One
Animal PlanetJapan.
One of the most glorious places in the entire galaxy, in Dongwoo’s humble opinion. Not that he had ever been there, but he had travelled to a lot of other places so he thought that he was qualified to have such an opinion. He had done extensive research when planning his journey, learning about all the different places in the Milky Way to try and find the one planet he wanted to visit. Nowhere had caught his fancy, until he discovered the open arms of Earth, and more specifically, Japan. Land of sushi and samurais, anime and manga, and that adorable neko-chan with the pretty pink bow. Dongwoo had been sold as soon as he discovered Hello Kitty, he just knew that he had to go there and collect all of the cute - or as the natives would say, kawaii - things that made Japan so fantastically and wonderfully awesometastic. After searching far and wide, it was his calling in life to settle in the tiny island country; he just knew it.
And now here he was, just minutes away from landing in the Land of the Rising Sun. He could hardly control his excitement - wait, scratch that. He wasn’t controlling his excitement. He was just jumping up and down in his squishy space ship seat. He was so happy that he had invested in such an immaculate space traveller - traffic was no joke during summertime intergalactic quests with tons of spaceships travelling at warp speed in every kind of direction. The power steering on his newly renovated Bang X2 - he wanted to splurge and buy the Hurricane model but fuel these days was so expensive - seriously made things so much easier. It was worth it though, for Dongwoo was nearly at the planet which ruled his dreams every night and this was probably the most exciting moment of his entire 23 earth years, 7 months, and 4 days of existence.
So exciting in fact, that when Dongwoo was in the middle of his victory dance his flailing arms accidentally broke off the handle on the lever of his throttle. Even worse, the lever had broken off in full throttle, pushing him into the Earth’s atmosphere at top speed. His mind went into hyperdrive, his fingers gliding across his control panel at an accelerated rate as he tried to figure out how to override the manual controls. But his efforts were fruitless; he was moving quickly towards the earth’s surface and the landing gear was deemed useless because there was a 99.9% chance that he was going to crash.
With no further thought, he grabbed his backpack, slipped his shoulders in and slammed his hand down on the bright red button to open up the emergency door. He was greeted by the cold chill of evening on Earth, causing him to in his breath at the sudden temperature change - he always functioned at an optimal heat of 69 degrees Celsius. He stepped to the edge of the exit, allowing himself one last fond embrace of the hard metal of the Bang X2 as a way of saying thanks for getting him this far. With a final kiss goodbye, he jumped out of the falling spaceship and barreled down to the ground far below. He freefell for a while, before his hands tugged at the string hanging from the backpack. Dongwoo heard the swoop of the parachute and it deployed above him, abruptly changing the speed of his descent to the surface below.
Despite the fact that he knew he hadn’t quite reached Japan - he had timed his playlist perfectly for his journey and he still had at least half of the chorus of Sugar Rush to go - he couldn’t help but feel happy. He may not have made it all the way to his country of choice, but he had made it to Earth; and that was a reason to smile. He giggled all the way to solid ground, his pink hair flying around his face as he fell.
Hoya was sleeping when he heard the crash. He sat up immediately as his heart thumped in his chest. Was somebody trying to break in? No… the security alarms would have gone off if that was the case. What was happening then?
Hoya tried to still his beating heart as he crept to his bedroom window. He opened up the blinds and peeked outside to be greeted by the sight of lights in his garden.
“What is going on?” He muttered to himself, trying to get a better view of the lights. The only thing he could really think was that perhaps it was some kids trespassing on his land. Judging by the colorful lights it appeared to be some fireworks, and that would explain the sudden loud noises. He glared at his backyard a little, before he realised that glaring wasn’t going to do him much good, so he shrugged on his dressing gown and slippers and marched downstairs.
He flung the back door open and stormed outside, marching towards the location of the disturbance. He was seething angry - he’d had a long day in which he had spent hours on video chat trying to sort out on big business deal with an overseas client, and tomorrow he was going to have to do it all over again. How dare those hooligans disturb his much needed sleep! He was going to teach them a lesson - as well as ensure that they paid for any and all damages inflicted on his backyard.
“You kids think it’s funny to cause a racket in the middle of the night? I’ll have you all arrested for trespassing so help me-” Hoya broke off mid rant, his eyes doubling in size when he saw the flickering flames around the smoking debris. He felt a shiver run down his spine when he realized that the colorful lights were not from fireworks at all, but from what appeared to be some sort of spaceship.
No, there was no way it could be a spaceship. A spaceship was something from those ridiculous sci-fi movies that Sungyeol liked to watch so much. They weren’t real, just a figment of delusional conspiracy theorists’ imaginations who were deranged enough to believe in an extraterrestrial presence outside of Earth.
Hoya was a logical man, he looked at the facts of the situation before coming to any conclusion, so surely there had to be some sort of reasonable explanation for a smoking piece of machinery that was crashed into his backyard. Perhaps this was the work of his brother, he was known for spending his money on ridiculous things that were ultimately useless, and a makeshift UFO seemed like something that Sungyeol would salivate over. He was actually quite intelligent, he just chose to apply his intellect to not so intelligent things.
The smirk slid back onto Hoya’s face; it was even better that his younger brother was the cause of this mess. He had been looking for a reason to get the irresponsible man out of his house, and you crashed one of your big, shiny toys into my favorite patch of petunias and I made it very clear that the flower bed was off limits and think of what this will do to my property value sounded like quite the start. Hoya’s head flew back and forth, his eyes searching wildly for the gangly limbs and gleaming eyes that perfectly described Sungyeol when he was in the midst of one of his nerdy schemes.
“Alright you overgrown choding, I know you are out here somewhere! There’s no point in hiding, you will have to come out eventually and when you do, you’ll be getting the kicking of the century!” Hoya barked, but the night was eerily quiet around him, sans the sound of fire crackling and the winding down of the machinery. Hoya stepped a bit closer to the giant object, peering over it suspiciously to try to get a better look. “I know you aren’t dumb enough to actually be inside of that thing, but if you are now is the time to say something so I can begin the chain of events that will inevitably end in your trip to the hospital.” He waited patiently, but instead of a cheeky remark back there was nothing.
Hoya was starting to get worried; what if Sungyeol actually did decide to jump inside a make believe UFO and had failed miserably during his landing. What if he was locked inside the clearly doomed spaceship but was too hurt to respond? His heart started to beat faster in panic as his concern for his brother grew. “Sungyeol this isn’t funny anymore! Come out! I know I said I was mad but I’ll go easy on you, just say something!”
But instead of hearing the pleading voice of his younger brother, he was met with the sounds of strange giggling. His head whipped around wildly, searching for the source of the noise. Even if his brother’s priorities were slightly out of order, Sungyeol definitely still had a healthy amount of fear of him, and giggling was not something he would dare to do in this situation. But the cackling continued on, getting louder by the second and Hoya finally looked up to the sky.
He had to blink a few times, unable to believe what was in front of his eyes. The giggling was coming from what seemed to be a man in some sort of strange suit, who was floating down from the sky on what looked to be a red and green polka dotted parachute.
“Wheeee!” The man yelled out in glee as he came in to land beside Hoya, much too gracefully for the speed at which he was travelling.
Hoya stared at him in blatant shock. Where the hell had he came from and what was he doing in his backyard? “Hey! How in the world did you end up here?”
The man turned to him with a surprised look, as if he hadn’t been expecting for Hoya to acknowledge his presence. “My parachute, silly! It’s been a while since I crashed… My poor little ship is officially a mess.” He looked wistful, his hands clasped in front of his chest as if he was sending up a prayer. But just a few seconds later his face changed entirely, a bright expression taking over his features. “But wow, I forgot how much fun flying is!” He did a small twirl to accentuate his statement, before ridding himself of his colorful parachute without further ado.
Hoya couldn’t say anything. This was just too bizarre. First he had been woken up by a bang and then he had seen the UFO looking thing and now there was this weird person standing beside him on the lawn as if he was the one who owned the place. A man with hair as pink as cotton candy, who appeared to be wearing a green dinosaur onesie.
The man noticed Hoya’s staring and his ear splitting grin widened even more. “Isn’t it awesome!? I got it in the inter-planet catalogue. Apparently these are all the rage on this planet and so I thought I would wear it so I would fit in with the locals. I gotta admit; you Earthlings have style. It’s so comfortable and warm and fuzzy and look I’ve got a tail!” He swung his round a little so the aforementioned tail whipped around him. He then stopped and stepped closer to Hoya, and before the other could react he reached out and grabbed Hoya’s . “But you don’t have a tail… where is your tail?”
“What are you doing?” Hoya hissed, spinning around to glare at the weirdo that had just violated him.
The newcomer looked confused. “I was looking for your tail but… you don’t have one. Why don’t you have one?”
“Are you on drugs? I’m going to call the police!” Hoya threatened, but the man looked unfazed. This unsettled Hoya, usually when he yelled at people they cowered and apologized immediately, but this man continued to smile at him as if he wasn’t violating the sanctity of Hoya’s private property. He cocked his head to the side, his ridiculously bright pink hair falling into his eyes. He moved closer to Hoya, getting in his personal space and making him extremely uncomfortable. “Why… are you looking at me like that?”
The man positively beamed at him, his eyes turning into crescents as he clapped his hands together. “Wow, I’ve never seen a creature from this planet up close and you are so…” He leaned back in so he was only an inch away from Hoya’s face. “Cute.”
“What?!” Hoya jumped back in surprise.
“And the welcome that Earthlings give is so warm! I never expected you to be so nice and hospitable. Some planets can be a real drag when it comes to registering as a documented alien during visits. I’m so happy now!” The crazy man continued his gleeful speech. “And I’m sorry that I crashed my spaceship in your flowers. I should probably get rid of these flames, huh?” He said all of this with that almost insane grin on his face and Hoya could only gawk as this random pink haired man turned to face the fire and waved his hands dramatically. Immediately, the fire died down to just a smoulder, so all that was left was the crackling spaceship and Hoya’s charred up petunias. “There! All done!”
Hoya’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just… make the fire disappear?”
The man looked troubled for a second. “Oh, did you not want me to? I was trying to save your dandelions. I can bring it back-” His arms were already raising and Hoya’s brain went into overdrive.
“No, no! Don’t bring it back.” Hoya stopped him, grabbing onto his sleeve to prevent another inferno. The man looked down at the hand that was touching him, before moving his eyes back to Hoya’s face.
“Really cute.” He muttered, and Hoya pulled back as if the man had burned him.
“Quit… saying things like that!” It was already difficult enough to accept the reality of the past ten minutes of his life, the last thing he needed was some giggling, fire manipulating man implying that he was adorable.
“But it’s true! And on my planet we love to tell the truth. When I see you I just want to hold you in my arms, cuddle with you and ruffle your hair!” He made a move towards Hoya who stepped back just as quickly.
“Stay where you are! And what do you mean your planet? I don’t know what you are doing here, or what kind of parlour tricks you used to make the fire go away, but I don’t trust you. You show up here in the middle of the night, with some spaceship replica and a ridiculous parachute and this whole thing is just- well, ridiculous! I can’t even bother to take you seriously when you are wearing a freaking dinosaur outfit. Did Sungyeol put you up to this? How much did he pay you?” Hoya wanted answers and he wanted them now.
The pink haired man touched his lips, his eyebrows scrunching together in an expression of intense concentration. “Sungyeol? I’m not sure what a Sungyeol is.” He blinked at Hoya as if he were at a loss. “Why? Should I find one? Is it as cute as you?” When Hoya stared at him blankly in response, he continued on. “Anyway, no one paid me to come to Earth, I wanted to! I’ve been dreaming of coming here for so long, and I finally travelled here and my mission was a success!” He pumped his fist in the air once, before looking confused again. “Well, I guess it wasn’t a complete success since I crashed my spaceship. Plus we are speaking Korean, which sadly leads me to believe that we aren’t in Japan. And I really wanted to land in Japan. It’s my favorite place in the entire galaxy, because as the locals say, it is very kawaii!”
Hoya stared at him for a solid three seconds, before turning away without another word. He could hear the man’s footsteps following him as he made his way to the house. “Wait! Where are you going?”
“To call the police.” Hoya responded, has patience officially gone after listening to the ridiculous explanation from the bizarre man.
“The police? But you only call the police when someone has done something bad! And I come in peace!” The man held up his hands. “Wait! Maybe it’s because I’m a stranger! I’m sorry, I’m still unaccustomed to Earth manners. Let me introduce myself to you. I am Dongwoodedoolop!” He held out his hand, jogging behind Hoya’s fast paces.
Hoya turned around in frustration. “You expect me to believe that anyone on this planet would name their child that?”
“But I’m not from this planet. I already told you that, silly! But rest assured that I do come in peace.” He repeated. “My mentor told me that all non-Earthlings have to say that when they land because you locals are scared of us. Why are you scared of us? Am I scary?” His expression grew sad and Hoya couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. Maybe this guy was a few colors short of a rainbow, but he did seem harmless enough. Maybe if he got him inside, Hoya could get some contact details and call up the correct mental institution to get him collected.
“You’re not scary.” He said, forcing a smile onto his face, “Why don’t you come inside and have a drink and you can tell me all about your planet and why you love Japan so much.”
The mental institution escapee smiled. “So you believe me?”
“Sure.” Hoya forced out. “Why wouldn’t I?” There was a pause as he opened the door to the house and then he turned back to the supposed alien. “So, what did you say your name was?”
“Dongwoodedoolop!”
“Dongwoodededoodoo?” Hoya tried. “Dongwoodoodedoo?”
The dinosaur clad man just stood and stared all this time. “Not quite right, but close! It’s Dongwoodedoolop!”
Hoya tried a couple more times before he finally shook his head and gave up. “I’m just going to call you Dongwoo, okay?”
“Sure!” The stranger replied with just as much gusto. “Dongwoo! I like that! It’s cute! So what’s your name? I believe it’s usual in Earth greetings that both names are exchanged? Or maybe I’m wrong… I might be wrong...”
Hoya cut in. “My name is Hoya.”
“Cuuuuuuuute!” Dongwoo squeeed. “But not as cute as you.” He reached over to Hoya’s head but the annoyed man just moved away. “Awwww, you won’t let me pet you! You’re such a bad Okami-chan!”
“Okami… what? I just told you that my name is Hoya.”
“But you suit Okami better, because Okami is cute!” Dongwoo bounded past Hoya and threw himself onto the plushy couch. “Waaah! So soft! Why are Earth houses so adorable and soft and waaaah!” Hoya could only watch as Dongwoo rubbed his feet into the carpet - only recently installed, Hoya hoped this wouldn’t leave scuff marks - a look of bliss on his face.
“Please, try to keep your voice down!” He didn’t want to wake up his younger brother or give him the impression that he was open to the idea of taking in a charity case. He already had a hard enough time getting Sungyeol to keep his animal patients at the shelter. “And you probably think it’s comfortable because you’re used to white padded walls.” Hoya muttered, heading into the kitchen to make drinks, because he so desperately needed coffee right now. No, not coffee. Coffee would make him nervous, a nice cup of jasmine tea would do him very well right now.
“What do you mean white padded walls?” He heard Dongwoo ask, and Hoya could only sigh. Apparently this freak had super keen hearing as well, because Hoya was well mastered at muttering sassy comments under his breath so he knew the exact volume at which most people couldn’t hear him.
“Nothing!” Hoya called back.
“White padded walls sound fun though. I could bounce off them. It would be like a wall of trampolines!” Dongwoo paused thoughtfully. “I want to go on a trampoline. They don’t work the same on Mato because of the difference in the gravitational pull. Do you have a trampoline? Or a room with white padded walls? Maybe green padded walls instead. Green is my favorite color.”
“Of course it is.” Hoya replied. “I’m sure that we’ll be able to get you to the right place tomorrow, and I’m sure they’ll have a nice green padded room especially for you. Maybe it will even have a padded door, how awesome would that be?”
Dongwoo gasped. “Will it be in Japan? If it had green padded rooms and was in Japan, it would be awesometastic!”
“You never know! Maybe. You know what? I’ll see what I can do.”
“You will help me get to Japan? You would do that, just for me?” Dongwoo’s voice was full of awe.
Hoya handed him a mug of hot chocolate and sat down with his own herbal tea. “Of course I would. I’ll help you get to where you need to go.” Like a psychiatric ward.
“Waaaah, Earth people are even nicer than I thought they would be! I’m glad that I landed in your backyard Okami-chan. But you have such a nice house… you must be really important on this planet! Maybe I should call you Okami-san?” Dongwoo looked pensive for a moment.
“You could call me Hoya.”
“Nope! Okami-san it is!” He lifted the cup to his mouth and Hoya made a move to stop him from drinking, preparing to warn him that it was too hot. Dongwoo took a sip of the drink before he could, his face lighting up as he swallowed it. “Okami-san! This drink is delicious! So tasty!”
Hoya’s jaw dropped as Dongwoo took another long gulp. He could see the steam rising from the hot drink and he couldn’t believe that this stranger wasn’t in pain. He opened his mouth to ask about it but thought better. No doubt he would get some insane answer, when the real reason was probably something logical. Maybe Dongwoo had burned off his taste buds in his asylum or something. Yeah, that made sense. He flung any stray thoughts away and tried to concentrate on the bigger situation at hand right now.
“After you drink that, how about I show you to somewhere to sleep. You’ve had a very long journey from your planet, right Dongwoo?” Hoya tried his hardest to smother his inner and actually sound convincing, and it seemed that he was doing a good job from the way that Dongwoo beamed.
“Yes! Planet Mato is so far away!”
“Exactly!” Hoya jumped in, “So maybe you should get some rest and we’ll see about getting you to Japan tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay!” Dongwoo nodded enthusiastically, “I am sleepy, and when I get to Japan the first thing I want to do is buy all the cute things and pet all the squishy animals, so if I sleep now then when I get to Japan I can just do that and I won’t need to sleep and-”
“Why don’t you drink your hot chocolate and then I can show you where you’ll sleep. You can tell me all about the wonders of Japan in the morning.”
Dongwoo’s eyes widened, and he lifted the cup to his lips and swallowed it all after Hoya’s encouragements. “Done! Can I sleep now Okami-san?”
Hoya just stood up and led the way to the nearest guest room, he let Dongwoo in who immediately threw himself onto the four poster bed. “Okami-san’s home is so big and everything is so nice. Is Okami-san a king or something?”
“No, I’m not a king.” Hoya sighed, choosing not to focus on the fact that a mental patient’s probably unsanitary body was going to lay on his immaculate sheets. He also ignored the use of the weird sounding name again. “I run my own business.” He explained, hoping that would end the questions about his supposed royalty.
“That’s soooo cool.” Dongwoo said in awe. “Anyway, I’m going to sleep so tomorrow comes sooner. I want tomorrow to come as quick as possible so I can experience Earth properly.” He grinned. “Goodnight Okami-san, thank you for being so nice to me.”
“Goodnight.” Hoya exhaled as he closed the door. Just as it was about to click closed he heard a voice shout out.
“Okami-san?”
“Yes?” Hoya tried to not let out how frustrated he was, he had always found that the best way to approach these weird situations was with tact and smiles. He was used to weird from Sungyeol. Granted, Sungyeol had never reached this level of bizarre, but he could apply the experience he had gotten to this moment.
“Will you sing me a goodnight song?” Dongwoo asked, his head tilting.
“No.” Hoya closed the door and headed to his room, hearing Dongwoo’s wondering voice as he moved away.
“Earth night is so pretty and dark. This moon is so small and dull compared to the two back at home…”
Hoya scratched his head as he walked away. Nothing had quite made sense since the moment the loud crash outside his window had woken him from his slumber.
Maybe if he slept, he would wake up and find that this was all some insane stress-induced dream. It would make sense, he had been having a really busy time at work.
Yeah, it all made sense now.
He hoped.
A/N: So there is chapter one of one of the most random things either of us will ever write (and Jade wrote a fic about Sungyeol looking like a noodle and Ray wrote one about quesadillas. That’s saying a lot). We hope this fills the Yadong crack alien void that everyone has so obviously been feeling.
So yeah, Hoya is judging and Dongwoo is just always happy and we think this sets the whole tone for this whole thing pretty well! Thanks to everyone who has subscribed before we even started this thing! CHYEA!
Comment and let us know what you think!
Jade & Ray
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