운명 (Fate/Destiny)
Title: "Fate/Destiny" (an excerpt from Replay (Clue + Note))
Author: thekeycifer (a.k.a kpopfanboy)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Key/Dongwoon (friendship)
Genre: Future/Fantasy AU
Length: ~2000 words (Replay (Clue + Note): Chaptered)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I own nothing and know even less. This story is an excerpt from my Replay (Clue + Note) fanfic which can currently be viewed on AsianFanFics.
Summary: When Key becomes unhappy with his life in the limelight, he's offered a chance to change his destiny...
“Come in, come in!” an elderly woman’s voice could be heard from behind a pile of books placed upon a desk near the back of the store. “I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get any customers tonight! Now state your business, boy.”
The diva glanced back toward the door, wondering if he should just make a break for it. Dongwoon was probably long gone by now and he was in no condition to be socializing with anyone at the moment. His eyes were still puffy and red from the tears he had just shed and his concert clothes were a mess. But with a more insistent and irritated sounding, “Come now! Don’t be shy!” from somewhere beyond the desk, he felt curiosity get the better of him.
As he hesitantly approached the desk, he finally spotted the tiny, old ajumma perched on a stool as she pored over a particularly thick book with a magnifying glass that made one of her eyes look considerably larger than the other. Her plain, musty old-fashioned dress looked just as out of place in Seoul as her shop did.
“Fate,” the woman muttered with hardly a glance his way.
“Deh?” Key replied.
“It’s a fascinating thing. It really is…”
“What is?” Key asked, confused.
“Fate, boy! Fate!” she snapped impatiently, without even looking up from her book. “Histories, timelines, entire existences-all are shaped by the small, minute details of the choices we make-or don’t make. Yes? They’re consequences of the things we say. Consequences of the people we meet. That’s one theory, at least. But does this really matter at all, I wonder? Perhaps everything in these tomes was all predetermined since before their creation… And it’s just simply a journey riddled with pointless questions and clues we’re given to solve as we’re guided along a predestined path. Regardless, it’s quite fascinating indeed… Yes, it is…”
The ajumma seemed to forget Key was there for a few moments and continued to mutter to herself. By this point, the diva was convinced the woman was completely mad. Of course the results of a book would be predetermined. Someone had to write the story with an end result in mind, wouldn’t they?
Key had begun to back away toward the door when she spoke again, halting him in his tracks. “Yours is a question of Fate, too, is it not?”
“Umm, is it?” Key asked.
“I can see it plainly on your face, as I’ve seen it many times before. You’re conflicted. You say to yourself, maybe things would have turned out differently if you had taken a different path. You wonder if things would have ended up better for you if you had never met the certain people who are now troubling you. Hmm?”
Key simply stared at the woman in shock. How did she know?
The woman closed her colossal book with a loud thump and hopped down from her stool. Key silently followed as she led him to a wall of scrolls and books. She paused and tapped her chin as she mumbled to herself, “I know just the question that needs answering… But where did I put that silly old thing?”
She grabbed a rickety old ladder on wheels from the side of a bookcase, pushed it down a few rows, and then clambered up the wall of filings. She pulled out a few different books from the shelves, leafed through them for a few moments, and then tossed them aside in rejection as she muttered to herself.
This process continued for quite some time. Key was eyeing the door, considering just making a break for it when the strange librarian finally let out an, “Aha! Found it! This tricky little thing… Tsk tsk…”
She quickly descended the ladder and tossed a small book, no bigger than the palm of Key’s hand, onto a table that stood between her and Key. “This is a story not unlike your own,” she said. “Go on, look!” she added when Key eyed the artifact warily.
The singer carefully picked up the strange, leather-bound book to examine it. Somehow, it felt… familiar in his hands. The weight, the musty smell, the strange symbols scrawled across its cover. It was warm and seemed to hum with a life of its own.
He opened it and leafed through its yellowing pages. Most of it seemed to be written in a long forgotten, unintelligible language, but he was able to make out certain phrases every so often. Phrases like “Replay,” “Juliette,” “Ring Ding Dong,” “Lucifer,” “Hello,” and “Sherlock…” Certain proper nouns and names that didn’t sound like the ones he knew, but felt naturally familiar on his tongue.
And then there were the faded drawings of vaguely familiar-looking people and places. A skinny mushroom-haired redhead, a muscular boy with spiky hair, a tall brooding-looking type with large eyes, and another boy who was all smiles in nearly every barely-discernable image of himself.
“What… is this?” Key finally asked the old woman after getting over his initial shock.
“Your question. Or is it your answer? Regardless, it’s the mystery you need to solve if you’re ever going to find yourself,” the ajumma replied cryptically. Key stared at her blankly and she finally sighed impatiently. “You’ve found yourself doubting the path you have chosen; doubting the people you have put your faith in, correct?”
Key nodded. “Perhaps you’re wondering what might’ve happened if you’d cast your lot in with another pool of options?” she continued. “If you had added different pages, inscribed new lines, eliminated useless data… maybe things would have turned out differently for you? Perhaps some clues along your path were merely red herrings? Distractions? This is your question of Fate.”
Something in the small ajumma’s words seemed to ring true in his ears with a much deeper meaning. He could suddenly sense there was much more to this woman, her books, and the very building in which they stood.
“…Who are you?” Key asked the ajumma.
“Just an old Scribe who offers others the option to rewrite their stories. History is my hobby. Prophecies are my vocation. But to me, there is no greater masterpiece in our lives than the riddles we pose ourselves with.”
Key looked up at her after leafing through a few more pages. This sounds like pretty serious stuff… Maybe I shouldn’t mess with this, he thought. The rapper carefully placed the book back down on the table and slid it back toward her. With an expression of obvious disappointment on her face, she moved to take it back.
However, their exchange was interrupted with the creaking of the front door and the tinkling chimes. “There you are!” exclaimed Dongwoon’s voice from across the store. “I’m so glad that I found you!” B2ST’s intrepid maknae came into view around the massive hourglass and grinned in relief as he hurried toward Key.
The diva smiled and felt a sense of comfort come over him at the sight of his lifelong friend, but then Dongwoon held up his phone. “Jonghyun’s been talking me through my search, listing off the probable routes you would’ve taken. Turns out he was right." He then extended the phone toward Key as he neared, "Here, he wants to talk to you. He says it’s important.”
Apparently sensing the sudden change in mood within Key, the ajumma spoke urgently to him in a hushed voice. “If you could erase certain elements of your life, thereby changing your Fate… would you do it?”
Key felt guilty when he glanced to Dongwoon’s smiling face that had suddenly changed to a quizzical expression. He had almost reached them. Key's eyes then darted to the phone in the taller boy’s hands and he felt the bitter rush of anger return to him when he remembered his ruined career. “Boy, would I…” he grumbled.
Upon his response, the tiny ajumma reached down and opened the small, leather-bound book without hesitation. She turned to a few pages located near the front and swiftly tore four pages from its binding. “Then it is done,” she stated ominously.
No sooner had the pages left the book’s binding, before they faded into oblivion. Key could only barely make out the brief flashes of the faded archaic symbols scrawled across them: a stylized rabbit encased in earth, a steer engulfed in flames, a canine encircled by wisps of air, and a cat bathed in brilliant light… All of them, now gone. Meanwhile, the later pages within the book seemed to fade and disappear while new words reappeared in their place…
Key didn’t remember returning to the dorms that night, but when he awoke the next morning, he found himself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. What the-?
The diva lay there for a while, puzzling over the events of the previous night, but had no recollection of any further conversation with the ajumma, Dongwoon, or even Jonghyun. Could this be Dongwoon’s room in B2ST’s new dorm? I think he mentioned they were moving when we last talked…
“Dongwoon?!” he called out. There was no response. Man, I must’ve hit the soju hard last night when we left that shop… Key soon returned to deep thought, but jumped when he was interrupted by the loud, obnoxious ringtone of a phone that he couldn’t recall acquiring. After a momentary debate whether he should answer a stranger’s phone, he hesitantly picked it up.
“…Yoboseyo?” he answered sleepily.
“Kibum! What the hell?!” a vaguely familiar, clearly distraught voice exclaimed. “How long were you planning on going without telling me about your weeklong trip to Korea?”
“…What?” Key replied, totally confused.
“Don’t play dumb! Think about how ridiculous I felt when I had to hear from Tao about your plans-after you’d left! How could you fly to Seoul without so much as telling me! We’re supposed to all be in this together!”
Key suddenly recognized the voice on the other end of the phone, “…Kris?”
“Yah! I told you never to call me that during business hours, now that we’re in the same office together. It’s Wu Yifan, now, remember? We have to look professional in front of this new boss. He’s a total dictator! I mean, does this fashion internship with Kim Heechul himself mean nothing to you?!”
Key rubbed his temples gingerly. “Oh, umm… sorry?” he answered. This was so confusing to him, it was starting to give him a headache.
He could hear a sigh on the other side of the phone. “Kibum, have you been drinking?” Kris paused and then began delicately, “I know you’re taking some personal days away from this stressful internship over here in America, but please try to keep in mind that you’re there to pay your respects to your halmeoni. Try and keep it together…”
Key perked up at the mention of his grandmother, “…I am?!”
“…It’s been three years since she passed away, right?” Kris asked cautiously.
Key nearly dropped his phone. His grandmother was the only family he had left in this world. And for that matter, he had just talked to her last week on the phone. There’s no way she could be dead.
“Kris, did my band mates in SHINee put you up to this? Because it’s not funny…” he growled.
“Wu Yifan! It’s Yifan!” Kris desperately hissed into the phone, “And what the heck is a SHINee?”
This time Key really did drop the phone, for he had just now reached up and opened the curtains of his high-rise hotel window. He could see the contours of the SM Building on Seoul’s early morning skyline, but instead of the normal, bright and gaudy TVXQ!, SHINee, Super Junior, SNSD, f(x), and EXO advertisement banners draped across its exposed length, he could only see a single billboard advertisement in their place. One that clearly didn't belong.
An advertisement for B2ST.
“Kibum? Kibum?!” Kris’s muffled voice buzzed in concern from somewhere on the hotel room floor.
Author: thekeycifer (a.k.a kpopfanboy)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Key/Dongwoon (friendship)
Genre: Future/Fantasy AU
Length: ~2000 words (Replay (Clue + Note): Chaptered)
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I own nothing and know even less. This story is an excerpt from my Replay (Clue + Note) fanfic which can currently be viewed on AsianFanFics.
Summary: When Key becomes unhappy with his life in the limelight, he's offered a chance to change his destiny...
“Come in, come in!” an elderly woman’s voice could be heard from behind a pile of books placed upon a desk near the back of the store. “I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to get any customers tonight! Now state your business, boy.”
The diva glanced back toward the door, wondering if he should just make a break for it. Dongwoon was probably long gone by now and he was in no condition to be socializing with anyone at the moment. His eyes were still puffy and red from the tears he had just shed and his concert clothes were a mess. But with a more insistent and irritated sounding, “Come now! Don’t be shy!” from somewhere beyond the desk, he felt curiosity get the better of him.
As he hesitantly approached the desk, he finally spotted the tiny, old ajumma perched on a stool as she pored over a particularly thick book with a magnifying glass that made one of her eyes look considerably larger than the other. Her plain, musty old-fashioned dress looked just as out of place in Seoul as her shop did.
“Fate,” the woman muttered with hardly a glance his way.
“Deh?” Key replied.
“It’s a fascinating thing. It really is…”
“What is?” Key asked, confused.
“Fate, boy! Fate!” she snapped impatiently, without even looking up from her book. “Histories, timelines, entire existences-all are shaped by the small, minute details of the choices we make-or don’t make. Yes? They’re consequences of the things we say. Consequences of the people we meet. That’s one theory, at least. But does this really matter at all, I wonder? Perhaps everything in these tomes was all predetermined since before their creation… And it’s just simply a journey riddled with pointless questions and clues we’re given to solve as we’re guided along a predestined path. Regardless, it’s quite fascinating indeed… Yes, it is…”
The ajumma seemed to forget Key was there for a few moments and continued to mutter to herself. By this point, the diva was convinced the woman was completely mad. Of course the results of a book would be predetermined. Someone had to write the story with an end result in mind, wouldn’t they?
Key had begun to back away toward the door when she spoke again, halting him in his tracks. “Yours is a question of Fate, too, is it not?”
“Umm, is it?” Key asked.
“I can see it plainly on your face, as I’ve seen it many times before. You’re conflicted. You say to yourself, maybe things would have turned out differently if you had taken a different path. You wonder if things would have ended up better for you if you had never met the certain people who are now troubling you. Hmm?”
Key simply stared at the woman in shock. How did she know?
The woman closed her colossal book with a loud thump and hopped down from her stool. Key silently followed as she led him to a wall of scrolls and books. She paused and tapped her chin as she mumbled to herself, “I know just the question that needs answering… But where did I put that silly old thing?”
She grabbed a rickety old ladder on wheels from the side of a bookcase, pushed it down a few rows, and then clambered up the wall of filings. She pulled out a few different books from the shelves, leafed through them for a few moments, and then tossed them aside in rejection as she muttered to herself.
This process continued for quite some time. Key was eyeing the door, considering just making a break for it when the strange librarian finally let out an, “Aha! Found it! This tricky little thing… Tsk tsk…”
She quickly descended the ladder and tossed a small book, no bigger than the palm of Key’s hand, onto a table that stood between her and Key. “This is a story not unlike your own,” she said. “Go on, look!” she added when Key eyed the artifact warily.
The singer carefully picked up the strange, leather-bound book to examine it. Somehow, it felt… familiar in his hands. The weight, the musty smell, the strange symbols scrawled across its cover. It was warm and seemed to hum with a life of its own.
He opened it and leafed through its yellowing pages. Most of it seemed to be written in a long forgotten, unintelligible language, but he was able to make out certain phrases every so often. Phrases like “Replay,” “Juliette,” “Ring Ding Dong,” “Lucifer,” “Hello,” and “Sherlock…” Certain proper nouns and names that didn’t sound like the ones he knew, but felt naturally familiar on his tongue.
And then there were the faded drawings of vaguely familiar-looking people and places. A skinny mushroom-haired redhead, a muscular boy with spiky hair, a tall brooding-looking type with large eyes, and another boy who was all smiles in nearly every barely-discernable image of himself.
“What… is this?” Key finally asked the old woman after getting over his initial shock.
“Your question. Or is it your answer? Regardless, it’s the mystery you need to solve if you’re ever going to find yourself,” the ajumma replied cryptically. Key stared at her blankly and she finally sighed impatiently. “You’ve found yourself doubting the path you have chosen; doubting the people you have put your faith in, correct?”
Key nodded. “Perhaps you’re wondering what might’ve happened if you’d cast your lot in with another pool of options?” she continued. “If you had added different pages, inscribed new lines, eliminated useless data… maybe things would have turned out differently for you? Perhaps some clues along your path were merely red herrings? Distractions? This is your question of Fate.”
Something in the small ajumma’s words seemed to ring true in his ears with a much deeper meaning. He could suddenly sense there was much more to this woman, her books, and the very building in which they stood.
“…Who are you?” Key asked the ajumma.
“Just an old Scribe who offers others the option to rewrite their stories. History is my hobby. Prophecies are my vocation. But to me, there is no greater masterpiece in our lives than the riddles we pose ourselves with.”
Key looked up at her after leafing through a few more pages. This sounds like pretty serious stuff… Maybe I shouldn’t mess with this, he thought. The rapper carefully placed the book back down on the table and slid it back toward her. With an expression of obvious disappointment on her face, she moved to take it back.
However, their exchange was interrupted with the creaking of the front door and the tinkling chimes. “There you are!” exclaimed Dongwoon’s voice from across the store. “I’m so glad that I found you!” B2ST’s intrepid maknae came into view around the massive hourglass and grinned in relief as he hurried toward Key.
The diva smiled and felt a sense of comfort come over him at the sight of his lifelong friend, but then Dongwoon held up his phone. “Jonghyun’s been talking me through my search, listing off the probable routes you would’ve taken. Turns out he was right." He then extended the phone toward Key as he neared, "Here, he wants to talk to you. He says it’s important.”
Apparently sensing the sudden change in mood within Key, the ajumma spoke urgently to him in a hushed voice. “If you could erase certain elements of your life, thereby changing your Fate… would you do it?”
Key felt guilty when he glanced to Dongwoon’s smiling face that had suddenly changed to a quizzical expression. He had almost reached them. Key's eyes then darted to the phone in the taller boy’s hands and he felt the bitter rush of anger return to him when he remembered his ruined career. “Boy, would I…” he grumbled.
Upon his response, the tiny ajumma reached down and opened the small, leather-bound book without hesitation. She turned to a few pages located near the front and swiftly tore four pages from its binding. “Then it is done,” she stated ominously.
No sooner had the pages left the book’s binding, before they faded into oblivion. Key could only barely make out the brief flashes of the faded archaic symbols scrawled across them: a stylized rabbit encased in earth, a steer engulfed in flames, a canine encircled by wisps of air, and a cat bathed in brilliant light… All of them, now gone. Meanwhile, the later pages within the book seemed to fade and disappear while new words reappeared in their place…
Key didn’t remember returning to the dorms that night, but when he awoke the next morning, he found himself in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. What the-?
The diva lay there for a while, puzzling over the events of the previous night, but had no recollection of any further conversation with the ajumma, Dongwoon, or even Jonghyun. Could this be Dongwoon’s room in B2ST’s new dorm? I think he mentioned they were moving when we last talked…
“Dongwoon?!” he called out. There was no response. Man, I must’ve hit the soju hard last night when we left that shop… Key soon returned to deep thought, but jumped when he was interrupted by the loud, obnoxious ringtone of a phone that he couldn’t recall acquiring. After a momentary debate whether he should answer a stranger’s phone, he hesitantly picked it up.
“…Yoboseyo?” he answered sleepily.
“Kibum! What the hell?!” a vaguely familiar, clearly distraught voice exclaimed. “How long were you planning on going without telling me about your weeklong trip to Korea?”
“…What?” Key replied, totally confused.
“Don’t play dumb! Think about how ridiculous I felt when I had to hear from Tao about your plans-after you’d left! How could you fly to Seoul without so much as telling me! We’re supposed to all be in this together!”
Key suddenly recognized the voice on the other end of the phone, “…Kris?”
“Yah! I told you never to call me that during business hours, now that we’re in the same office together. It’s Wu Yifan, now, remember? We have to look professional in front of this new boss. He’s a total dictator! I mean, does this fashion internship with Kim Heechul himself mean nothing to you?!”
Key rubbed his temples gingerly. “Oh, umm… sorry?” he answered. This was so confusing to him, it was starting to give him a headache.
He could hear a sigh on the other side of the phone. “Kibum, have you been drinking?” Kris paused and then began delicately, “I know you’re taking some personal days away from this stressful internship over here in America, but please try to keep in mind that you’re there to pay your respects to your halmeoni. Try and keep it together…”
Key perked up at the mention of his grandmother, “…I am?!”
“…It’s been three years since she passed away, right?” Kris asked cautiously.
Key nearly dropped his phone. His grandmother was the only family he had left in this world. And for that matter, he had just talked to her last week on the phone. There’s no way she could be dead.
“Kris, did my band mates in SHINee put you up to this? Because it’s not funny…” he growled.
“Wu Yifan! It’s Yifan!” Kris desperately hissed into the phone, “And what the heck is a SHINee?”
This time Key really did drop the phone, for he had just now reached up and opened the curtains of his high-rise hotel window. He could see the contours of the SM Building on Seoul’s early morning skyline, but instead of the normal, bright and gaudy TVXQ!, SHINee, Super Junior, SNSD, f(x), and EXO advertisement banners draped across its exposed length, he could only see a single billboard advertisement in their place. One that clearly didn't belong.
An advertisement for B2ST.
“Kibum? Kibum?!” Kris’s muffled voice buzzed in concern from somewhere on the hotel room floor.