Let Night Lay [PG/FANFIC]
Title: Let Night Lay
Genre: Angst/Drama/Romance
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): JaeMin
Wordcount: 4,868
Summary: Sometimes it takes more than one liftetime to find the one you truly love. The thread of soulmates is controlled by a dispassionate Fate.
Let Night Lay
I would find you,
Love you
Though the seas may come
And Hell shall bar the way
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It begins like this
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She leans over the throne upon which she sits to gaze at the two figures glowing brightly from within a glass sphere. Humanity is trivial, she thinks even as she carelessly tosses a lock of raven black hair over her shoulders. But there’s something about the two blurred figures suspended in time within her pretty little toy that captivates her. The glow means they are about to die. The fact that they won’t leave her vision means that she’s bound to meddle in their affairs.
Her mouth quirks to the side, lush, red lips curving into a bitter smile. Her slender hands reach for the crimson spool of thread by her side, a glimmering gold needle protruding from the center. The picture becomes clearer the longer she looks and the image is a sad one, given her knowledge, but the feeling soon fades. Two young boys…most likely sons from two different Immortals. She focuses on the pale, moon-white face of the shorter boy. His eyes are alive and when she looks closer still, she can see his heart overflowing with love.
The taller boy is obviously younger. She can tell by the way his face lights up with excitement at the slightest gesture from the other, tell by the sun that seems to radiate from his form. Truly, they are magnificently beautiful. She breaks the thread she is weaving and watches their blood wash over the face of her glass sphere.
She has claimed them and their lives.
Death will be angry with her for meddling in his realm, but she doesn’t care for his falsely imposing presence. Life will be angrier still for stealing away these two wonderful, naïve sprits from her realm, but she doesn’t care for that kind of sentimentality and sweetness either.
She is Fate.
And Fate trumps all.
She turns to her thread, mending the previous cut with a second string of life. They will be reborn, again and again, until they too will know the despair that she stands for everyday of her existence. She breaks the second thread halfway through and sets about mending the tear again. The string of life is fragile. She isn’t surprised when the third and then the fourth threads give way as well. The fifth however…the fifth stays together, stays sturdy, but she knows the edges are frayed. It won’t break though.
She breathes over the intertwined pattern carefully, sealing it permanently in shades of gold and silver. These two spirits are hers to command, and she has not been merciful.
Son of the Moon and son of the Sun.
How fitting that they should fall in love.
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The First is but a Tragedy
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Kim Jaejoong is born with the first of the rising tides and the last of winter’s snow. His father’s kingdom is by the sea, sea gulls flying higher and higher above the majestic palace. He is born pale as a dove’s feathers with eyes that are as black as night. The citizens of the Great Court rejoice and sound loud fanfares for the birth of an heir, especially one as ethereal as an immortal.
Kim Jaejoong is born into a world of rich, silk curtains and adoration bought by power and wealth.
(And all the while, Fate sits placidly on her jeweled throne, a slim finger twisting and twisting a piece of broken, red thread.)
Three years after the prince’s birth, another child is born. But this one is born with the first rays of dawn and the last of summer’s leaves. His mother’s kingdom is only a poor shack, hastily made on the outskirts of the vast and mighty ocean. His skin is golden tan and his hair the color of crushed hazelnuts and wheat. The other prostitutes are scandalized that such a child-one born out of wedlock, can even exist.
At the tender age of one, Shim Changmin is lovingly wrapped in mismatched pieces of fabric and set out in the cold.
(Life watches these pieces of red strings with disgust and loathing, yearning to mend them all with her hands into one smooth entity-into one intertwined soul.)
Years pass. Summer changes to Autumn and then to bitterly cold Winter before kissing the forehead of Spring. Jaejoong grows to become a perfect prince, well mannered and handsome with followers left and right. His servants are many, though his friends are few. Loneliness creeps up on him wherever he goes and he becomes sick. Heartsick for something he has never quite had.
The King sends for the best doctor and hopes for the best. Behind him, a thousand prayers paint the sky a melancholy blue.
(Death hovers behind a sixteen-year old, dark wings slowly unfurling as a red thread finally begins to unravel and trail away in his whitewashed hands. He does not find Fate’s game reasonable in the least, but he does her bidding. If not just to see the end of this story-the end of something that has only just begun.)
Shim Changmin is awkward and ungainly-unused to his height and slenderness. It is as if he is air, there for but an instant before vanishing behind a ray of sunlight or a drop of rain. He is underfed and underpaid, but he is alive and he owes his life to the Healer anyways. His days are spent buried behind collections of herbs, meticulously researching fanciful cures to at least soothe the ill. The villagers know him as the Helper and do not refer to him by any other name. Indeed, even the Healer does not call him by his true name.
But he remembers it. He is Shim Changmin. And he longs for a day when someone in this large kingdom will call for him, will recognize him for all that he is.
“The King has summoned me. The Prince has fallen ill and I must see if there is something to be done. You will come with me. My other aids cannot to be trusted to keep their heads on straight in the presence of royalty.” The Healer says patiently.
He looks up, eyes widening in surprise and concern.
He has heard of Kim Jaejoong and a bit of his heart twinges as if in pain.
And yet, still, he has no idea why.
(She thinks it’s best this way. She thinks it is beautiful to watch them suffer so and thinks that it because she is like them too. She is like the breaking of the younger boy’s heart and the emptiness of the older one’s spirit.)
“You must help my son.” The King rumbles gravely, aging hands reaching out to brush tenderly against the soft cheek of youth. “He cannot die yet.”
Changmin hears, but does not really hear. He is too focused on the still and barely breathing figure on the bed. He can tell that the Prince must be beautiful and that surely the Prince must be kind to have his father worried so. The Healer by his side is fussing over which herbs to use for which symptoms, but he remains wordless.
He knows the answer somehow, resonating deep in his soul.
‘This boy will die.’
It’s a soft voice that whispers in his ear, soothing and kind. He turns and sees only the worn face of the King though. Shim Changmin’s eyes are hopeless as the crashing of the waves against an insurmountable cliff, as sad as the desperate fluttering of sea gulls as they spread their wings towards heaven.
And though he cannot see Kim Jaejoong’s eyes (for they are closed, closed)…
Inside, he knows that they must be as tragic as the wilting of a rose.
(Death covers the barely open mouth softly and blows out the candle of Life, a silent farewell to the world of the living where a thirteen-year old boy, awkward and ungainly, waits and waits for a pair of eternally black eyes to open. It is painless. Just an end. An end to the beginning of a beginning.)
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The Second is but a Lie
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He’s the Renaissance amusement of the year.
“Boy of Death! Step right up, step right up! Five pennies for a lookin’! Hair’s black as night! Won’t believe, true beauty!” The announcer guffaws into the curious crowd, wide arms gesturing here and there, the bright colors are gaudy and ridiculous. It’s part of the reason why these people come and flock to the little tent perched behind him.
“Picked him off the streets from some vagabonds out of the way. You’ve never seen a face like this one!” The comic character continues, hollering and hollering as more and more coins are shoved into the glass jar at his feet. He doesn’t so much give the admission tickets out as he flings them-like pieces of paper confetti-into the crowd.
“Don’t you find it cruel to sell someone shamelessly like that?” A soft voice asks, timid and meek. The crowd simultaneously turns to the slender boy standing in the middle, like a young shoot or sapling. “I don’t think he’d…he’d like it much.”
The announcer laughs-falsely cheery and flourishes another ticket from underneath his striped coat. “That’s a cute one. Tell ya what, you can have a peep for free.” And then the noise comes back again, people gibbering in excitement for the so-called ‘Boy of Death’ and pinching and petting the little, lost boy who dared to say anything about humanity. The lights dim in preparation and the announcer makes his way slowly over to the boy with the too-large eyes and the weak frame.
“Your name?” He asks quietly, smile as large as anything. It feels like it’ll split his face apart.
“Shim Changmin, sir. And I don’t think anyone can be a child of Death, don’t you, sir?”
The announcer’s smile grows wider.
“You’ll see.”
(Life watches the scene anxiously, white wings fluttering like a heartbeat. Her eyes are hopeful and she thinks that maybe Fate will have let them have their love in this life. Surely…surely…. She lifts her head slowly and breaks into a wistful expression. The Muse of Loss looks back at her from across the arena, hands clasped tenderly around the little boy’s eyes. It’s over. And still the game continues.)
In retrospect, it’s an admittedly humble entrance for such a grandiose affair. The so-called Boy of Death parts the flap of the tent confidently, striding forward in steps that don’t falter. The crowd claps when he reaches the front, drinking in the foreign features, the slim curve of a visible collarbone, the pale-rose mouth. His eyes move over the crowd, lowering himself into a modest bow.
He can see another boy, younger than him, look back with pity and curiosity shining in a pair of hazel eyes. He wonders why anyone as innocent-looking as that is even here, watching him as he sings in captivity-watching him struggle against the invisible bonds of the circus. Because it wasn’t fun and games when the crowds left. It wasn’t warm or nice or funny like people always thought circuses would be. It was cold and hollow. Barren.
His voice soars above the anticipating clouds, far above the dazzling sun, to a place where one day…he hopes he will be free.
(And Fate hears him. Even though she shouldn’t. She’s got other threads to sew and to snap. Other lives to ruin or to make. But she loves these two little spirits, loves them as much as she wants to break them. Loves them even as she kills them.)
“You don’t look very dead.” Changmin comments quietly, long after the crowds have left and the people have drifted away. He doesn’t look up, opting to stare blankly at the calluses of his small palm instead.
Jaejoong laughs-crystal clear and haunting. “No. I’m very much alive.” He smiles a bit and chuckles awkwardly. “And you?”
“I think I’m alive too. But mother will be worried if I don’t go back soon.” He says the last line with regret, biting his lip. He doesn’t want to go back home, even if his mom is nice and makes him dinner and brushes his hair. He wants to stay here with the strange boy who looks sad even when he smiles and who says he’s alive when he looks dead. “I’ll come tomorrow, okay? And….”
He coughs, pauses, feels a chill snaking its way up his back and continues.
“Maybe mom will let me bring something to share with you.”
Jaejoong’s smile is real this time, the sadness fading away behind genuine delight. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
(The Muse of Loss relinquishes her hold over the younger boy’s eyes, plants a cold kiss at the base of his throat and fades into the background. Promises shouldn’t be made, she thinks. They’re only ever meant to be broken.)
But Changmin doesn’t come the next day…or the next…or the day after that. And Jaejoong’s left alone at night with promises of a warm hand to hold onto and a gift that never comes. Finally, the sales begin to drop. People don’t want to see the ‘Child of Death’ anymore. It’s old news. So the circus packs up their little belongings, scraping together juggling balls and gaudy outfits.
They move onto the next town over.
Two days after that, Changmin’s fever breaks.
But it’s too late. Too late now.
(From her throne, She watches the threads become dust and finally trickle away. She hasn’t stopped feeling so empty inside.)
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The Third is but a Dream
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He’s completely lost.
The books stare back at him with unintelligible labels and formidable numbers marching across their bindings. He cranes his neck trying to get a good look at the subject and pulls back in disgust when he realizes he’s in the mathematics section of the library.
“Do you need some help?” He turns and sees a friendly face smiling back at him. The stranger has a comfortable sweater on to block the chill of the rainy London nights and a general look of ‘academic kindness.’ A bookworm, he assesses internally and thanks God that the stranger hasn’t laughed at him yet. Lost in a library. How pathetic.
“Yeah. Could you help me find the rubbish cooking book section? I don’t know how I ended up here.” He scratches his head in embarrassment and looks at his feet.
“Sure. Just follow me.” They walk through mazes of bookshelves and countless studying students. Most of the people in the library are quiet, poring over books upon books to meet the requirements of Oxford College. The soft pattering of rain hitting the windows is audible even in the far back rooms.
He sighs in relief when he sees a familiar book cover and turns to thank the kind librarian-only to see a charming, boyish grin directed at him. It makes him blush, which mortifies him, and finally resolves itself by turning the tips of his ears a faint pink. “T-Thanks.” He manages to stammer out.
“No problem, mate. I’m Changmin, feel free to ask me for help if you ever get lost in the library again.” He laughs, warm and inviting. “Although I doubt you’ll ever wander back here again. You don’t look much like the studying type.”
“You’re right.” Jaejoong answers wryly, hugging a cooking book to his chest. He’ll try out pie this time. A cinnamon apple pie. “I’m Jaejoong.” He pauses, clears his throat awkwardly and finally thinks what the bloody hell, there’s no harm in asking. “Do you like cinnamon apple pie?”
“Depends. Are you a good baker?”
This is how they become friends.
(Don’t, Life wants to scream to them. Don’t. But Fate is irreversible and the tides continue to ebb and flow. She has no control…no power.)
He finds himself getting ‘lost’ more and more often within the library, even though he knows the place now inside and out, until each corridor and each bookcase is etched into his mind. But he does it so he can always walk into Changmin, with the bright smile and the happy laughter. He always brings a piece of his newest homemade dessert with him too, carefully wrapped in paper towel.
And even though the sign on the front of library clearly says, Do Not Eat, even though Changmin’s a library assistant, they still manage to get away with munching on cake or pie or a macadamia-nut cookie.
Well, as long as they don’t show up with telltale crumbs on their faces.
It’s a perfect friendship, because Jaejoong needs someone to listen to him as he talks about all of life’s troubles: his mother’s cancer, his family still in Korea, and the rent that he doesn’t have enough money to pay for sometimes. Changmin needs someone to help and to listen to: he needs to feel needed, wanted…useful.
But perfect things never last.
On December 13th, 1894, Jaejoong gets the message.
‘Your mother is dead. Come back.’
He feels disgusted at himself for not wanting to leave.
(The Scales of Justice tip right and then left in her lap, swathed in sheets of the finest heaven-spun silk. With careful fingers and sad eyes, she smashes the left side, leaving the right swaying and sinking-lonely and lost.)
Changmin doesn’t want it to end this way.
The ship harbor is cold and packed with people from all walks of life leaving Britain for some reason or other. He carries a promise in his pockets and a heavy heart in his chest. The face looking back at him is pale with a pink nose from the cold, black eyes unreadable. “I-I…” He stutters out and then stops. He wants to say don’t go, please don’t go, you’re my best friend and I need you, I need you have a good trip and stay safe.
“It’s okay.” Jaejoong responds quietly, tongue licking chapped lips nervously. The ship is going to leave soon. Fifteen minutes. He still hasn’t checked in yet. And he finds it funny that they’ve never been lost for words before, at least not until now, right when he’s about to leave. “I should go.”
“Yeah.” Changmin replies helplessly. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t want to say that. He wants to scream a million things that are bottling up his chest like cancer. His hand fumbles in his pockets around the humble gift, all awkward angles and poorly wrapped corners.
“I guess…I’ll see you later than.” Jaejoong says after a long, long silence. He knows it’s a lie. Once in Korea, he won’t be coming back. They both know it’s a lie.
“W-Wait!” And he stumbles back at the force of the hug, a part of him just breakingbreakingbreakingdying inside. The wrapped chocolate is hastily shoved into his pockets somewhere in between the sounding of the ship’s horn and the salty taste of tears (his or Changmin’s?).
On the ship, all he can see through the foggy window is a warm smile (a bit sad now, a bit worn) and hazel eyes looking back up at him from the midst of a colorless crowd.
He knows he’s lost something far too precious for words.
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The Fourth is but a Nightmare
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Graduation is a pain, especially since there’s a war going on right now and graduating means they’re all going to be enlisted sooner or later.
“I’m joining the army.” Jaejoong says the next day, legs swinging over the edge of a wooden bridge. “I’m eighteen and I get more glory if I join rather than wait for the recruitment officer to come and drag me out of my house.”
They’re still teenagers-young adults. Glory seems magnificent and fighting as a soldier seems like an honor. Take up a gun and fight for your country. That’s the ideology of the time and it runs rampant in all the students old enough to enlist.
Changmin nods, nose buried in his textbook talking about derivatives and integrals. Three years younger, he hasn’t got a shot in hell to enlist yet. Never mind the fact that he’s a crappy liar to begin with, or so Jaejoong adamantly says every time a person asks. “Tomorrow?” He asks, flipping a page, chewing thoughtfully on the end of the pencil.
“Probably.” Jaejoong answers, waiting for a response (the response). He likes the way their reflections distort and blend together with the ripples of the water. It’s like art.
“Oh.” Changmin responds and lifts his head, closing the book shut with a note of finality. “I’ll find you.”
“Find me?”
“Yeah. Find you. When I graduate, the first I’m going to do is enlist. And then I’ll find you.” And he looks so serious as he answers, face set in a determined expression. “You better not die on me, Kim Jaejoong. You better not die on me. We’ll become heroes together, right? Glory for all.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Jaejoong replies and can’t resist the urge to break the moment. It’s dangerously private and touchy-feely. He doesn’t understand the strange thumpthump of his heart or the way his hands itch to wrap around the other’s slender body in an embrace. He doesn’t understand it and so he pushes the moment away. They’ve been friends since fourth grade. Just friends. Nothing more and nothing less. “That is, if you manage to survive school. Three years left!” He snickers, gleefully rubbing his hands together.
Changmin calmly reaches out an arm and shoves him into the water.
“Nice try. I’m going back to math, loser.”
(War is a bloodied youth with too many bruises and cuts to count. His eyes are white and iris-less, blind like so many of the soldiers who go to fight for some nameless thing like “glory.” His sword is broken and when he walks, it is only with the halting, stumbling steps not unlike a soulless being. He reaches for the battered hilt of the blade and digs it deeper into the ground, drawing fresh blood from corpses. Three years pass.)
Shim Changmin finally makes his mother cry.
It only takes two words before she collapses into a mess at his feet, a thousand pleas and cries echoing from wall to wall. She doesn’t want him to go. China’s just entered the war on the other side and there’s million upon millions of enemy soldiers on the field now. He won’t last. Not her little, sweet, always smiling, studious Changmin. He’s only eighteen years old-too young to die. She doesn’t want him to go. She knows he won’t come back.
“I have to.” He pleads, knowing all too well that she won’t understand. “I have to.” Because he promised Jaejoong, because the past three years have been bitter and lonely without the other constantly by his side. And he knows inside that they’re not really friends anymore. What he feels can’t be classified as friendship. But these strange revelations can be explored later. All he wants is to enlist in the army and find his best friend again-the one person who’s worth the whole world and more to him.
She lets him go in the end, eyes red and swollen. She lets him go and memorizes his last smile before he boards the train.
After he’s gone, she goes back home and drinks herself to sleep.
(Fate doesn’t laugh this time. Of all the Immortals, all the Muses, and all the Sprites, she’s only afraid of War. War isn’t something trivial or fickle and she’s eerily somber as the scene plays before her like an old movie. This is what she’s done to them. And a part of her hates herself for it.)
He joins the army as a medic.
He just isn’t built to take lives for any reason whatsoever. It makes him feel better thinking that he’s saving people every single second of everyday by staunching blood flow and cleansing infections. But the war is taking a toll on his body. He’s losing weight and the shadows are haunting his face, flickering beneath weary eyes. Two months and still no word about Jaejoong. He’s asked everyone, from the lucid wounded to the Generals sent to get their yearly shots. Nothing. But he refuses to believe that Jaejoong might be dead.
It’s impossible. Impossible.
It’s a chilly November day when he’s asked to report to the battlefield to help those wounded in action. The guns are still firing on both sides when he arrives, ducking for cover, a first-aid kit digging into his hip from its place in his soldier pack. He makes his way from one wounded to another, doing his best to save the ones who have a chance to survive, and staying by the side of those who are beyond help.
Maybe it’s the fatigue getting to him. Maybe it’s the desperation and the thought that maybemaybemaybe he died.
He sees the back of a head, black hair the exact same shade and the same height and build of body. Hope drives him half-insane and he runs. Runs like he’s never before to the deadly still figure on the ground.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes the soldier isn’t Jaejoong but a Chinese scout.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes the Chinese scout isn’t wounded, but rather waiting in hiding.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes there’s a gun pointed at his head.
Fifty feet away from the scene, Jaejoong’s scream dies in his throat as he watches the body crumple soundlessly into the dirt.
“You’ve found me. I’m alive…I’m right here. You’ve found me…”
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The Fifth is but an Ending
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The first time Kim Jaejoong sees Shim Changmin, his heart gives a funny little jump and his chest clenches in burning pain. For a moment, he thinks they must have met before. If not in this life, than certainly in some other one. He remembers (more than sees) the bright, sunny smile. He remembers (more than hears) the warm voice. He remembers (more than feels) the sharp, aching sense of loss.
And he knows that he cannot lose this something again.
“I’m Jaejoong.” The words sound familiar, like he’s said the same thing to this complete stranger many, many times before.
“Oh.” A quick bow for the sake of politeness, mismatched eyes twinkling with laughter. “My name’s Changmin.”
This is how they meet for the last and final first time.
(Fate watches Love’s silhouette take shape in the corridors of the building and buries her head in her arms. It is done. They will have their soul mate at long last.)
Jaejoong confesses on a sleepless night, hands curled protectively around a mug filled with jasmine tea. The words are not eloquent and they are not romantic. He stutters and stammers his way through, grasping for a way to express the emotions fighting for control over him.
Changmin is quiet on his side of the couch the entire time, careful to make sure that the other members of the band don’t hear this. He knows he’s been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. For ages.
“I’m sorry, Minnie. I never meant to-it just happened and it’s okay…it’s okay if you say no.” But he knows a rejection will ruin a part of him. Jaejoong is a lot of things, but he isn’t an idiot. He knows that somehow, for some reason, Changmin is his soul mate. The one.
Changmin’s only answer is to reach over and tenderly intertwine their fingers together.
(But the fifth string, however strong, however sturdy, is still frayed. And that is something even Fate cannot change. She only writes the beginnings of two lives, never the ends. She wishes the edges would become smooth again.)
It happens so suddenly that it leaves the world shell-shocked.
They’re touring China when the public transport bus they’re on bursts into flames. Terrorism, the police say, marking the accident scene with long strips of yellow tape. A simple homemade bomb by someone who thought that it wasn’t enough to just take away their own life-but that it was fair game to take fifty-three others.
Seven survive with severe burns. Just seven of the sixty people.
Shim Changmin and Kim Jaejoong aren’t on the list of survivors.
(Love shakes her head when she sees the scene, making her way past silent Death and forlorn Fate. She kneels by the two spirits, holding onto one another even after life. They turn to her as one, the taller one asking if they’re really dead now-if that was really the end of their young lives.
She says yes and asks them if they are afraid.
They shake their heads and look at her, one pale as the moon and his counterpart as bright as the burning sun.
“Come then. You belong in the hall of Immortals, son of the Sun and son of the Moon.” She murmurs and steps back quietly.
“Together?” The dark-haired one asks, black eyes deep and thoughtful.
“Forever.” Love promises them.)
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And this is how it ends
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Genre: Angst/Drama/Romance
Rating: PG
Pairing(s): JaeMin
Wordcount: 4,868
Summary: Sometimes it takes more than one liftetime to find the one you truly love. The thread of soulmates is controlled by a dispassionate Fate.
Let Night Lay
I would find you,
Love you
Though the seas may come
And Hell shall bar the way
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It begins like this
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She leans over the throne upon which she sits to gaze at the two figures glowing brightly from within a glass sphere. Humanity is trivial, she thinks even as she carelessly tosses a lock of raven black hair over her shoulders. But there’s something about the two blurred figures suspended in time within her pretty little toy that captivates her. The glow means they are about to die. The fact that they won’t leave her vision means that she’s bound to meddle in their affairs.
Her mouth quirks to the side, lush, red lips curving into a bitter smile. Her slender hands reach for the crimson spool of thread by her side, a glimmering gold needle protruding from the center. The picture becomes clearer the longer she looks and the image is a sad one, given her knowledge, but the feeling soon fades. Two young boys…most likely sons from two different Immortals. She focuses on the pale, moon-white face of the shorter boy. His eyes are alive and when she looks closer still, she can see his heart overflowing with love.
The taller boy is obviously younger. She can tell by the way his face lights up with excitement at the slightest gesture from the other, tell by the sun that seems to radiate from his form. Truly, they are magnificently beautiful. She breaks the thread she is weaving and watches their blood wash over the face of her glass sphere.
She has claimed them and their lives.
Death will be angry with her for meddling in his realm, but she doesn’t care for his falsely imposing presence. Life will be angrier still for stealing away these two wonderful, naïve sprits from her realm, but she doesn’t care for that kind of sentimentality and sweetness either.
She is Fate.
And Fate trumps all.
She turns to her thread, mending the previous cut with a second string of life. They will be reborn, again and again, until they too will know the despair that she stands for everyday of her existence. She breaks the second thread halfway through and sets about mending the tear again. The string of life is fragile. She isn’t surprised when the third and then the fourth threads give way as well. The fifth however…the fifth stays together, stays sturdy, but she knows the edges are frayed. It won’t break though.
She breathes over the intertwined pattern carefully, sealing it permanently in shades of gold and silver. These two spirits are hers to command, and she has not been merciful.
Son of the Moon and son of the Sun.
How fitting that they should fall in love.
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The First is but a Tragedy
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Kim Jaejoong is born with the first of the rising tides and the last of winter’s snow. His father’s kingdom is by the sea, sea gulls flying higher and higher above the majestic palace. He is born pale as a dove’s feathers with eyes that are as black as night. The citizens of the Great Court rejoice and sound loud fanfares for the birth of an heir, especially one as ethereal as an immortal.
Kim Jaejoong is born into a world of rich, silk curtains and adoration bought by power and wealth.
(And all the while, Fate sits placidly on her jeweled throne, a slim finger twisting and twisting a piece of broken, red thread.)
Three years after the prince’s birth, another child is born. But this one is born with the first rays of dawn and the last of summer’s leaves. His mother’s kingdom is only a poor shack, hastily made on the outskirts of the vast and mighty ocean. His skin is golden tan and his hair the color of crushed hazelnuts and wheat. The other prostitutes are scandalized that such a child-one born out of wedlock, can even exist.
At the tender age of one, Shim Changmin is lovingly wrapped in mismatched pieces of fabric and set out in the cold.
(Life watches these pieces of red strings with disgust and loathing, yearning to mend them all with her hands into one smooth entity-into one intertwined soul.)
Years pass. Summer changes to Autumn and then to bitterly cold Winter before kissing the forehead of Spring. Jaejoong grows to become a perfect prince, well mannered and handsome with followers left and right. His servants are many, though his friends are few. Loneliness creeps up on him wherever he goes and he becomes sick. Heartsick for something he has never quite had.
The King sends for the best doctor and hopes for the best. Behind him, a thousand prayers paint the sky a melancholy blue.
(Death hovers behind a sixteen-year old, dark wings slowly unfurling as a red thread finally begins to unravel and trail away in his whitewashed hands. He does not find Fate’s game reasonable in the least, but he does her bidding. If not just to see the end of this story-the end of something that has only just begun.)
Shim Changmin is awkward and ungainly-unused to his height and slenderness. It is as if he is air, there for but an instant before vanishing behind a ray of sunlight or a drop of rain. He is underfed and underpaid, but he is alive and he owes his life to the Healer anyways. His days are spent buried behind collections of herbs, meticulously researching fanciful cures to at least soothe the ill. The villagers know him as the Helper and do not refer to him by any other name. Indeed, even the Healer does not call him by his true name.
But he remembers it. He is Shim Changmin. And he longs for a day when someone in this large kingdom will call for him, will recognize him for all that he is.
“The King has summoned me. The Prince has fallen ill and I must see if there is something to be done. You will come with me. My other aids cannot to be trusted to keep their heads on straight in the presence of royalty.” The Healer says patiently.
He looks up, eyes widening in surprise and concern.
He has heard of Kim Jaejoong and a bit of his heart twinges as if in pain.
And yet, still, he has no idea why.
(She thinks it’s best this way. She thinks it is beautiful to watch them suffer so and thinks that it because she is like them too. She is like the breaking of the younger boy’s heart and the emptiness of the older one’s spirit.)
“You must help my son.” The King rumbles gravely, aging hands reaching out to brush tenderly against the soft cheek of youth. “He cannot die yet.”
Changmin hears, but does not really hear. He is too focused on the still and barely breathing figure on the bed. He can tell that the Prince must be beautiful and that surely the Prince must be kind to have his father worried so. The Healer by his side is fussing over which herbs to use for which symptoms, but he remains wordless.
He knows the answer somehow, resonating deep in his soul.
‘This boy will die.’
It’s a soft voice that whispers in his ear, soothing and kind. He turns and sees only the worn face of the King though. Shim Changmin’s eyes are hopeless as the crashing of the waves against an insurmountable cliff, as sad as the desperate fluttering of sea gulls as they spread their wings towards heaven.
And though he cannot see Kim Jaejoong’s eyes (for they are closed, closed)…
Inside, he knows that they must be as tragic as the wilting of a rose.
(Death covers the barely open mouth softly and blows out the candle of Life, a silent farewell to the world of the living where a thirteen-year old boy, awkward and ungainly, waits and waits for a pair of eternally black eyes to open. It is painless. Just an end. An end to the beginning of a beginning.)
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The Second is but a Lie
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He’s the Renaissance amusement of the year.
“Boy of Death! Step right up, step right up! Five pennies for a lookin’! Hair’s black as night! Won’t believe, true beauty!” The announcer guffaws into the curious crowd, wide arms gesturing here and there, the bright colors are gaudy and ridiculous. It’s part of the reason why these people come and flock to the little tent perched behind him.
“Picked him off the streets from some vagabonds out of the way. You’ve never seen a face like this one!” The comic character continues, hollering and hollering as more and more coins are shoved into the glass jar at his feet. He doesn’t so much give the admission tickets out as he flings them-like pieces of paper confetti-into the crowd.
“Don’t you find it cruel to sell someone shamelessly like that?” A soft voice asks, timid and meek. The crowd simultaneously turns to the slender boy standing in the middle, like a young shoot or sapling. “I don’t think he’d…he’d like it much.”
The announcer laughs-falsely cheery and flourishes another ticket from underneath his striped coat. “That’s a cute one. Tell ya what, you can have a peep for free.” And then the noise comes back again, people gibbering in excitement for the so-called ‘Boy of Death’ and pinching and petting the little, lost boy who dared to say anything about humanity. The lights dim in preparation and the announcer makes his way slowly over to the boy with the too-large eyes and the weak frame.
“Your name?” He asks quietly, smile as large as anything. It feels like it’ll split his face apart.
“Shim Changmin, sir. And I don’t think anyone can be a child of Death, don’t you, sir?”
The announcer’s smile grows wider.
“You’ll see.”
(Life watches the scene anxiously, white wings fluttering like a heartbeat. Her eyes are hopeful and she thinks that maybe Fate will have let them have their love in this life. Surely…surely…. She lifts her head slowly and breaks into a wistful expression. The Muse of Loss looks back at her from across the arena, hands clasped tenderly around the little boy’s eyes. It’s over. And still the game continues.)
In retrospect, it’s an admittedly humble entrance for such a grandiose affair. The so-called Boy of Death parts the flap of the tent confidently, striding forward in steps that don’t falter. The crowd claps when he reaches the front, drinking in the foreign features, the slim curve of a visible collarbone, the pale-rose mouth. His eyes move over the crowd, lowering himself into a modest bow.
He can see another boy, younger than him, look back with pity and curiosity shining in a pair of hazel eyes. He wonders why anyone as innocent-looking as that is even here, watching him as he sings in captivity-watching him struggle against the invisible bonds of the circus. Because it wasn’t fun and games when the crowds left. It wasn’t warm or nice or funny like people always thought circuses would be. It was cold and hollow. Barren.
His voice soars above the anticipating clouds, far above the dazzling sun, to a place where one day…he hopes he will be free.
(And Fate hears him. Even though she shouldn’t. She’s got other threads to sew and to snap. Other lives to ruin or to make. But she loves these two little spirits, loves them as much as she wants to break them. Loves them even as she kills them.)
“You don’t look very dead.” Changmin comments quietly, long after the crowds have left and the people have drifted away. He doesn’t look up, opting to stare blankly at the calluses of his small palm instead.
Jaejoong laughs-crystal clear and haunting. “No. I’m very much alive.” He smiles a bit and chuckles awkwardly. “And you?”
“I think I’m alive too. But mother will be worried if I don’t go back soon.” He says the last line with regret, biting his lip. He doesn’t want to go back home, even if his mom is nice and makes him dinner and brushes his hair. He wants to stay here with the strange boy who looks sad even when he smiles and who says he’s alive when he looks dead. “I’ll come tomorrow, okay? And….”
He coughs, pauses, feels a chill snaking its way up his back and continues.
“Maybe mom will let me bring something to share with you.”
Jaejoong’s smile is real this time, the sadness fading away behind genuine delight. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
(The Muse of Loss relinquishes her hold over the younger boy’s eyes, plants a cold kiss at the base of his throat and fades into the background. Promises shouldn’t be made, she thinks. They’re only ever meant to be broken.)
But Changmin doesn’t come the next day…or the next…or the day after that. And Jaejoong’s left alone at night with promises of a warm hand to hold onto and a gift that never comes. Finally, the sales begin to drop. People don’t want to see the ‘Child of Death’ anymore. It’s old news. So the circus packs up their little belongings, scraping together juggling balls and gaudy outfits.
They move onto the next town over.
Two days after that, Changmin’s fever breaks.
But it’s too late. Too late now.
(From her throne, She watches the threads become dust and finally trickle away. She hasn’t stopped feeling so empty inside.)
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The Third is but a Dream
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He’s completely lost.
The books stare back at him with unintelligible labels and formidable numbers marching across their bindings. He cranes his neck trying to get a good look at the subject and pulls back in disgust when he realizes he’s in the mathematics section of the library.
“Do you need some help?” He turns and sees a friendly face smiling back at him. The stranger has a comfortable sweater on to block the chill of the rainy London nights and a general look of ‘academic kindness.’ A bookworm, he assesses internally and thanks God that the stranger hasn’t laughed at him yet. Lost in a library. How pathetic.
“Yeah. Could you help me find the rubbish cooking book section? I don’t know how I ended up here.” He scratches his head in embarrassment and looks at his feet.
“Sure. Just follow me.” They walk through mazes of bookshelves and countless studying students. Most of the people in the library are quiet, poring over books upon books to meet the requirements of Oxford College. The soft pattering of rain hitting the windows is audible even in the far back rooms.
He sighs in relief when he sees a familiar book cover and turns to thank the kind librarian-only to see a charming, boyish grin directed at him. It makes him blush, which mortifies him, and finally resolves itself by turning the tips of his ears a faint pink. “T-Thanks.” He manages to stammer out.
“No problem, mate. I’m Changmin, feel free to ask me for help if you ever get lost in the library again.” He laughs, warm and inviting. “Although I doubt you’ll ever wander back here again. You don’t look much like the studying type.”
“You’re right.” Jaejoong answers wryly, hugging a cooking book to his chest. He’ll try out pie this time. A cinnamon apple pie. “I’m Jaejoong.” He pauses, clears his throat awkwardly and finally thinks what the bloody hell, there’s no harm in asking. “Do you like cinnamon apple pie?”
“Depends. Are you a good baker?”
This is how they become friends.
(Don’t, Life wants to scream to them. Don’t. But Fate is irreversible and the tides continue to ebb and flow. She has no control…no power.)
He finds himself getting ‘lost’ more and more often within the library, even though he knows the place now inside and out, until each corridor and each bookcase is etched into his mind. But he does it so he can always walk into Changmin, with the bright smile and the happy laughter. He always brings a piece of his newest homemade dessert with him too, carefully wrapped in paper towel.
And even though the sign on the front of library clearly says, Do Not Eat, even though Changmin’s a library assistant, they still manage to get away with munching on cake or pie or a macadamia-nut cookie.
Well, as long as they don’t show up with telltale crumbs on their faces.
It’s a perfect friendship, because Jaejoong needs someone to listen to him as he talks about all of life’s troubles: his mother’s cancer, his family still in Korea, and the rent that he doesn’t have enough money to pay for sometimes. Changmin needs someone to help and to listen to: he needs to feel needed, wanted…useful.
But perfect things never last.
On December 13th, 1894, Jaejoong gets the message.
‘Your mother is dead. Come back.’
He feels disgusted at himself for not wanting to leave.
(The Scales of Justice tip right and then left in her lap, swathed in sheets of the finest heaven-spun silk. With careful fingers and sad eyes, she smashes the left side, leaving the right swaying and sinking-lonely and lost.)
Changmin doesn’t want it to end this way.
The ship harbor is cold and packed with people from all walks of life leaving Britain for some reason or other. He carries a promise in his pockets and a heavy heart in his chest. The face looking back at him is pale with a pink nose from the cold, black eyes unreadable. “I-I…” He stutters out and then stops. He wants to say don’t go, please don’t go, you’re my best friend and I need you, I need you have a good trip and stay safe.
“It’s okay.” Jaejoong responds quietly, tongue licking chapped lips nervously. The ship is going to leave soon. Fifteen minutes. He still hasn’t checked in yet. And he finds it funny that they’ve never been lost for words before, at least not until now, right when he’s about to leave. “I should go.”
“Yeah.” Changmin replies helplessly. “Yeah.” But he doesn’t want to say that. He wants to scream a million things that are bottling up his chest like cancer. His hand fumbles in his pockets around the humble gift, all awkward angles and poorly wrapped corners.
“I guess…I’ll see you later than.” Jaejoong says after a long, long silence. He knows it’s a lie. Once in Korea, he won’t be coming back. They both know it’s a lie.
“W-Wait!” And he stumbles back at the force of the hug, a part of him just breakingbreakingbreakingdying inside. The wrapped chocolate is hastily shoved into his pockets somewhere in between the sounding of the ship’s horn and the salty taste of tears (his or Changmin’s?).
On the ship, all he can see through the foggy window is a warm smile (a bit sad now, a bit worn) and hazel eyes looking back up at him from the midst of a colorless crowd.
He knows he’s lost something far too precious for words.
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The Fourth is but a Nightmare
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Graduation is a pain, especially since there’s a war going on right now and graduating means they’re all going to be enlisted sooner or later.
“I’m joining the army.” Jaejoong says the next day, legs swinging over the edge of a wooden bridge. “I’m eighteen and I get more glory if I join rather than wait for the recruitment officer to come and drag me out of my house.”
They’re still teenagers-young adults. Glory seems magnificent and fighting as a soldier seems like an honor. Take up a gun and fight for your country. That’s the ideology of the time and it runs rampant in all the students old enough to enlist.
Changmin nods, nose buried in his textbook talking about derivatives and integrals. Three years younger, he hasn’t got a shot in hell to enlist yet. Never mind the fact that he’s a crappy liar to begin with, or so Jaejoong adamantly says every time a person asks. “Tomorrow?” He asks, flipping a page, chewing thoughtfully on the end of the pencil.
“Probably.” Jaejoong answers, waiting for a response (the response). He likes the way their reflections distort and blend together with the ripples of the water. It’s like art.
“Oh.” Changmin responds and lifts his head, closing the book shut with a note of finality. “I’ll find you.”
“Find me?”
“Yeah. Find you. When I graduate, the first I’m going to do is enlist. And then I’ll find you.” And he looks so serious as he answers, face set in a determined expression. “You better not die on me, Kim Jaejoong. You better not die on me. We’ll become heroes together, right? Glory for all.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Jaejoong replies and can’t resist the urge to break the moment. It’s dangerously private and touchy-feely. He doesn’t understand the strange thumpthump of his heart or the way his hands itch to wrap around the other’s slender body in an embrace. He doesn’t understand it and so he pushes the moment away. They’ve been friends since fourth grade. Just friends. Nothing more and nothing less. “That is, if you manage to survive school. Three years left!” He snickers, gleefully rubbing his hands together.
Changmin calmly reaches out an arm and shoves him into the water.
“Nice try. I’m going back to math, loser.”
(War is a bloodied youth with too many bruises and cuts to count. His eyes are white and iris-less, blind like so many of the soldiers who go to fight for some nameless thing like “glory.” His sword is broken and when he walks, it is only with the halting, stumbling steps not unlike a soulless being. He reaches for the battered hilt of the blade and digs it deeper into the ground, drawing fresh blood from corpses. Three years pass.)
Shim Changmin finally makes his mother cry.
It only takes two words before she collapses into a mess at his feet, a thousand pleas and cries echoing from wall to wall. She doesn’t want him to go. China’s just entered the war on the other side and there’s million upon millions of enemy soldiers on the field now. He won’t last. Not her little, sweet, always smiling, studious Changmin. He’s only eighteen years old-too young to die. She doesn’t want him to go. She knows he won’t come back.
“I have to.” He pleads, knowing all too well that she won’t understand. “I have to.” Because he promised Jaejoong, because the past three years have been bitter and lonely without the other constantly by his side. And he knows inside that they’re not really friends anymore. What he feels can’t be classified as friendship. But these strange revelations can be explored later. All he wants is to enlist in the army and find his best friend again-the one person who’s worth the whole world and more to him.
She lets him go in the end, eyes red and swollen. She lets him go and memorizes his last smile before he boards the train.
After he’s gone, she goes back home and drinks herself to sleep.
(Fate doesn’t laugh this time. Of all the Immortals, all the Muses, and all the Sprites, she’s only afraid of War. War isn’t something trivial or fickle and she’s eerily somber as the scene plays before her like an old movie. This is what she’s done to them. And a part of her hates herself for it.)
He joins the army as a medic.
He just isn’t built to take lives for any reason whatsoever. It makes him feel better thinking that he’s saving people every single second of everyday by staunching blood flow and cleansing infections. But the war is taking a toll on his body. He’s losing weight and the shadows are haunting his face, flickering beneath weary eyes. Two months and still no word about Jaejoong. He’s asked everyone, from the lucid wounded to the Generals sent to get their yearly shots. Nothing. But he refuses to believe that Jaejoong might be dead.
It’s impossible. Impossible.
It’s a chilly November day when he’s asked to report to the battlefield to help those wounded in action. The guns are still firing on both sides when he arrives, ducking for cover, a first-aid kit digging into his hip from its place in his soldier pack. He makes his way from one wounded to another, doing his best to save the ones who have a chance to survive, and staying by the side of those who are beyond help.
Maybe it’s the fatigue getting to him. Maybe it’s the desperation and the thought that maybemaybemaybe he died.
He sees the back of a head, black hair the exact same shade and the same height and build of body. Hope drives him half-insane and he runs. Runs like he’s never before to the deadly still figure on the ground.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes the soldier isn’t Jaejoong but a Chinese scout.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes the Chinese scout isn’t wounded, but rather waiting in hiding.
It isn’t until it’s too late that he realizes there’s a gun pointed at his head.
Fifty feet away from the scene, Jaejoong’s scream dies in his throat as he watches the body crumple soundlessly into the dirt.
“You’ve found me. I’m alive…I’m right here. You’ve found me…”
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The Fifth is but an Ending
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The first time Kim Jaejoong sees Shim Changmin, his heart gives a funny little jump and his chest clenches in burning pain. For a moment, he thinks they must have met before. If not in this life, than certainly in some other one. He remembers (more than sees) the bright, sunny smile. He remembers (more than hears) the warm voice. He remembers (more than feels) the sharp, aching sense of loss.
And he knows that he cannot lose this something again.
“I’m Jaejoong.” The words sound familiar, like he’s said the same thing to this complete stranger many, many times before.
“Oh.” A quick bow for the sake of politeness, mismatched eyes twinkling with laughter. “My name’s Changmin.”
This is how they meet for the last and final first time.
(Fate watches Love’s silhouette take shape in the corridors of the building and buries her head in her arms. It is done. They will have their soul mate at long last.)
Jaejoong confesses on a sleepless night, hands curled protectively around a mug filled with jasmine tea. The words are not eloquent and they are not romantic. He stutters and stammers his way through, grasping for a way to express the emotions fighting for control over him.
Changmin is quiet on his side of the couch the entire time, careful to make sure that the other members of the band don’t hear this. He knows he’s been waiting for something like this to happen for a long time. For ages.
“I’m sorry, Minnie. I never meant to-it just happened and it’s okay…it’s okay if you say no.” But he knows a rejection will ruin a part of him. Jaejoong is a lot of things, but he isn’t an idiot. He knows that somehow, for some reason, Changmin is his soul mate. The one.
Changmin’s only answer is to reach over and tenderly intertwine their fingers together.
(But the fifth string, however strong, however sturdy, is still frayed. And that is something even Fate cannot change. She only writes the beginnings of two lives, never the ends. She wishes the edges would become smooth again.)
It happens so suddenly that it leaves the world shell-shocked.
They’re touring China when the public transport bus they’re on bursts into flames. Terrorism, the police say, marking the accident scene with long strips of yellow tape. A simple homemade bomb by someone who thought that it wasn’t enough to just take away their own life-but that it was fair game to take fifty-three others.
Seven survive with severe burns. Just seven of the sixty people.
Shim Changmin and Kim Jaejoong aren’t on the list of survivors.
(Love shakes her head when she sees the scene, making her way past silent Death and forlorn Fate. She kneels by the two spirits, holding onto one another even after life. They turn to her as one, the taller one asking if they’re really dead now-if that was really the end of their young lives.
She says yes and asks them if they are afraid.
They shake their heads and look at her, one pale as the moon and his counterpart as bright as the burning sun.
“Come then. You belong in the hall of Immortals, son of the Sun and son of the Moon.” She murmurs and steps back quietly.
“Together?” The dark-haired one asks, black eyes deep and thoughtful.
“Forever.” Love promises them.)
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And this is how it ends
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