JUST SO YOU KNOW, WHEN THEY SAY "ONCE UPON a time"..... they're lying.

   I'ts not once upon a time.It's not even twice upon a time.It's a hundred times, over and over, every time someone opens up the pages of this dusty old book. "Jonghyun," my best friend says."checkmate." I follow Onew's gaze and stare down at the chessboard, which isn't really a chessboard at all. It's just squares crached onto the sand of Everafter Beach, and a bunch of accommodating fairies who don't mind acting as pawns and bishopd and queens.There isn't a chess set in the story, so we have to make do with what we've got, and of course we have to clean up all the evidence  when we're done, or else someone might assume that there is more to the story than what they know.

  I can't remember when I first realized that life, as I know it, wasn't real. That this role i performed over and over was just that-a role. And that in order for me to play it, there had to be another party involved-namely one of those large,round,flat faces that blurred the sky above us every time the story began.The relationships you see on the page aren't always as they seem. When we're not acting our parts, we're all just free to  go about our business. It's quite complicated,really.I'm Prince Jonghyun, but I'm not Prince Jonghyun. When the book is closed, I can stop pretending that I'm interested in Jessica or that I'm fighting a dragon, and instead I can hang out with Onew  or taste the concoctions Queen Victoria likes to dream up in the kitchen or take a dip in the ocean with the pirates, who are actually quite nice fellows. In other words, we all have lives outside the lives that we play when a Reader opens the book. For everyone else here, that knowledge is enough. They’re  happy repeating the story endlessly, and staying trapped onstage even when the Readers are gone. But me, I’ve always wondered. It stands to reason that if I have a life outside of this story, so do the Readers whose faces float above us. And they’re not trapped inside the book. So where exactly are they? And what do they do when the book is closed?

  Once, a Reader,a very young one, knocked the book over and it fell open on a page that has no one but me written into it. For a full hour, I watched the Other-world go by. These giants stacked bricks made of wood, with letters written on their sides, creating monstrous buildings. They dug their hands into a deep table filled with the same sort of sand we have on Everafter Beach. They stood in front of easels, like the one Minho like to use when he paints, but these artists used a unique style- dipping their hands into the paint an smearing it across the paper in swirls of colour. Finally, one of the Others, who looked to be as old as Queen Victoria, leaned forward and frowned. “Children! This is ot how we treat books,” she said, before shutting me out.

  When I told the others what I had seen, they just shrugged. Queen Victoria suggested I see Taemin about my strange dreams and ask for a sleeping potion. Onew, who is my best friend noth inside the story and out, believed me. “What difference does it make, Jonghyun?” he asked. “Why waste time and energy thinking about a place or a person you’ll never be?” Immediately I regretted bringing it up. Onew wasn’t always a dog- he was written into the story as Jinki, my best buddy from childhood, who was transformed by Minho into a common hound. Because it’s on flashback of text, the only time he’s ever read he’s seen as a dog, which is why he stays in that form even when we’re offstage.

  Onew captures my queen. “Checkmate,” he says. “Why do you always beat me?” I sigh. “Why do you always let me?” Onew says, and scratches behind his ear. “Stupid fleas.” When we’re working, Onew doesn’t speak, he just barks. He follows me around like, well, a faithful pup. You’d never guess, when he’s acing, that in real life he’s always bossing the rest of us around.

  "I think i saw a tear at the top of page forty-seven," I say as casuallt as I can, lthough I'vebeen thinking of nothing but getting back there to investigate since first spotting it. "Want to come check it out?" "Honestly, Jonghyun. Not that again." Onew rolls his eyes. "You're like a one-trick pony." "Did you call me?" Socks trots closer.(A/N Lol i know random.. sorry i couldn't think of a name xp) He's my trusty steed, and again, a shining axample of how what you see isn't always what's true. Although he snorts and stamps with the confidence of a stallion on the pages of our world, when the book is closed he's a nervous mess with the self-confidence of a gnat.

  I smile at him, because if i don't, he's going to think I'm angry at him. He's that sensitive. "No, we didn't..." "I distinctly heard the word pony... " "It was just an expression," Onew says. "Well, now that I'm here, tell me the truth," Socks says, turning in a half circle. "This saddle totally makes my but look fat, doesn't it?" "No," I say immediatly, as Onew vigorously shakes his head. "You're all muscle," Onew says. "In fact, I was going to ask id you'd been working out."

  "You're just saying that to make me feel better." Socks sniffles. " I knew I shoudn't have had that last carrot at breakfast." "You look great, Socks." I insist. "Honestly." But he tosses his mane and sulks back toward the other side of the beach. Onew rolls onto his back. " If I have to listen to that stupid horse whine one more time-" "that's axactly what I'm talking about," I interrupt. "What if you didn't have to? What if you could be anywhere,anything, you wanted to be?"

  I have this dream. It's kind of silly, but I see myself walking down a street I've never seen before, in a villae I can't identify. A boy hurries past me, his dark hair whipping behind him like a flag, and in his haste he crashes into me. When I reach out to help him up, I feel a spark ignite between us. His eyes are the color of honey, and I cannot turn away from them. Finally, I see, and when I kiss him, he tastes of mint and winter and nothing like Jessica-

  "Yeah, right," Onew says, interrupting me."How many career opportunities are there for a basset hound?" "You're only a dog because you were written that way," I say. "What if you could change that?"

~TO BE CONTINUED~