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Finally got off my lazy to write this lol

And feel free to listen to this song as you read this. It may just change your perspective of the world ^^

A/N: Of Ramblings, Explanations, and Clarifications

Oh god.

This fic was all over the place and I finally realized that you all would be going into the story without any idea of what was going on. So thank you to everyone that made it through this long oneshot and managed to get a story out of it haha.

The idea for this fic first came to me last summer, a few months after the Magical Realism in my English class. I didn't like reading the stories because I could never find the closure that I craved or really understand what or why things were happening, but I later realized that I was missing the author's point, and did some more research.

Though debatable, magical realism isn't quite the same as fantasy, but it can certainly be read as that way. It just won't make as much sense, though I guess the point of magical realism isn't to really make sense.

"Magical realism is not speculative and does not conduct thought experiments. Instead, it tells its stories from the perspective of people who live in our world and experience a different reality from the one we call objective... Magical realist fiction depicts the real world of people whose reality is different from ours. It's not a thought experiment. It's not speculation. Magical realism endeavors to show us the world through other eyes." x

Of course, I'm far from an expert on this, and this fic probably can't even be considered true magical realism, but I'm pretty satisfied with the overall result (except that damn rushed ending ;;).

Okay lame intro aside, let's get into the story itself.

Library!au characters: Junmyeon, Baekhyun, Minseok, Sehun, Yixing, Jongin, (Mei)tao

451!au characters: Luhan, Yifan, Kyungsoo

?: Chanyeol and Jongdae

In the library!au, Chanyeol lived one of those neglected younger sibling lives, where he could never compare to his "perfect" sister Yoora and thus never really felt loved in his household. Habits such as pyromania are classified as mental disorders and do not just hit out of the blue. Parent neglect can lead to neurological and pathological disorders and in the case of this story, Chanyeol became a pyromaniac at a pretty young age and gave into the impulses as a way to relieve the feeling of neglect he had felt throughout his childhood. Unfortunately, one of those incidents didn't end as he had expected and the fire spun out of control, taking Yoora's life.

I had struggled with building this past for Chanyeol in this world because for me, I wanted it to make sense. I had changed parts of the backstory several times and finally decided on this one thanks to the K-drama "It's Okay It's Love" (the one Kyungsoo was in; I didn't actually watch it but I did read the summary on dramabeans because the story seemed interesting and had one of my faves Lee Kwangsoo in it but I'm a lazy and I'm off topic again). I won't spoil details about the drama, but the idea of Chanyeol's guilt manifesting in his subconscious did come from there to a certain degree.

Like Baekhyun had been explaining to the others at the end of the fic, Chanyeol's acts of arson and "nightmares" are spawned from the guilt of believing himself to be his sister's cause of death. Through his unconscious, he continued his pyromania and came back with burnt clothes because he was trying to "punish" himself for his crime. What both kept him going yet also became part of his demise was Jongdae.

It should probably be self-explanatory about how they came together, but after serving the 20 hours, Chanyeol stayed at the library, unable to leave Jongdae's side and the idea of being able t