In the nights of summer, the air swarmed with fireflies, heavy and dense and warmly lit.

They flocked in the dells, or the boscage, swirls of light like twirling neon ferris wheels.

If you searched hard enough, you’d find them, with sufficient diligence and patience. It wasn’t the easiest task, filtering through the woods late at night, recounting steps and memorizing routes.

Some can take hours, and when dawn breaks out they return home, only to come back the next night in agonizing pursuit of treasures you’d best find by pure fortune. But determination never let anyone down, and these were always the type of people who unearth the fireflies with a sense of dire purpose.

For Mingyu, who has had nothing but his own sedulousness to accompany him on crucial examinations and important events, luck was never a good friend and often abandoned him in times most critical. In his earlier years of childhood, believing was an easy thing; you could catch a ladybug and pray for a soulmate, or witness the rare occurrence of a shooting star and beg for the reconciliation of disputed parents.

They were just superstitions: no harm done.

However, year after year passed for the child in brutal honesty. Reality was a stone set in place, a show for all to see and for Mingyu to swallow. Nothing was softer, sweeter, and the world took its toll on a small child.

If he found a four leaf clover, he’d hand it over to the ahjussi who slept on the streets at night on an old dirty mattress, claiming he had given a share of his prosperity to the man, therefore indicating the swift recovery from his harrowing situation.

If he saw a spider in the morning, on the wooden cabinet or his desk, he’d panic a little, fumble about, but eventually clasp his hands to wish for the girl next door to stop crying every night; for whatever reason she cried.

He would love to make friends with her, if not for the blasted old man, a little of a drunkard, who opened the door and shouted at Mingyu to get lost. (a/n if you see a spider in the morning, don’t kill it! it’s good luck)

He’d wish for the old widower living across to soon heal from ailing, or for his father to stop drinking. He’d wish for all the good things, solely because he believed he was a child with ample fortune to spare.

But as with tall tales, some wishes just don’t come true.

The old man without a home or money had a tumour in his lung, one far too large to remove or cancel. Money was something luck could never have brought him, nor the strength to live or recuperate. He sat on the mattress in cool spring and grinned at the boy who gifted him a four leaf clover, held it in his hand and took it to his demise.

The girl next door did stop crying, but he never managed to know why she looked down at the ground all the time like she was trying her best not to whimper, or why she had a massive patch of blue and black to the left of her neck. Several weeks later she moved, along with the god forsaken yelling that reverberated within the walls of the next house and her timely wailing at nightfall.

The old widower was blessed with a healthy body months later, but not a healthy mind. She clung to the solitude of the empty house like a servile lover, as if she felt her dead spouse’s presence in the acheronian corners or the fading white lights. Days after she took to measures to see her husband, the person that filled up the barrenness of the building, as she shut the windows tight and the gas.

His father stopped drinking, not because he wanted to, but because excessive alcohol consumption had ramifications of its own, like the excessive bubbling of acid in his stomach, eventually leading to gastric ulcers.

To Mingyu, it seemed to him that luck or magic was simply never enough.

And so for he, who time and time again watched the gradual collapse of hope built like bricks and debris, understood that people were mere chess pieces in society, discardable and replaceable. He became the conventional archetype of a flame gone awry, a child with hope who grew to lose it.

For Wonwoo, who depended on himself and a bit of fate to his successes, luck came and went as magic was supposed to, never copious and never scarce. He held onto it like a king held onto bars of gold, something that will in future augment in value and eventually benefit more.

He believed that things could be mended, that souls cross paths for a reason, that people live to change. Reality was no stranger, as well, as all children soon find that things like luck and destiny and magic don’t actually exist.

Wonwoo prided himself on being a meticulous researcher, one who inspected all sides to a decision before going with it. He heard of the typical bullied gay kid, a thesis glorified such that fewer actually care about the victim.

It will pass, after all.

He heard of the objection, the violence, the way people handled a person with the one wish to love whoever they wanted, and still he went with the decision to confess to Mingyu. For Wonwoo, who saw that society beat down whoever rose, his beliefs were on the winning end of the rope in a game of tug of war.

While reality shaped Mingyu’s character the way a potter melded ceramic ware, the belief that things could be greener someday structured Wonwoo’s.

Wonwoo had always loved geography. Loving was an understatement, in fact, for he had far too many books and papers on the subject one would think it was his profession. He once painted the ocean (in 2D format, of course) with all the zones labelled for Mingyu, and although he told Mingyu it took him three months, it actually took him six, if we included the research late at night after school.

His memory wasn’t the best, so he took note of places he wanted to revisit, especially particular areas in the woods. He walked round the outline of the forest, just the border, and he scrawled down objects that became the area’s mascot.

Like the many others who came fiercely with passion rather than luck, he scrutinised the areas one night, with a small torch and a map he drew himself, driven by ambition after Mingyu said something to him the other day in casual conversation.

“So, have you heard? That couples go out at night in the forest to find the fireflies?”

Wonwoo sat leaning against the wall, sipping from a milk carton, in uniform and wintry languor.

“Huh, aren’t they easy to find? They’re usually by the pond,” Mingyu replied, as equally listlessly.

“Apparently not, it seems. Some search for nights but don’t find anything.”

Mingyu nodded his head, staring blankly at a magazine Seungcheol passed to him in assembly, not really heeding his best friend’s words patently filled with motive.

Wonwoo said everything with a purpose. Nothing was ever just for the sake of breaking silence, especially when it was freezing outside and it was too rigid to move your lips.

“So…”

Mingyu rolled his eyes. Here it came.

“You want to go with me, when summer rolls around?”

Wonwoo had a sort of twinkle in his eyes when he became restless with exuberance, and it wasn’t hard to spot. Anybody could tell he was trying to hide it, monotonous voice and callous flipping of a book, but Mingyu saw it straight off and groaned internally.

“Wasn’t it for couples?”

Wonwoo eyed him with partial judgement. “I didn’t know you were such a narrow-minded jock.”

“Like, I know jocks are stupid, but-”

“Ugh, stop. I’m not a jock, I just play sports well.”

Wonwoo put down the milk carton on the floor and looked up at Mingyu, who sat at his own desk.

“C’mon, won’t it be fun? And if we actually find it, it’d be so cool, y’know, and magical-”

“Magical? What are you, a sappy fourteen-year-old?”

Wonwoo glared at Mingyu, who still paid more interest in the magazine than Wonwoo’s proposition.

“Yes, magical,” Wonwoo sighed, “like the saying that the birth of a firefly is the birth of hope and guidance, and they symbolize that anything is possible.”

Mingyu snorted. It was too cold out, and here Wonwoo was, talking gibberish about things he couldn’t be bothered about. “I have better things to do.”

Wonwoo narrowed his eyes at Mingyu, then proceeded to read off the book in his hands. “Fireflies represent the heart of a child, the guilelessness in human nature and freedom in the soul. They-”

“Uh-huh, so why don’t you get a girlfriend and go with her?” Mingyu deadpanned, finding nothing in Seungcheol’s magazine particularly compelling, hence giving in to conversing with Wonwoo.

“Why would I go with somebody I just met? I swear, sometimes you make no sense at all.”

“But it’s just a bunch of insects flying around, does it matter who you go with?”

“I suppose it mustn’t, if you’re so disinterested.”

Mingyu put the magazine down and sighed. Now he’s mad, idiot.

“Fine, whatever. But I don’t want to spend eight hours finding a cluster of insects, so do some research first.”

Wonwoo muttered a soft “jerk” but complied anyway, seeing as to how his best friend only ever tolerated such romantic things with his own girlfriend.

Wonwoo eventually found that luck was on his side, because even after the endless checking of the treaded tracks and if he had w