(warning: death)
Day 29: “I just adopted a kid but it turned out they have magic powers” AU

When Jonghyun signed up to adopt a kid, he didn’t sign up to adopt a kid with magical powers. One with magical powers that nobody, including the kid itself, could control.

Sure, ice wasn’t as destructive as other powers that the kid could have had, like wind or fire, but try explaining to the kindergarten teacher why there is ice in the drinks of the kid.

(Jonghyun had terribly failed and got a speech about how horrible it was of him as a dad to give his child frozen drinks to school and where he even got the idea to do so from.)

It was that when Minki joined their world, everything became better.

Minki was a few years younger than Jonghyun and just as alone as Jonghyun had been before he adopted Yibo.

The resemblance between the child and no-longer stranger was only their femininity, or so Jonghyun thought in the beginning. He was soon proven wrong when he started observing the both played together, noticing that they had actions scarily alike.

Jonghyun once asked if Minki was Yibo’s long-lost family and that it would be the reason for the younger to stay with Jonghyun, but Minki denied. He didn’t have a son himself nor any family that could have had a son of this age.

So the thought of being family got dismissed, which left Jonghyun with only questions and no answers.

They became closer, almost like the real family they both never had. It was nice for everyone, and that itself settled Jonghyun enough to not ask about the overlaps between his new lover and his adopted son as it visibly started to stress out Minki.

Or at least that’s the only answer Jonghyun could think of when he started questioning Minki’s thinning frame. He never directly asked his lover, as weight is a painful thing for the younger male and he didn’t want to hurt his loved one even more.

However, it didn’t stop at just losing weight; the younger couldn’t sleep in peace anymore, his eye bags getting darker every day. The normally shining eyes lost its glow, turning into soulless black orbs. Minki wasn’t happy anymore, nor sad, he was like a slowly dying flame; he lost all his brightness.

In all those bad things Jonghyun did notice a good thing. Yibo was slowly grasping control over his powers which meant he had to worry less about the younger.

A year later, when Jonghyun sat next to Minki’s deathbed, he got the answer to the question he kept asking himself.

Why?

Yibo had hugged his father, which surprised Jonghyun as Yibo was never one to initiate skinship but he wrapped his son in his arms.

“Papa died because of me.”

“Ya, Yibo. Don’t say things like that. It’ll make papa sad if he heard you say that.”

“I’m serious dad.”

“What do you mean, Yibo?”

“Papa did have powers too. Papa’s fire calmed down my ice.”

“Why did papa never tell me about his powers?”

“He didn’t want to hurt you even more. And he knew he was going to lose it as calming down mine was very tiring and cost a lot.”

Jonghyun put his son in his bed that night and went straight back to Minki. Tears started dripping down when he softly touched Minki’s hand, observing his face, afraid he won’t remember the face he loved dearly one day.

Upstairs, in Yibo’s room, the temperature was lowering fast and soon it started freezing, the boy’s tears turning into ice, the last teardrops of ice that would ever fall down. The cold was everywhere, freezing everything including the child’s heart, making it unable to beat ever again.

(And so, Jonghyun lost everything he had and loved dearly in a timespan all too short.)

(His own heart couldn’t take it anymore, it lost the fire it needed and the cold to cool it down. And so, that also stopped.)

(bonus points for those who know who Yibo is)