❄  For the first time in forever  ❄

Minseok still remembers that day when Auntie Anna opened up the gates.

It had been a real nice day—the villagers were happy, piling into the castle grounds, milling around the fountain under the clearest blue sky Minseok could remember.

Well that might’ve been because he was told to stay in the castle most of his life.

Auntie Anna would always tell him stories of his mummy whenever he had to stay inside the castle—usually on days with really bad storms.

Minseok would press his face to the glass and watch as the drizzling raindrops rolling down his window froze up.

When Auntie Anna stayed with Minseok in the castle, so did Luhan. Auntie Anna would never let Luhan and Uncle Kristoff out to work in such weather.

But today was nice.

The flowers were blooming, and as Minseok looks at the sky, grinning, he notes no looming clouds in sight—which is always good. No clouds mean no storms. No storms mean outside!

Sometimes when it was only sprinkling, Luhan would come home all wet, and tell Minseok giddy stories of splashing in the mud, letting the rain sprinkle his face—and Minseok would pout, wishing he could play in the rain too.

It was great, though, that Minseok’s skin always stayed a frosty pale despite only going outside in blaring bright sunlight.

Minseok beams as a few chittering birds flew overhead, sitting in his usual clearing whenever he was out to play and Luhan was at work.

He didn’t really have any other friends, since the weather was pretty bad in Arendelle, and so he’s always inside.

The clearing was really nice—the ground was covered in short green grass, and there to Minseok’s right sat a cute little pond, with the typical lilies and lily pads. And there were ducks! Aunty Anna had brought Minseok to this pretty little clearing, saying that she had found it when the gates were open when Mother was crowned Queen of Arendelle. It was also the day she met Uncle Kristoff, she would tell him.

Minseok smiled softly and played with the purple star-shaped flowers amidst the grass, and letting a ladybug crawl on his index finger. It wasn’t such a great idea, for the lady bug froze and he dropped it, feeling a bit upset with himself.

The grass under him was beginning to freeze too, so Minseok stands up—it was time to leave.

He missed Olaf—Olaf didn’t work, like Luhan did, so he’d always stay with Minseok during the winter. But that was when the storms were worst, so his company was great.

But in the middle of spring, like now, Minseok wished Olaf was here to keep him company.

There was going to be this ball in the ballroom—usually Minseok and Luhan danced around in there, and messed up the curtains and patterned the marble floors with muddy footprints from when Luhan comes home in the middle of a storm, so Minseok was allowed outside in the sun while the maids got the castle cleaned up.

There were a few paintings that needed replacing, windows that needed to be unfrosted, and icicles that need to be removed from ceilings…

“Master Minseok!” one of the maids bowed with a quick little dip of her head upon his arrival back into the castle.

Usually he’d be let out longer, but today, mother asked for his hair and clothes to be done—there were going to be far away guests.

“Mistress is waiting for you in your room.”

Minseok smiles and dips his head, which his mother keeps on telling him was unnecessary, but he liked his friends. He had no other company whenever Luhan worked and Olaf was gone.

Up three stairs at once, pulling himself up with one hand on the railings, Minseok jumps up two flights of stairs, and there he was infront of his room, leaving behind frosted railings cased with splintering ice. As he takes hold of his bedroom door knob, he promises to defrost it later.

“Minseok!” mother stands and welcomes him with open arms.

“Mother,” Minseok grins.

They had the same frighteningly pale skin, matched with their flowing, silky, dazzling white hair and large, shining ice blue eyes. Minseok has grown enough to stand eye to eye with her, her long blue cape cascading down from her shoulders, glittering under whatever frail light was shining.

“Get dressed—the maids have your clothes for you when you come out from your bath.” She smiled, gently patting him towards his bathroom.

And when Minseok came out, icicles sticking up everywhere from his hair but fully dressed in a neat light grey suit cuffed with glinting silver at the wrists, neck and down his chest, his mother was still there, standing up and moving him to sit on his neatly done bed with both hands flat on his shoulders.

“You look so good in that, dear.”

Minseok grins, looking down at his light blue sheets with his back facing her. He could hear her taking something from his dresser… and a moment later, she was running her fingers through his frozen hair. She replaces her hands with his own neat, pearly white comb—which doesn’t seem to be working too well.

“Elsa?”

Minseok’s mother looks up at the creak open of the door.

Auntie Anna smiles, opening the door wider, and letting herself in.

“The maids told me you’d be here—oh Minseok!” Anna gasped, running to him, all smiles. “Oh Minseok, you look gorgeous!”

“Th-thank you…” Minseok smiles embarrassedly. He loved Auntie Anna, he really did, but he was just shy.

Being completely honest, he didn’t like balls. He didn’t like Auntie Anna’s social things she liked holding. It seems like he’d gotten it from his Mother, for Father quite enjoyed them too.

Anna gives him a light kiss on his cheek, before frowning at Elsa’s poor job of trying to comb through his hair.

“Oh Elsa,” she gently shooed her sister away and took her place behind Minseok, taking his comb in her hands and smiling. “Luhan’s already done and downstairs—there are guests waiting for you Elsa, so you better go down too.” When Minseok’s mother looked ready to protest, Anna waves her off yet again. “I’ll take good care of Minseokie’s hair. You’re still as bad at hair dressing as I remember.”

Elsa huffs unappreciatively, but flashes her son a warm smile before sweeping out of his room, her glittering icy-blue cape trailing in her wake.

Anna was wearing a generous amount more than Minseok’s family, and he could imagine Uncle Kristoff and Luhan all wearing similar outfits—layers of thick coats and capes, rimmed with fur and fluff on the inside.

Her fingers were warm, considerably warmer than his mother’s, as she ran her fingers through his hair, melting enough ice to let it become malleable.

She pulled and picked at his hair, styling it to fly up on his right side, exposing his forehead, though a few stubborn stray strands refused to move from his face.

Auntie Anna was really good at hair styling—she practises on Luhan all the time. Mainly because Kristoff refuses her touching his hair, but Luhan doesn’t mind—he likes it.

Minseok usually has his hair flipped up, though it lies flat on his forehead in a side-swept fringe when wetted.

“Auntie?”

Anna smiles. “Yes Minseok?”

“Why do you like balls so much?”

“There’s music everywhere! Music, and dancing, and people! Isn’t it interesting? All the different kinds of people you meet—maybe make new friends!”

Minseok, being entirely honest, quite liked his social life. Although sometimes he felt kind of lonely, being an only child and Luhan away helping his father with transporting ice on mules most of the time, but he was perfectly content. He just wasn’t the biggest social butterfly.

Infact, he had the perfect plan for the ball tonight.

He would stay by Elsa for the first five minutes, greet a few important people, then he’d just hang around by the back of the ball room.  Elsa wouldn’t be happy if he left, but he’d just lean against one of the walls and just watch. He liked watching. He was great at it too.

He was horrible with speaking—he stuttered all the time, and he couldn’t hold a look in the eye for more than a few seconds.

“It’s okay,” Anna would always tell him when he showed less than acceptable interest for her social gatherings and is currently telling him at the moment too. “Elsa hated them too. Remember when I told you about opening the gates for the first time that I could remember?”

Minseok nodded—she’d told him and Luhan hundreds of times.

“Yeah, your mother’s coronation. I was so, so excited, that I’d meet the one…”

“But you didn’t.”

Anna laughed. “No I didn’t. I met a jerk.”

Minseok grins.

“Oh Minseok,” Anna’s voice suddenly grew serious. She’d stopped brushing through his hair, so he turned around on his bed to face her. Her pretty, large blue eyes overflowed with concern. “Minseok, strangers—”

“I know, Auntie.” He smiled warmly, comfortingly.

She nods. “Good you know… but don’t make rash decisions, okay?” Minseok nods. “Don’t walk too close with people you don’t know, people we haven’t introduced to you.” Minseok nods. “And—”

“Don’t fall in love with the wrong person,” Minseok finishes, rolling his eyes. “How do you expect me to do that?”

Anna shrugs, with a light grin. “Not my problem—Your mother told me to tell you.” She stands, straightening her own velvety purple ball gown. “Let’s go?”

Minseok nods to himself, following Anna down the flights of stairs down to the ballroom. He had always known Elsa was a bit shy about her feelings. (His dad, Jack, had once told him about having to wait for almost a year for her to say ‘yes’.)

“Hello Minseok!” a man says quite overly energetically, reaching for his hand and enthusiastically shaking it before it got too cold. “Do you remember me? Oh you might not, but I was here for your birthday ceremony eighteen years ago!”

“Oh…” Minseok nods, and tries smiling at the tall man.

“Hello Chanyeol,” Elsa says curtly. “How is your father?”

“Queen Elsa,” Chanyeol bows to the floor, his handsome white robes brushing the polished tiles. “Thank you,” he smiles brightly upon allowed to rise. Minseok felt both stunned and creeped out by his wide show of teeth. His teeth were so perfectly white, he thinks he might be blinded if light was to reflect directly off.  “And my father’s great!”

They talk about this and that, with mostly Minseok’s father doing the conversing, until they were approached by another young man.

“Queen Elsa,” the man, even taller than Chanyeol, gives her a deep bow, though not as nearly as low as Chanyeol—Minseok thinks that maybe it’ll be difficult for him to rise again, with his alarmingly tall height, towering over Minseok and Elsa.

Jack, however, smiled, less intimidated by his height. “Kris! How lovely to see you!”

Minseok’s plan wasn’t working.

Fifteen minutes into the night and Elsa’s death grip on his elbow hasn’t gone.

He scowled—too many faces, too many weird people and too many fake smiles and kind-heartedness.

Just when he was just about done with being dragged around, yet another voice interrupts his train of thought, capturing Elsa’s attention, leaving Jack to talk to the General of some distant country alone about the shipping and purchase of stallions.

“Queen Elsa,”

“Rapunzel… Eugene.” Minseok glances sideways at his mother. Her voice was stiff, and cold, as if the place wasn’t cold enough.

On second look at the guests, he dips his head in recognition.

Rapunzel had short, chin length hair, and almost alarmingly large brilliantly green eyes. Her lips were slightly upturned in almost an uncertain smile, while her partner looked almost indifferent. Eugene was tall, and had the same dark brown hair Rapunzel had, handsomely sculpted face rimmed with a thin, almost invisible layer of facial hair. His hair was glossy with gel, smoothed back, though Minseok could almost see his strands struggling, and without doubt, his hair would break free of the glossy gel.

Although Eugene was dressed up and Rapunzel had short hair, it didn’t keep Minseok from recognising them from a photo he had taken a glimpse of on his mother’s desk. He glances towards her yet again.

“And this must be Minseok!” Rapunzel turned to him excitedly.

“Er… yes.”

“Hello Minseok!” Rapunzel smiled warmly. “Oh he looks about the same age as our son… Eighteen, right? Eugene, speaking of him, where is he?”

For a brief, terrifying moment, Minseok had a bad feeling they would introduce their son… which meant friends, which meant socialising which meant talking which—

“I let him wander around.”

And Rapunzel seemed to have then let it pass.

Not even a minute later, Jack calls Elsa over, and she hurriedly ends her one-sided conversation with the two, mainly Rapunzel chattering on and on, and whisks Minseok away from them.

“Minseok-ah, don’t affiliate yourself too much with that family—not Rapunzel, not Eugene, and certainly not their boy.”

But before Minseok could even ask who their son was, Elsa lets go of his arm and turns to face him.

“Now off you go, go talk to some people, hang out with Luhan or something—I’ll just go talk to some people with your father.”

And all thought of the strange family left his mind—this was his escape, presented right infront of him.

Happiness.

Minseok nodded, gently shooing her away, confirming to her that he’ll be fine, and makes his own way to the edge of the ballroom, shield in darkness, and leaning against a wall next to a heavy set of emerald curtains.

And it was then that he finally sees everything happening in the room.

There were people dancing, waltzing to the violin and cello pieces, in the middle of the dance floor. Hanging around the edges, like himself, were people walking around with their glasses of wine and champagne, their maids and butlers walking around and offering seconds.

There in the far side of the hall was a giant table laid with plates and plates of food, adorned with the occasional candle.

Minseok was reaching out to take a glass of champagne when offered by a passing butler when someone snatches it out of his hands.

“Aren’t you a bit young to be drinking?”

Minseok turns to look at him, wide eyed. His words die in his throat, running his eyes over the man.

He was dressed in a neat all black, suit pressed to perfection, jet-black hair messily swept to the side, revealing a slight bit of his forehead. His thin lips played in a mischievous, suppressed grin, the corners curling up with his smirk. His eyes were glinting, and Minseok notes, a dazzling emerald in colour.

Looking down at his hand that held the glass he was about to take, he observes his fingers, not so long and delicate as Minseok’s, but rougher, and right index finger adorned with the silver glint of a ring.

“No,” he finally finds himself saying to the stranger. “I’m eighteen.”

“Hello Eighteen.” The stranger shoots back, grinning at Minseok’s appalling loss. “My name is Jongdae. How do you do?”

Minseok was at a rather poor loss of words, and his next sentence just sounded lame. “I-I’m f-fine…”

Jongdae takes a sip of the champagne—Minseok finds himself wishing he wouldn’t hold the glass stationary; he found the tinkling of the ring he was wearing against the glass ridiculously beautiful.

“How are you enjoying your party?”

“Fine.” He felt bad—he could notice Jongdae’s obvious approaches at conversation, but all he did was fire rudely short responses back. Short responses really make no contribution to conversation.

“Do you dance?”

Minseok glances at his parents talking to someone or rather, yet still shakes his head.

“Man you don’t seem to like talking much.”

Minseok, however, curved into a little smile. “Sorry.”

“No it’s alright. Perfectly fine for me, infact—because then I can talk all I want without you interrupting me.”

Minseok smiles, and true to his words, Jongdae launches into story after story, throwing in the occasional things he reads off books; he talks about himself, his hometown (somewhere much warmer than here, for a fact), space, science, magic, fairy tales….

Minseok just listened, occasionally sipping the juice he’d gotten instead of alcohol. Jongdae didn’t talk too fast, at a really comfortable, casual conversational manner—which Minseok would admit that he liked.

He doesn’t like it when people talk too much at once, but Jongdae spoke at such an easy pace with sufficient pauses to make way for a new tale that it doesn’t even feel like Jongdae’s doing all that much talking.

“There was a time, my father told me, that he stole the Royal’s crown.” He was saying as they moved along the edge of the ballroom to grab some snacks.

Minseok’s jaw drops open. “No way.” If Elsa had something so precious stolen, she might call on Marshmallow again. Minseok shudders thinking about it.

“Oh yes he did,” Jongdae chortled.

One other thing Minseok learned about him, other than his crazed daring and humour and not-so-surprising brilliance with the girls, was that he had the most beautiful laugh. It literally bubbled right out of his throat and Minseok just thinks he’d have the best song if he were a bird.

“So then what happened?” Minseok asked, returning to the edge of the crowd, munching on a few warm pastries.

Jongdae was in the middle of telling his long-winded story of how then his father met his mother when Luhan came bounding up to him.

“Minseok!”

“Oh—hey Luhan,” he had smiled broadly, turning around to look at him.

Luhan said something about helping him set up fireworks or something up on the roof, and took one of his hands, dragging him away.

“Wait—sorry, Jongdae—”

“No it’s fine,” Jongdae waved, smiling, though Minseok doesn’t pick up the faded light in his eyes. “We were meant to be going home soon.”

“But the party was meant to last until midnight.” Minseok says quietly, secretly hoping this wouldn’t be the last time he’d see Jongdae. The boy was utterly fascinating.

“We live too far.” Jongdae says with a scowl.

As Luhan drags him away again, he looks back one last time, and shouts a farewell. “Bye, Jongdae!”

He doesn’t get to hear Jongdae’s goodbye as Luhan hauls him out the ballroom and the doors shut behind them.

Jongdae just feels really rejected.

“Oh well,” he tells himself. “It’s nothing,” he continues to mumble to himself, sipping and eventually downing a glass of red wine this time.

He saw the way the other boy held the blonde’s hand, and something uninvited bubbles up in his chest. He takes another long shot, attempting to constrain whatever it was, trying to swallow it back down. But instead, the gloomy, bitter feeling continues to lurk down in the pit of his stomach.

The blonde boy had caught his attention from halfway across the hall, and for some crazy, crazy reason that he knew none of, he just really wanted to leave an impression. Maybe because he was the young prince, son of Elsa and Jack Frost, but in other words, he wanted to impress. He could swear there was nothing more to it.

He takes a look at the clock. Ten.

Minseok had been dragged off… so no point in staying, right?

Jongdae takes a sweeping glance around the ballroom, and suddenly feels a strong unwilling to socialise. Maybe he really should leave.

Minseok didn’t even know if Jongdae knew of his name.

What if Jongdae didn’t know he was the prince of Arendelle?

He smiles to himself, following Luhan up to the tower. That would be better.

That would be great.

Upon wrestling the large wooden doors open, Luhan throws them open wider, and cold wind smacks Minseok right in the face. But he smiles, and raises a hand, a mini snowstorm brewing in the centre of his palm, miniature snowflakes swirling crazily around in the wind.

Luhan, however, shivered uncontrollably despite his overload of clothing.

Suddenly, Minseok remembers; he had a look at the invitation himself, and it had specified warm clothing. All the guests were dressed extremely warmly… but one.

Suddenly, as if his attention was drawn to him no matter he was, Minseok looked down into the gloom of the courtyard, and squints.

And if he squinted really, really hard, he could make out a familiar figure dressed in silky all black, with two others that too looked familiar…

And indeed, in comparison to whom Minseok could only guess to be his parents, Jongdae was wearing so little… yet he seemed so unaffected by the cold in the palace. And even out here in the open air, with particularly biting winds tonight, Luhan huddling in his coats next to him, if Jongdae was cold he didn’t show it. He walked with his hands by his side, posture firm and back straightened, not at all hunched from the cold.

The weather, Minseok also notes, had turned foul the moment he stepped out of the hall, the winds strong and icy, though ineffective to him.

He takes a last look down at the fading shadows of three people before they were swallowed by the darkness upon walking out of the light the palace shed on them.

He felt really sorry for Jongdae, having to travel back in such horrid weather.

❄

Happy First Day of Christmas

❄