The first time Junmyeon met him was when he was thirteen and he lost his most precious friend at that time: his precious bunny doll.

They never lived in the same place for long, he, his mother, and his father. His mother was a healer, and his father was a tutor, a renowned one that everyone from all over the countries even abroad called him to teach their children. It’s then become an unspoken rule that his father could only teach at one place for a year or two. After that, his father must answer another call for someone else. Living in one place and had their students come to study was not an option. His father loved travelling that stayed and taught in one place only, even with different students, would get him insane. His mother loved his father too much to say anything, and Junmyeon.. what could Junmyeon do?

Junmyeon had friends, a lot of them. Everywhere he went, he vowed to himself that he’d made at least one friend. When he moved out of the place, he sent them letters. Some would reply but some would move on with their lives, as if Junmyeon never existed in the first place.

Soon, he got tired with never replied letters and befriended books instead.

On his seventh birthday, everyone showered him with gifts. It was all books and things that would helped him to learn. He put them aside and reached for a lonely bunny doll sitting between heavy books.

He never let the doll go ever since. He could lease all his books, all his clothes, all his toys, but never his bunny doll.

This time, they were moving to the city in the North. Junmyeon was clutching his bunny doll, in the verge of sleep after thirteen hours journey. The carriage came into a sudden halt. He fell from his mother’s lap and already preparing for a long pained wail when the driver shouted: “A boy! It’s a boy!” and he jumped out of the carriage even before his father could register what was the driver said.

And there was an unconscious boy, laying on his stomach, in the middle of the road.

He ran to the boy and when he reached him, he kneeled and examined the boy further. He ran his gaze to the boy, visually examined him for any injuries. It was what his mother told him anyway. The boy had a set of bushy eyebrows, slightly plump lips, and he was definitely taller than him. Perhaps older too. The boy had nothing on him except for a pants. Junmyeon saw some old bruises, nearly healed. But the long horizontal gash on his back was the one that Junmyeon worried about.

Did someone cut the boy’s back and left him bleeding to death?

His gaze stopped when he caught a necklace, dangling helplessly from the boy’s neck. The necklace had a black bird-shaped ornament, only that it wasn’t really a bird. He remembered reading about it somewhere, but wherever was it, it wasn’t a book about healings or happiness. So he took and pocketed it. He was not a thief, he’d return it later when it was safe. If his father saw the necklace, there was a chance the he would not help the boy.

“Junmyeon why are you running so fast?” His father said as he took ragged breaths. He was never born for running. “He is hurt! We have to help him!” Junmyeon said. His father looked at the boy..

“Now, now Junmyeon, how can we help someone, a stranger, out of nowhere, lied here down on the road, blocking way.. what if he is dangerous? A trap?” His father reached for his arm and dragged him to the carriage. Junmyeon trashed around. “But father.. he is hurt! Look at his back! Are you going to leave him to death here?”

His father was persistent, so he looked at his mother and put his sad look. “Mama, he is hurt! The boy is hurt! Isn’t that a healer’s job to help someone hurt?”

His mother was never one against his son’s sad look so he said to his husband. “I think we should help him. He is not a bait. Look around you. We are practically nowhere. The boy must be really need help.”

His father looked around and he seemed to just realize that they were basically nowhere. It was and endless desert with nothing, no trees no bushes to hide.

He then nodded and looked at Junmyeon. “You, get into the carriage.” Junmyeon was about to protest but his father already throwing him inside and his mother immediately held him.

Soon his father got inside the carriage with the boy in his arm. The carriage then continued to move.

Junmyeon stayed besides the boy when his mother started to tend the boy’s injuries. “I’m going to clean his wounds.” His mother said and made a move for his healing equipments. Junmyeon grasped the boy’s hand, remembering how painful it was to have his wound cleaned, even when its only a scrape. He wondered how painful it would be for the boy as he had a long gash on his back.

The boy was flinching even when he was unconscious when his mother began dabbed his back. Junmyeon could feel the boy’s hand grasped to his harder. Junmyeon leaned to the boy’s ear and kept whispering “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay. Just a bit more.” Until his mother finished tending the wound.

“Keep an eye on him, Junmyeon. He flinched a lot when I tend his wound. He might wake up very soon.” His mother smiled at him. Junmyeon smiled back.

Apparently, the boy didn’t wake up as soon as his mother thought so Junmyeon fell asleep during his watch. The next moment he opened his eyes, he almost jumped in shock when he was met with a pair of pitch black eyes. “You woke up..” Junmyeon managed to whisper after seeing a pair of thick eyebrows that were familiar. He looked at his mother who was fast asleep and contemplating between waking her up or not. But then the boy clutched as his arm and shaking his head with pure terrors in his eyes so then Junmyeon decided not to wake her.

“Mama is not going to do anything to you, you know. She is the one who tended your wounds.” Junmyeon said softly. The boys only nodded before closing his eyes and clutched to Junmyeon hand tighter, moving closer to Junmyeon. Junmyeon only stayed stiffly and awkwardly, having a stranger boy taller than him and awkwardly clinging to him.

Junmyeon then reminded of something. He digged his pocket. The boy looked at him when he felt the rustle. He looked at Junmyeon in shock when Joonmyeon took out his necklace. “I’m sorry I took this, here.” He gave the necklace to the boy who immediately took it and about to put it on his neck, winced when he moved his limbs. “No no don’t!” Junmyeon shouted. The boy froze, both immediately eyed his mother, afraid she would wake, but thankfully, she didn’t. “Don’t over exert yourself, don’t move around. Your back is going to be painful.” Junmyeon said silently. “And don’t use your necklace yet. I don’t know what your necklace symbolize but whatever it is, I don’t think father is going to like it.”

The boy nodded and removed his necklace before realizing he had nothing for hiding his necklace. Junmyeon looked around in confusion before landed his eyes on his bunny doll. He was hesitant, but then he only going to lend it.

“Here, hide it inside the bunny.” Junmyeon said, ped a small secret zip on the bunny’s stomach, hidden because of its thick fur. The boy at first eyed him funnily and gave him a mocking smirk. He knew what he thought, a big boy, playing with a doll. But then the boy obeyed and clutched the doll tightly to his chest. Junmyeon felt a bit of jealousy, after all it was his only friend. It was only for a while. He thought to himself.

“So, why don’t you tell me how come you could lie on the road?” Junmyeon finally asked when the boy seemed so comfortable with his bunny doll. The boy didn’t say anything, only looked at Junmyeon for a long time as if memorizing every bit of Junmyeon’s face, before suddenly fell asleep. Junmyeon stuck out his tongue in annoyance, but then he fell asleep too.

They were only three hours into their destination when the carriage stopped because of the boy again.

This time though, was because the boy trashed around and voicelessly screaming. He kept rolled from left to right. Junmyeon was petrified. The boy was fine at first, slept soundly beside him when suddenly he clutched Junmyeon’s hand tightly and began kicking the floor of the carriage. At first his parents thought it was a tantrum, but seeing agony on his eyes, they realized the boy was in pain.

“Come, Junmyeon. Let’s wait outside while your mother help him.” The driver said as he took Junmyeon’s hand to grab him outside. The boy trashed around madly and clutched tightly and JUnmyeon’s arm, he kept shaking his eyes, begged Junmyeon to stay with him with his eyes. When Junmyeon didn’t come back to him, he started to scream, now with voice.

Junmyeon shook his head. He couldn’t stay. He would only hinder his mother’s work. So he kneeled near the boy again and grabbed his bunny doll that had been thrown quite faraway from the boy. He put the bunny in the boy’s hand. “Here, bunny will keep you safe. Don’t be scared. Mama is only going to help you. And I’ll be around. I’ll comeback soon after mama finished healing you, okay?”

The boy seemed to get what Junmyeon said, and slowly let Junmyeon’s hand go. He then hugged the bunny in his chest tightly, buried his face in the bunny’s head.

“Is he okay, Mama?” Junmyeon asked when he finally permitted to get back into the carriage. His mother looked somber at first, before smiled grimly. “he is.” She answered. Junmyeon realized the grim smile, so he checked the boy by himself. That grim smile on his mother’s face meant something, something that she wouldn’t tell, so Junmyeon must figured it out by himself.

The boy seemed asleep hugging the bunny tightly to his chest, his feet up until his neck was buried inside the blanket. Junmyeon couldn’t see any injuries. He sighed in disappointment. So whatever it is that made his mother smiled that way, was something that couldn’t be seen with bare eyes.

He leaned down beside the boy. The carriage started to move again. Junmyeon then lulled to sleep by the movement.

He didn’t realize his arm moved on its own to hug the boy.

Junmyeon had a strange dream.

He was with the boy, awake. The boy smiled widely at him.

He smiled in return, but his face fell when he saw the necklace already dangling on the boy’s neck. “My father is not going to be pleased when he saw…” Junmyeon was cut in the middle of the sentence when the boy pecked his forehead very quickly. Junmyeon even question whether it was just his imagination or really happened.

“Thank you.” He heard the boy spoke for the first time. His voice was quite deep, but warm.

Junmyeon didn’t know why suddenly he wanted to looked down, so he did, and he found himself floated above the ground.

He looked at the boy in confusion, but the boy wasn’t there.

The boy really wasn’t there when Junmyeon woke up. Leaving his bunny on Junmyeon’s hand.

His parents and driver was also confused as they didn’t saw him jumped out of the carriage.  

Junmyeon scrambled for his bunny, and opened the secret zipper.

The necklace was gone.

Then it wasn’t a dream.

Junmyeon was sad, but just like how he got over his unreplied letters, he got over the sadness because the boy just abandoned him.

They reached the city and settled immediately. Their home was nice, and there were friends all around the city. Junmyeon grimaced, remembering that in the end he would probably only need to forget all the friend he made here as they moved on with their lives when Joonmyeon left.

Joonmyeon was on the front gate of his home when he saw a huge bonfire on the front yard of his house. His father, his mother, and his driver, along with two of the maid was standing quite far from the fire.

“What happened?” Junmyeon asked in confusion as he realized that it wasn’t a bonfire. They were burning the carriage. “We get rid of things touched by that boy.” His father seethed between his teeth.

Junmyeon’s ears perked up at the mention of the boy. “What? What did the boy do that you have to burn the carriage?”

His father didn’t answer, only keeping his eyes to the fire. When the maid came forward, with a familiar blanket and more familiar doll, Junmyeon almost ran to stop the maid, only to be held by his driver.

His mother reached him and hugged him tight. Junmyeon was in tears when the maid threw the blanket and the doll to the raging fire. He buried his face, crying painfully in his mother’s arm.

“The boy is a dragon, Junmyeon. We must burn all the things he touched, or the dragons will be after us.”

Dragon.  It was a dragon necklace, not a bird. Suddenly, Junmyeon was so grateful for his initiative to hide the necklace.

Junmyeon was sad, as his friends of many years were now burned to ashes, but he silently hoped for the new friend, the new dragon friend that would hopefully come back to him, sometimes in the future.

That’s how Junmyeon first met him, then lose his most precious friend.

The second time Junmyeon met him, he was seventeen, then he lose his first kiss...