,” Jongin recounts, hair mused and messy, as always. “I thought you went but it was empty and the lights were off and I just.” He pauses, looking visibly frightened. “I just fell in.”
“No matter how much I want it to be, this isn’t a dream. We’re in some dying place called Underland. Oh, and use your stage name here.”
Jongin’s eyebrows knit in obvious confusion but there’s fear flashing in his eyes. “What do I do? Isn’t this your dream? I just-”
Rough voice cuts in. “Underland is not for weak of mind. The only way the both of you will escape is to never forget yourself and of course, to always remain absolute.”
Joonmyun is not sure what to make out of that sudden chunk of advice. Jongin looks equally puzzled, understandably so. Absolut pushes a smoke tube into Jongin’s hand, gesturing at the younger to take a puff.
“Do pay attention Suho,” Absolut nudges when Joonmyun’s attention drifts from the scroll to the blue swirls of smoke trailing from between Jongin’s plush lips.
“Where do I look at exactly?”
Absolut hums. “Nowhere in particular. I need to inform you about Underland’s not so pretty history and it’s two ruling parties who threaten to further overturn the already unbalanced imbalance of our impaired utopia.”
The worm tells them of Red and White, both outwardly benign and generous in order to lure others in favour of their inner motives. Both own individual gardens, feeding off the rest of Underland. “Only creatures who submit to either side can enjoy that paradise,” Absolut says. “But they inadvertently enslave themselves to a colour, how dismal.”
Jongin fists his hand into a cushion looking very alarmed. “How do we end this.”
“According to the nameless scroll, only Alice can unlock the door in the Queen’s garden. In the garden, Alice can find and destroy the Wire of Aces.” Absolut shows them a diagram of a black and red patterned pipeline. The drainage ducts snaking through the core of Underland.
“Who’s the Queen?”
“We don’t even know which one’s Alice yet,” says Joonmyun.
Absolut impatiently huffs smoke right into Joonmyun’s face. “You’ve been playing dumb for too long, Suho. After all this while, I was absolutely sure that you would remember. You’ve already lost once against the Queen.”
“What do you mean.” Joonmyun still hasn’t the slightest recollection of physically fighting against anyone ever, no such person, no such Queen.
“The Queen is the highly potent combination of both Red and White. After all, they are one and the same entity. Very large and obviously dangerous.” Absolut’s voice is taunting and secretive. “How else do you think you got that scar?”
61.
A sudden ridge curiously placed between his left eye and the bridge of his nose. It would’ve been something to talk about but Joonmyun never brings it up, simply because he has no idea how it came to be.
Joonmyun does not get conscious about it. Sometimes he forgets about it. Sometimes he feels the sharpest pain slicing through his upper face, an unexplainable sensation of the hottest knife sweeping clean through his buttery skin.
67.
Jongin and Joonmyun head down another overgrown path, following the direction of the full moon. They make the slow discovery that Underland has no sun, instead illuminated by the gentle moonlight. It was hard to notice with all the thick canopy filtering most of the moon beams The whole place must be nocturnal, Joonmyun realises, a slow beating pulse uniting them within the darkness of permanent dusk.
He glances at Jongin sometimes, the younger a few steps ahead of him, eyes never leaving the moon above them. Jongin knows, of course.
“I saw you reading about Wonderland before. Way back, though. You know, with Sehun.” He pauses in his tracks, turns his head back at Joonmyun who stops too. “Does it have a happy ending?”
“She ends up about to get her head sliced off,” Joonmyun shrugs. They continue to weave through this field of massive daisies. “But before she gets beheaded, she wakes up because it was actually a dream.”
“Do you think that maybe this is all just some fucked up dream?”
“Why don’t you pinch yourself? I don’t know,” laughs Joonmyun, even more when Jongin actually tries to pinch his arm. “Maybe I don’t want to wake up.”
Clambering on top of a huge twig, Jongin speeds ahead. “We have to wake up!” he shouts from the top. “We have to comeback with this song we’ve been practicing so hard for.” Jongin hums the tune to Growl. Joonmyun has good gut feeling about that song too.
Wolf was (secretly) a total mess to Joonmyun and everyone had been giving their all, morning practice, night practice, even the showers, for their upcoming title song. He looks up at Jongin, gestures at him to get back down, but Jongin is smiling so hard, moonlight bouncing off his blond hair. There, that young and wild boy at heart, finally set free.
71.
They come across a grinning cat, translucent against the dark top of a direction post, it’s smile reminiscent of someone they know. Conveniently waiting for them at the crossroads, Joonmyun asks for some help.
“Turn left,” it advises, “A dewy lake, approach with a calm heart. Mushrooms could induce vertigo but nurse a broken heart.”
Joonmyun bows to the cat, despite not understanding half of what he just heard, and Jongin quickly does too, running with Joonmyun to the left. Grinning, the feline presence fades away.
73.
Jongin kisses him once, after practice, before debut, pushing him into the sky curtains when no one else is in the studio. Without much experience, he presses hard and awkward against Joonmyun’s mouth with his own. He pulls away, embarassed or confused, Joonmyun can’t tell but he tugs Jongin back, kisses him properly, sucking gently on his bottom lip, letting their tongues meet for a bit.
79.
They don’t talk for a week and when they do, Jongin never brings it up again.
83.
Fifteen minutes of traversing across huge puddles of evening dew, trekking on top of fallen stems. Not much of a lake. Soaked shoes leave Joonmyun grumbling occasionally. As predicted by the absolute one, they come across the same peacock from before. He addresses himself as Eddie. Wildly enthusiastic, unlike the first time they met, the peacock describes himself as vain but valiantly loyal. He pledges himself to stay by their sides until they finish what they’re here for.
“He reminds me of someone back home.” Jongin sounds embarrassingly homesick, blearily pinching at his nose and rubbing his eyes.
“Apologies for my bouts of sleepiness before,” he bows to both Joonmyun and Jongin. “I would take you to the Queen’s garden but we are far too small for that.”
Blades of grass stretch into the star filled sky. Without any questions, they follow Eddie who leads them down through a grove of mushrooms. Assuming a tourguide role, Eddie dispenses chunks of trivia about the columns of fungi (fly agaric, indigo milkcaps, funnel shrooms) until they reach a room crafted into a disgustingly huge mushroom. Inside the room there is nothing but a glass elevator which they promptly enter.
The glass box they are in doesn’t move and the both of them lapse into a state of mild panic.
“You’re supposed to press the damn button,” says Eddie. “I’m a peacock. I can’t press that without falling over.”
“Oh,” Joonmyun mouths and Jongin swiftly stabs at the only glass button there.
89.
These dreams are terribly boring at best, only that pulling sensation leaving his spine tingling when he wakes up. Slowly, they intensify, the reason why Joonmyun finds himself losing sleep as the intervals between vacuums of black shorten from months to weeks to days. He can see himself wandering around with that cut on his face, loud breathing noises filling the chamber of his head.
They aren’t coming from him.
97.
“So I was reading something,” Chanyeol hovers over Joonmyun who’s seated with his portion of their daily kimbap breakfast.
Joonmyun puts his chopsticks down and gestures in mock surprise. “Oh, you actually read?”
“Of course I do.”
“Don’t be mean,” Minseok adds from the other side, mouth stuffed with his last bit of kimbap. Minseok rarely takes sides but he is far from mediator. He shrugs at them both as he strides out of the kitchen. “Hey, if five year olds can read, so can Chanyeol.”
“You better be watching your socks,” Chanyeol hisses before turning to Joonmyun. “Okay. It’s nothing really. I’ve just been reading about irregular sleep habits and I think it may apply to a certain someone right in front of me.”
“Who told you about my uh, sleep habits.”
“Besides the screams of absolute terror from your room?” Chanyeol moves his attention to the fridge, opening, closing it aimlessly. “Jongdae told me how you curl up in your sleep and start shaking and shit. I just hope all your extra practice is getting to you in the wrong way.”
101.
Crystal tracks seem to lead on forever into an underground chasm. Snuggling into the fur lined seats (“faux of course”) of their glass cart, Joonmyun looks up and attempts to count the stalactites jutting from the ceiling. He doesn’t know how long these tracks go on for.
“Close your eyes,” Eddie says. “Don’t even think we’re going to let you go up against the Queen without any rest.”
Pockets of silence fill in the remaining spaces of the huge cart where Jongin’s already fallen asleep on Joonmyun’s shoulder. Every fibre of his body is screaming with exhaustion but sleep eludes him like the way out of Underland. Gaze fixed on the cave roof, thoughts wandering between the inverted rock formations above. “Do I really need to?”
“Need to what?” The peacock asks back.
Joonmyun shifts under the younger boy’s weight, gently adjusting his shoulder for the blond head resting on it. “Defeat this queen?”
The thought in itself is absurd, even after running around Underland and facing all its oddities. Gigantic and ruthless, Eddie had told them on their way, the Queen measured the height of ten trees and the width of three lakes. She’d merely need to step on Joonmyun to end him unless he was lucky enough. Not really the most reassuring piece of pre-battle advice.
Eddie cranes his neck slightly to the left, as if in thought. And then he speaks, gentle, in hushed whispers. “We can’t force you to do something you do not want. The will to defeat the Queen has to come from your heart.”
103.
The cart treads over glimmering pools, liquid diamond (he isn’t sure that’s actually possible but nothing is) refracting light from the luminescent rock bed, illuminating cracks and edges within the cave walls. When Joonmyun’s sure the two are knocked out, he unwraps himself from the plush fur, crawls towards the edge of the cart. Curiosity leads him to peer over thick glass. It makes him want to reach his hand out towards the swirling surface.
Not quite a reflection. Joonmyun’s own face in the rushing water shocks him because he is pretty sure he has no makeup on right now. Light traces of kohl and smears of bb cream and eyes devoid of any expression stare back at him, despondent, barely concealed unlike how he’d control himself. His reflection cycles in emotion, hand in the water reaching back up for him.
Joonmyun quickly sloshes his hand through his reflection, never wanting to see himself like that again.
107.
Transparency.
Tongue-in-cheek naming for an underground rebellion against the ruling parties of Underland and their total lack of it. Built completely like a stalactite, the inverse structure hangs like a looming glass cocoon, deep underground, buzzing like a hive, pushing for change. The underground operation sprouts out into a glass tunnel leading right up to under the Wire of Aces.
Jongin gasps at the marvellous architecture, clinging onto Joonmyun. “Fuck,” he says quickly, loosening his grip around Joonmyun’s arm. “I still don’t know if I’m scared or amazed or..”
The two have to wrap their feet in a shroud of spun silk. Plastic reacts with the crystal, apparently fizzing into clouds of black smoke and melting upon contact. Joonmyun quite treasures his shoes.
Sliding around the crystallised premise, it takes Joonmyun every shred of effort not to slip around like a fool in front of the many creatures now surrounding them. They lead Jongin and Joonmyun into a large hall droning with activity, politely engaging in small talk. Pink giraffes with collared shirts, a bearded monkey with three tails, floating teacups with round eyes, but not nearly as round as Joonmyun’s, wide with awe.
And then anxiety slithers in, coiling tight around his neck, because everyone here has absolute faith in him.
109.
He doesn’t know what he’s looking for in the crowd, eyes scanning quickly behind his eyesmile. He strains his ears, and his eyes, looking, searching for any form of consolation in the crowd.
To be loved.
113.
Now seated again around a circular stump of glass with Eddie dropping cloths onto their laps and the teacups landing on the makeshift table, Jongin and Joonmyun are prepared for yet another session of tea. One of the giraffes, relatively small in stature, pushes out a trolley stacked with more cake.
“You all are really fond of tea parties,” Joonmyun says. “Are you sure this is a good time for-”
“It’s always tea time,” a familiar voice replies. “Tea is a necessity, not really the parties.”
When Joonmyun turns, he sees Absolut seated to his left smiling at him, bearded monkey on the opposite and a few more new creatures filling in the rest of the seats. The giraffe distributes calculated amounts of cake, served on fine porcelain.
“Here we have Suho and Kai,” someone announces. “Alice and companion.”
Everyone has their eyes on Joonmyun, a silent sense of expectation brewing quietly amongst them. He twists his fingers between the hem of his shirt.
Then standing, slamming his hands on the table, Joonmyun announces, “We will not proceed unless all of you stop hiding things from me.”
Silence for a while. Clinking of fine china teacups. The monkey speaks. “Proceed we may. There will be no more hidden motives.”
“We promise to stay diamond,” another one adds.
“Delicious, and to the point,” someone else quips and there they go again, speaking in terms that neither Joonmyun or Jongin comprehend.
“Listen to Alice, he looks very pressed. Fruit juice, in fact.”
“Why didn’t you just take us here first?” Joonmyun attempts to control his temper but fatigue gnaws at him. His eyes are bleary, mouth pouted and crooked to the side. He’s always had that petulance bubbling in him. Jongin looks at Joonmyun, now seated, and places his hand on Joonmyun’s knee, squeezing it gently.
“Alice is flaring like flaming flamingo. Keep your temper.”
“Get a grip or the tea will get too hot,” the teacup in front of him whispers.
Absolut clears his throat, and the table falls to silence. Staring aggressively at the twelve types of cake in front of him, Joonmyun tries to cool down. “You had to find your way here yourself. We can’t force you to do something you do not want.”
“Nobody expected the other one to fall in either.”
All eyes are shifted to Jongin now. He was born for attention but on the receiving end of otherworldly beings, he crumples. “How was I supposed to know about your plans to convert our dance room into some portal to get Junmyeon here. Some forewarning would’ve been nice.”
“Down, down, down, and now you are here. Clear, the meeting is over,” a mouse gently says.
“The armour for Alice and his companion have been prepared.”
What an odd choice of word. Joonmyun stands up once again. “You haven’t even told us how to slice the wire or whatever.”
“That, we do not need to tell you, Alice.”
All creatures vacate the table leaving the mess of a tea party and Absolut behind. It looks away from them, plays up the theatrics. “I must be losing my sharpness. My absolute answers are laced with fractions of doubt.”
“Why is that so,” Jongin asks.
“Smoking is banned in Transparency.”
127.
Lighter than a feather, Joonmyun strides around in the gold armour they’ve made for him. Jongin is in gold too, looking as sleepy as ever. The monkey slips a tiny package into their hands and tells them not to eat it until they’ve entered the Garden. In a tiny glass room outside the tunnel to the Queen’s garden, they wait for the go ahead.
“I’ve just realised,” Jongin suddenly says, eyes now wide again. “We have no weapons.”
The monkey speaks, again. “Hand to hand combat.”
“I can’t even go up against Suho, much less a giant.”
“All you need is to be prime.”
Fiddling with the package in his hand, Jongin frowns. “What does that even mean?”
“It means to stay only divisible by yourself and no one else.”
“We’d barely be able attack her big toe before she steps on us. I'd be divided into chunks of meat. This is mad. Have I gone mad?”
“Clearly,” the goldsmith says. She’s tanned, slightly on the shorter side, with gold earrings dangling against her jet black waves. She has a golden badge fixed to her chest, her name carved on it, Gold H. Smith. Her voice is sweet and high. “But you know what they say, all the best people are.”
“So I’ve read,” says Joonmyun.
“The Queen has Alice’s sword,” Gold reveals. “But the Queen can’t use it because she doesn’t know the sword’s name.”
“I don’t know its name either,” Joonmyun frowns but Gold smiles reassuringly at him.
“You will when you see it, and then you will use it to slice the Queen into Red and White. And then slice Red and White into oblivion.”
Gold sounds way too confident in them, like she had a little too much moon shining into her.
“What does the initial in your name stand for? Just curious.”
“Hatter,” she says. “My great great great grandfather.”
131.
Equipped with nothing but a package of cake and four vials of glittering potion, two each, Jongin and Joonmyun crawl through the glass tunnel into a vertical shaft. It’s wider than they imagined, easily fitting more than two people inside.
This is it, Joonmyun thinks, the last part before they get stomped to death. He can smell roses lingering thick in the air, stronger and stronger as they climb upwards, hands gripping on clay cut steps. Sunlight, instead of moonlight, beams through the top and glints off their gold.
Within fifteen minutes, they are three quarters up.
“If we die tonight,” Jongin starts and Joonmyun laughs because the younger’s suddenly speaking all too quickly, shakily.
Dirt pours from above, spilling past their armour, staining their cheeks with deep brown, ground above them rumbling with heavy footsteps. She must be waiting for them.
“Don’t you have faith in me. We aren’t going to die.”
An uncertain assumption, just like when he first fell in. Joonmyun tries to visualise what monster awaits them. Grotesque with teeth like piranhas? Claws perhaps? Tooth and nail, infused with poison. Clumps of loose soil continue to fall as they pull themselves higher with every step. He shifts his focus to the Wire of Aces.
“Joonmyun. I just want to say I had the best time ever. With you here. Wherever here is.”
“I’ve never had so much cake in my life.”
Joonmyun deflects. He’d rather not. Pumping heavily again, fear, or something else, courses through his arteries and veins, and he tries to ignore his pounding heart.
“I’m never having that ever again. Unless anniversary cakes.”
Anniversary cakes. Joonmyun had erased that part out for a bit, the cameras, the scripts. Immersed in Underland, he nearly forgets his name, not Alice, not Suho. If Jongin wasn’t here, the whole essence of Joonmyun wouldn’t be either.
Stretching his hand out, he grabs the handle of the vent’s cover. This is it.
He pushes it open
137.
Lounging on her throne, the Queen beckons for Joonmyun.
For those who talked about the Queen without ever seeing her, the exaggeration is gross. Enticing and dangerously potent, like the red slapped across her lips, she smiles flashing pearly whites from between. Rose petals of the same burgundy shade flock to them, covering his gold plated feet.
139.
Attention diverted, Jongin runs around the perimeter of the Queen’s garden to locate the said wire. He doesn’t know where to start, trimmed bushes towering into the sky, much higher than any tree from before.
149.
“Alice,” she says. “Let us negotiate in a civil manner, just like how you’d like.”
Joonmyun loosens his stance, decides to listen to her preposition. Beneath the gold, he is breaking out into cold sweat, melting under her presence.
“Why don't you join me instead. You don’t need to pick white or red. I’ll give you both.”
White clouds of chiffon and tulle trail along with her as she strides forward. The ground rumbles with every step, throwing Joonmyun slightly off balance. He takes a swift look behind her to see footprints so distinct and deep into the grass. Creating such a high amount of pressure, her mass much be so much more than it looks.
Joonmyun steps back instinctively, holding onto a stray branch for balance. The constantly shaking earth has him mildly disoriented. “What’s in it for me.”
“I can make you perfect,” she offers.
“Define perfect,” challenges Joonmyun. He tries to buy some time for Jongin.
Flashing her teeth yet again, loud laugh echoing throughout the trimmed landscape. “Every little detail without flaw.”
And it is horribly tempting. That keyword he’s been going for his whole life, while running for class president, while working through years and years of training. Perfect from the angles of his arms to the curve of his nose to the character he tries to uphold. Where had he gone wrong?
“Nothing can ever be perfect,” Joonmyun says. “Because everyone sees perfection differently.”
Three more steps back, away from the suffocating scent of roses she emanates. What’s a civil discussion without some of that political correctness he knows so well.
“Love, Alice, I can give you love,” the Queen tilts her head to the side. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Alice?”
“What,” he whispers quickly, then holds himself back from saying another word. If he says too much, he’d give himself away. The Queen will turn it against him, expertly twisting his words into poisonous arrows to aim at his heart.
But she seems to know him so well, as if his eyes were open pools of unspoken wants.
“But more than love I can give you fear. All the creatures in Underland will bow to you, Alice. After all, isn’t it far better to be feared than to be loved?”
“Is it really,” wonders Joonmyun out loud.
“It just might be. You could tell me if you accept my offer.”
Brief hesitation, thoughts running wild. Brushing deep red petals off his armour, he considers the offer for a brief moment, tossing the thought around his palate, swallowing the consequence.
He just might succumb, his knees are feeling weak again. “What’s the catch?”
“It’s not that much to me. Quite a bargain.”
Joonmyun strokes his chin gently, remembering how fond creatures here are of theatrics. He plays on his skills. “We could flesh out a deal.”
“Flesh indeed,” she smiles. “I want your companion, Kai. How delicious he’d be, dipped in tea.”
And Joonmyun backpedals.
And then he runs.
151.
Expanding almost ten times her original size (he’s never been so glad about exaggerations), the Queen speeds after Joonmyun, swinging her sword wildly at his little figure. He proves his dexterity for once, avoiding the blade. Branches are amputated, tree tops decapitated.
Diving under a blooming strawberry bush, Joonmyun joins Jongin in hiding, on his knees, panting so hard like never before.
“What the fuck happened out there.”
“I’ve triggered some giant mode and she’s slicing the whole place up. I hope you’ve found the damn pipeline.”
“It’s under her throne,” Jongin breathes. “We need her sword-”
“Off with their heads.” Her shrieks give Joonmyun an insane ache bouncing around his headspace. The top half of the bush is sliced right off, leaving messy hedges sticking out. Coupled with her heavy footsteps, they are tossed around like glass dolls.
Jongin shoves Joonmyun out of the way, sword narrowly missing the both of them.
“Shit,” Jongin grunts, pulling the older as they dash under a rows of bushes. He still has time to turn to Joonmyun and smile. “Okay, okay, we aren’t dead yet.”
Eyes on the peculiar black sword, the weapon she can’t seem to control, Joonmyun notices thin streaks of liquid silver coating the handle. The ebony edge strikes a chord in him, as if it’s sliced through him before, whispered its name deep into his flesh.
Millions of thorns scratch at their golden armour, wearing it down ever so slightly. Never tearing his eyes away from the blade as Jongin pulls him through a maze of hedges and overgrown vines, he whispers ever so quietly, “Black Pearl.”
A sudden blackout shrouds the garden for an entire second and when the sun is shining again, light is glinting off the massive sword, now in his hand.
Somehow, Jongin is still dragging him forward but the Queen stops running, clearly shocked, somewhat betrayed by the sword. She shrieks for their heads again, decibels hitting that of deafening. Servants from the Red and White garden storm in and if it isn’t the Queen who’d end them, it’ll be the countless servants flooding through the archways in the brick wall.
“Over there,” the younger yells over the repetitive shrieking. No matter how much they’ve been running, the throne never seemed to get any nearer.
Feeling through his armour, Joonmyun remembers the little package of cake tucked between the joints. “We have to eat the cake, I think.”
Jongin pulls it out and quickly unwraps it, heavily iced cake in the centre of his golden palm. Quickly, they take an unplanned, synchronised bite out of it.
The ground increases in distance from the tip of his nose and the massive sword finally fits just right in his grip. The golden armour stretches along with them. With their height now half a tree, they now match up to the Queen.
Precise and quick, he swings the sword fluidly knocking the servants off balance instead of ending them, Joonmyun works with the sword in tandem.
Charging towards her Majesty, Joonmyun raises the sword above his head with two hands while Jongin follows behind him, throwing the vials of liquid that explode into a glittering smokescreen. Something oozes from the blade, down his wrist, straight into his chest and he feels electric.
But he runs past her, plunging his sword through her throne, into the Wire of Aces, releasing the Queen’s garden from its elaborate spell. Brick walls and vegetation crumble into heaps of dust. Sky high bushes are now endless skeletal columns piercing into the setting sun.
Dissolving behind them is the once perfect image of the Queen, unable to sustain herself without the drainage duct absorbing life and pumping it straight to her.
“You’re all crazy,” she spits, slowly disappearing into the wind. “I am you. We were supposed to be one.”
Then she is gone completely, particles of red and white floating in the wind.
Jongin is clinging onto Joonmyun, blond hair matted onto his shiny forehead, cheeks dirty with soil and dust. He moans incoherently for a bit, pulling the armour off both of them as they walk back to the hatch of Transparency.
“We did it,” Jongin says, shrinking back to his original size. “You did it.”
157.
And between the nightmares, sometimes he dreams of himself climbing up towards bright light.
163.
Two more vials of dark ebony condense out of thin air.
There is finally only one obvious step to return back.
Underland’s creatures watch them in the glass hall eagerly but not expectantly. Part of Joonmyun really wants to stay but he has a million things to do, schedules to meet, cameras to smile at, questions to answer, a group to take care of. Their smiles are unspoken thank you’s and Joonmyun feels cherished for the first time in a long while. Eddie is tearing in the corner.
“I guess we have to drink this.” Jongin uncorks the vial, swirling the silvery black around, taking a tentative sniff at it. He flashes a shy grin at Joonmyun.
Joonmyun smiles back at him. “I guess we do.”
167.
They fall in reverse, ascending towards a halo of fluorescent light. Jongin reaches out, curving a fist around Joonmyun's forearm. Finally, the comfort of sleep brushes across his eyelids.
173.
He rouses to aching limbs and blurred vision.
Joonmyun pushes himself off the polished wooden floor, crawls towards Jongin, slumped on the other end of the practice room, against those curtains of the practice room. He lies next to Jongin, eyes barely open, and links their hands. Jongin squeezes back tightly and then whispers, “do you think the rest would believe us if you told them?”
“I could tell them about what happened this morning till now,” says Joonmyun. He sits up slowly but keeps his grip firm around Jongin’s warm fingers. “But not yesterday.”
“Baekhyun would never believe you,” Jongin laughs. “Maybe Sehun.” Jongin remains on the floor and it’s impossible to tell that just moments before, they were running through lush forests and conversing with creatures. He squeezes Joonmyun’s hand again. “Why not yesterday?”
“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then,” Joonmyun recites, favourite line from this book he read so long ago in the same room he’s sitting in. It doesn’t go without meaning.
Joonmyun won’t forget ever himself, and how he waltzed with danger and had cake with them too, and how he tumbled in alone but crawled out with Jongin’s hand in his.
From: Your Secret Santa
Title: Nocturnes
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Suho/Kai
Length: 8,700 words
Summary: "I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then."
Notes: Dear midnightplanets, thank you for the amazing prompt! Hope you enjoy the fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! Have a great 2014 ♡ ♡ ♡
2.
He tumbles into a neverending darkness.
3.
In most cases, if ever, one would expect shouting throughout the entire freefall. Joonmyun stops yelling twelve seconds in.
His lungs are not aching, not yet. He has trained far too long for his breath to give up so fast. No one can hear him, he reasons and it scares him how he even has time to think because three minutes in and he's still falling. Joonmyun watches the light from his apparent point of entry diminish as he races backwards into wherever.
Joonmyun’s mind races quickly like his fall. There is something awfully familiar about this plunge, like one of those recurring dreams he has all the time.
No, they are far too vivid for dreams, the suction of darkness twisted between flashes of knitted peacock feathers and crunches of bone, blue china, bone, skeletal columns.
The damp smell of earth is nauseating, mouthfuls of waterlogged soil, tiny clumps of organic matter floating up, pelting against his cheeks while he falls down. Joonmyun’s hands are outstretched and desperate as he clutches onto nothing. Four minutes. Five. Ten. He loses all sense of time or direction as his body falls deeper into the abyss.
And right now, he can say again, this is not a dream, the rush of air slapping against his cheeks, howling across the shell of his ear, fluttering at his eyelashes.
I’m going to die, Joonmyun thinks.
5.
He rouses to aching limbs and blurred vision.
Joonmyun pushes himself off the textured floor, crawls towards one of the dusty walls to help himself stand. The room is covered with floral paper to the ceiling, illuminated by a chandelier hanging in reverse from the ground. Joonmyun takes in the odd sight, fear now washed away by awe. He notices the walls punctured with whitewashed doors of different sizes.
This place is at a standstill. There is only his lone self and the quiet roar of wind through the gaping hole above him.
So it has to be one of the hundred doors surrounding him then. Joonmyun’s starting to develop this sudden, intense dislike for doors. How’d he get here? That’s right, through that wretched studio door. Joonmyun berates himself for not checking before he stepped into the darkness of the dance room. What were the odds?
“So much for practice,” he shrugs as he twists at a doorknob. Joonmyun likes to keep tabs on himself, searching his stage name up on Naver and Nate. The other members call it vain, masochistic and purposefully self-inflicting but he thinks of it as progressive monitoring.
“I hope you don’t take these seriously,” Jongdae had said, chin over Joonmyun’s shoulder, watching the upvotes and downvotes scroll past his eyes.
“Of course I do not,” Joonmyun lies. Of course he does, what are idols but the manifestation of what their fans want, what the general public expects. The comments had called for extra dance practice, not really prancing around some peculiar chasm.
He moves to the next door when he realises this one is rusted shut. Drags his feet across the floor, knees still weak and shaky. The process is painfully slow, almost like trying to walk again. Joonmyun bends his knees slowly, absentmindedly brushing his fingers on the copper doorknob. He’s been here before. Sort of. The tugging in his chest gets stronger.
"Down the rabbit hole," Joonmyun whispers, barely. It feels like a conflicting mix of epiphany and memory. And right then, the door he's at swings open under his gentle push.
7.
“What is that,” Sehun points towards the book in Joonmyun’s hand. Sehun is three years younger and demanding and always asking him questions. They are slumped together in the corner of their designated practice room. There are so many other new trainees but Joonmyun likes Sehun, has some good gut feeling about him.
“It’s a book,” Joonmyun replies. Well, obviously. “Alice in Wonderland. I have to read it for school but I think I like it so far.”
Sehun scoots a little closer to take a look at some of the pages. “It’s sorta strange. I feel bad for the main character at some points because she seems so lost in a nice place.” Wonderland isn’t exactly the ideal place for an escape but sometimes Joonmyun imagines getting lost there. Thrown into a land of talking flowers and rabbits and food that could finally make him tower over others for a change.
Joonmyun is about to share with Sehun the plight of Alice when Jongin bursts into the practice room, panting slightly.
“Sorry I’m late,” Jongin mumbles, tossing his sling bag into another corner. Jongin is two years younger and demanding and to some extent, intimidating despite his age. In the dance room he goes all serious, throwing energy in ways Joonmyun can’t. Fluid in every aspect. Tough footwork, merely baby steps for him. Expression, a whole catalogue of playful smirks and dark stares. Outside the dance room, he reverts back to shy high school boy, determined eyes peeking from behind thick black bangs.
Jongin’s whole existence is suffocating to Joonmyun for no good reason.
11.
Joonmyun’s fully convinced he’s veered off completely. Less than ten steps into an oversized garden and he comes across huge stalks of talking flowers. Whispering, wilted tulips are clearly gossiping in front of him, about him. A sleeping peacock lies nestled between the stalks. He has an inkling of his location but his mind screams impossible.
Curling a leafy arm over Joonmyun’s quivering shoulders, a pale fuchsia tulip leans over, blowing scent gently over his cheek. “You aren’t like us so surely you must be the one?”
“He can’t be. I mean he’s way too tiny to be of impact. He’s no bigger than a flower.” Joonmyun looks up at a red one, its petals slightly tattered at the edge. His involuntary pout threatens to spill over his lips. Height is especially not his favourite topic for discussion, much less between babbling tulips.
“He obviously isn’t the one,” an orange one snaps. Its colour is not sunset brilliant but muted and blotchy. These flowers are probably dying. Frowning, he tries to cut into their conversation but their roaring volume drowns him out. All the aggressive rustling of petals and leaves awakens the peacock from his slumber.
Immediately scrutinising the new object, the peacock steps up to Joonmyun, stares at him hard and long, and then whines, “We should just consult the absolute one.”
“I don’t think he has a clue where he is,” one yellow tulip says, pressing a leaf against Joonmyun’s chest. He looks down, away from the harsh stares of these flowers. “Poor thing, just look at him.”
“He could be the one,” Joonmyun glances up at the peacock. At least the peacock seemed to be nice. Forget criticism and praise. Talking flowers are trying to pass judgement on him even though they’ve just met him two minutes ago.
“Anyone could be the one if they wanted to,” another tulip yells from the back. And then there is more shouting and they soon forget about him standing right there, listening to them.
Joonmyun has no idea who or what they are referring to so he merely tiptoes away. The twenty odd tulips become so invested in arguing with each other that he has no problem sneaking out of their sight, veiled by their massive shadows.
13.
The more he tries to run away from those words, the more it makes him realise that they have always been true.
17.
Bright red against a white brick wall. Joonmyun is now sick and wary of doors, entrances, exits but he decides to test his luck when he sees this one.
19.
Behind his charismatic stage-ready exterior, Jongin is volatile and difficult to understand. Joonmyun tries. He really does. But after so many years, Jongin begins to slide between extreme ends of the spectrum, out of range, out of Joonmyun’s reach.
Jongin pushes and pulls, shoves away then tugs Joonmyun closer, then curls away, maybe shy, mostly embarrassed, when Joonmyun brushes gently against his arm. There is no consistency. Nothing predictable about them. When Jongin suddenly throws his arms over Joonmyun’s neck, he can’t help but inwardly gasp, quickly pulling the younger in, closing his eyes to savour the moment.
The loud pounding of his heart drowns out the screams of the fans as they twist a little around the stage, similar to how his own stomach twists when he remembers that they are no longer just Joonmyun and Jongin, but also Kai and Suho.
Joonmyun would rather Kai push him away than Jongin. The four of them continue to claw at each other for dominance in a silent sort of battle.
23.
Dense layers of shrub pulsate under Joonmyun, creeping over his chunky basketball shoes. When he turns around, the door from which he entered from is already shrouded with curtains of pale green foliage. There is something about the wisps of chlorophyll in this particular garden. Breathing around the synthetic material of his shoes. Pumping quietly and quickly, almost in sync with his palpitating heart.
Roses of yellow and grey bloom in his footsteps, mocking the print on his shirt, mocking his foreign existence. Joonmyun decides not to step any further because he doesn’t like the idea of crushing something so alive under his feet, then having something grow in his trace.
"I've been waiting for you," a voice creeps, sudden like the sneaking scent of musky rose. Clumps of roses sprout from his hair and he peels them off quickly. Joonmyun can see nothing through this mess of overgrown flora. "You're late for the garden party," it says again. "Your own birthday party."
"It isn't my birthday," Joonmyun responds with gentle apprehension, flickering yet another flower off the tip of his nose. At least he isn’t talking with himself again but he can’t see who’s talking to him anyway.
“What do you mean? It is your birthday everyday.” Shrubs pile and knot in front of Joonmyun, forming a chair for him to sit on. He does not deny the plants. “There is no need to celebrate such an occasion in multiples of three hundred and sixty five.”
And a figure draws closer, trudging through the vegetation. Trays carrying teapots, sweets and cake balance atop the person’s many hands. Joonmyun can’t make out his face, hidden behind layers of white, thick lace. “The garden knows you, but I don’t. Tell me who you are.” Lace Face pours him a cup.
“Suho,” Joonmyun says shortly. It’s only half a lie, deceptive and industrial imagery. Practiced and pushed every single day for two years. In front of the mirror, he goes over his script. He says it without any doubt to betray him.
It spreads the bone china porcelain around the table, waving teapots and plates out of nowhere, before seating itself opposite Joonmyun. “You may address me simply as White.”
“White,” Joonmyun repeats, trying to contain his trembling.
“Care for some cake, Suho?” offers White. Joonmyun can picture a beckoning smile behind the patches of lace.
Joonmyun shrugs. Honestly, he wants the way out of here more than he wants a mouthful of buttercream layered cake. “Uh, no. I’m not actually-”
Fists slam down hard onto the vine table, knocking tea out of their porcelain cups and some meringues off their silver trays. “Hungry? A poor excuse for your blatant avoidance of cake. Had it not been for your bright eyes, I would’ve thought you were walking dead trespassing through my garden.”
Joonmyun wants to counter but White’s words are strangely gripping. All this while Joonmyun had been moulding himself around others. What makes this any different? The figure tilts its masked head to the side. “Care for some cake, Suho?” it offers again. White gives no opportunity for Joonmyun to reject.
He takes a small bite out of it, letting the cream glide slowly over his tongue.
“Tell me more about yourself, Suho.”
“I’m lost and I need to get out of here,” Joonmyun swallows a bit of hot tea, doesn’t mean to be rude. He pretty much figures that he doesn't belong in this world with nonexistent laws of physics and plants more sentient than himself. Joonmyun sees no point in being indirect.
“Trespassers aren’t tolerated in the garden," White shifts closer, elbows pushing empty teacups off the table, smashed shards of stained porcelain. "Underland is crumbling, while my garden is thriving. The least you could do is to accept my hospitality."
29.
Just pervasive blackness before he jolts awake, drenched in perspiration, loud pounding in his ears. He grips wildly at his sheets. Presses his face into his pillow. Take me away from here, he shouts at the dark.
31.
Two slices of cake later and Joonmyun feels completely nauseous, saturated with creamed fat and sugar, drowning in sweetened tea. He’s about to explode, in the most literal sense, into a mess of flesh and churned up party food.
White drops him an ultimatum, stay in the garden or stay out forever, to wander in the wild unknown of Underland by himself, all alone.
37.
Joonmyun wakes up one day feeling like he just got tossed out of nowhere, body aching and throat parched. His pillow is uncomfortably wet. He drags himself to the washroom, squints at the mirror, notices a shock of crimson streaking from above his eye. It streams out quickly, deep red contrasting against the clean white of his sink.
41.
Joonmyun chooses the latter. He sees no point staying in the safe cocoon of White’s garden. He needs to find a way out of this place. Staying in the same place, Joonmyun reasons, is almost as bad as regressing.
He feels dwarfed by his surroundings, more than he does on a daily basis. Joonmyun is shorter by a good sixty percent of his group. Here he is sixty percent the height of a stalk of bellflowers. Inside the dusty cup of a purple flower, legs hanging out, lips in its habitual pout, he ponders his next step to take.
It doesn’t seem to matter though. Any concept of consequences seemed to be illusory here. Joonmyun has taken far too many missteps but there have been no repercussions whatsoever. Something could be waiting for him, dangerous, electrifying. Octopuses with wings. Another eloquent, tea loving creature. But he needs is to get out of here, back into the world he fell from, back to the mundane lights of the practice room.
Swirls of blue smoke rise in the distance. That means life somewhere behind the curtain of raspberry bushes. Someone he could ask for help, hopefully more useful than those talking flowers or White. Underland, he realises, is full of creatures that too are equally as lost in their own world.
43.
"You were yelling in your sleep."
Joonmyun looks up from his coffee and milk to see Jongin standing at the doorway of their dorm's kitchen. Jongin joins Joonmyun at the counter, eyes sleepy, hair messy.
"What were you dreaming of?" the younger asks. He scrunches his face and Joonmyun feels apologetic for the puffs under his eyes. "I mean, you were shouting loud enough to get me up. I have no idea how Jongdae slept through that."
"I don't know. It was all black," he swirls the coffee in his mug, dark like the vacuum of his dreams. He won’t tell Jongin about that tugging sensation on his limbs and the constriction of his subconscious set of lungs, each breath smaller and smaller in volume.
Jongin nibbles on his lips, eyes flickering from the nearly empty mug to the dirty kitchen counter to Joonmyun’s eyes, which he quickly averts when they meet.
"Don't worry about me," insists Joonmyun, eyebrows frowning gently.
“I won’t,” Jongin replies quietly, sliding off his seat. It isn’t all that convincing. He watches Jongin retreat to the washroom. Joonmyun can already hear Chanyeol's grunting and Minseok’s quiet voice bouncing off the walls, the click of the heater, buzzing shavers, morning sounds.
It’s another day, Joonmyun reminds himself, and he too slides off his seat, slides last night to the back of his mind.
47.
He runs, following the billowing clouds of blue, diving through stems and ducking under leaves until he reaches a purple tentage hoisted up by mushrooms. The same blue smoke lazes out of the entrance in large and slow tendrils.
The interior of the tent is lined with carpets and cushions so Joonmyun resorts to crawling in, not wanting to remove his basketball shoes. A huge worm, identically blue with the smoke, watches his every move, slowly exhaling fruit flavoured vapour. It wears a cape with its name, Absolut, embroidered all over.
“Absolut?” The worm rolls its eyes. It exhales blue in the direction of its cape, as if answering the question. Joonmyun takes two small steps back.
“Stop moving away,” the worm finally says between drawls of smoke. “Tell me your name.”
Quietly and still shaking, Joonmyun replies with his stage name.
“Try some,” Absolut wheezes, slithering up to him. Absolut thrusts a mouthpiece into Joonmyun’s hand after pushing him down into one of the plush pillows. Judging from his experience with White, the creatures of Underland absolutely hate any rejection of their questionable hospitality. “It’s been a last time since you had a trace of tobacco in your bloodstream, you pathetic thing. I can smell you.”
“I’m a singer,” Joonmyun explains, doesn’t know why he winces when he says that. “It’s not good practice for us to smoke.”
Joonmyun barely remembers himself fiddling with a lighter, menthol stick dangling from between his lips, as he inhaled burnt tar into his lungs. Extremely stressed, he had been back then, just before their comeback. That was just an alternative way of venting it, exhaling out all that fear and pent up anger he never knew he had. Absolut merely snorts, flashing his blackened teeth.
“In the book you were a caterpillar,” Joonmyun says, thinking out loud.
“You must be confused,” Absolut squints. “Caterpillars were generations ago. You don’t know what you are saying. You don’t belong here and it is obvious.” The worm’s voice is rough and true to his name, absolute. “I can smell you. Everyone else can smell you.”
Absolut vanishes behind a dense shroud but reappears quickly with a parchment scroll. His tiny hands, gloved in purple satin, pull open the scroll. For effect, it whips out monocle and sets it in front of his eye.
Joonmyun gulps. “What is it?”
“The name of this scroll evades me. A symptom of the sleepy haze cast over the land. Eighty seven percent of my fellow creatures have been inflicted with eternal drowsiness.”
“Well I did see a peacock dozing off under some tulips,” he nods.
“In approximately thirty seven minutes, I will collapse into a slumber. Hurry up and have some while I read this.”
Joonmyun brings the mouthpiece up, hesitantly pressing it against his flushed lips. He breathes in slowly through his mouth, letting the flavoured smoke descend into the cavity of his lungs.
“Underland now, Wonderland then,” Absolut recites poetically. Joonmyun appreciates the effort as a stage major but this is no time for theatrics. He tries to keep patient, slowly breathing out blue. “One, not from our world, will be able to save us. Goes by the name of Alice.”
“So Underland is looking for an Alice to save them,” Joonmyun summarises.
Absolut throws the scroll aside, picking up his tube and taking a large draw of smoke. “To put it simply, yes. It could be you. You have fulfilled the condition of being foreign. I just hope you haven’t met White or Red yet.”
Joonmyun gasps. “But I have.”
The worm shakes its upper half and does two more quick puffs. “Oh dear, oh dear. Smoke more boy. The both of them are enemies yet allies. They each want full control over Underland, but more importantly, would do anything to make sure there is no Alice. Was it White or was it Red. Don’t tell me you had their terrible cake.”
“Yes I did. White gave me a lot of that,” Joonmyun replies, painfully honest and Absolut is groaning. Just as Joonmyun’s about to inhale smoke again, something in the mountain of pillows starts to move.
A tanned hand peeks out, and then blond hair, and then Joonmyun sees Jongin’s face.
53.
“What is that,” Sehun points towards the matte screen of Joonmyun’s iPad. They’re seated at the back of the van, rest of the group nodding off during the long drive to the next fansign. Different genres of music leak out from their earpieces creating an oddly comforting white noise for Joonmyun to read in.
“I’m looking at dreams. Uh, the meaning of them,” Joonmyun shows Sehun a massive list of dream meanings, fingers scrolling through several paragraphs, curious interpretations of the subconscious mind. “These are more western though.”
Sehun looks over, raising a brow. “Like what?”
“Dreams about falling are actually common,” says Joonmyun.
“I don’t remember having one before. Actually, I rarely remember anything when I sleep.”
“There you go,” Joonmyun says. “Falling is an indication of anxiety and instability. Like a loss of control. A lack of balance.” This, Joonmyun reveals reluctantly. No, he’s pretty sure he’s got his life under control, planned down to the very minute. He recalls harder, tries to cough up some more detail but he only remembers all black.
59.
Jongin crawls from beneath the pillows, running up to Joonmyun and crushing him in the tightest, most surprising hug ever. "Joonmyun," Jongin murmurs, pressing his chest up against Joonmyun. "Finally, someone." Joonmyun hugs him back hard into the cushions, cards a hand through Jongin's rough, grey hair.
“Two minutes to speak.” Absolut cuts their reunion short, reminding them of the lack of time it has. It vanishes yet again behind a wispy cloud, giving them some mock privacy.
“How did you get here?” Joonmyun asks.
“I have no idea why I got up so early to practice,” Jongin recounts, hair mused and messy, as always. “I thought you went but it was empty and the lights were off and I just.” He pauses, looking visibly frightened. “I just fell in.”
“No matter how much I want it to be, this isn’t a dream. We’re in some dying place called Underland. Oh, and use your stage name here.”
Jongin’s eyebrows knit in obvious confusion but there’s fear flashing in his eyes. “What do I do? Isn’t this your dream? I just-”
Rough voice cuts in. “Underland is not for weak of mind. The only way the both of you will escape is to never forget yourself and of course, to always remain absolute.”
Joonmyun is not sure what to make out of that sudden chunk of advice. Jongin looks equally puzzled, understandably so. Absolut pushes a smoke tube into Jongin’s hand, gesturing at the younger to take a puff.
“Do pay attention Suho,” Absolut nudges when Joonmyun’s attention drifts from the scroll to the blue swirls of smoke trailing from between Jongin’s plush lips.
“Where do I look at exactly?”
Absolut hums. “Nowhere in particular. I need to inform you about Underland’s not so pretty history and it’s two ruling parties who threaten to further overturn the already unbalanced imbalance of our impaired utopia.”
The worm tells them of Red and White, both outwardly benign and generous in order to lure others in favour of their inner motives. Both own individual gardens, feeding off the rest of Underland. “Only creatures who submit to either side can enjoy that paradise,” Absolut says. “But they inadvertently enslave themselves to a colour, how dismal.”
Jongin fists his hand into a cushion looking very alarmed. “How do we end this.”
“According to the nameless scroll, only Alice can unlock the door in the Queen’s garden. In the garden, Alice can find and destroy the Wire of Aces.” Absolut shows them a diagram of a black and red patterned pipeline. The drainage ducts snaking through the core of Underland.
“Who’s the Queen?”
“We don’t even know which one’s Alice yet,” says Joonmyun.
Absolut impatiently huffs smoke right into Joonmyun’s face. “You’ve been playing dumb for too long, Suho. After all this while, I was absolutely sure that you would remember. You’ve already lost once against the Queen.”
“What do you mean.” Joonmyun still hasn’t the slightest recollection of physically fighting against anyone ever, no such person, no such Queen.
“The Queen is the highly potent combination of both Red and White. After all, they are one and the same entity. Very large and obviously dangerous.” Absolut’s voice is taunting and secretive. “How else do you think you got that scar?”
61.
A sudden ridge curiously placed between his left eye and the bridge of his nose. It would’ve been something to talk about but Joonmyun never brings it up, simply because he has no idea how it came to be.
Joonmyun does not get conscious about it. Sometimes he forgets about it. Sometimes he feels the sharpest pain slicing through his upper face, an unexplainable sensation of the hottest knife sweeping clean through his buttery skin.
67.
Jongin and Joonmyun head down another overgrown path, following the direction of the full moon. They make the slow discovery that Underland has no sun, instead illuminated by the gentle moonlight. It was hard to notice with all the thick canopy filtering most of the moon beams The whole place must be nocturnal, Joonmyun realises, a slow beating pulse uniting them within the darkness of permanent dusk.
He glances at Jongin sometimes, the younger a few steps ahead of him, eyes never leaving the moon above them. Jongin knows, of course.
“I saw you reading about Wonderland before. Way back, though. You know, with Sehun.” He pauses in his tracks, turns his head back at Joonmyun who stops too. “Does it have a happy ending?”
“She ends up about to get her head sliced off,” Joonmyun shrugs. They continue to weave through this field of massive daisies. “But before she gets beheaded, she wakes up because it was actually a dream.”
“Do you think that maybe this is all just some fucked up dream?”
“Why don’t you pinch yourself? I don’t know,” laughs Joonmyun, even more when Jongin actually tries to pinch his arm. “Maybe I don’t want to wake up.”
Clambering on top of a huge twig, Jongin speeds ahead. “We have to wake up!” he shouts from the top. “We have to comeback with this song we’ve been practicing so hard for.” Jongin hums the tune to Growl. Joonmyun has good gut feeling about that song too.
Wolf was (secretly) a total mess to Joonmyun and everyone had been giving their all, morning practice, night practice, even the showers, for their upcoming title song. He looks up at Jongin, gestures at him to get back down, but Jongin is smiling so hard, moonlight bouncing off his blond hair. There, that young and wild boy at heart, finally set free.
71.
They come across a grinning cat, translucent against the dark top of a direction post, it’s smile reminiscent of someone they know. Conveniently waiting for them at the crossroads, Joonmyun asks for some help.
“Turn left,” it advises, “A dewy lake, approach with a calm heart. Mushrooms could induce vertigo but nurse a broken heart.”
Joonmyun bows to the cat, despite not understanding half of what he just heard, and Jongin quickly does too, running with Joonmyun to the left. Grinning, the feline presence fades away.
73.
Jongin kisses him once, after practice, before debut, pushing him into the sky curtains when no one else is in the studio. Without much experience, he presses hard and awkward against Joonmyun’s mouth with his own. He pulls away, embarassed or confused, Joonmyun can’t tell but he tugs Jongin back, kisses him properly, sucking gently on his bottom lip, letting their tongues meet for a bit.
79.
They don’t talk for a week and when they do, Jongin never brings it up again.
83.
Fifteen minutes of traversing across huge puddles of evening dew, trekking on top of fallen stems. Not much of a lake. Soaked shoes leave Joonmyun grumbling occasionally. As predicted by the absolute one, they come across the same peacock from before. He addresses himself as Eddie. Wildly enthusiastic, unlike the first time they met, the peacock describes himself as vain but valiantly loyal. He pledges himself to stay by their sides until they finish what they’re here for.
“He reminds me of someone back home.” Jongin sounds embarrassingly homesick, blearily pinching at his nose and rubbing his eyes.
“Apologies for my bouts of sleepiness before,” he bows to both Joonmyun and Jongin. “I would take you to the Queen’s garden but we are far too small for that.”
Blades of grass stretch into the star filled sky. Without any questions, they follow Eddie who leads them down through a grove of mushrooms. Assuming a tourguide role, Eddie dispenses chunks of trivia about the columns of fungi (fly agaric, indigo milkcaps, funnel shrooms) until they reach a room crafted into a disgustingly huge mushroom. Inside the room there is nothing but a glass elevator which they promptly enter.
The glass box they are in doesn’t move and the both of them lapse into a state of mild panic.
“You’re supposed to press the damn button,” says Eddie. “I’m a peacock. I can’t press that without falling over.”
“Oh,” Joonmyun mouths and Jongin swiftly stabs at the only glass button there.
89.
These dreams are terribly boring at best, only that pulling sensation leaving his spine tingling when he wakes up. Slowly, they intensify, the reason why Joonmyun finds himself losing sleep as the intervals between vacuums of black shorten from months to weeks to days. He can see himself wandering around with that cut on his face, loud breathing noises filling the chamber of his head.
They aren’t coming from him.
97.
“So I was reading something,” Chanyeol hovers over Joonmyun who’s seated with his portion of their daily kimbap breakfast.
Joonmyun puts his chopsticks down and gestures in mock surprise. “Oh, you actually read?”
“Of course I do.”
“Don’t be mean,” Minseok adds from the other side, mouth stuffed with his last bit of kimbap. Minseok rarely takes sides but he is far from mediator. He shrugs at them both as he strides out of the kitchen. “Hey, if five year olds can read, so can Chanyeol.”
“You better be watching your socks,” Chanyeol hisses before turning to Joonmyun. “Okay. It’s nothing really. I’ve just been reading about irregular sleep habits and I think it may apply to a certain someone right in front of me.”
“Who told you about my uh, sleep habits.”
“Besides the screams of absolute terror from your room?” Chanyeol moves his attention to the fridge, opening, closing it aimlessly. “Jongdae told me how you curl up in your sleep and start shaking and shit. I just hope all your extra practice is getting to you in the wrong way.”
101.
Crystal tracks seem to lead on forever into an underground chasm. Snuggling into the fur lined seats (“faux of course”) of their glass cart, Joonmyun looks up and attempts to count the stalactites jutting from the ceiling. He doesn’t know how long these tracks go on for.
“Close your eyes,” Eddie says. “Don’t even think we’re going to let you go up against the Queen without any rest.”
Pockets of silence fill in the remaining spaces of the huge cart where Jongin’s already fallen asleep on Joonmyun’s shoulder. Every fibre of his body is screaming with exhaustion but sleep eludes him like the way out of Underland. Gaze fixed on the cave roof, thoughts wandering between the inverted rock formations above. “Do I really need to?”
“Need to what?” The peacock asks back.
Joonmyun shifts under the younger boy’s weight, gently adjusting his shoulder for the blond head resting on it. “Defeat this queen?”
The thought in itself is absurd, even after running around Underland and facing all its oddities. Gigantic and ruthless, Eddie had told them on their way, the Queen measured the height of ten trees and the width of three lakes. She’d merely need to step on Joonmyun to end him unless he was lucky enough. Not really the most reassuring piece of pre-battle advice.
Eddie cranes his neck slightly to the left, as if in thought. And then he speaks, gentle, in hushed whispers. “We can’t force you to do something you do not want. The will to defeat the Queen has to come from your heart.”
103.
The cart treads over glimmering pools, liquid diamond (he isn’t sure that’s actually possible but nothing is) refracting light from the luminescent rock bed, illuminating cracks and edges within the cave walls. When Joonmyun’s sure the two are knocked out, he unwraps himself from the plush fur, crawls towards the edge of the cart. Curiosity leads him to peer over thick glass. It makes him want to reach his hand out towards the swirling surface.
Not quite a reflection. Joonmyun’s own face in the rushing water shocks him because he is pretty sure he has no makeup on right now. Light traces of kohl and smears of bb cream and eyes devoid of any expression stare back at him, despondent, barely concealed unlike how he’d control himself. His reflection cycles in emotion, hand in the water reaching back up for him.
Joonmyun quickly sloshes his hand through his reflection, never wanting to see himself like that again.
107.
Transparency.
Tongue-in-cheek naming for an underground rebellion against the ruling parties of Underland and their total lack of it. Built completely like a stalactite, the inverse structure hangs like a looming glass cocoon, deep underground, buzzing like a hive, pushing for change. The underground operation sprouts out into a glass tunnel leading right up to under the Wire of Aces.
Jongin gasps at the marvellous architecture, clinging onto Joonmyun. “Fuck,” he says quickly, loosening his grip around Joonmyun’s arm. “I still don’t know if I’m scared or amazed or..”
The two have to wrap their feet in a shroud of spun silk. Plastic reacts with the crystal, apparently fizzing into clouds of black smoke and melting upon contact. Joonmyun quite treasures his shoes.
Sliding around the crystallised premise, it takes Joonmyun every shred of effort not to slip around like a fool in front of the many creatures now surrounding them. They lead Jongin and Joonmyun into a large hall droning with activity, politely engaging in small talk. Pink giraffes with collared shirts, a bearded monkey with three tails, floating teacups with round eyes, but not nearly as round as Joonmyun’s, wide with awe.
And then anxiety slithers in, coiling tight around his neck, because everyone here has absolute faith in him.
109.
He doesn’t know what he’s looking for in the crowd, eyes scanning quickly behind his eyesmile. He strains his ears, and his eyes, looking, searching for any form of consolation in the crowd.
To be loved.
113.
Now seated again around a circular stump of glass with Eddie dropping cloths onto their laps and the teacups landing on the makeshift table, Jongin and Joonmyun are prepared for yet another session of tea. One of the giraffes, relatively small in stature, pushes out a trolley stacked with more cake.
“You all are really fond of tea parties,” Joonmyun says. “Are you sure this is a good time for-”
“It’s always tea time,” a familiar voice replies. “Tea is a necessity, not really the parties.”
When Joonmyun turns, he sees Absolut seated to his left smiling at him, bearded monkey on the opposite and a few more new creatures filling in the rest of the seats. The giraffe distributes calculated amounts of cake, served on fine porcelain.
“Here we have Suho and Kai,” someone announces. “Alice and companion.”
Everyone has their eyes on Joonmyun, a silent sense of expectation brewing quietly amongst them. He twists his fingers between the hem of his shirt.
Then standing, slamming his hands on the table, Joonmyun announces, “We will not proceed unless all of you stop hiding things from me.”
Silence for a while. Clinking of fine china teacups. The monkey speaks. “Proceed we may. There will be no more hidden motives.”
“We promise to stay diamond,” another one adds.
“Delicious, and to the point,” someone else quips and there they go again, speaking in terms that neither Joonmyun or Jongin comprehend.
“Listen to Alice, he looks very pressed. Fruit juice, in fact.”
“Why didn’t you just take us here first?” Joonmyun attempts to control his temper but fatigue gnaws at him. His eyes are bleary, mouth pouted and crooked to the side. He’s always had that petulance bubbling in him. Jongin looks at Joonmyun, now seated, and places his hand on Joonmyun’s knee, squeezing it gently.
“Alice is flaring like flaming flamingo. Keep your temper.”
“Get a grip or the tea will get too hot,” the teacup in front of him whispers.
Absolut clears his throat, and the table falls to silence. Staring aggressively at the twelve types of cake in front of him, Joonmyun tries to cool down. “You had to find your way here yourself. We can’t force you to do something you do not want.”
“Nobody expected the other one to fall in either.”
All eyes are shifted to Jongin now. He was born for attention but on the receiving end of otherworldly beings, he crumples. “How was I supposed to know about your plans to convert our dance room into some portal to get Junmyeon here. Some forewarning would’ve been nice.”
“Down, down, down, and now you are here. Clear, the meeting is over,” a mouse gently says.
“The armour for Alice and his companion have been prepared.”
What an odd choice of word. Joonmyun stands up once again. “You haven’t even told us how to slice the wire or whatever.”
“That, we do not need to tell you, Alice.”
All creatures vacate the table leaving the mess of a tea party and Absolut behind. It looks away from them, plays up the theatrics. “I must be losing my sharpness. My absolute answers are laced with fractions of doubt.”
“Why is that so,” Jongin asks.
“Smoking is banned in Transparency.”
127.
Lighter than a feather, Joonmyun strides around in the gold armour they’ve made for him. Jongin is in gold too, looking as sleepy as ever. The monkey slips a tiny package into their hands and tells them not to eat it until they’ve entered the Garden. In a tiny glass room outside the tunnel to the Queen’s garden, they wait for the go ahead.
“I’ve just realised,” Jongin suddenly says, eyes now wide again. “We have no weapons.”
The monkey speaks, again. “Hand to hand combat.”
“I can’t even go up against Suho, much less a giant.”
“All you need is to be prime.”
Fiddling with the package in his hand, Jongin frowns. “What does that even mean?”
“It means to stay only divisible by yourself and no one else.”
“We’d barely be able attack her big toe before she steps on us. I'd be divided into chunks of meat. This is mad. Have I gone mad?”
“Clearly,” the goldsmith says. She’s tanned, slightly on the shorter side, with gold earrings dangling against her jet black waves. She has a golden badge fixed to her chest, her name carved on it, Gold H. Smith. Her voice is sweet and high. “But you know what they say, all the best people are.”
“So I’ve read,” says Joonmyun.
“The Queen has Alice’s sword,” Gold reveals. “But the Queen can’t use it because she doesn’t know the sword’s name.”
“I don’t know its name either,” Joonmyun frowns but Gold smiles reassuringly at him.
“You will when you see it, and then you will use it to slice the Queen into Red and White. And then slice Red and White into oblivion.”
Gold sounds way too confident in them, like she had a little too much moon shining into her.
“What does the initial in your name stand for? Just curious.”
“Hatter,” she says. “My great great great grandfather.”
131.
Equipped with nothing but a package of cake and four vials of glittering potion, two each, Jongin and Joonmyun crawl through the glass tunnel into a vertical shaft. It’s wider than they imagined, easily fitting more than two people inside.
This is it, Joonmyun thinks, the last part before they get stomped to death. He can smell roses lingering thick in the air, stronger and stronger as they climb upwards, hands gripping on clay cut steps. Sunlight, instead of moonlight, beams through the top and glints off their gold.
Within fifteen minutes, they are three quarters up.
“If we die tonight,” Jongin starts and Joonmyun laughs because the younger’s suddenly speaking all too quickly, shakily.
Dirt pours from above, spilling past their armour, staining their cheeks with deep brown, ground above them rumbling with heavy footsteps. She must be waiting for them.
“Don’t you have faith in me. We aren’t going to die.”
An uncertain assumption, just like when he first fell in. Joonmyun tries to visualise what monster awaits them. Grotesque with teeth like piranhas? Claws perhaps? Tooth and nail, infused with poison. Clumps of loose soil continue to fall as they pull themselves higher with every step. He shifts his focus to the Wire of Aces.
“Joonmyun. I just want to say I had the best time ever. With you here. Wherever here is.”
“I’ve never had so much cake in my life.”
Joonmyun deflects. He’d rather not. Pumping heavily again, fear, or something else, courses through his arteries and veins, and he tries to ignore his pounding heart.
“I’m never having that ever again. Unless anniversary cakes.”
Anniversary cakes. Joonmyun had erased that part out for a bit, the cameras, the scripts. Immersed in Underland, he nearly forgets his name, not Alice, not Suho. If Jongin wasn’t here, the whole essence of Joonmyun wouldn’t be either.
Stretching his hand out, he grabs the handle of the vent’s cover. This is it.
He pushes it open
137.
Lounging on her throne, the Queen beckons for Joonmyun.
For those who talked about the Queen without ever seeing her, the exaggeration is gross. Enticing and dangerously potent, like the red slapped across her lips, she smiles flashing pearly whites from between. Rose petals of the same burgundy shade flock to them, covering his gold plated feet.
139.
Attention diverted, Jongin runs around the perimeter of the Queen’s garden to locate the said wire. He doesn’t know where to start, trimmed bushes towering into the sky, much higher than any tree from before.
149.
“Alice,” she says. “Let us negotiate in a civil manner, just like how you’d like.”
Joonmyun loosens his stance, decides to listen to her preposition. Beneath the gold, he is breaking out into cold sweat, melting under her presence.
“Why don't you join me instead. You don’t need to pick white or red. I’ll give you both.”
White clouds of chiffon and tulle trail along with her as she strides forward. The ground rumbles with every step, throwing Joonmyun slightly off balance. He takes a swift look behind her to see footprints so distinct and deep into the grass. Creating such a high amount of pressure, her mass much be so much more than it looks.
Joonmyun steps back instinctively, holding onto a stray branch for balance. The constantly shaking earth has him mildly disoriented. “What’s in it for me.”
“I can make you perfect,” she offers.
“Define perfect,” challenges Joonmyun. He tries to buy some time for Jongin.
Flashing her teeth yet again, loud laugh echoing throughout the trimmed landscape. “Every little detail without flaw.”
And it is horribly tempting. That keyword he’s been going for his whole life, while running for class president, while working through years and years of training. Perfect from the angles of his arms to the curve of his nose to the character he tries to uphold. Where had he gone wrong?
“Nothing can ever be perfect,” Joonmyun says. “Because everyone sees perfection differently.”
Three more steps back, away from the suffocating scent of roses she emanates. What’s a civil discussion without some of that political correctness he knows so well.
“Love, Alice, I can give you love,” the Queen tilts her head to the side. “Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Alice?”
“What,” he whispers quickly, then holds himself back from saying another word. If he says too much, he’d give himself away. The Queen will turn it against him, expertly twisting his words into poisonous arrows to aim at his heart.
But she seems to know him so well, as if his eyes were open pools of unspoken wants.
“But more than love I can give you fear. All the creatures in Underland will bow to you, Alice. After all, isn’t it far better to be feared than to be loved?”
“Is it really,” wonders Joonmyun out loud.
“It just might be. You could tell me if you accept my offer.”
Brief hesitation, thoughts running wild. Brushing deep red petals off his armour, he considers the offer for a brief moment, tossing the thought around his palate, swallowing the consequence.
He just might succumb, his knees are feeling weak again. “What’s the catch?”
“It’s not that much to me. Quite a bargain.”
Joonmyun strokes his chin gently, remembering how fond creatures here are of theatrics. He plays on his skills. “We could flesh out a deal.”
“Flesh indeed,” she smiles. “I want your companion, Kai. How delicious he’d be, dipped in tea.”
And Joonmyun backpedals.
And then he runs.
151.
Expanding almost ten times her original size (he’s never been so glad about exaggerations), the Queen speeds after Joonmyun, swinging her sword wildly at his little figure. He proves his dexterity for once, avoiding the blade. Branches are amputated, tree tops decapitated.
Diving under a blooming strawberry bush, Joonmyun joins Jongin in hiding, on his knees, panting so hard like never before.
“What the fuck happened out there.”
“I’ve triggered some giant mode and she’s slicing the whole place up. I hope you’ve found the damn pipeline.”
“It’s under her throne,” Jongin breathes. “We need her sword-”
“Off with their heads.” Her shrieks give Joonmyun an insane ache bouncing around his headspace. The top half of the bush is sliced right off, leaving messy hedges sticking out. Coupled with her heavy footsteps, they are tossed around like glass dolls.
Jongin shoves Joonmyun out of the way, sword narrowly missing the both of them.
“Shit,” Jongin grunts, pulling the older as they dash under a rows of bushes. He still has time to turn to Joonmyun and smile. “Okay, okay, we aren’t dead yet.”
Eyes on the peculiar black sword, the weapon she can’t seem to control, Joonmyun notices thin streaks of liquid silver coating the handle. The ebony edge strikes a chord in him, as if it’s sliced through him before, whispered its name deep into his flesh.
Millions of thorns scratch at their golden armour, wearing it down ever so slightly. Never tearing his eyes away from the blade as Jongin pulls him through a maze of hedges and overgrown vines, he whispers ever so quietly, “Black Pearl.”
A sudden blackout shrouds the garden for an entire second and when the sun is shining again, light is glinting off the massive sword, now in his hand.
Somehow, Jongin is still dragging him forward but the Queen stops running, clearly shocked, somewhat betrayed by the sword. She shrieks for their heads again, decibels hitting that of deafening. Servants from the Red and White garden storm in and if it isn’t the Queen who’d end them, it’ll be the countless servants flooding through the archways in the brick wall.
“Over there,” the younger yells over the repetitive shrieking. No matter how much they’ve been running, the throne never seemed to get any nearer.
Feeling through his armour, Joonmyun remembers the little package of cake tucked between the joints. “We have to eat the cake, I think.”
Jongin pulls it out and quickly unwraps it, heavily iced cake in the centre of his golden palm. Quickly, they take an unplanned, synchronised bite out of it.
The ground increases in distance from the tip of his nose and the massive sword finally fits just right in his grip. The golden armour stretches along with them. With their height now half a tree, they now match up to the Queen.
Precise and quick, he swings the sword fluidly knocking the servants off balance instead of ending them, Joonmyun works with the sword in tandem.
Charging towards her Majesty, Joonmyun raises the sword above his head with two hands while Jongin follows behind him, throwing the vials of liquid that explode into a glittering smokescreen. Something oozes from the blade, down his wrist, straight into his chest and he feels electric.
But he runs past her, plunging his sword through her throne, into the Wire of Aces, releasing the Queen’s garden from its elaborate spell. Brick walls and vegetation crumble into heaps of dust. Sky high bushes are now endless skeletal columns piercing into the setting sun.
Dissolving behind them is the once perfect image of the Queen, unable to sustain herself without the drainage duct absorbing life and pumping it straight to her.
“You’re all crazy,” she spits, slowly disappearing into the wind. “I am you. We were supposed to be one.”
Then she is gone completely, particles of red and white floating in the wind.
Jongin is clinging onto Joonmyun, blond hair matted onto his shiny forehead, cheeks dirty with soil and dust. He moans incoherently for a bit, pulling the armour off both of them as they walk back to the hatch of Transparency.
“We did it,” Jongin says, shrinking back to his original size. “You did it.”
157.
And between the nightmares, sometimes he dreams of himself climbing up towards bright light.
163.
Two more vials of dark ebony condense out of thin air.
There is finally only one obvious step to return back.
Underland’s creatures watch them in the glass hall eagerly but not expectantly. Part of Joonmyun really wants to stay but he has a million things to do, schedules to meet, cameras to smile at, questions to answer, a group to take care of. Their smiles are unspoken thank you’s and Joonmyun feels cherished for the first time in a long while. Eddie is tearing in the corner.
“I guess we have to drink this.” Jongin uncorks the vial, swirling the silvery black around, taking a tentative sniff at it. He flashes a shy grin at Joonmyun.
Joonmyun smiles back at him. “I guess we do.”
167.
They fall in reverse, ascending towards a halo of fluorescent light. Jongin reaches out, curving a fist around Joonmyun's forearm. Finally, the comfort of sleep brushes across his eyelids.
173.
He rouses to aching limbs and blurred vision.
Joonmyun pushes himself off the polished wooden floor, crawls towards Jongin, slumped on the other end of the practice room, against those curtains of the practice room. He lies next to Jongin, eyes barely open, and links their hands. Jongin squeezes back tightly and then whispers, “do you think the rest would believe us if you told them?”
“I could tell them about what happened this morning till now,” says Joonmyun. He sits up slowly but keeps his grip firm around Jongin’s warm fingers. “But not yesterday.”
“Baekhyun would never believe you,” Jongin laughs. “Maybe Sehun.” Jongin remains on the floor and it’s impossible to tell that just moments before, they were running through lush forests and conversing with creatures. He squeezes Joonmyun’s hand again. “Why not yesterday?”
“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then,” Joonmyun recites, favourite line from this book he read so long ago in the same room he’s sitting in. It doesn’t go without meaning.
Joonmyun won’t forget ever himself, and how he waltzed with danger and had cake with them too, and how he tumbled in alone but crawled out with Jongin’s hand in his.