The antique shop owner left the used-books fair with a very peculiar book in his possession. The leather-bound book featured a star, a fox and a clock on the cover and no title. The inside was written in traditional Chinese when he first opened it, then in English when the volunteer at the check-out line had trouble scanning the book, and now, it was written in Korean.

Each time, the content of the book remained the same, only the language changed. “In the second basement of an antique store, a passageway hides in plain sight. On the top frame, a star, a fox and a clock were engraved into the stone frame. Nobody knew where it led or what those symbols meant. And no one dared to venture into the darkness. Until one fearless kid disappeared inside it for days. When the darkness gave him back to the land of the living, his face covered with golden ashes. A star-like pattern burned inside his left palm. The mark of destiny they said.”

Yunho looked down at his hand where the star-shaped star lingered 30 years later. He had no recollection of how or where he got the scar. Everything remained a muddy mess in his memories. Everything except a pair of warm amber eyes. The eyes of the angel who showed him the way home.

His parents used to say that he was in a state of delirium when they found him, shouting about needing to go back to a ‘golden desert’ and to find a mythical being.

He sighed and pocketed the book. Age had gotten the best out of him. Old enough now to dismiss what happened as mere dreams. He had long stopped looking for answers, or the amber-eyed angel.

⭑

The shaman’s son stepped into his university’s campus cafe as strongly suggested by his mother. Per her readings of the stars, he would meet someone important today. For years, he had dismissed weird things she said as shenanigans. Now he wasn’t so sure if everything was truly nonsense.

Just last month, following his mother’s strange instructions, he’d stumbled across a strange door at a traditional temple. Engraved in the wooden frame, there were a star, a fox and a clock. An odd sensation urged him to enter. A feeling of familiarity overcame him as if he was finally going home.

When he passed the threshold of the entrance, the doors slammed shut behind him. The pitch-black room engulfed him completely. At what he assumed as the end of the room, a bright light called for him. "Jaejoong, welcome," it whispered. Like under a spell, he went forward, one tentative step after another.

As he squeezed through the crack in the wall to survey his new surroundings, his jaw dropped open. Before him, rested a vast desert. No, not the desert as we know it. Underneath his feet, in front of his eyes, a desert of star fragments stretched endlessly, shining and blinding.

“A breathtaking sight isn’t it?” A deep voice said beside him.

When Jaejoong turned to the sound of the voice, he saw nothing.

“Down here,” the voice said again.

Jaejoong looked down on his right side to find a fennec fox sitting by his feet. His pale sand-coloured fur stirred in the soft breeze. “You can talk,” he blurted out, dumbfounded.

“Is this supposed to be a statement or a question?” The Fox’s mouth moved as would an animal in Disney’s CGI movies or in a video game. “Your mother said that you will come. I have waited for a very long time.”

The Fox looked up at him. Chills ran down Jaejoong’s spine when their eyes locked. It was like looking at a mirror. The same amber irises stared back at him.

“You’re every inch your mother’s son. Except for the eyes,” The Fox continued. It raised a paw, waving before him as if showing its whole self. “If you ask her, this isn’t the form she remembered me as. I was more human when she arrived in the Celestial Desert.”

Jaejoong could feel his mind going haywire trying to process the words from the Fox. It couldn’t be, any sane mind would dismiss this craziness. The rubbish stories his mother shared with him as a child may after all have some sort of reality in them. A magical reality that he had grown to shrug off whenever his mother talked.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” The Fox stood up and shook off the stardust lingering in his fur. “We can catch up another time. But right now, someone needs your help. We surely don’t want this someone to turn into another little fox guardian of the Desert.”

With that, the Fox took off at a surprising speed. Jaejoong scrambled to keep up with the tiny animal as his feet sank into the desert and star fragments oozed into his sneakers. Soon, his legs were too numb to continue and his sweater was wet from the sweat.

He stopped, falling into the desert and panting from exertion. “How far do we have to go?”

“Hurry before it’s too late.”

Jaejoong forced himself up, mumbling under his breath that he had gone totally bonkers for talking to a fox. “I’m crazy. This is a nightmare and I’ll wake up soon.”

“I can hear you, you know.” The seriousness dropped just a bit as the Fox ran back a few feet. Its eyes were twinkling with tease.

“You are supposed to.” Jaejoong nearly shouted. “I’m going to check myself into an asylum after this.”

They continued to walk for what felt like an eternity. Every now and then, Jaejoong would peer down at his wristwatch. But it wasn’t moving like he was somewhere between time and space. In another dimension where time worked differently. Or didn’t work at all. He hadn’t reached a conclusion yet.

The fennec fox stopped abruptly and his ears twitched in search of the noise that Jaejoong’s human ears couldn’t hear. Crouching down to a hunting position, it moved forward. It positioned itself onto its rear legs, jumped into the air and plunged back down with its forepaws digging into the stars. A little human hand appeared in the middle of star fragments. A child’s hand.

Jaejoong hurried forward and helped the Fox dig. He pulled an unconscious young boy who was swallowed by the desert. He scooped up the bottom of his shirt and started wiping the star fragments and blood away from the child’s face. The cut under the boy’s left eye was deep and needed to be cleaned properly.

“I would worry more about his hand if I were you.” The Fox said. Its muzzle nibbled the boy’s left hand where the skin of his palm was burned to a charred black mess. “Foolish child picked up a fresh fragment of a shooting star.”

“I need to bring him back to my world.” Jaejoong held the boy against his chest protectively.

“He came through a different door than you. And you cannot follow him through the same door.” The Fox warned. “I can lead you to his door, but he must go alone. Or one of you will get lost in time and be trapped here forever.”

Jaejoong followed the fennec fox through the desert again in a different direction. Or he thought. He had long lost any sense of orientation as the desert stretched into the horizon. To add a cherry on top, the wind started to pick up despite the sky remaining the same dark indigo colour. Maybe clouds don’t exist in this place.

The Fox eventually stopped before a stone arch that was about as tall as Jaejoong’s shoulders. Jaejoong shook the little boy awake. A pair of disoriented and scared eyes met his. He smiled kindly, reassuringly to the child. “Go home now.”

He gently pushed the frightened child towards the arch. An old wooden door appeared, sensing the proximity of a human presence. Then, the door and the arch disappeared along with the boy, as if nothing was there in the first place.

A sudden and sharp heartache hit Jaejoong, like he just lost the most precious thing in his life. He tumbled forward, grasping his chest and his vision started to blur from tears and pain. “What’s happening to me? What is this place?” He gasped out between breaths, knowing fully well that these questions were long overdue.

“It’s a space between the sky and the earth, a place where stars come to die.” the Fox approached the young man on the ground. “Each fragment carries a wish that has yet to come true.”

Jaejoong lifted his shirt and peered under it. Over his heart, an elaborate star-shaped pattern carved itself into his skin, like magic. He looked at the Fox with bewilderment.

“Looks like your mother’s wish is about to become reality.” The Fox said happily. “You had met your fated partner, you just need to find him again in your own world.”

⭑

The antique shop owner settled on a window-side table in the campus coffee shop outside the book fair. He sipped on his hot Americano as he browsed through the book he’d just purchased. Besides the introduction of the book where it could be related to his childhood. The following short-stories all followed different mystery doors that lead to one place, the Celestial Desert.

On some pages, tarot card-styled arts were printed with a one-word description. He half-heartedly flipped through the pages until a particular drawing caught his attention.

A man, chestnut-haired with amber eyes, kneeled in the golden sand. A black-haired child held closely against his chest. When looking closer at the child’s open hand, a star-shaped black mark was visible. At the bottom of the picture, written in the white ribbon was the word ‘Fate’.

On the adjacent page, a tall black-haired man in a tailored suit was standing behind the amber-eyed man from the previous drawing, a star-shaped light coming from the man’s chest. Their hands joined together to hold an anatomically-correct representation of a heart in their open hands. In the ribbon, ‘Destiny’ was written in the same calligraphy.

Yunho remained transfixed by the drawings and how the black-haired man was unmistakably himself. But his concentration broke when a sharp pain from his old scar jolted through his body. He jerked his hand away from the book. The sudden movement had knocked his coffee off the table.

He mumbled some apology to the barista who hurried to his table to clean away the broken pieces and offered to pay for the damages.

⭑

The shaman’s son turned toward the commotion where a handsome man crouched down to help the barista gather the broken pieces of his mug. He was in his early to mid-thirties and looked so very out of place in his last-century suit.

Jaejoong’s heart skipped a beat when his eyes landed on the man’s face. The pale horizontal scar on the left cheek was too familiar to be a coincidence and he needed to be certain.

Jaejoong turned back to the counter. “Can I have a refill for the gentleman over there? And a black coffee.” he said as he handed over some cash.

With two mugs of steaming coffee, the shaman’s son carefully made his way toward the antique store owner. He went over in his mind about how he should start the conversation. What to say or how to explain why he hadn’t aged since their first encounter while the boy he saved was now a fine-looking man.

“Is this seat taken?” Jaejoong asked politely, settling the mugs on the table. “I hope you don’t mind me getting you a refill.”

Surprised, Yunho shut the book close as if he was caught reading something indecent in public. His heart rammed in his chest while he tried to maintain a calm façade. When he looked up, he became star-struck.

The sharp pain he felt earlier in his left palm now throbbed steadily like a heartbeat. His scar was telling him something he already realized. The amber eyes. The eyes he dreamed of and unconsciously searched for all his life. The face and the chestnut hair from the tarot pictures. Nothing was truly making sense, yet everything was struck with renewed clarity.

“It’s you,” he said between relief and disbelief. A life-long burden finally removed from his shoulders.

⭑

Somewhere in the Celestial Desert, a star fragment slowly rose from the desert floor. It disintegrated into dust and then into much smaller particles in front of a fennec fox. Its tail wagged in excitement. Another wish from the shaman had become real.

The same particles travelled between time and space. And among the pages of an untitled book that could be described as a star, a fox and a clock, a predetermined story commenced. Without a doubt, those met in the Celestial Desert are always destiny.

end.