Guard Our Wings (by miangel)
Title: Guard Our Wings
Artwork: #22
Pairing: Suho-centric, Suho/everyone (but not really romantically)
Genre: Angels/Heaven AU
Rating: PG
Word Count: 12,894 words
Summary: Suho had a noble duty: to match each guardian angel with their wings. But the guardian-in-trainings who came to find their wings were sometimes a little odd and a bit too much for Suho to handle.
A/N: This was another submission for the SNCJ Reverse Big Bang a few months back for cirtnecce's beautiful artwork:
~*~
The square little cottage-like building stood at the end of the road leading up to the grandeur gates of an academy. It stood alone, its wooden frame looking almost rickety but the little place was anything but. One door of entry stood to the side of a glass display of a large, widespread, gleaming white wing. The sunbeam reflected off each feather, catching the eyes of each and every person who happened to pass by.
For such an important place, it was rather small and confined, but Suho liked to refer to it as being cozy. The front counter was narrow, barely fitting a couple of chairs and a table. The rows and rows of racks that stretched seemingly endlessly to the back of the place took up most of the space. They groaned under the weight of the most various, the most extensive collection of wings, each hanged individually, covered protectively in white cloth until their rightful owner came to claim them.
After all, it’s the wing that chooses the angel.
A sign stating “Suho’s Wings Shop” was unnecessarily placed on the front roof of the building. It was neither a shop nor was it really Suho’s to own. But he had wanted to give the place a personal touch and since no one had complained against the sign, it remained in place.
Suho’s job was pretty straightforward: find a suitable wing for every guardian-in-training. But it was by no means easy. The thing was, wings acted as an extension of a guardian angel, a representation of themselves in its colour, width, and softness. No two wings were the same, just like no two personalities of a person were the same. They were as unique as fingerprints and would grow with the guardian it was attached to.
Suho remembered the first time he had gotten his wings: the feeling of elation, of freedom, of completion once those bright turquoise wings were attached to his shoulder blades. It was like being reunited with a long lost friend he had never known he had. They warmed him during his bleakest days and grounded him during his moments of panic. He felt a sense of fulfilment when young guardians finally found their right wings, seeing the light shine bright in their eyes.
He came across a variety of people of all races from everywhere around the world. They left different impressions on him, their chosen wings telling Suho more about the person than anything ever could. Yet there had been very few people coming by his store since the 21st century; Leeteuk was certainly getting very picky on which souls he would let into the Angel Academy.
The wings were starting to gather dust and Suho was forced to be even more meticulous in their cleaning, taking out each one from their protective covering and sifting through each feather, each fold, making sure they remained immaculate. Not that he minded. He loved tending to each wing, running his hand through their smooth coating, admiring the array of different shades of colours on each one, wondering what sort of person was destined for each wing.
He was just taking out one particularly heavily plumaged, rather short but full-feathered set of wings one afternoon when the chime to his shop door tinkled, indicating he had a client at hand. Such was his haste to meet this new guardian (finally! It’s been eons!), he brought along the wings as he sprinted up to the counter in record time, heaving breathlessly, putting on his signature welcoming smile.
Suho realized a tad too late, judging from the taken aback expression of the young, so stereotypically Asian boy before him (small eyes, round face, cheeks that never seemed to grow out of their adorableness), that his smile might just have been on the border of being creepy.
“Hello and welcome to Suho’s Wings Shop! I give you wings so you can fly~”
He demonstrated flying by flapping his own blue wings, creating a mini burst of wind that knocked off half the ornaments on his counter. The boy flinched slightly at the gust of wing, but otherwise remained staring at Suho.
“Um…hi?”
Suho walked around his counter, smile still taking up half of his face, and gestured towards his store. “I have every type of wing you could possibly imagine, in all sizes, colours, densities, textures…whatever you could possibly dream of! I will help you find the right wing!”
The boy stared, more alarmed by Suho’s sudden close proximity than anything else. There was friendly and then there was just invasion of personal space. Suho’s bright eyes evidently meant no harm, but the boy wished he would just stay a few steps apart.
“So you’re going to go to the academy and train to become a guardian!” Suho exclaimed, still very close by. “Are you excited? Scared? Nervous? Worried training will be too hard?”
The boy lifted a finger, a query forming on the tip of his tongue, but Suho never gave him an open window to cut in.
“You shouldn’t worry too much about training, Leeteuk is really nice and he’ll help you out in any way you need. They’ll teach you everything you need to know about protecting your charge-your assigned human, I mean. You’ll get to go back to earth, which is always fun, but this time you’ll be invisible and you can fly around and it’s amazing because-.”
Suho didn’t get to finish telling the boy what else was so amazing about being a guardian because at that precise moment, the wings he had been unaware of still holding started to beat frantically against their coverings. In an instant, he knew exactly why. And his face lit up upon realization.
“Um…is that supposed to do that?” the boy asked, small eyes glancing nervously at the moving wings.
“Only with the right person!” Suho declared chirpily. “Here hold out your hands.”
Without waiting for any signs of consent, Suho removed the cover of the wings, making sure he kept a firm grip on the roots to keep them from flying off wildly and placed both wings on the boy’s tentatively open palms. The effect was instantaneous: the baby blue wings calmed to a mild flutter, almost caressing the hands holding it like a cat would purr against its owner.
Suho clapped his hands together, eyes shining brightly with happiness. “Congratulations! You have found your wings!”
The boy looked up, bewildered. “That easy?”
Suho shrugged. “For some people it is, for others, it takes quite a while to find a match. Consider yourself lucky.”
“Wow….” he said, now clutching the wings with more certainty, awe written all over his face. He looked back up at Suho. “Thanks, um….”
“Suho,” he offered, introducing himself.
“Suho! Yeah, thanks, Suho. I’m Minseok,” he introduced. “So how do I put these on?”
“Oh. The academy usually helps you with that. I’m just here to find a wing that matches you,” he explained. “ ‘Minseok’…is that your angel name?”
Minseok blinked a few times, comprehension coming to him rather slowly. “Oh! Right! They gave me an angel name! It’s, uh…wait…I can’t remember…oh, right! Xiumin! Yeah, it’s Xiumin!”
“You’re gonna have to get used to that name because everyone will call you that from now on,” he advised.
Minseok nodded, somewhat solemnly. Suho knew all too well how what was going through Minseok’s mind: his worries, his fears, his mingling attachment to the world he’d left behind. He gave Minseok a gentle pat on his shoulder.
“You’ll be fine,” Suho assured. “Being chosen to become a guardian is an opportunity of a lifetime. Quite literally.”
Minseok gave him a small, nervous smile. “Thank you.” He appreciated the words of comfort. “Oh wait, do I have to pay you or something? Cuz I’ve got no money and….”
Suho laughed, a bright ringing laughter that seemed to warm Minseok to the core, leaving his feelings soothed. “No, you don’t need to pay a cent.”
“But the sign says this is a shop….”
“Suho’s Wings Storage Room didn’t sound too appealing,” he explained. “Just make sure you take good care of those wings.”
“I will!” Minseok nodded enthusiastically, clutching the wings to his chest. “Thanks again!”
Suho waved him out, watching as a soft blue light glowed around Minseok, emitting from the wings he held tightly close to him as he walked the path to the academy. He smiled to himself, a sense of fulfilment settling in his chest. There really was no other contentment than seeing a pair of wings find their rightful home.
~*~
A few days (years in Earth time) later, Suho found himself tending to another customer. He was more than surprised to have someone come by so soon after Minseok. It usually took a few weeks (decades) before another soul would be in search for their guardian wings. But Suho was hardly complaining.
His signature greeting died in his throat, however, when he saw the boy that walked through his door. His heart went out to the boy, taking in his frail figure, childish features, wide eyes and the innocent smile playing on his lips. To have such a young soul be taken from the years they still had to live and enjoy the world all but wrenched his heart.
“Hi,” Suho greeted slowly as if he was afraid the boy would flee at sharper tones. “I’m Suho. Welcome to my shop.”
The boy’s smile faded slightly, a frown marring his face at the tone Suho had taken to talk to him. “Um, yeah, hi.”
Suho stared. The boy stared back. His eyes were such a soft hazel brown and so wide. And they stared at Suho in perplexed confusion as to why the shop owner looked as though the boy would fall apart at any given moment.
“Would you like a lollipop? I think I have a jar in the back,” Suho offered, giving what he hoped was a friendly smile and not a creepy one.
The boy continued to stare, his frown deepening with the offer. But then he recognized the sort of look Suho had on his face and it turned the frown into a scowl. As much as a scowl his pretty face could make anyway, which was probably as intimidating as a kitten trying to growl.
“I am not a child,” the boy said. “I’m twenty-two years old.” He paused. “Or I was twenty-two when I died. Damn rogue truck.”
Suho had to stop his jaw from dropping but the flush of embarrassment was something he couldn’t avoid. “You’re twenty-two?! Oh my God! I’m so sorry! I thought you were-.”
The boy glared in warning.
“-twenty,” Suho finished sheepishly, voice small.
The boy let out a frustrated growl. “I am so SICK of being mistaken for a kid! I am a MAN, goddamnit! I will age maturely and everyone will see just how manly I can be!” He raised a fist in conviction.
Suho lifted a tentative finger as though to propose a question but was really just him being cautious of cutting off the boy’s monologue. “Um…I hate to break it to you, but…you won’t age here if you’ve already reached your twenties on earth.”
The boy whipped his head at Suho. “What?!”
“Unless you died before you turned twenty, you’ll stay looking like the age that you died at,” he explained. “For example, I’m actually twenty-one.”
The boy began to tremble with what Suho assumed to be rage and he was bracing himself for another onslaught of yells or screams or just outright rampage, but he wasn’t prepared for what the boy actually did: pout.
He let out a huff of breath, shoulders drooping and entire body slumping in disappointment. He looked like an abandoned puppy. “Why couldn’t I die at an older age?” he lamented.
“What’s, er, your name?” Suho asked carefully.
“I’m Luhan,” the boy introduced, still looking very much forlorn. His expression suddenly contorted into anger once more. “They wanted to call me Xiao Lu, but I said NO! I told them I would die before I let them name me Little Deer.”
Suho opened his mouth to remark, but Luhan was apparently not finished with his self-mourning.
“But then I realized that I was already dead, so they laughed at me and I threatened to walk away and fall to hell instead where they’d appreciate me a bit more, so they finally gave in and let me keep my name.”
Suho waited in case Luhan wasn’t done. But a minute or two of the boy merely looking put off and very pouty, it seemed he was done rambling.
“Do you want to see the wings?” Suho asked tentatively, afraid Luhan could burst out again.
Luhan’s face lit up immediately, the abrupt change almost scaring Suho. “Ooooh! Yes! Yes! I was so excited when they told me I’d get wings!”
Suho didn’t even have the chance to utter another word because Luhan had already grabbed his hand and pulled him to the racks of wings behind the counter. He couldn’t figure out which Luhan frightened him more: the dramatic, monologue-saying, upset Luhan or the Luhan that was now looking through each wing with bouncy delight, loud verbal expressions of awe punctuating his search every few seconds. Suho could do nothing but stare.
“These are so cool!” Luhan exclaimed.
A particular loud cry from Luhan startled Suho. Before Suho could even ask why he’d yelled, Luhan was already tugging out a set of wings amidst a particularly tangled rack. Suho stepped forward to help him remove the wing carefully, but Luhan gave an extremely hard tug and half the rack came flying off, burying Luhan in a mixture of feathers and hangers and cloths. Suho’s wings had reflexively created a barrier for him and left him unharmed.
Feathers floated down from where they had flown on impact of the fall. Suho stood up, shaking his wings free, eyeing the mess at his feet and also, ultimately, Luhan sitting in the middle of it all. His eyes were wide with excitement and an awestruck expression was on his face. Several lone feathers landed on the fluff of brown that was his hair and Suho almost cooed at how adorable he found the image if he wasn’t so afraid of Luhan’s repercussions at being treated like a kid again.
Sudden movement from the pile of wings caught both of their attention. Suho forgot all about urge to pat Luhan’s fluffy brown hair to dig through the disarray, trying to find what he knew was undoubtedly a pair of wings calling for its rightful owner. Luhan watched with round eyes as Suho finally unearthed a long but thin-feathered pair of light brown wings. They resembled the colour and fluffy texture of Luhan’s hair so much that Suho wondered if they’d been made out of Luhan’s woven hair rather than feathers.
“Oh! That’s the wing I was trying to get!” Luhan said, clapping happily.
For all his hatred at being considered younger than his real age, Luhan sure acted child-like, Suho noted. He made grabby hands at the wings and as though sensing it, the wings flew out of Suho’s hands and into Luhan’s open arms. He cuddled the wings like a toddler would cuddle its favourite toy.
“I’m going to name you Xiao Lu,” Luhan said, petting the wings which seemed to flutter gently at the attention it was receiving,
Suho didn’t think he could let Luhan walk out of his door without a few pats to his head. Luhan seemed to be in some sort of revered trance at his newfound wings that he never noticed Suho tie the tiny tuft of his fringe atop his head. He would no doubt freak out now that he looked almost infant-like, but as Suho watched the boy skip down the road to the academy, he hoped the novelty of his wings would distract Luhan from ever remembering who had tied his hair up so adorably.
~*~
Suho immediately tended to the clutter of wings Luhan had left. It wasn’t as simple a cluster as Suho thought. The wings had gotten tangled a lot worse with one another and it took quite a while for Suho to sort them individually. He hardly minded. In fact, he enjoyed tending to each wing, taking his time to care for them one by one. He wanted to make sure that each wing remained at its best when the right owner came to claim them. He believed wings, as an extension of a guardian, were more than inanimate objects and deserved proper treatment.
Which was why he had a way of making sure each unclaimed wing felt special.
“Beautiful wing, your feathers are so light, they’d soar with one gust of wind.”
“Your colours are so intriguing they surpass the beauty of the most scenic views in the world.”
“You shine so bright that heaven’s light pales in comparison.”
“Majestic wing, whoever comes to take will be the luckiest guardian in heaven.”
Suho was so immersed in showering each wing with his words of love and affection as he organized them in place once more that he never heard the tinkle of the doorbell, signalling someone had entered. The guest peeked inside, frowning at the seemingly empty store. He thought of leaving and rechecking with the elder angel who had guided him before (a very enthusiastic, skinny, tall man who had the brightest smile ever and apparently wanted to be called Mariomi) whether he really was at the right place. But then he heard a voice from inside the store.
“Oh such stunning beauty behold before me, such grandeur wings deserve only the best of guardians.”
The guest stopped just by the counter. The voice continued to speak in a tone laced with such sincere tenderness, it made him frown.
“You shall wait, dear one, for a rightful guardian that will match your perfection.”
The guest grew uneasy. He could now see Suho from where he was standing, holding out a pair of wings, stroking the length of it from one tip to the other, words flowing in a loving coo.
“I shall care for you until the day someone worthy takes you to fulfil your honourable duty.”
Suho gave the wings one last loving stroke before hanging it back with the others on the rack. It was then as he turned to attend the front of the store again did he notice a pair of eyes framed in very sharp eyebrows watching him with an incredulous look on his face. His mouth was lifted to one side, twitching slightly, looking like a smirk but in reality was just how his face fell into place. Not realizing the guest was still questioning Suho’s sanity over what he’d just witnessed, Suho happily approached the new customer.
“Whoah...which heaven did you fall from?” Suho asked, looking up, up, and (oh my God, was that his store’s ceiling? Why was it so dusty?) up to meet the guest’s face.
The face twitched even more, his frown deepening and his gaze seemingly sharpened. “What?”
“You’re really good-looking, you know?” Suho pointed out matter-of-factly. “A lot of people must’ve cried at your funeral.”
His face remained the same throughout the whole exchange and Suho briefly wondered if he was capable of any other expression. He might have been stunningly good-looking, but his stagnant expression of arrogant displeasure must’ve been quite off-putting to people.
“You need to smile more. You’ll scare off people like that,” Suho said.
The guest’s lips moved a bit. Suho guessed he was trying to give off what he assumed was a smile, but it didn’t lose its intimidating factor. Suho thought it had something to do with his eyebrows.
“You’re weird,” Suho remarked.
“You talk to wings. You’re weirder,” the guest argued back.
“Wings also need to be loved,” Suho defended and his own wings gave a ruffle of agreement. “Otherwise, how do you think I keep them healthy and shining and beautiful?”
Suho took out an armful of wings and spread his own pair out to demonstrate his point. Admittedly, despite being stored away in a congested space for such a long time, each wing sparkled brightly, feathers soft to the touch and colours vibrant.
“So...you’re Suho?”
Suho nodded.
“And you’ll help me find the right wings for me?”
He nodded even more enthusiastically, grinning broadly.
“Alright. Well, I’m Kris,” he extended a hand out in introduction.
Suho took the hand, shaking it vigorously. “Nice to meet you, Kris! Now is Kris your real name or your angel name?”
He didn’t seem too pleased with the question. But then again, Suho had a hard time differing any change of expression. “Just call me Kris,” he insisted.
Kris turned out to not be much of a talker, merely grunting and huffing in response to anything Suho said. Suho was intrigued how someone could maintain one expression all the time, but came to realize that despite his daunting demeanor, Kris was anything but (in fact, he seemed rather fond of the little animal figurines Suho had on display on a shelf, especially the tiny panda one).
They spent quite a while looking through the collection of wings in Suho’s storage, taking out a few to test their compatibility with Kris. Yet no matter how many wings they went through, none of them reacted to Kris.
“Maybe your scowl scares the wings too,” Suho said once they had gone through their eighth row of wings.
Kris grunted in reply. Suho merely took that as an agreement.
“Oh!” Suho clapped his hands together, face lighting up like a light bulb idea had gone off in his head. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? Come with me!”
Without waiting for a reply (grunt or otherwise), Suho pulled on Kris’ arm and lead him to the very back of the store. Here there was one single rack lined up against the wall. Unlike all the other wings, the ones here were placed at larger intervals from one another to accommodate their bulky size.
“I should’ve realized sooner normal sized wings wouldn’t fit you,” Suho said. “I mean, you’re practically a giant. You’d need giant wings too. Here, look through these.”
Suho helped Kris sift through with caution. The wingspan of those wings reached two to three times the length of Suho’s own wings; they were heavy and required cautious handling. They were about to reach the end of the row, with Suho growing more nervous by the second that they might not find wings for Kris (there had to be wings for him somewhere in there, there had to be!), when Kris paused in his tracks. He gently pushed other wings aside and pulled out an extremely large, full-feathered set of wings.
Suho recognized those wings. It was one of the largest, heaviest pair he had in his store. The feathering was layered, creating a thick, protective, shield-like coating. It had a sandy-coloured sheet on the inner side of the wings, but the outer coating was a shining sunrise golden orange. Even without the sunlight bouncing off it, the wings emitted their own glow.
The wings didn’t flutter or flap in reaction to Kris placing a tentative hand on its inner layer, but the feathers did ripple to his touch, like gentle waves kissing the shoreline. Suho felt like a proud father.
“You two are definitely meant to be!” Suho said, voice breaking slightly at the emotion choking up his throat.
Kris glanced at Suho with a frown then returned to inspecting his wings. It was lucky (or fate, as Suho would think) Kris was so tall or he’d have a hard time carrying the wings himself to the academy. Suho found himself being pat twice on the head as a form of gratitude from Kris (he would’ve returned the favour, but he would need a very high stool for that) as he left.
“Don’t forget to smile more!” were Suho’s last words to Kris’ disappearing back.
~*~
The Department of Children’s Fantasies and Dreams (guardian angels existed so why couldn’t fantasies and dreams also be managed by heaven?) were suffering from a surplus of unused supplies. Children on earth in the current era seemed to spend more time in front of digital, man-made devices rather than allowing their minds to be filled with an imagination. The department now had very little to do and most of the products they used to enhance children’s imagination were gathering dust.
Which was why Suho’s store was chosen to promote some of these products: in the hopes that guardian angels in training would help restore the innocent fantasies of children in the world.
A couple of boxes stood open by Suho as he sorted through the items inside, deciding where he could place each one in his store. He had cleared some space on his window display to hang some of the items and was selecting a few that would attract people’s attention. The fairy wings had already gone up; they were a perfect fit to Suho’s store.
Suho pulled out a plastic bag labelled “Unicorn Horns”. Looking inside at the half dozen colourful horns inside, he shrugged and pulled a couple out to place on the display. As he set them down on the display base, he was shocked out of his wits at the sudden appearance of a person, seemingly out of nowhere, placing his face and hands flat onto the glass window.
Suho effectively screamed.
“HOLY CRAP!”
That was probably the only time Suho even came close to swearing.
“Oh my God what are you doing? You nearly gave me a heart attack?”
The person sticking to his window remained attached to the glass, eyes not exactly at Suho, but at the item in his hand. Suho lifted the item up. Brown eyes followed. He looked at the horns then at the person on his window, back to the horns. He dropped the horns down to floor and the person followed suit, crouching down to stare at them.
Feeling both confused and amused at the person’s fascination, Suho left the horns where they were and exited his store. The staring person was still very much fixated on the unicorn horns, not even responding when Suho tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Suho tried calling.
He still received no response. Was he lost? But he wouldn’t be walking past Suho’s place if he wasn’t headed towards the academy.
“Are you here to get your wings?” he asked.
Suho shouldn’t have expected any answer. The person remained staring at the display.
“Come inside and you can take a closer look at the horns.”
That definitely caught the person’s attention. He latched himself onto Suho’s arm like a leech out for blood and looked at him with bright, shining, hopeful eyes. Suho was strongly reminded of an obedient Labrador determined to please its master in exchange for treats. His brown, slightly flyaway hair certainly could’ve passed off as dog ears.
Suho watched him make a beeline for the horns once they were inside. “There’s a whole plastic bag of them. Take them all if you’d like.”
There was no describing how ecstatic the person was, glancing at Suho with utter disbelief, eyes wide with doubt at Suho’s words, waiting for Suho to laugh and say he was joking at any moment, but when he didn’t, the person turned to the bag nearby and clutched it close to his chest, making some sort of squeal of joy. Suho imagined he would be shooting rainbows if he could manage it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you~”
So he could talk, Suho realized. “You’re welcome.” Maybe now that he got what he wanted, they’d be able to communicate. “So what’s your name?”
“My name is...,” he paused, mouth open with his unfinished sentence, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Lay! My name is Lay.” Remembering his own name seemed to be quite an accomplishment for him.
“Are you headed to the academy?” Suho asked.
Lay nodded vigorously. “Yeah. They told me I should get my wings here. Oh look! Wings!” Lay dashed over to Suho and reached out a cautious hand to Suho’s back. “Can I touch them?” he asked with wide, sparkling eyes.
Suho nodded, stretching his wings out so Lay could stroke a few feathers. “There are more wings over there,” Suho pointed to the rows.
Lay’s face lit up and he darted to the rows of wings, horns still clutched tightly in his hold. Suho followed behind, watching him flit from row to row, looking through the wings briefly before moving off to another place.
“Look at these! They’re so fluffy!”
Flit.
“Oh my God this one sparkles!”
Flit.
“Whoah~ This one’s huge~”
Suho felt a headache coming on just from watching Lay dash through his store. He should probably sit down and let Lay exhaust himself before helping him find his wings.
“Ooooh~ This one’s really pretty. Hey, I think it likes me! It’s flapping at me!”
Suho instantly rushed over to where Lay currently was on the far left side of his store. To say that the wings were positively reacting to Lay was a severe understatement; it looked as though Lay was being attacked by a very wide, but thin-coated pair of silver wings. Any other person might have been frightened at a rabid wing beating against them like a rogue chicken, but Lay looked as though he enjoyed the attention.
“Can I keep this one, please?” Lay asked, wing still flapping crazily against his face, ruffling his messy hair even more.
“Well...you sort of have to; it chose you,” Suho said.
Lay beamed. “Great!”
His arms became packed full with the addition of the wings but Lay could not have looked happier. Suho would’ve offered to help him until he reached the academy safely, but Lay was already distracted with how his new wings reflected an array of colours, an aurora of a mixture on its sheen coating from the sunlight. Suho thought that it might actually become possible for Lay to start shooting rainbows.
~*~
Suho was beginning to question Leeteuk’s choice of souls to train into guardians. He wasn’t discriminatory against people, but Suho was seriously beginning to question the personality of people who came by his shop. Lay had been a...unique person. They came every few decades or so, Suho wasn’t too surprised. But when just over a week later, he came across another odd individual (which, really, was saying something, because Suho saw the oddest of people), he couldn’t stop his mind from wondering.
When the young man had entered his store, Suho was more than ready to play the part of attentive shopkeeper. His customary greeting was at the tip of his tongue and his signature smile was halfway forming. However, when he began setting up what looked like a mini portable stereo in a corner, pressed a few buttons then proceeded to kneel in the middle of Suho’s shop, back facing Suho, arms outstretched high and a microphone in hand, Suho had serious, serious doubts about Leeteuk’s sanity.
Suho was startled out of his thoughts by the sudden scream of introduction:
“I AM CHEN, THE DANCING MACHINE!”
Then the music started and Suho was sure Leeteuk had lost his sanity.
“CARELESS! CARELESS! SHOOT ANONYMOUS! ANONYMOUS! HEARTLESS! MINDLESS! NO ONE WHO CARE ABOUT ME~”
‘What in the world was a pagan worshiper doing in heaven?’ was Suho’s first thought. And then the young man (Chen, his name apparently was) rose from his kneeling and began singing. If Suho hadn’t still been so staggeringly taken aback by the loud outburst of music now booming in his shop, he would’ve been more appreciative of Chen’s voice. The reason for overlooking his rather bizarre behaviour became almost obvious with the strength and beauty of his voice. But no matter how good of a singer he was, his voice, magnified by the portable stereo (how could such a small stereo make such a deafening sound?) was causing Suho’s shop to shake. Wings were falling off their racks, the animal figurines Kris had admired were also in danger of falling and breaking and Suho himself had to hold onto the counter to stay upright.
Suho’s wings immediately fell into their protective stance: spread out around Suho to make sure no falling object harmed him. He secured the twelve figurines first, placing them in a drawer of unused cover cloths. Suho then proceeded to crawl along the counter, gripping heavily onto his only support, to try and reach the stereo. He would’ve told Chen to turn off the music himself, but he was too immersed in his singing and was apparently now executing a dance routine over enthusiastically. Suho didn’t want to yell himself hoarse for nothing either.
He managed to reach the corner where the stereo was placed, but the music gave a particularly loud thump at that point and Suho bounced a few feet away again, his wings flapping frantically in surprise. Sighing, he crawled on the ground, grabbing the stereo when it was within reach and stabbed the power button off. The music stopped, his store stopped shaking, but Chen continued to belt out a high note. Only when he paused to take a breath from his ambitious pitch did he realise there were no instrumentals accompanying him.
“Hey, why’d you turn off the music?”
“You nearly destroyed my store,” Suho said, more out of exasperation rather than anger, gesturing towards the mess of wings that had fallen off their racks here and there.
“But that’s the beauty of music! It’s supposed to sweep your world away!”
Suho stared in incredulity. Chen was grinning, an almost Cheshire cat sort of grin. He couldn’t figure out whether he was being sarcastic or he was for real.
“Yes well, sweep someone else’s world away,” Suho said, standing up and straightening out his rumpled clothes. “I’ll be in trouble if I can’t give people their wings because you destroyed my store.”
Chen’s face sobered up immediately at the mention of wings. “Oh right. I was told I’d find the right wing for me here. One that would fit who I am.”
Suho blinked at the sheepish look on the young man’s face. “So...you thought you’d have to showcase who you were to find the right pair of wings?”
He nodded, shuffling his feet uncertainly.
Suho sighed. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “It’s the wing that chooses the angel.”
He looked up at Suho, grin starting to creep onto his face once more. Suho was beginning to consider associating that grin with impending doom.
“But wouldn’t me singing draw the right wing to me faster?”
“No. More. Singing.” Suho’s eyes widened in fear. “Please.”
“But I didn’t even get to do my last dance routine.”
“Sing at the academy; they have sturdier walls,” Suho said. “Now put that mic down and come with me so we can find you your wings.”
Chen did follow Suho to look at the wings, but he refused to let go of his microphone. Where he even managed to land his hands on those electronic devices, Suho would never know. He thought it would be better that he didn’t ask.
“We’ll start here. Just look through these and let me know if you feel drawn to any of them or if any of them feel right with you. These are the brighter coloured wings but they’re rather thick-feathered. Judging from how powerful you sang, your wings would be strong too. But from the way you-Chen?”
Suho turned around. Chen was no longer following him. He had disappeared.
“Chen? Where did you-.”
“BOO!”
“HOLY MOTHER OF-.”
Chen cackled gleefully, almost rolling around on the floor from the hilarity of having scared Suho out of his wits. Apparently hiding behind the next row and standing up abruptly with a shout of ‘BOO’ never got old. Suho would’ve found the prank a lot more amusing had he not been the victim and was currently suffering from what could only be diagnosed as a minor heart attack. His own wings were fluttering rather wildly too from the surprise. He leaned against the rack he’d been showing Chen, hand clutching his chest, trying to calm both his speeding heart beat and panicked wings. Chen was still laughing like a hyena.
Just as Suho was beginning to regain his normal heart rate and Chen began sobering up (his cackles turning into small snorts of laughter), loud, frenzied flapping suddenly came from behind Suho. The sound grew louder, more frantic, until Suho stumbled forward as a pair of dark grey wings pushed him away in its attempt to break free of its protective cloth and hanger. Suho didn’t have to even watch Chen approach the batting wings with revered interest to know that they had found his wings (he was silently grateful that his encounter with the odd kid was about to end very soon).
“Oh wow, these are awesome!” Chen exclaimed, almost dancing with the wings.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief when he finally lead Chen and his newly acquired wings (the tips of which had a tendency to tilt upwards for some reason, but then again, Suho thought it was better not to use reason when regarding Chen) walked out of his store.
He fervently hoped that would be the last of any possibly destructive guardians.
~*~
Part 2
Artwork: #22
Pairing: Suho-centric, Suho/everyone (but not really romantically)
Genre: Angels/Heaven AU
Rating: PG
Word Count: 12,894 words
Summary: Suho had a noble duty: to match each guardian angel with their wings. But the guardian-in-trainings who came to find their wings were sometimes a little odd and a bit too much for Suho to handle.
A/N: This was another submission for the SNCJ Reverse Big Bang a few months back for cirtnecce's beautiful artwork:
~*~
The square little cottage-like building stood at the end of the road leading up to the grandeur gates of an academy. It stood alone, its wooden frame looking almost rickety but the little place was anything but. One door of entry stood to the side of a glass display of a large, widespread, gleaming white wing. The sunbeam reflected off each feather, catching the eyes of each and every person who happened to pass by.
For such an important place, it was rather small and confined, but Suho liked to refer to it as being cozy. The front counter was narrow, barely fitting a couple of chairs and a table. The rows and rows of racks that stretched seemingly endlessly to the back of the place took up most of the space. They groaned under the weight of the most various, the most extensive collection of wings, each hanged individually, covered protectively in white cloth until their rightful owner came to claim them.
After all, it’s the wing that chooses the angel.
A sign stating “Suho’s Wings Shop” was unnecessarily placed on the front roof of the building. It was neither a shop nor was it really Suho’s to own. But he had wanted to give the place a personal touch and since no one had complained against the sign, it remained in place.
Suho’s job was pretty straightforward: find a suitable wing for every guardian-in-training. But it was by no means easy. The thing was, wings acted as an extension of a guardian angel, a representation of themselves in its colour, width, and softness. No two wings were the same, just like no two personalities of a person were the same. They were as unique as fingerprints and would grow with the guardian it was attached to.
Suho remembered the first time he had gotten his wings: the feeling of elation, of freedom, of completion once those bright turquoise wings were attached to his shoulder blades. It was like being reunited with a long lost friend he had never known he had. They warmed him during his bleakest days and grounded him during his moments of panic. He felt a sense of fulfilment when young guardians finally found their right wings, seeing the light shine bright in their eyes.
He came across a variety of people of all races from everywhere around the world. They left different impressions on him, their chosen wings telling Suho more about the person than anything ever could. Yet there had been very few people coming by his store since the 21st century; Leeteuk was certainly getting very picky on which souls he would let into the Angel Academy.
The wings were starting to gather dust and Suho was forced to be even more meticulous in their cleaning, taking out each one from their protective covering and sifting through each feather, each fold, making sure they remained immaculate. Not that he minded. He loved tending to each wing, running his hand through their smooth coating, admiring the array of different shades of colours on each one, wondering what sort of person was destined for each wing.
He was just taking out one particularly heavily plumaged, rather short but full-feathered set of wings one afternoon when the chime to his shop door tinkled, indicating he had a client at hand. Such was his haste to meet this new guardian (finally! It’s been eons!), he brought along the wings as he sprinted up to the counter in record time, heaving breathlessly, putting on his signature welcoming smile.
Suho realized a tad too late, judging from the taken aback expression of the young, so stereotypically Asian boy before him (small eyes, round face, cheeks that never seemed to grow out of their adorableness), that his smile might just have been on the border of being creepy.
“Hello and welcome to Suho’s Wings Shop! I give you wings so you can fly~”
He demonstrated flying by flapping his own blue wings, creating a mini burst of wind that knocked off half the ornaments on his counter. The boy flinched slightly at the gust of wing, but otherwise remained staring at Suho.
“Um…hi?”
Suho walked around his counter, smile still taking up half of his face, and gestured towards his store. “I have every type of wing you could possibly imagine, in all sizes, colours, densities, textures…whatever you could possibly dream of! I will help you find the right wing!”
The boy stared, more alarmed by Suho’s sudden close proximity than anything else. There was friendly and then there was just invasion of personal space. Suho’s bright eyes evidently meant no harm, but the boy wished he would just stay a few steps apart.
“So you’re going to go to the academy and train to become a guardian!” Suho exclaimed, still very close by. “Are you excited? Scared? Nervous? Worried training will be too hard?”
The boy lifted a finger, a query forming on the tip of his tongue, but Suho never gave him an open window to cut in.
“You shouldn’t worry too much about training, Leeteuk is really nice and he’ll help you out in any way you need. They’ll teach you everything you need to know about protecting your charge-your assigned human, I mean. You’ll get to go back to earth, which is always fun, but this time you’ll be invisible and you can fly around and it’s amazing because-.”
Suho didn’t get to finish telling the boy what else was so amazing about being a guardian because at that precise moment, the wings he had been unaware of still holding started to beat frantically against their coverings. In an instant, he knew exactly why. And his face lit up upon realization.
“Um…is that supposed to do that?” the boy asked, small eyes glancing nervously at the moving wings.
“Only with the right person!” Suho declared chirpily. “Here hold out your hands.”
Without waiting for any signs of consent, Suho removed the cover of the wings, making sure he kept a firm grip on the roots to keep them from flying off wildly and placed both wings on the boy’s tentatively open palms. The effect was instantaneous: the baby blue wings calmed to a mild flutter, almost caressing the hands holding it like a cat would purr against its owner.
Suho clapped his hands together, eyes shining brightly with happiness. “Congratulations! You have found your wings!”
The boy looked up, bewildered. “That easy?”
Suho shrugged. “For some people it is, for others, it takes quite a while to find a match. Consider yourself lucky.”
“Wow….” he said, now clutching the wings with more certainty, awe written all over his face. He looked back up at Suho. “Thanks, um….”
“Suho,” he offered, introducing himself.
“Suho! Yeah, thanks, Suho. I’m Minseok,” he introduced. “So how do I put these on?”
“Oh. The academy usually helps you with that. I’m just here to find a wing that matches you,” he explained. “ ‘Minseok’…is that your angel name?”
Minseok blinked a few times, comprehension coming to him rather slowly. “Oh! Right! They gave me an angel name! It’s, uh…wait…I can’t remember…oh, right! Xiumin! Yeah, it’s Xiumin!”
“You’re gonna have to get used to that name because everyone will call you that from now on,” he advised.
Minseok nodded, somewhat solemnly. Suho knew all too well how what was going through Minseok’s mind: his worries, his fears, his mingling attachment to the world he’d left behind. He gave Minseok a gentle pat on his shoulder.
“You’ll be fine,” Suho assured. “Being chosen to become a guardian is an opportunity of a lifetime. Quite literally.”
Minseok gave him a small, nervous smile. “Thank you.” He appreciated the words of comfort. “Oh wait, do I have to pay you or something? Cuz I’ve got no money and….”
Suho laughed, a bright ringing laughter that seemed to warm Minseok to the core, leaving his feelings soothed. “No, you don’t need to pay a cent.”
“But the sign says this is a shop….”
“Suho’s Wings Storage Room didn’t sound too appealing,” he explained. “Just make sure you take good care of those wings.”
“I will!” Minseok nodded enthusiastically, clutching the wings to his chest. “Thanks again!”
Suho waved him out, watching as a soft blue light glowed around Minseok, emitting from the wings he held tightly close to him as he walked the path to the academy. He smiled to himself, a sense of fulfilment settling in his chest. There really was no other contentment than seeing a pair of wings find their rightful home.
~*~
A few days (years in Earth time) later, Suho found himself tending to another customer. He was more than surprised to have someone come by so soon after Minseok. It usually took a few weeks (decades) before another soul would be in search for their guardian wings. But Suho was hardly complaining.
His signature greeting died in his throat, however, when he saw the boy that walked through his door. His heart went out to the boy, taking in his frail figure, childish features, wide eyes and the innocent smile playing on his lips. To have such a young soul be taken from the years they still had to live and enjoy the world all but wrenched his heart.
“Hi,” Suho greeted slowly as if he was afraid the boy would flee at sharper tones. “I’m Suho. Welcome to my shop.”
The boy’s smile faded slightly, a frown marring his face at the tone Suho had taken to talk to him. “Um, yeah, hi.”
Suho stared. The boy stared back. His eyes were such a soft hazel brown and so wide. And they stared at Suho in perplexed confusion as to why the shop owner looked as though the boy would fall apart at any given moment.
“Would you like a lollipop? I think I have a jar in the back,” Suho offered, giving what he hoped was a friendly smile and not a creepy one.
The boy continued to stare, his frown deepening with the offer. But then he recognized the sort of look Suho had on his face and it turned the frown into a scowl. As much as a scowl his pretty face could make anyway, which was probably as intimidating as a kitten trying to growl.
“I am not a child,” the boy said. “I’m twenty-two years old.” He paused. “Or I was twenty-two when I died. Damn rogue truck.”
Suho had to stop his jaw from dropping but the flush of embarrassment was something he couldn’t avoid. “You’re twenty-two?! Oh my God! I’m so sorry! I thought you were-.”
The boy glared in warning.
“-twenty,” Suho finished sheepishly, voice small.
The boy let out a frustrated growl. “I am so SICK of being mistaken for a kid! I am a MAN, goddamnit! I will age maturely and everyone will see just how manly I can be!” He raised a fist in conviction.
Suho lifted a tentative finger as though to propose a question but was really just him being cautious of cutting off the boy’s monologue. “Um…I hate to break it to you, but…you won’t age here if you’ve already reached your twenties on earth.”
The boy whipped his head at Suho. “What?!”
“Unless you died before you turned twenty, you’ll stay looking like the age that you died at,” he explained. “For example, I’m actually twenty-one.”
The boy began to tremble with what Suho assumed to be rage and he was bracing himself for another onslaught of yells or screams or just outright rampage, but he wasn’t prepared for what the boy actually did: pout.
He let out a huff of breath, shoulders drooping and entire body slumping in disappointment. He looked like an abandoned puppy. “Why couldn’t I die at an older age?” he lamented.
“What’s, er, your name?” Suho asked carefully.
“I’m Luhan,” the boy introduced, still looking very much forlorn. His expression suddenly contorted into anger once more. “They wanted to call me Xiao Lu, but I said NO! I told them I would die before I let them name me Little Deer.”
Suho opened his mouth to remark, but Luhan was apparently not finished with his self-mourning.
“But then I realized that I was already dead, so they laughed at me and I threatened to walk away and fall to hell instead where they’d appreciate me a bit more, so they finally gave in and let me keep my name.”
Suho waited in case Luhan wasn’t done. But a minute or two of the boy merely looking put off and very pouty, it seemed he was done rambling.
“Do you want to see the wings?” Suho asked tentatively, afraid Luhan could burst out again.
Luhan’s face lit up immediately, the abrupt change almost scaring Suho. “Ooooh! Yes! Yes! I was so excited when they told me I’d get wings!”
Suho didn’t even have the chance to utter another word because Luhan had already grabbed his hand and pulled him to the racks of wings behind the counter. He couldn’t figure out which Luhan frightened him more: the dramatic, monologue-saying, upset Luhan or the Luhan that was now looking through each wing with bouncy delight, loud verbal expressions of awe punctuating his search every few seconds. Suho could do nothing but stare.
“These are so cool!” Luhan exclaimed.
A particular loud cry from Luhan startled Suho. Before Suho could even ask why he’d yelled, Luhan was already tugging out a set of wings amidst a particularly tangled rack. Suho stepped forward to help him remove the wing carefully, but Luhan gave an extremely hard tug and half the rack came flying off, burying Luhan in a mixture of feathers and hangers and cloths. Suho’s wings had reflexively created a barrier for him and left him unharmed.
Feathers floated down from where they had flown on impact of the fall. Suho stood up, shaking his wings free, eyeing the mess at his feet and also, ultimately, Luhan sitting in the middle of it all. His eyes were wide with excitement and an awestruck expression was on his face. Several lone feathers landed on the fluff of brown that was his hair and Suho almost cooed at how adorable he found the image if he wasn’t so afraid of Luhan’s repercussions at being treated like a kid again.
Sudden movement from the pile of wings caught both of their attention. Suho forgot all about urge to pat Luhan’s fluffy brown hair to dig through the disarray, trying to find what he knew was undoubtedly a pair of wings calling for its rightful owner. Luhan watched with round eyes as Suho finally unearthed a long but thin-feathered pair of light brown wings. They resembled the colour and fluffy texture of Luhan’s hair so much that Suho wondered if they’d been made out of Luhan’s woven hair rather than feathers.
“Oh! That’s the wing I was trying to get!” Luhan said, clapping happily.
For all his hatred at being considered younger than his real age, Luhan sure acted child-like, Suho noted. He made grabby hands at the wings and as though sensing it, the wings flew out of Suho’s hands and into Luhan’s open arms. He cuddled the wings like a toddler would cuddle its favourite toy.
“I’m going to name you Xiao Lu,” Luhan said, petting the wings which seemed to flutter gently at the attention it was receiving,
Suho didn’t think he could let Luhan walk out of his door without a few pats to his head. Luhan seemed to be in some sort of revered trance at his newfound wings that he never noticed Suho tie the tiny tuft of his fringe atop his head. He would no doubt freak out now that he looked almost infant-like, but as Suho watched the boy skip down the road to the academy, he hoped the novelty of his wings would distract Luhan from ever remembering who had tied his hair up so adorably.
~*~
Suho immediately tended to the clutter of wings Luhan had left. It wasn’t as simple a cluster as Suho thought. The wings had gotten tangled a lot worse with one another and it took quite a while for Suho to sort them individually. He hardly minded. In fact, he enjoyed tending to each wing, taking his time to care for them one by one. He wanted to make sure that each wing remained at its best when the right owner came to claim them. He believed wings, as an extension of a guardian, were more than inanimate objects and deserved proper treatment.
Which was why he had a way of making sure each unclaimed wing felt special.
“Beautiful wing, your feathers are so light, they’d soar with one gust of wind.”
“Your colours are so intriguing they surpass the beauty of the most scenic views in the world.”
“You shine so bright that heaven’s light pales in comparison.”
“Majestic wing, whoever comes to take will be the luckiest guardian in heaven.”
Suho was so immersed in showering each wing with his words of love and affection as he organized them in place once more that he never heard the tinkle of the doorbell, signalling someone had entered. The guest peeked inside, frowning at the seemingly empty store. He thought of leaving and rechecking with the elder angel who had guided him before (a very enthusiastic, skinny, tall man who had the brightest smile ever and apparently wanted to be called Mariomi) whether he really was at the right place. But then he heard a voice from inside the store.
“Oh such stunning beauty behold before me, such grandeur wings deserve only the best of guardians.”
The guest stopped just by the counter. The voice continued to speak in a tone laced with such sincere tenderness, it made him frown.
“You shall wait, dear one, for a rightful guardian that will match your perfection.”
The guest grew uneasy. He could now see Suho from where he was standing, holding out a pair of wings, stroking the length of it from one tip to the other, words flowing in a loving coo.
“I shall care for you until the day someone worthy takes you to fulfil your honourable duty.”
Suho gave the wings one last loving stroke before hanging it back with the others on the rack. It was then as he turned to attend the front of the store again did he notice a pair of eyes framed in very sharp eyebrows watching him with an incredulous look on his face. His mouth was lifted to one side, twitching slightly, looking like a smirk but in reality was just how his face fell into place. Not realizing the guest was still questioning Suho’s sanity over what he’d just witnessed, Suho happily approached the new customer.
“Whoah...which heaven did you fall from?” Suho asked, looking up, up, and (oh my God, was that his store’s ceiling? Why was it so dusty?) up to meet the guest’s face.
The face twitched even more, his frown deepening and his gaze seemingly sharpened. “What?”
“You’re really good-looking, you know?” Suho pointed out matter-of-factly. “A lot of people must’ve cried at your funeral.”
His face remained the same throughout the whole exchange and Suho briefly wondered if he was capable of any other expression. He might have been stunningly good-looking, but his stagnant expression of arrogant displeasure must’ve been quite off-putting to people.
“You need to smile more. You’ll scare off people like that,” Suho said.
The guest’s lips moved a bit. Suho guessed he was trying to give off what he assumed was a smile, but it didn’t lose its intimidating factor. Suho thought it had something to do with his eyebrows.
“You’re weird,” Suho remarked.
“You talk to wings. You’re weirder,” the guest argued back.
“Wings also need to be loved,” Suho defended and his own wings gave a ruffle of agreement. “Otherwise, how do you think I keep them healthy and shining and beautiful?”
Suho took out an armful of wings and spread his own pair out to demonstrate his point. Admittedly, despite being stored away in a congested space for such a long time, each wing sparkled brightly, feathers soft to the touch and colours vibrant.
“So...you’re Suho?”
Suho nodded.
“And you’ll help me find the right wings for me?”
He nodded even more enthusiastically, grinning broadly.
“Alright. Well, I’m Kris,” he extended a hand out in introduction.
Suho took the hand, shaking it vigorously. “Nice to meet you, Kris! Now is Kris your real name or your angel name?”
He didn’t seem too pleased with the question. But then again, Suho had a hard time differing any change of expression. “Just call me Kris,” he insisted.
Kris turned out to not be much of a talker, merely grunting and huffing in response to anything Suho said. Suho was intrigued how someone could maintain one expression all the time, but came to realize that despite his daunting demeanor, Kris was anything but (in fact, he seemed rather fond of the little animal figurines Suho had on display on a shelf, especially the tiny panda one).
They spent quite a while looking through the collection of wings in Suho’s storage, taking out a few to test their compatibility with Kris. Yet no matter how many wings they went through, none of them reacted to Kris.
“Maybe your scowl scares the wings too,” Suho said once they had gone through their eighth row of wings.
Kris grunted in reply. Suho merely took that as an agreement.
“Oh!” Suho clapped his hands together, face lighting up like a light bulb idea had gone off in his head. “Why didn’t I think of this sooner? Come with me!”
Without waiting for a reply (grunt or otherwise), Suho pulled on Kris’ arm and lead him to the very back of the store. Here there was one single rack lined up against the wall. Unlike all the other wings, the ones here were placed at larger intervals from one another to accommodate their bulky size.
“I should’ve realized sooner normal sized wings wouldn’t fit you,” Suho said. “I mean, you’re practically a giant. You’d need giant wings too. Here, look through these.”
Suho helped Kris sift through with caution. The wingspan of those wings reached two to three times the length of Suho’s own wings; they were heavy and required cautious handling. They were about to reach the end of the row, with Suho growing more nervous by the second that they might not find wings for Kris (there had to be wings for him somewhere in there, there had to be!), when Kris paused in his tracks. He gently pushed other wings aside and pulled out an extremely large, full-feathered set of wings.
Suho recognized those wings. It was one of the largest, heaviest pair he had in his store. The feathering was layered, creating a thick, protective, shield-like coating. It had a sandy-coloured sheet on the inner side of the wings, but the outer coating was a shining sunrise golden orange. Even without the sunlight bouncing off it, the wings emitted their own glow.
The wings didn’t flutter or flap in reaction to Kris placing a tentative hand on its inner layer, but the feathers did ripple to his touch, like gentle waves kissing the shoreline. Suho felt like a proud father.
“You two are definitely meant to be!” Suho said, voice breaking slightly at the emotion choking up his throat.
Kris glanced at Suho with a frown then returned to inspecting his wings. It was lucky (or fate, as Suho would think) Kris was so tall or he’d have a hard time carrying the wings himself to the academy. Suho found himself being pat twice on the head as a form of gratitude from Kris (he would’ve returned the favour, but he would need a very high stool for that) as he left.
“Don’t forget to smile more!” were Suho’s last words to Kris’ disappearing back.
~*~
The Department of Children’s Fantasies and Dreams (guardian angels existed so why couldn’t fantasies and dreams also be managed by heaven?) were suffering from a surplus of unused supplies. Children on earth in the current era seemed to spend more time in front of digital, man-made devices rather than allowing their minds to be filled with an imagination. The department now had very little to do and most of the products they used to enhance children’s imagination were gathering dust.
Which was why Suho’s store was chosen to promote some of these products: in the hopes that guardian angels in training would help restore the innocent fantasies of children in the world.
A couple of boxes stood open by Suho as he sorted through the items inside, deciding where he could place each one in his store. He had cleared some space on his window display to hang some of the items and was selecting a few that would attract people’s attention. The fairy wings had already gone up; they were a perfect fit to Suho’s store.
Suho pulled out a plastic bag labelled “Unicorn Horns”. Looking inside at the half dozen colourful horns inside, he shrugged and pulled a couple out to place on the display. As he set them down on the display base, he was shocked out of his wits at the sudden appearance of a person, seemingly out of nowhere, placing his face and hands flat onto the glass window.
Suho effectively screamed.
“HOLY CRAP!”
That was probably the only time Suho even came close to swearing.
“Oh my God what are you doing? You nearly gave me a heart attack?”
The person sticking to his window remained attached to the glass, eyes not exactly at Suho, but at the item in his hand. Suho lifted the item up. Brown eyes followed. He looked at the horns then at the person on his window, back to the horns. He dropped the horns down to floor and the person followed suit, crouching down to stare at them.
Feeling both confused and amused at the person’s fascination, Suho left the horns where they were and exited his store. The staring person was still very much fixated on the unicorn horns, not even responding when Suho tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Suho tried calling.
He still received no response. Was he lost? But he wouldn’t be walking past Suho’s place if he wasn’t headed towards the academy.
“Are you here to get your wings?” he asked.
Suho shouldn’t have expected any answer. The person remained staring at the display.
“Come inside and you can take a closer look at the horns.”
That definitely caught the person’s attention. He latched himself onto Suho’s arm like a leech out for blood and looked at him with bright, shining, hopeful eyes. Suho was strongly reminded of an obedient Labrador determined to please its master in exchange for treats. His brown, slightly flyaway hair certainly could’ve passed off as dog ears.
Suho watched him make a beeline for the horns once they were inside. “There’s a whole plastic bag of them. Take them all if you’d like.”
There was no describing how ecstatic the person was, glancing at Suho with utter disbelief, eyes wide with doubt at Suho’s words, waiting for Suho to laugh and say he was joking at any moment, but when he didn’t, the person turned to the bag nearby and clutched it close to his chest, making some sort of squeal of joy. Suho imagined he would be shooting rainbows if he could manage it.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you~”
So he could talk, Suho realized. “You’re welcome.” Maybe now that he got what he wanted, they’d be able to communicate. “So what’s your name?”
“My name is...,” he paused, mouth open with his unfinished sentence, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Lay! My name is Lay.” Remembering his own name seemed to be quite an accomplishment for him.
“Are you headed to the academy?” Suho asked.
Lay nodded vigorously. “Yeah. They told me I should get my wings here. Oh look! Wings!” Lay dashed over to Suho and reached out a cautious hand to Suho’s back. “Can I touch them?” he asked with wide, sparkling eyes.
Suho nodded, stretching his wings out so Lay could stroke a few feathers. “There are more wings over there,” Suho pointed to the rows.
Lay’s face lit up and he darted to the rows of wings, horns still clutched tightly in his hold. Suho followed behind, watching him flit from row to row, looking through the wings briefly before moving off to another place.
“Look at these! They’re so fluffy!”
Flit.
“Oh my God this one sparkles!”
Flit.
“Whoah~ This one’s huge~”
Suho felt a headache coming on just from watching Lay dash through his store. He should probably sit down and let Lay exhaust himself before helping him find his wings.
“Ooooh~ This one’s really pretty. Hey, I think it likes me! It’s flapping at me!”
Suho instantly rushed over to where Lay currently was on the far left side of his store. To say that the wings were positively reacting to Lay was a severe understatement; it looked as though Lay was being attacked by a very wide, but thin-coated pair of silver wings. Any other person might have been frightened at a rabid wing beating against them like a rogue chicken, but Lay looked as though he enjoyed the attention.
“Can I keep this one, please?” Lay asked, wing still flapping crazily against his face, ruffling his messy hair even more.
“Well...you sort of have to; it chose you,” Suho said.
Lay beamed. “Great!”
His arms became packed full with the addition of the wings but Lay could not have looked happier. Suho would’ve offered to help him until he reached the academy safely, but Lay was already distracted with how his new wings reflected an array of colours, an aurora of a mixture on its sheen coating from the sunlight. Suho thought that it might actually become possible for Lay to start shooting rainbows.
~*~
Suho was beginning to question Leeteuk’s choice of souls to train into guardians. He wasn’t discriminatory against people, but Suho was seriously beginning to question the personality of people who came by his shop. Lay had been a...unique person. They came every few decades or so, Suho wasn’t too surprised. But when just over a week later, he came across another odd individual (which, really, was saying something, because Suho saw the oddest of people), he couldn’t stop his mind from wondering.
When the young man had entered his store, Suho was more than ready to play the part of attentive shopkeeper. His customary greeting was at the tip of his tongue and his signature smile was halfway forming. However, when he began setting up what looked like a mini portable stereo in a corner, pressed a few buttons then proceeded to kneel in the middle of Suho’s shop, back facing Suho, arms outstretched high and a microphone in hand, Suho had serious, serious doubts about Leeteuk’s sanity.
Suho was startled out of his thoughts by the sudden scream of introduction:
“I AM CHEN, THE DANCING MACHINE!”
Then the music started and Suho was sure Leeteuk had lost his sanity.
“CARELESS! CARELESS! SHOOT ANONYMOUS! ANONYMOUS! HEARTLESS! MINDLESS! NO ONE WHO CARE ABOUT ME~”
‘What in the world was a pagan worshiper doing in heaven?’ was Suho’s first thought. And then the young man (Chen, his name apparently was) rose from his kneeling and began singing. If Suho hadn’t still been so staggeringly taken aback by the loud outburst of music now booming in his shop, he would’ve been more appreciative of Chen’s voice. The reason for overlooking his rather bizarre behaviour became almost obvious with the strength and beauty of his voice. But no matter how good of a singer he was, his voice, magnified by the portable stereo (how could such a small stereo make such a deafening sound?) was causing Suho’s shop to shake. Wings were falling off their racks, the animal figurines Kris had admired were also in danger of falling and breaking and Suho himself had to hold onto the counter to stay upright.
Suho’s wings immediately fell into their protective stance: spread out around Suho to make sure no falling object harmed him. He secured the twelve figurines first, placing them in a drawer of unused cover cloths. Suho then proceeded to crawl along the counter, gripping heavily onto his only support, to try and reach the stereo. He would’ve told Chen to turn off the music himself, but he was too immersed in his singing and was apparently now executing a dance routine over enthusiastically. Suho didn’t want to yell himself hoarse for nothing either.
He managed to reach the corner where the stereo was placed, but the music gave a particularly loud thump at that point and Suho bounced a few feet away again, his wings flapping frantically in surprise. Sighing, he crawled on the ground, grabbing the stereo when it was within reach and stabbed the power button off. The music stopped, his store stopped shaking, but Chen continued to belt out a high note. Only when he paused to take a breath from his ambitious pitch did he realise there were no instrumentals accompanying him.
“Hey, why’d you turn off the music?”
“You nearly destroyed my store,” Suho said, more out of exasperation rather than anger, gesturing towards the mess of wings that had fallen off their racks here and there.
“But that’s the beauty of music! It’s supposed to sweep your world away!”
Suho stared in incredulity. Chen was grinning, an almost Cheshire cat sort of grin. He couldn’t figure out whether he was being sarcastic or he was for real.
“Yes well, sweep someone else’s world away,” Suho said, standing up and straightening out his rumpled clothes. “I’ll be in trouble if I can’t give people their wings because you destroyed my store.”
Chen’s face sobered up immediately at the mention of wings. “Oh right. I was told I’d find the right wing for me here. One that would fit who I am.”
Suho blinked at the sheepish look on the young man’s face. “So...you thought you’d have to showcase who you were to find the right pair of wings?”
He nodded, shuffling his feet uncertainly.
Suho sighed. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “It’s the wing that chooses the angel.”
He looked up at Suho, grin starting to creep onto his face once more. Suho was beginning to consider associating that grin with impending doom.
“But wouldn’t me singing draw the right wing to me faster?”
“No. More. Singing.” Suho’s eyes widened in fear. “Please.”
“But I didn’t even get to do my last dance routine.”
“Sing at the academy; they have sturdier walls,” Suho said. “Now put that mic down and come with me so we can find you your wings.”
Chen did follow Suho to look at the wings, but he refused to let go of his microphone. Where he even managed to land his hands on those electronic devices, Suho would never know. He thought it would be better that he didn’t ask.
“We’ll start here. Just look through these and let me know if you feel drawn to any of them or if any of them feel right with you. These are the brighter coloured wings but they’re rather thick-feathered. Judging from how powerful you sang, your wings would be strong too. But from the way you-Chen?”
Suho turned around. Chen was no longer following him. He had disappeared.
“Chen? Where did you-.”
“BOO!”
“HOLY MOTHER OF-.”
Chen cackled gleefully, almost rolling around on the floor from the hilarity of having scared Suho out of his wits. Apparently hiding behind the next row and standing up abruptly with a shout of ‘BOO’ never got old. Suho would’ve found the prank a lot more amusing had he not been the victim and was currently suffering from what could only be diagnosed as a minor heart attack. His own wings were fluttering rather wildly too from the surprise. He leaned against the rack he’d been showing Chen, hand clutching his chest, trying to calm both his speeding heart beat and panicked wings. Chen was still laughing like a hyena.
Just as Suho was beginning to regain his normal heart rate and Chen began sobering up (his cackles turning into small snorts of laughter), loud, frenzied flapping suddenly came from behind Suho. The sound grew louder, more frantic, until Suho stumbled forward as a pair of dark grey wings pushed him away in its attempt to break free of its protective cloth and hanger. Suho didn’t have to even watch Chen approach the batting wings with revered interest to know that they had found his wings (he was silently grateful that his encounter with the odd kid was about to end very soon).
“Oh wow, these are awesome!” Chen exclaimed, almost dancing with the wings.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief when he finally lead Chen and his newly acquired wings (the tips of which had a tendency to tilt upwards for some reason, but then again, Suho thought it was better not to use reason when regarding Chen) walked out of his store.
He fervently hoped that would be the last of any possibly destructive guardians.
~*~
Part 2