You built up a world of magic, because your real life was tragic.

 

The first time Daehyun saw those words, they were scratched into the bark of a young, thick sapling of a tree he did not yet have the capacity to identify. They pranced in front of his eyes, loops and circles and all as he watched the performance with curious, youthful eyes. They were foreign to him, etched in a language that he could not yet understand. In fact, he didn’t even realize that it was a language. To a five year old, the messy scrawls were nothing more than confusing scribbles or secret symbols that another child like him had drawn into the tree.

 

“Daehyun-ah, come along now!” his grandmother called, and the boy stood up from his crouched position immediately, running off to join his grandparents as they trekked through the woods behind the house. It was a rare occasion that he would get the chance to visit the elderly couple on his mother’s side, and he always did his best to make the most of the weekends he had with them. Whereas Daehyun and his parents lived hours away on the white, sandy beaches of Busan, his grandparents had found a pleasant place right at the edges of Seoul in a small community with trees in the background.

 

Daehyun didn’t get to see forests particularly often, so the rather large collection of trees he was walking amongst was quite the novelty. They swayed in the wind of spring, creaking branches emitting groans from the strain of carrying the leaves; one after another they communicated to each other in the squeaking of wood and rasping of leaves, a second tongue that Daehyun could never hope to comprehend. The light scratches on the sapling were quickly forgotten in favor of trotting along with his hand in his grandmother’s warm palm and his head tilted up at the canopy above. He shrieked in excitement as his eyes landed on a large creek and, letting go of his grandmother’s hand, raced ahead to the banks, ignoring his grandfather’s calls to stop.

 

“Can I? Can I, can I, can I?” he chattered enthusiastically as he waited impatiently for his grandparents to catch up. “Please?” he elongated the word, bouncing on his toes with his hands clasped in front of his chin.

 

“No, Daehyun, you’ll get your clothes wet. We can come back tomorrow with your bathing suit and then you can go in.”

 

“No, I want to go now! Please, please? I won’t get wet, I promise!”

 

“Daehyun-ah, your mom will be very mad if I tell her you weren’t listening to us,” his grandmother reprimanded.

 

Daehyun pouted, stomping his foot and staring longingly at the rippling water as it from below. He waited for a minute, then two, then three, hoping that if he stood there stubbornly for long enough then his grandparents would give in and let him in. However, after five minutes of complete silence, he whirled around, stuck out his tongue, and waded into the water defiantly, blissfully relishing in the way the cool liquid washed around his calves and rushed to his knees. He didn’t get far before his grandfather grabbed onto the back of his shirt, dragging him back onto land kicking and screaming. His grandfather knelt down, a twinkle in his eyes as he held onto the feisty brunet’s shoulders. That twinkle threw Daehyun for a loop, and he observed the content expression on the old man’s face, gaze tracing the wrinkles on his forehead and the kindness that was folded within each one.

 

“How about we go home now for dinner? Halmeoni will make you kimchi and bulgogi and then we can all go on the swing in the backyard.”

 

“Bulgogi?” Daehyun questioned. With that, the little beast was tamed, and trotted behind his grandparents with the sudden realization that he was indeed very hungry.

 

In the few hasty seconds he had been in the creek, he had missed the thick rope dangling from a tree a hundred meters down, mesmerizingly swinging from side to side from more than just the effect of the breeze. The curious face that had popped up from around the trunk of the tree to which the rope was attached was lost on the five year old as well, as he babbled excitedly about anything and everything and nothing at all at the same time on the path back to home.

 

 

 

 

 

The second time Daehyun saw the words, he was nearly ten years older and wiser. The sapling that bore the heavy words had grown along with the boy, and now it stood as a tall, young tree. The sentence had followed with the growth of the White Ash, and where it had once been at the very base, it was now level with all of Daehyun’s five feet. At fourteen, Daehyun had begun to learn English in school, and if he focused hard, he could sound out the letters and form the words. However, even with what little knowledge he had, the meaning of the words did not register; partly because the only words he could grasp were you, up, a, because, and your but mostly because his attention was directed to the ginger cat he could have sworn to have seen slinking amongst the ferns.

 

“A-achoo!” So it was confirmed, there was most definitely a cat somewhere nearby, and unless Daehyun wanted his lungs to close up from his allergy, it was best that he hightail it out of there.

 

 

 

 

 

At sixteen, Daehyun could fully comprehend the words. They had been stabbed deeper into the trunk through the years, and were no longer scratches. Instead, they were carved brutally into the rough bark with as much emotion as they attempted to portray. The tree itself was weighed down with the burden of new buds, crying from the harsh reality that was whittled into its wood and the work that it faced with the oncoming season. However, even knowing the meaning, Daehyun could only scoff and shake his head before kicking at the ground as if it had wronged him, and walking away. To a sixteen-year old male going through his first break-up because the girl had apparently found a better guy, those words were pathetic and weak. To him, whatever the person who had painstakingly written the English words of wisdom was going through was nothing compared to the agony that was tearing through Daehyun’s heart every time he so much as glanced at his phone. It was nearly unbearable, a piece of glass shredding the muscle in his chest to pieces with unforgiving viciousness.

 

His cellular device had been left at his house in Busan, as he had no intention of going anywhere near the internet or any form of contact from the outside world while his spring break wasted away. The connection to his life was too great for him to handle at the moment. Although Seoul was just a few minutes’ walk from his current location, the forest he was in felt isolated from the blaring of car horns and the buzz of the city. It was quiet, peaceful, and just what a confused boy like him needed in a time of loss.

 

Daehyun had absolutely no idea where he was going, and there was a huge possibility that he was lost, but perhaps being lost physically was just what he needed to find his way mentally once more. His ex-girlfriend had broken up with him the week before, and seeing the way the teen moped about the house and slept away the days leading up to his vacation, Daehyun’s parents had sent him to his grandparents instead of letting him retreat to his room, where hopefully his attitude would take a turn for the better.

 

The brunet sighed, leaning his forehead on the smooth trunk of a birch and letting his eyes flutter shut in a moment of blissful ignorance. He listened to the over-cheerful chirping of birds in the branches above him and cursed the world under his breath. It had no right to be so happy when he himself was so miserable.

 

The leaves on the floor of the forest crinkled suddenly, and Daehyun jumped, turning on the intruder. His eyes scanned the area around him, flickering from one side to another. He twisted his body so that he could look through his peripheral vision, the way he had seen it done in movies, but nothing stirred in the undergrowth. The tension in his muscles seeped away after a few moments and Daehyun brushed off the rustling as a squirrel or something of the like making its escape up a tree.

 

That was, until the same crinkling sounded again, this time followed by a quiet curse carried by the wind.

 

Oh, no, I’m not ready to die yet. Daehyun thought angrily, snatching a large branch that had fallen on the ground in a recent storm. He pointed it in front of his torso, bending his knees and crouching forward in a ready position. “Whoever you are, come out right now and let’s get this over with. I’m really not in the mood to have my time wasted, so if you have plans of attacking me and leaving my body floating in the river, then get on with it.”

 

In a flurry of crackling and crunching leaves, the intruder took off in the opposite direction, and Daehyun let out a bark of laughter.

 

“Ha! Too scared, huh? Come back here and face me like a man, you coward!” Daehyun shouted after the receding footsteps. He stared down at the thick stick in his hands and lifted his knee as he brought up the wooden limb. He broke the branch over his thigh in a sudden fit of rage, sinking to the ground and flinging the halved pieces away from himself as he howled in pain. The smarting flesh on his thigh would later form into a nasty bruise, the only reminder he had of the stranger that had dared tread on his limited time to wallow in self-pity.

 

 

 

 

 

Curled up with his knees drawn into his chest, that was how Daehyun’s grandfather found him hours later.

 

“Daehyun?” he questioned gently, grunting as he carefully lowered himself to sit by the red-eyed teen. Even withering with the onset of old age, his grandfather always kept a lively twinkle in his intelligent orbs, which was the one thing that Daehyun would always remember from his younger years. “You know, your parents are worried. Halmeoni, too. Even me. And you know me, I never worry about anything,” the old man joked. For the sake of his grandfather, Daehyun mustered up a feeble smile, his lips shaking from the mere effort of such a task. “I’m not going to give you a long lecture about keeping up an appearance, because I’m sure your mother already has. I’m not going to tell you that grown men don’t cry or that men are supposed to stay strong through everything, because no doubt your father already gave you that spiel. I won’t tell you that everyone is always here for you if you need to talk, because your friends probably already said that. And I won’t try to buy information by bribing you with food, because halmeoni is going to do that as soon as we sit down at the dinner table. We men know each other well enough to tell what the problem is without having to ask. Perhaps your father doesn’t know it very well because your mother was his first and only love, but son, that man is one lucky bastard in a million. How old are you now, Daehyun? Fourteen, fifteen?”

 

“Sixteen and a half,” Daehyun supplied helpfully.

 

“Right. Well, Daehyun, at sixteen, I had already gone through forty girls.”

 

Daehyun stared at his grandfather, then shook his head and rolled his eyes.

 

“Alright, it seems you’re past the phase of believing everything anyone tells you. In that case, let’s say twenty.”

 

Daehyun scoffed.

 

“Ten?”

 

“As if.”

 

“Fine, five. And I’m not going any lower than that. Point is, I went through enough of them in my life to know the kind of impact they leave. It’s never going to be sunshine and rabbits, or however that phrase went, and getting through this kind of stuff isn’t anything new. A boy like you with a face like that is going to have to go through a lot of those, so better get geared up and learn from this experience. One day, you’ll find the right person for you. Now, halmeoni is making you kimchi and bulgogi and then she wants us all to swing in the backyard.” With the quick way his grandfather moved onto the next topic, the emphasis on the word person flew right by Daehyun’s head. “I’ll distract her from the nagging she’s probably getting ready to spout, while you grab your food and run.” The old man winked, the wrinkles around his eyes deepening as he smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

A week later, as Daehyun pressed his temple against the cool window of the train headed back to Busan, the bruise on his thigh had faded, and so had the pain of a fleeting love. All that remained were idle thoughts about the intruder in the forest that would soon be put to rest as exams neared and weeks turned into months.

 

 

 

 

 

At age twenty, Daehyun found himself rushing through a forest he hadn’t been to in almost four years. Exams after exams after exams, he had struggled through high school and was accepted into a good university in the center of Seoul on a half-paid scholarship where he could follow his dreams of becoming a doctor. It was tough work, and he spent every waking minute studying and struggling through the curriculum. Despite his location near his grandparents, he had only managed two visits since beginning university at nineteen.

 

He had missed his last chance of seeing his grandfather alive and well.

 

Daehyun ran, legs pushing off the firm ground with all of the angered effort he could manage. His chest was heaving and his muscles were burning with exertion but to him the pain was a distraction from reality. All he wanted to do was run until he ran into somewhere new, a place, a world he had never explored. Imagination was his only freedom from the harsh, grating truth he had just had to face.

 

“We’re sorry, Mrs. Jung, but we found cancer in your father’s lungs in the x-rays after his heart attack. To find the cancer through an x-ray means that the tumor has been there far too long. He hasn’t been in for an x-ray appointment since five years ago, and has barely attended his physical check-ups. Otherwise, we may have caught it earlier. I’m afraid that even though he has survived the heart attack, the cancer may be too much for his body to handle.”

 

“How? Why lung cancer? He never smoked!”

 

“We don’t know, ma’am. We’re sorry. We’re estimating that he has a few weeks, at most. We’ll do everything we can, but the tumor in his lungs is far too great to fix. Visiting hours are from eleven in the morning to nine at night.”

 

Just four years ago, his grandfather had been perfectly fine. Even half a year ago, the man had been as rowdy and exaggerating as he had always been. How had it come to this? How had the only tree Daehyun still had standing in his forest of support been felled?

 

No. It isn’t true, it can’t be. Daehyun couldn’t imagine his grandfather without the twinkle in his eye and the same words he always said, even when it wasn’t true. “Halmeoni is making kimchi and bulgogi for dinner, then we’ll go out and swing in the backyard.” When was the last time that had been the case? Daehyun’s grandmother was losing her luster in her old age just as much as his grandfather. The air was too humid outside, and if they sat on the cold swing, their joints would hurt for days on end as a painful reminder.

 

At eighty-four, anything could happen, Daehyun knew; but knowing and believing were two things that were worlds apart.

 

Daehyun finally slowed to an eventual halt, hand clutching at the nearest steady wall, which happened to be the trunk of a tree, as he wheezed in mouthfuls of air. He continued straight in the direction he had been going as soon as he wasn’t on the verge of passing out, though the trees still spun around him.

 

You built up a world of magic, because your real life was tragic.

 

The brunet stopped, studied the words, felt them. His finger followed the deep gouges in the bark as his eyes closed involuntarily from the exhaustion setting in his bones. He lifted up a sigh, lungs straining from the effort of breathing in the entire world and letting it all go in the span of ten seconds. The sigh was heavy, and fell straight to the ground from the moment it left his lips. It lay there, stirring the leaves of the ferns and staring up at the young man in all its pitiful glory until Daehyun couldn’t bear the sight of it anymore and resumed his wavering pace.

 

How much longer he walked was an unknown factor both to himself and to the trees that watched on in silence as he trudged through the quiet woods. Gradually, the silence stepped back and made room for a sound that Daehyun was less familiar with. The sound grew as he marched forward, the distinct noises of a shallow creek running over smooth rocks settling in with the rest of the environment. Vaguely, Daehyun could recall the same spring from his years as a child, and he smiled weakly to himself. He sat on the bank, removing his shoes and socks so that his toes could dip into the cool water as he lay back, arms crossed behind his head.

 

 

 

 

 

Night found Daehyun stumbling into his grandparents’ house, where he and his mother were staying for the next few weeks. The scolding of the worried woman fell on deaf ears, but the puffiness around her eyes were burned onto the back of his eyelids every time they slipped shut.

 

He spent a restless night tossing and turning with the sheets twining about his legs like serpents and sweat breaking out on his bare skin, until morning dawned on dark, under-eye circles and pale skin. He skipped breakfast, despite his mother’s halfhearted calls, and rummaged in his suitcase until his fingers wrapped tightly around a certain item. He buried the smooth sandwich of plastic and metal into the pocket of his jeans before wandering out tentatively into the heat of the day. It was the middle of summer, and the sun was his worst enemy as it soaked into his shirt and caressed his flesh with unwanted warmth. His feet carried him in the direction of the forest at the back of the house, moving on their own accord without a pause until he was once again running his hands up a familiar trunk.

 

The words were the same, the cuts in the bark still raw, as if they were renewed without fail everyday. How much did the Ash bleed with every new engraving?

 

How much did the engraver bleed with every of his knife?

 

Daehyun fished the pocketknife out of his loose pocket, fingers flicking the blade open without a second of hesitation. He cut himself open figuratively just the same way he created fresh wounds on the tree physically, every ounce of emotion he had in his pained heart pulsing into the new carvings. Chips of wood fell to the forest floor, evidence of the cruelty Daehyun didn’t care to spare them, forlorn pieces of the Ash’s outer wall as it was scratched away.

 

Will you let me in?

 

The blade was safely returned to its resting place, a smear of blood seeping into the denim of Daehyun’s pants from the careless injury to his thumb. The man surveyed his work, tired gaze dragging across the crude etches as the words swam in front of his eyes. In his exhaustion, it seemed that the mess of letters was taunting him, mocking him with foolish laughter at the childish request, and Daehyun had half a mind to retrieve his knife and gouge out the rest of the bark in that section so that the question could be left unasked. With his courage dwindling like a dying candle, the brunet trailed to the spring nearby and resumed his position from the evening before. Hardly ten minutes had passed before his breathing had deepened and his heavy eyelids had mercifully slipped shut.

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you the one who asked?”

 

Daehyun jolted awake at the voice close by his ear, his heart falling into his stomach from a near heart attack. “Jesus Christ!” he swore, trembling hand resting over his chest as he in deep, calming breaths. As the frantic fluttering of his heartbeat slowed, he allowed himself a glance at the person who had woken him up. It appeared to be a young man, perhaps a year or two older than Daehyun himself, with searching brown eyes and tousled, dark chocolate hair. He leveled the strange male with a stare as the elder straightened out into his full height, returning an equally studying gaze to Daehyun. “How long have you been here?” Daehyun made no effort to hide his irritation at having had his sleep ruthlessly interrupted, ignoring the other’s question and forming his own.

 

“I’m always here.” The voice of the man didn’t quite match his appearance, the sharp edges of the elder brunet’s jaw and the curve of bulging muscles that brought Daehyun’s own to shame contrasting jarringly with the gentleness of his tone. With the chance to observe the boy closer, Daehyun could see there was no need to be intimidated. The new arrival had a softness to his expression, a soothing liveliness in his eyes that Daehyun had not seen in far too long.

 

“Why?” Daehyun questioned.

 

“Well why are you here?” came the playful response.

 

“It’s quiet, it’s peaceful, and I can think to myself here,” Daehyun listed off, already having an idea as to what the reply to that would be.

 

“I guess you’re not the only one then. I’m Jongup, it’s nice to meet you,” Jongup held out his hand, shaking it with Daehyun’s eagerly as the younger quietly mumbled his own introduction. “So, are you the one that asked the question?”

 

Daehyun hesitated. “Are you the one who wrote the sentence?”

 

“Yes.” The answer was nearly whispered, but the word was firm, full of confidence.

 

Daehyun considered his next statement carefully before daringly letting his toe test the waters. “You sure don’t look like your life is all that tragic.”

 

Jongup laughed, his eyes slitting from the way his cheeks pulled up with the peals of happiness. “But you do.”

 

Daehyun scowled. The situation with his grandfather had been gratefully pushed to the side while he conversed with Jongup, and he didn’t particularly appreciate the other bringing it back into the light. “Maybe that’s because my life does .”

 

With all the amusement gone from his features, Jongup scrutinized the unhappy brunet with a cautious seriousness. His dark orbs flickered to one side as his attention was drawn to the way the water wove around large boulders in the stream. Eventually, Daehyun followed his gaze, and they both watched the murky liquid play against the banks, bubbling with its own happiness in absence of foreign joy.

 

“Come with me.” Jongup ordered, rising to his feet with a deep intake of breath. “I’ll show you something.”

 

 

 

 

 

Daehyun visited his grandfather everyday. To be more accurate, every night. After much pleading on his mother’s and grandmother’s side, and with the consent of the patient, the doctors had allowed for one visitor to stay over the night. Daehyun, being the youngest and most capable of staying wide awake through the dark hours, voluntarily took on the position of night watch. The nurses had kindly prepared him a cot beside his grandfather, but the squeaky makeshift bed remained untouched each visit, without fail.

 

His spine straight and back rigid, the young brunet would sit in one of the two cushioned chairs in the hospital room, enveloped in silence but for the steady beeping of the heart monitor and the labored breathing of his beloved grandfather. The room was kept mostly in darkness save for the glaring green of the machines to which the old man was connected. He scorned that color, in all its sickly glory, for the illness it represented and the night that it kept at bay. Often, Daehyun wondered if his grandfather had trouble falling asleep with that hideous color as the only thing to keep him company through his dreams.

 

By nine at night, the wrinkled form in the bed was long asleep, and it remained in the soothing clutches of slumber up through noon, so Daehyun had no chance to speak to his grandfather, regardless of his alert stays. The male thought it better this way; he wasn’t particularly sure how well he would handle speaking with his fading elder. Even the mere notion of his grandfather’s departure had incoherent words bubbling up Daehyun’s throat like boiling water in a kettle. He was vulnerable in this time, weak to the ways of the world and the oceans it threatened to throw him under. He was teetering on a bridge suspended over a deep abyss, and he wasn’t sure if he would make it across to the other side, skitter back to where he started, or topple over into oblivion all together.

 

It was just a matter of when the wind blew.

 

 

 

 

 

“What’s this?” Daehyun questioned as he stopped beside Jongup. He eyed the rope looped carefully over the thickest part of the branch of a great tree. It would be hard to say that the oak was even on land, so much of its roots and trunk were drowning in water. Its boughs, naturally, followed in the same direction so that they formed an arch spanning nearly the entire width of the creek. The rope was secured to the tree not only at the branch but also at the trunk, where it was held to the tree with a nail so that the rope wouldn’t swing out into the center of the spring and become unreachable.

 

“What, you’ve never swung on a rope before? The creek is a lot deeper than it looks, especially now. Over the years, it’s been filling up with water, hence why this tree has nearly all of its roots submerged. We’ve just had an entire month of rains, so the chances of drowning have risen with the water. It’s about ten, maybe even eleven feet deep. Don’t fall in, you’ll smash your head open on the rocks below,” Jongup informed him cheerily as he unknotted the rope from the nail. He stepped back as far as the cable would allow him, tugging twice on the length of woven fibers with as much strength as his muscular figure could muster.

 

There were knots at regular intervals on the rope, amounting to a total of eight from the very bottom to three quarters of the way up. With his calloused hands wrapped just above the sixth knot, Jongup jumped, feet finding place on the first knot as he was driven forward. He shot across the entire hundred-foot width of the brook with a whoop, flying completely past the bank on the other side. Jongup let himself swing back and forth a couple of times, one hand sticking out to grab at Daehyun every time he passed by, before he deemed the ride to be enough and jumped down onto the ground on the opposite end from Daehyun with a grin. The younger had little time to blink before the rope was swinging back to him, and he only just managed to catch it before it was propelled in the opposite direction once more.

 

“Your turn!” Jongup called.

 

Hesitantly, Daehyun tottered a few steps back, eyeing the destination with determination before his feet, too, lifted off the ground. He wasn’t nearly as far behind as Jongup had been, so the elder boy caught him on his first swing, firm hands landing on the jutting bones of Daehyun’s hips. With a sudden energetic push, Daehyun was rushing through the air to the other side and back again. The cycle was repeated at least another five times, and by the end of it, the smile on Daehyun’s face was more genuine than it had been in years.

 

 

 

 

 

Jongup had explained that he had work from the early hours in the morning until late in the afternoon just before they had parted. With his new schedule of nighttime vigilance, Daehyun had no chance to explore the forest save for the one, sometimes two more hours he could handle staying awake in the morning after the trip to the hospital. At half past eleven in the morning, Daehyun would arrive at his grandparents’ house, eat, bundle up in the silence of the forest for another hour, and by two in the afternoon, he’d be fast asleep in his temporary home once more. At eight, he would wake, eat, and let his mother drive him back to the hospital. It was a tiring routine, one that left him lusting for the joys of life, but it was necessary. However, he had no more chances to see Jongup since their first, and seemingly, last meeting.

 

In the one hour that Daehyun could spare to the wood, he found himself bustling through the undergrowth, following the tracks and deer paths left behind by earlier visitors until he reached the rope. The trees practically swallowed his tiny figure whole, but he stepped with practiced confidence that grew with every day. He would dangle, wrapped around the length of fibers, to and fro, to and fro, until the wind knocked out all of the unpleasant, morose thoughts on his mind, until his cheeks were flushed and his hair was hardly more than a nest for the birds. Then, he would go home, and he would think about Jongup—for lack of another subject to turn his hectic mind to, he promised himself—until he fell asleep.

 

Once a full week had run its course, Daehyun was graced with the sight of a lean, muscled figure standing by the blemished White Ash tree again.

 

“What are you doing here?” Daehyun inquired. The words came out harsher, more hostile than he meant them to, and he winced. He had spoken little the entire six days.

 

“It’s Sunday, I don’t have any work today. I was wondering when you would show up,” Jongup explained, smiling widely, completely unfazed by Daehyun’s tone.

 

“Oh. Right.”

 

“So, you’ve been swinging, have you?” Jongup questioned, taking his own inquiry as a cue to start walking to the object of their discussion.

 

“Yeah. It’s fun.”

 

“You haven’t explored anything on the other side?”

 

“No. Was I supposed to?” Daehyun strode beside the elder, fiddling with his thumbs.

 

Jongup gave him a calculating look, even as he continued along. Any lesser man would have toppled over from the roots  in the way and the other debris in their path, but not Jongup. “You know, Daehyun, I can open myself, but you have to be willing enough yourself to take the first step.”

 

Daehyun scowled at the cryptic words. After a long night of no sleep, the green was burned into his eyes and he had no desire to hold any meaningful, soul-searching deliberations. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

Jongup sighed. “Never mind.”

 

They spent the next hour and a half swinging and talking about mindless, unimportant things. Both of them had yet to share the reason why. Why were they in the forest in the first place?

 

As they separated, Daehyun back to his grandparents’ house and Jongup in the opposite direction, the elder called out to him, “Explore the other side a bit next time, Daehyun, you might find a little surprise.”

 

Daehyun was too exhausted to fully process the words, and brushed it off as another cryptic gift for the time being as he stumbled wearily to his bed, fatigue clawing at his eyelids.

 

The world breathed in deeply, and let out the air in a long exhalation.

 

 

 

 

 

On Monday, Daehyun was in a better state to analyze Jongup’s suggestion as he sat through the lonely hours of darkness by his grandfather’s side. He had been listening to the patterns of breath from the old man, and was relieved to hear that the labored inhalations had soothed to quiet, easy ins and outs. The brunet dared to hope that perhaps the doctors had been wrong. There was that little breadth for mistake, wasn’t there?

 

His grandmother arrived a little bit early, and the kindly nurses let her into the room despite the fact that there was still a half hour or so before visiting hours were to begin. Daehyun thanked them, drawing his grandmother into a gentle hug before taking his leave. The bus ride home was nearly excruciating as the young man tapped his foot in impatience, eager to see what it was that was on the other side that Jongup felt it so necessary to show him.

 

He didn’t waste time on the usually thrilling rushes through the air above the creek and leapt off the rope not a moment too soon, teetering with his arms outstretched and flailing at his sides as he tried not to fall into the water lapping just inches behind his heels. He secured the rope to another nail, wandering off into the trees ahead, observant eyes scanning every little detail. He walked like this for an immeasurable length of time, watching and waiting for something to happen, with no luck. Even with his initial excitement, the lingering tiredness after every night was building up, pulling on his clothes until every bit of extra weight had him sagging in his own skin.

 

Daehyun shook his head, groaning at the stupidity of this venture and promising himself that he would very much enjoy thinking up a long, nagging rant for Jongup the next night. For now, it would be best for him to get to the house before he passed out right in the middle of the forest—again. He squinted up into the trees as his feet took him down the path he had just been on, trying to gauge the time by the set of the sun in the sky, with what little of the golden ball of light he could see through the canopy of leaves. With no results, he rubbed at his stinging eyes, in a lungful of fresh oxygen and willing the tense muscle in his neck and head to ease up.

 

A sudden gust of wind knocked at the trees, and the branches above parted just for a moment, revealing the sun to Daehyun’s curious gaze. He guessed that it was nearing one in the afternoon, and sighed, wearily glancing around at the rustling trees.

 

He stopped abruptly.

 

There, in all its stuffed, camouflaged glory, sat a teddy bear, grinning from the low branches of a leafy dogwood. Daehyun reached for the toy hesitantly, eyeing the folded piece of paper attached to its left paw.

 

Tomorrow, a little bit further.

The day after that, further still.

See what you can find. ;)

 

The words were a messy scrawl that could hardly be classed as legible. The black ink was smeared and there were crumbs and tiny specks of oil on the too-big sheet, and Daehyun was not in the least impressed.

 

But the teddy bear was soft, smelled like pine needles and musk, and reminded the brunet about the grains of sand in life; the ones that set the foundations for the pebbles, the stones, and the rocks.

 

That night, as Daehyun listened to his grandfather’s ragged breaths, which had worsened considerably from the peacefulness of the night before, he held the bear close, and breathed in as much of Jongup as he could.

 

 

 

 

 

“Daehyun-ah.”

 

Daehyun started, eyes widened in the layer of night that encased him. He stared at the bed from which the voice had come from, waiting for some form of proof that what he had thought he heard was actually true.

 

“Halabeoji?” the brunet whispered meekly, straining for a response.

 

“How are you doing, son?” His grandfather replied, his voice rasping in the enclosure, tired, kind.

 

“I-I’m fine. You should be sleeping, halabeoji, it’s not good for your health to stay up so long.”

 

“Oh, shut it, you silly brat. I’m not old enough for you to be telling me what’s good for me. More importantly, I’d like to know why you’ve been avoiding your old man all this time. What, you think I’m going to drop dead any second, do you? Well let me tell you what, that doesn’t warrant the silent treatment. Or the invisible treatment. Turn on those lights, son, I want to have a look at your face,” his grandfather demanded, making no effort to settle back into sleep.

 

Daehyun had to bite his lip to keep from letting out a happy cry of relief. He didn’t know what state he had been expecting his grandfather to be in, but perhaps the reason why he had avoided contact with the elder was that he was afraid to see what the inspiring man had shriveled into. He stood obediently, hand grappling with the wall as his fingers searched for the light switch, a small smile of triumph lighting his features as he finally flicked the lights on, blinking as they flickered for a moment before steadying into a bright stream of white.

 

His grandfather narrowed his eyes at him, slamming his palm into the sheets on the side of his bed. “Come here, son.”

 

Daehyun obliged, tentatively perching on the edge of the mattress as he was scrutinized by the old man’s beady eyes. His grandfather snorted.

 

“Still as handsome as ever. I would’ve thought that a few years in university would’ve roughened you up, but apparently not. You know, back when I was a boy, universities were cutthroat organizations out for your blood,” he commented.

 

Daehyun leveled him with a bland look, completely unimpressed by the exaggerations he had come to expect.

 

“Everyone was out either to prank you or steal your food, and son, I really don’t know which one was worse. If you wanted to eat a decent meal, you had to put your life on the line,” the white-haired man continued. Daehyun had an inkling as to where his immense infatuation with all that is edible had come from. “Anyway, all that aside, how have you been doing, Daehyun?”

 

The brunet shrugged in response, no concrete answer coming to mind.

 

“You look happy. Tired, but happy.”

 

Daehyun considered this for a moment. He wasn’t entirely sure about that statement, nothing that would invoke happiness had occurred in the last two weeks. “I don’t know.”

 

His grandfather redirected the conversation again. “What’s that on your wrist? And around your neck, too. I’ve never known you as one to wear jewelry.”

 

Indeed, framing his collarbone and dipping into his baggy t-shirt was a silver chain, from which dangled a plain, smooth cross. On his wrist was an intricate, colorful bracelet woven of many tiny strings. Daehyun was not one known to being immensely religious, but perhaps Jongup was. Both the necklace and the bracelet had been latter surprises from the elder boy, as Daehyun ventured further and further into the other side of the forest, searching high and low for each one after every trip to the hospital. Three more small presents had been left at home, including a beautiful butterfly nailed delicately and framed inside a tiny box, a dark blue Japanese fan depicting cherry blossoms, and a small mask carved carefully out of wood, which Daehyun could easily fit in his palm. The teddy bear sat on the chair where Daehyun had previously been huddled, before his grandfather had awoken.

 

Unconsciously, the boy let his eyes travel to the stuffed animal as he the cross. “They’re gifts, from a friend. A new friend.” It was four in the morning, and finally Sunday. Today, Daehyun would be able to see Jongup, would be able to thank him for all of the presents.

 

Lost in his thoughts, Daehyun was barely aware of the silence that stretched between his grandfather and himself as the elder man observed the boy. There had been a worry in those wise eyes that Daehyun had not caught on to, a worry that was quelled with the mentions of a friend. His grandfather smiled, the sight missed by the brunet, and buried deeper into the covers.

 

“That’s great to hear and all, but you’ve exhausted this old man here with all of your non-stop yammering. Turn off the lights, now, Daehyun.”

 

Daehyun rose to his feet, smiling wryly and dousing the light, letting the night creep back in and settled in comfort around the two figures in the room.

 

 

 

 

 

Jongup had denied any and all of Daehyun’s attempts to thank him, and they had made their way straight to the rope, taking turns being pushed across, their conversations held in constant shouts to rival the wind that flung their words every which way.

 

Little by little, the barriers around their hearts were falling away. Jongup was the first to let himself go, giving in to the timid question of “Why did you write that on the tree?”

 

“My parents died when I was a kid. I had just turned seven a few weeks prior. It was… awful. They died in a car crash because of a stupid truck driver and I wasn’t able to handle it. I had relatives that were willing to take me in, but none of them lived here, and there was no way in hell I was leaving the last place I had seen my parents alive. My mom’s sister, my aunt, moved in and took me under her wing. She was really young, just barely in her twenties, and both of us were suffering from the loss terribly. She didn’t know how to handle me when she could barely handle herself, so I closed myself up inside my heart. It wasn’t that she was bad to me or anything—not at all—I just hurt inside and I didn’t know how to express it. I put my sorrows into poems. Not gruesome poems or anything, but the line on the tree is from my first one. I didn’t have a “world of magic” or anything back then, but I wanted to pretend like that was a possibility. I didn’t want others to see it, though, so I looked up the translation in the school’s library. I translated a lot of different poems, but this was the only one that happened to rhyme, and I fell in love with it. I don’t really even know why I wrote it on a tree in the first place, though. It was like a cry for help, I guess.

 

“I came to the tree every day, and I scratched it in deeper with my pocket knife for every time that no one responded. Up until just a few years ago, I was lost, helpless, broken. But then,” Jongup turned his head to look at the younger male. “then, I saw someone. Or, I guess, technically, I heard them. They were making an awful lot of noise. They were running, and they just so happened to see the words on my tree, which stopped them. They were crying really hard, and probably didn’t even realize it themselves. But then I made a noise, and they started yelling at me, so I ran away. I think in that moment I finally pulled myself together. I realized that I wasn’t the only one suffering, and that one day I’d find someone to reply to me. Until then, I’d need to get my life on track, so that I would be there to answer to their cry for help.”

 

Daehyun wasn’t sure what force it was that compelled him to curl his hand into the collar of Jongup’s shirt and drag the elder forward. He wasn’t sure what in the world he was thinking when he crashed their lips together. He most certainly wasn’t sure why he let his emotions run wild, or why the simple slide of their lips on each other’s and the warmth from Jongup’s mouth and the reassuring way Jongup rubbed his thumbs in circles on Daehyun’s hips had him heating up and desperate for more.

 

He was, however, entirely sure of why he was up and running away as soon as they parted and he floated back gently to reality.

 

It was late in the afternoon. He was tired. Obviously.

 

 

 

 

 

Monday once again saw Daehyun padding through the forest, diving deeper into the greenery on the other side and desperately hoping to find a continuation to the game they had begun a week ago. His heart was pounding against his ribs and his chest was tight, palms clammy with anxiety. The anxiety spiked with every landmark he passed; the dogwood that had the teddy bear, the weeping willow to which the mask was nailed, the bush on top of which the bracelet had rested, on and on until each landmark was covered. By his calculations and observations from previous encounters, the next surprise was supposed to be in about ten yards more.

 

Daehyun swallowed. This was it—he would know whether he could ever hope to talk to Jongup again in this moment. Daehyun almost didn’t want to look, he was too afraid of finding that he had been rejected.

 

Something caught his eye. It was a quick flash of light, coming from not too far away. Excitement overtaking his anxiety, Daehyun lunged toward the tree where he had seen the glow, rounding a large oak only to stare quizzically at a tiny piece of metal taped to the next tree. He neared it, carefully picking out the lines of the silver before he plucked it off the trunk to examine it in his hand.

 

It was a charm, one that could be expected to go on a plain bracelet, and it was shaped in the form of a heart.

 

Daehyun smiled, letting out a breath he hadn’t been aware had been pent up in his lungs, and trotted back to the creek, back to home.

 

 

 

 

 

Daehyun and his grandfather had multiple talks during the night. It wasn’t every time, but it happened two, three times a week, and the boy was grateful for it. He missed spending time with the man he had always looked up to. He didn’t, however, miss the deteriorating quality of the elder’s breaths, and the increasing rasp in his voice.

 

His grandfather asked about his new friend every time. By now, Daehyun had showed him each gift, and was sure to update him on every new present. Daehyun cautiously informed the old man that his friend was a male, (he hoped his grandfather hadn’t thought that his friend was any more than just that) and was pleasantly surprised to find that his grandfather couldn’t care much less. Daehyun didn’t try to mention the kiss he and Jongup had shared, however.

 

The gifts Jongup had been giving the past week seemed to be amounting to something. It was always either a beautiful bead or another charm, and Daehyun kept them all in a small leather pouch he buried under his pillow. Another week ran its course, and this time, the younger was the one to test the waters and tell his story.

 

Jongup listened intently as they sat on the other side, mindlessly playing with the grass and throwing small stones into the rivulet. It was a simple story, but heartfelt, and when Daehyun finished, Jongup brushed his lips softly across the apple of the brunet’s cheek, fingers carding through Daehyun’s silky locks.

 

They sat in silence before both of them finally realized that they wanted some kind of physical contact, and then they were kissing again, splayed out on the forest floor and pressing so close to each other it was a wonder either of them could breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

Another week passed. The conversations between his grandfather and Daehyun were fading away along with the old man.

 

Daehyun tried not to cry the fourth time he met with Jongup, but the muscular boy knew him almost better than Daehyun knew himself, even with their limited time together.

 

On the fifth week, Daehyun encountered Jongup in the forest. It was a weekday.

 

“W-what are you doing here?” Daehyun stuttered out, both elation and shock registering on his face. He immediately folded himself into Jongup’s embrace, tucking his face into the crook of the elder’s neck.

 

“I asked about extended lunch breaks, and my boss said I can have them so long as I stay at work later. I’ll be here everyday now.”

 

Daehyun had never heard better news in his life.

 

 

 

 

 

By the end of the seventh week, Daehyun was fully aware that his grandfather could pass away any moment. Still, he remained strong, and didn’t shed a single tear during his nighttime vigilance.

 

“Daehyun,” the voice wavered. It was a Friday. “Come here,” his grandfather urged in a whisper. He had removed his oxygen mask.

 

“Halabeoji, put your mask on right now,” Daehyun demanded, flicking on the lights just in time to see the old man give him a piercing glare.

 

“Don’t tell me what to do, young man. Now listen,” he began stubbornly, his chest heaving from the mere effort of pushing the words out of his throat. “Tomorrow, I want you to bring your friend here,” he paused, giving himself a moment’s respite before launching into his purpose once more. “I want to meet him.”

 

“Hal—”

 

“No arguments, son. Bring him here. Promise me.”

 

Daehyun nodded meekly.

 

 

 

 

 

On Saturday, they were both sitting in the dark. Daehyun had snuck Jongup in, because he knew there was no way that more than one visitor would be allowed to stay the night—least of all when his grandfather was in such critical condition. Daehyun wondered what the point of the visit was if his grandfather slept the entire time, but as if sensing the young male’s thoughts, the old man spoke up.

 

“Daehyun, turn on the light so I can have a look at him.”

 

Daehyun hurried to follow with the request, blinking against the harsh, fluorescent illumination.

 

Jongup stood up and bowed deeply. “I’m Moon Jongup. It’s nice to meet you, sir. Daehyun speaks very fondly of his grandfather.”

 

A smile carved onto the wrinkled face of the aged man after he took some time to observe the boy, and he beckoned Jongup closer with one finger just barely lifting off the sheets. Jongup complied readily, bending down so that he could hear the whisper Daehyun’s grandfather wanted to relay.

 

Daehyun was on him as soon as he straightened. “What did you say to him, halabeoji?”

 

His grandfather fixed him with a disciplining look. “Nothing that curious young boys need to know.”

 

Daehyun sighed and chose not to argue for the sake of the man's lungs, willing his grandfather to secure the oxygen mask over his head again. He turned off the lights, plunging the room into darkness and retaking his position next to Jongup. He felt a warm hand cupping his, their fingers intertwining, and mustered a smile that he knew Jongup wouldn’t see either way. Something cool slid over his wrist, and after a moment of thought, Daehyun remembered that Jongup had asked for the pouch with all of the beads and charms collected over the course of the past four weeks. Somehow, the elder brunet must have compiled it all into a bracelet before getting to the hospital.

 

Daehyun smiled wider.

 

 

 

 

 

On Thursday, it happened. His grandfather’s time had come in the afternoon, with the old man and his wife holding hands as the withered form in the bed graduated from a peaceful dream to a slumber from which he would never wake up. The green on the machines leveled into a rigidly straight line and a long drone took over all other noise in the room, until the moment when nurses and doctors burst in through the entrance and huddled around the bed. Death waited in the corner, patiently watching the proceedings with a burden of rapidly fading warmth in its arms until finally all but a single doctor and the old woman had dispersed. Death and its new reaping slithered away along with the masses, making way for grief, which sat beside the grandmother and viciously grappled for the gray-haired lady’s heart.

 

The news reached Daehyun soon after, and he was shaken from his own sleep by the tearful face of his mother. They settled together on the couch in the living room, comforting each other with their presences, until Daehyun could take it no longer and rushed out of the house and into the forest. He didn’t need his mother, he needed Jongup.

 

In his haste, he hadn’t even thought to text Jongup and beg the boy to meet him in the woods, and his cell phone had been left in his room. Even now, he barely registered the fact that more likely than not, the elder male would not be in the vicinity.

 

“Jongup?” he called desperately, skidding to a halt by the White Ash he had come to know so well. “Jongup, are you here?” His words were broken up in between by gasps of oxygen that stung at his throat. He tried shouting louder once he had built up a sufficient amount of breath in his lungs. “Jongup? Jongup!”

 

No response.

 

Daehyun walked to the rope next, and tried there. He yelled for as long as his voice could manage, until his throat hurt and the pitch jumped with nearly every syllable before giving up. The brunet collapsed onto the bank, clutching at the rope nailed to the tree for support as his shoulders trembled and his chest flared in pain.

 

It was only a few moments later that loud, hurried footsteps disturbed the peace and a figure emerged from the other side. Jongup took one look at the crumpled figure and waded straight into the water, forgoing the process of calling for Daehyun to send the rope his way, and swam the short distance. He stumbled onto the ground and reached for Daehyun instantly, drawing the younger into a tight, wet embrace without need of an explanation of what had occurred.

 

“Daehyun,” Jongup cooed softly, peppering the brunet’s forehead with kisses. He kept a tight hold on the other, not letting so much as a centimeter of space between them as they mourned together. They stayed entirely still, barely breathing, for what felt like hours until Jongup shifted hesitantly. “Daehyun,” he mumbled. “I want to show you something. Do you want to see it?”

 

Daehyun inhaled a shuddering breath, unfolding piece by piece from Jongup’s arms until his limbs were straightened out and he was standing again. The elder rose to meet him, water from his clothes and hair dripping as he gathered the rope. Daehyun was sent across first, Jongup second, and the woven length was secured to the usual tree on the opposite end. Jongup grabbed for Daehyun’s hand, squeezing it gently as he led the boy into the woods.

 

It was getting darker with every passing moment, and the sky was purpling from the setting sun. It would be hard to see in the forest by dusk, but this was no concern of Jongup’s as they languidly shuffled down a familiar path. There was the dogwood, the weeping willow, the bush, and every landmark that held significance to Daehyun. The worn ground that marked the path was thinning, the undergrowth winning the territorial battles as they delved deeper than ever for a solid fifteen minutes.

 

They slowed to a stop after a good length of time, and Daehyun chanced a look at their surroundings. He was taken aback by the large tree before them. It was enormous, far bigger than all of the others he had seen to thus far. The oak trees farther back couldn’t hold a candle to the low-lying giant. It was not a tree that Daehyun could identify; wide-trunked with leaf-laden boughs toward the middle and ends, and smooth, thick branches up until that point. It towered above him, three times as tall as it was wide, the topmost canopy meeting the sky in a challenge. Past the tree, there was a natural clearing. It held no particular shape, bare save for the grass that reached to Daehyun’s torso and the flowers in its midst.

 

A tugging on his hand brought the male to the present, and he stumbled after Jongup as the other parted the branches of the tree and ushered Daehyun closer to the trunk.

 

“This is my world, Daehyun,” Jongup said, stretching his arms out to indicate the range of his safe haven. “I brought the wood, the nails, the tools. I hammered in those same nails and day by day, my world grew. I still scratched the words into that tree everyday, though. I told myself that I would keep doing that until I met the person that would join my world, that would finish it off and add the decorations. And in turn, I would help him haul the bricks for his world, and I would be the mortar in between that held it all together. I promised myself that I would never, ever let his home collapse, just like I believed that he would never let mine collapse.” Jongup paused, guiding Daehyun to the lowest-hanging branch. The younger hoisted himself up, settling into the crook by the trunk, and making room for Jongup to sit close enough so that their thighs were touching. The branch sank ever so slightly from the combined weight of the two males, making an opening in the protective layer of leaves so that they could look out into the clearing.

 

The evening crawled closer, enclosing the forest in a greenish, gloomy dusk.

 

“Jongup-ah, I can see that you are a good boy. Take good care of my grandson for me. I trust you.”

 

“Stay with me, Daehyun. Stay in my world,” Jongup pleaded, his voice a mere whisper as he took one of Daehyun’s hands and clasped it in between his own. “We can finish this one first. We’ll make it ours, and then we can venture out into the other world and fix it, together.” Jongup leaned in, molding his lips against Daehyun’s in a heartfelt kiss. He had to keep from laughing giddily when he felt Daehyun’s mouth curve upward and a sighed agreement escaped from their lip lock.

 

Tomorrow would bring with it the sun, and though the forest would never be as bright as the world outside, their clearing was the only spot of sunshine they needed, for now.

 

We built up a world of magic, for ourselves,

 

together.

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

a/n: welp. this took a lot longer than expected but it is also a lot longer than expected (someone explain to me how this managed to be 9.9k please). It also ended up completely different than expected. in other words, idk what this is. I'm not very pleased with it at all tbh but I wrote a lot so whatever. also, some of you may notice that the style was..different in the beginning and then kinda died toward the middle/end. I decided to try something new but obviously I am too dumb and too awful of a writer to pull of Markus Zusak's style OTL

anyways, I hope you enjoyed! ^^
-Jess