There was nothing in between – no magical, swirly interlude typically featured in cheesy time-travel movies. He simply found himself elsewhere, in a bathroom stall. The pool above him disappeared and reappeared in the next stall over, and he saw Sunggyu’s body falling through. The two of them exited the stalls, and Woohyun was glad to see that nobody was around, as casually appearing anywhere would be quite the evening news.

Then again, he figured he should assume that Sunggyu had more than enough experience portalling from place to place to make discreet landings.

Sunggyu nodded at Woohyun as they exited the bathroom, coming out into a small patisserie. Not one to enter restaurants and use their facilities without purchase, Woohyun decided to indulge in a chocolate eclair, which was strangely shaped like weiner dog. “Are all of the pastries here animal-shaped?” Sunggyu didn’t answer, thinking that the question was so remarkably obvious.

Regardless, Woohyun felt generous enough to buy Sunggyu a miniature strawberry shortcake, which was shaped like a crab. They sat down at a corner table of the cafe, a little ways away from the only other guests.

“You really didn’t have to,” Sunggyu said, though he couldn’t hide the excitement in his eyes as he regarded the creamy treat.

Woohyun shrugged, taking a bite off the tail of his dog-shaped eclair. It was perfect — wonderfully fluffy and not too sweet, the Bavarian creme complementing the chocolate frosting. “It’s no big deal. Speaking of spending money, though - where are we going to sleep for the next few days? Do we need to like, buy a hotel room or something?” While Woohyun was willing to blow some cash on the odd treat, hotels came pretty expensive.

Sunggyu looked around, and then whispered, “I usually just portal to an empty hotel room somewhere. We just have to get out of there before the housekeepers come around.”

Woohyun nearly choked on his dessert. “I...see.”

“Oh, and make sure you make the bed well in the morning. I’ve gotten pretty good at that,” Sunggyu muffled between quick bites of his strawberry shortcake.

“Um. Alright. I’ll do that.”

“Anyways,” Sunggyu’s voice became even more hushed than before, “I have a contact around here from another world. He should be here soon, actually.”

‘Soon’ came even sooner than expected, as the jingling of a chime hanging from the door indicated somebody’s entrance. The girl at the counter greeted him cheerily and he ordered something or another before looking around the cafe. Sunggyu caught his eye and waved him over.

He was somewhat short - but definitely not any more so than Woohyun himself. He was widely set, and Woohyun could tell that defined muscles lay under the leather jacket, white graphic shirt, and jeans that were obscuring them.

What caught Woohyun’s eye the most was a thin, red and black harlequin-patterned baton that the man held over his shoulder. It was topped off with two white stoppers on the ends. Upon closer inspection, Woohyun could see that the cane was segmented, a bit like those pencils where you could pull off a piece and attach it to the end for another pencil.

“Hey man, what’s up?” Sunggyu asked, scooting over a bit so that his friend could sit down. “Woohyun, this is Hoya. Hoya, Woohyun.”

Woohyun shook the man’s hand. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

Not missing a beat, Sunggyu went on, “He’s from an alternate world directly linked with this one. All of our creations - our fictional ones, that is - are real there. They have dragons, unicorns, religious deities, even the odd, jumbled mess of a child’s drawing. It’s quite a place. Unfortunately, having so many spectacular creatures in one place has attracted a lot of attention, and people have tried to travel to that world to kill the animals and sell their more profitable bits. Thus, they’ve imposed a whole bunch of laws banning hunting and the like. Of course, there are still poachers. I got lucky enough to make acquaintances with one of the most capable ones.”

The man nodded quietly, happy to let Sunggyu explain the whole situation. The waitress arrived with Hoya’s food, lemon tart shaped like a chicken and a drink with whipped cream, right after Sunggyu finished.

“Anyways, Hoya, do you have the goods?”

Woohyun was starting to feel like he had just come out of a movie about a drug lord.

Hoya pulled out a small plastic bag, inside which had four pieces of some sort of golden-yellow beeswax. Woohyun was relieved to see that it wasn’t any sort of white powder.

Sunggyu grimaced. “I expected better presentation, Howon.”

Howon visibly seethed. “I told you not to call me that. Besides, this is more discreet.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Sunggyu took the bag from him and paid him in some sort of currency that Woohyun had never seen before.

Hoya meticulously counted his pay and after he was satisfied, he shuffled the currency into one of his many pockets. “By the way, there’s been some trouble in the multiverse, too. Actually, I don’t know if it’s even trouble because so far, the other poachers have been able to handle it.”

“Trouble?” Sunggyu asked.

“Some has been wandering between the universes. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they actually closed the damn portals. We’ve had a few reports of creatures running in and out, mostly babies, and ending up where they’re not supposed to.”

Sunggyu winced a little on the inside. He took great care in making sure the portals were always closed before carrying on with his business. In his earlier days as a trainee, he had accidentally left a portal open and that had led to them chasing a unicorn across six different dimensions. Hoya was furious; that unicorn horn was priceless and it was a good thing they caught it in time before it went and got itself killed by a troll.

Since then, Hoya had forgiven him, but Sunggyu always felt like Hoya was passive-aggressively attacking him whenever similar instances occurred. “Oh. Well, if it’s all under control…”

“For now it is, as long as it doesn’t get any worse,” Hoya shrugged and sipped his caramel frappucino, a surprisingly childish drink for his character. “Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. I’ll leave you to the whole Sirena situation. Let me know how it goes.”

Hoya finished his frappucino and his lemon tart before getting up with a twirl of his baton. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Sunggyu. And Woohyun?”

Woohyun’s eyes widened. Hoya smirked with a knowing glance at the gatekeeper. “Take care of my mate for me, will you? He’s a bit like a tea kettle. He’s always screaming unless you keep an eye on him.”

Sunggyu blanched. “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean!?”

Hoya and Woohyun shared a chuckle. “I rest my case.”

With fitting grace, Hoya strode over to the door, waving his regards to the waitress. Woohyun watched him walk onto the sidewalk outside and hold up an arm to the sky, as if hailing a taxi. Within moments, a huge, winged, purple-scaled beast swooped down. Hoya grabbed onto one of the assorted golden spikes on the creature’s neck and hopped on, needing no more than a split second to find his balance before the beast flew away. Everybody in the area was staring, but not in utter shock as Woohyun would expect from the appearance of a legendary beast, but rather admiration at the smooth mount.

Woohyun gaped, turning slowly to look back at Sunggyu, who had an infuriatingly smug smirk on his face. “What the hell?”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention. That world I said Hoya was from? That’s where we are now. I thought you would have realized by the crab-shaped pastries.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, crabs and weiner dogs don’t exist in this world. Didn’t you notice the store says ‘Fantasy Patisserie’ all over?”

“That’s just a name!”

Sunggyu rolled his eyes, “How would Hoya even get to your universe anyways? He’s a poacher, not a gatekeeper.”

“...”

Woohyun stared disdainfully at Sunggyu before wolfing down the rest of the chocolate eclair huffily. Sunggyu took dainty bites of the last bits of his strawberry shortcake, which he had managed to make shockingly good progress on despite talking so much.

“Whatever. Let’s get out of here. Sirena or something, right?”

Sunggyu nodded, taking out a few pieces of the beeswax out of the bag as he pushed Woohyun back towards the bathroom they arrived in. “Here, you’ll need these. Put them in your ears.”

Woohyun took the pieces. “What, like this?” he asked, trying to stick them into his ears.

“No, , you have to mold them first,” Sunggyu held out his own pair and demonstrated, rolling the wax into perfect earplugs and sticking them into his ears.

“CAN YOU HEAR ME!?”

“Oh my lord, shhhh!” Sunggyu pushed Woohyun backwards, almost into the sink, He whispered lowly, “Magical earplugs, dummie. MAGICAL. I can hear you fine, it just filters out the sirena’s songs.”

Woohyun grumbled, “Sounds like information you should be telling me sooner,” before following suit with molding and sticking his own earplugs in. “Let’s go.”

HELLO. Applenamu here uploading the first (second?) chapter. I'm not a Comp. Sci major unlike my accomplice (Bio majors unite), but anyways. We're back!

Sori and I are both on Spring Break at the moment, so we wanted to catch up with this beautiful work while we have the time. Seriously, we have a plan and everything. Our goal is to write one more chapter before we're whisked away back to the land of midterms and essays and stress. Sunggyu, your portals would be much appreciated then. 

Anyway, please leave comments, and subscribe if you want to see what happens next; we really love and appreciate reading them. Until next time, Sori and Apple out! 

P.S. You should totes check out our individual stories as well. Maybe you'll find something you like. :)