Do you believe in fate?

No. The future is unpredictable.

But what if a prediction were to become true? Would it be fate then?

“You know, now that I think about it, this may be the first time in five hundred years I’ve ever wanted to kill you myself.” Jinyoung mumbles groggily from the passenger seat.

Mark gives him a quick side glance, his slouched frame lined by the dimly lit sky above the highway. It’s nearly five in the morning, the sun still a fumbling infant crawling out from behind the clouds, tickling the sky in colours of soft orange and red.

“Can you do it after we’re done?” Mark jokes, leisurely giving the wheel a turn, changing lanes.

“Where are we going anyway?” Jinyoung retorts, giving the landscape of empty fields and wired fences are a blanched look.

“I promised you we’d go to the beach, didn’t I?”

Jinyoung raises an eyebrow and spares a glance to Mark’s direction, “Is this really a time to go on a trip to the beach?”

“When’s going to be a good time then?” Mark throws back. “Next life or the one after that?”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“That’s what I’m hearing though.” Mark huffs, his thumb rubbing against the wheel. “If there’s really nothing we can do, we can live, can’t we? Let’s just stop thinking about the past for just a day, Jinyoung. Just one day.”

Jinyoung gives Mark a long stare. “Alright, Professor.” He says, his voice flat.

This wasn’t how it was meant to go, Mark thinks, his grip on the wheel growing tighter. The two of them had been locked up in Inseok’s house since Youngjae had come and gone, leaving behind havoc in his steps. Seemingly, Jinyoung has decided to reside in himself, and in a sense, he has changed with the new income of memories. Mark, as usual, is unsure of what to make of it all.

Pondering upon heavy thoughts however, is only an option for so long. The past cannot be changed but Mark refuses to believe the future is as set in stone. That being said, he knew a break was due. Hoping a change of pace, a change of environment would do it, Mark woke up in the middle of the night and packed a bag, dragging Jinyoung out of the bed at four in the morning.

They drive in silence for an hour, Mark offering glances now and again in Jinyoung’s direction. Jinyoung falls back asleep at one point, his head leaning against the window, random stray hairs sticking up messily. He’s slugged himself in one of Mark’s hoody, grabbed out of Mark’s bag seeing as Jinyoung didn’t have much at Inseok’s to begin with.

He looks small.

Mark sighs to himself as he turns into the next intersection. After an expanse of small trees cluttered together, the landscape gives way to the sea. Clear, blue waters spread out into the horizon, met with similar clear, blue skies, and the sun scatters itself upon the waves in crystals.

By instinct, Mark thinks home whenever he sees the sea. Maybe because the constant moving meant a brick house or an apartment never really felt like he was returning to comfort, but the sea was always there, no matter where he went.

Optimism is an option again when Mark catches sight of the coast. The beach here isn’t cluttered with people despite the warm weather, mostly because of the ragged rocks that spotted the beach. This was a diving area, and a prime fishing spot where small boats come and go on the daily. Mark knew that meant it was a less of a holiday destination and decided it was the best place for two people that wanted peace and quiet.

“We’re here?” Jinyoung groggily mutters, his eyes slitted thinly as he peers out the window. “Why am I not surprised to see the sea?” He half-smiles as he gives Mark a look over his shoulder.

“Well that kind of , I was hoping to surprise you,” Mark grumbles as he turns deeper into the coastal town. The houses here are tightly knitted together and small, faded white paint layered upon old hunched houses.

“You seem like a beach boy,” Jinyoung says with a hint of skepticism.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mark laughs, peering from the road to Jinyoung and back with a little smile of his own. Jinyoung just shrugs in response and Mark continues the drive to their hostel. Finding the place was easier than expected, but then again it was one of the only two places to grab a room in the town.

“Did you book a room?” Jinyoung asks curiously as they make their way out of the car. Mark parked just at the corner of the small car park. Well, it was called a car park but it looked more like a big piece of rubble ground with the sign ‘parking’ at the entrance.

“Yup, called them before we left.” Mark says as he throws his rucksack over his shoulder and shuts the back door of the car. He gives the keys a press and with one blink of their lights, the car locks.

“Stop bothering people so early in the morning.” Jinyoung grumbles as the two of them make their way to the small building ahead.

“Unlike you, Jinyoung, these people start their day when the sun rises, probably even before.” Mark says.

“It’s inhuman.”

“We used to do it all the time too.” Mark snorts.

Jinyoung raises an eyebrow up at him, “We?”

Mark bites his tongue. “I mean people, back then and stuff.” He mumbles as he pushes through the front door of the small hostel.

Mark makes his way over to the small reception desk. There’s a young man sitting down just before a computer screen, he’s got flat black hair swept neatly over his eyebrows and a pretty and chiselled face. “How can I help you?”

“I booked a room for two under Mark Tuan?” He doesn’t even finish what he’s saying before the receptionist is swinging out a pair of keys to him.

“First floor, room fifty eight. The stairs are to your right.” The receptionist says with disinterest. He’s not even looking at Mark as he grabs the keys from him and shrinks back.

“You booked one room?” Jinyoung mutters from beside Mark as they make their way towards the stairwell.

“Teenagers really scare me.” Mark grimaces as he stuffs the keys into his pockets and makes his way through the double doors. Flights of staircases spiral upwards and it almost looks endless despite the small size of the building. Mark’s about to take the first step up before Jinyoung pulls at his elbow.

“You booked just one room?” Jinyoung says it like he was reminding Mark of something he’d forgotten.

“Yes?” Mark replies, blinking.

“Were there no more rooms or…?” Jinyoung mutters, confused. He’s loosened his grip on Mark’s elbow and Mark watches his hand as it aimlessly drifts back down to his side.

“No, there was. Why? Did you want separate rooms?” Mark asks, silently amused as he watches Jinyoung’s face contort, a pout forming at his lips.

“No, don’t worry about it.” He mutters finally before the two of them make their way up a flight of stairs. Room fifty eight is just down a long hallway, with several doors marching up in numbers of two. Mark pauses just as he faces off with their room door, the dull metal of the door numbers stare at him flatly. He hadn’t really thought about it when he booked a single room for the two of them, since they had slept in the same bed before. Mark, however, wonders if he’d been too careless. With the way Jinyoung is grinding his teeth from behind him, the tension between them was practically crushing out the air.

Silent pressure finally pushes Mark to slot the key in the door and open it with a little more force than needed. Mark practically throws himself into the room and then stops abruptly when confronted with the double bed. Okay, so he really didn’t think this through.

Jinyoung slides past him, curiously peering into the room. With horror, Mark watches as his face drops from a frown into a full blown scowl. He didn’t think the ends of Jinyoung’s lips could droop any lower.

“I’m sorry.” Mark blurts out, regretting it the second it comes out of his mouth.

Jinyoung just pushes his way further into the room, chucking his small backpack onto the end of the bed. Mark watches him warily as he makes his way to the other end of the room, reaching out towards the curtains that covered up the doors to the balcony. With a spread of his hands, he opens up the view to the sea. Calm waters settle at the coast. From here, they could see the cliffs bordering the beaches and the jagged rocks speckled across the waters.

“What are you sorry about exactly… Professor?” Jinyoung retorts finally, his back to Mark.

Mark’s jaw comes loose as he ponders for a response. He isn’t exactly sure what he is sorry about, but he couldn’t brush off the feeling he’d done something wrong.

“I don’t know… you just seem upset with something. Is it because I got one room? And… one bed? I’m sorry, I didn’t think about it much when I called them this morning, I was kind of half asleep.” Mark rabbles, his hand clawing at the back of his neck, tugging at the short hairs.

Jinyoung’s shoulders rise and drop with a sigh and when he turns back to Mark, he’s lost the scowl, and has replaced with a thin line. “You didn’t think about it? Really?” Jinyoung asks with a small voice sounding somewhere between hurt and tired.

“I-” Mark falters, his eyebrows knitting tightly together. “I don’t understand.”

“Doesn’t it make you nervous? To be in the same room as me? To be alone with me? Am I-” Jinyoung in a breath. “Am I the only one that feels like this?”

“Jinyoung-” Mark calls out but Jinyoung’s already cutting his way through the room again.

“Nevermind, Professor. I’ll be at the beach, I just want to be alone for a bit.” Jinyoung says roughly, his voice dropping with his head as he curtly leaves the room.

Mark stands where he is, feeling lost. He looks up at the room around him, a small boxed room with barely any foot space around the bed. It was tight and suffocating, volumising the thoughts running around his head. Nervous? He looks down at his hands to find a slight tremor in them. How could he have time to feel nervous around Jinyoung when time felt like it was slipping away? What was the point when the end could come hurtling at them in the next second? Jinyoung could slip away any second and the thought was enough to numb every other feeling that swirled inside Mark.

Maybe that is the point.

Mark blinks and looks down at his hands fast, inspecting his fingers.

Maybe you have been focusing too much on the future as I have been focusing on the past, that we have not considered the present.

“The present?” Mark plays with the words on his tongue, as if to test them out. The present where Jinyoung has left to roam the beach with assumptions twisting around in him, the present where Mark is left with the silence and the view of the sea. Is this how regret is made?

Mark quickly chucks his rucksack onto the bed, the body hitting Jinyoung’s bag with a thud, and then turns to leave the room. He pauses, just in the opening of the door, giving the room a quick once over, where the sea is like a painting come to life in the frame of the glass doors. Mark exhales heavily as he leaves, shutting the door softly behind him.

There’s more wind by the coast than expected. Even though the sun is high, blistering heat mixes in with the cool sea air, the warm wind running itself through Mark’s hair. There aren’t a lot of people on the beach, a few families are scattered across the sand, settled upon blankets and cuddling underneath parasols. There’s several other people geared up in diving suits, oxygen tanks strapped to their back at the end of the beach on a dock to what seems to be a designated area for divers.

Mark’s feet are bare to the sand, his flip flops digging up the ground with every step he takes. He’s peering across the expanse of the beach, searching for that dark hoodie and deep black hair. He thinks about giving Jinyoung’s phone a call, but chances are he wouldn’t pick up in the first place.

A sigh builds up in his chest but he swallows it down with the salty air. Mark always found it too easy to give in to giving up, to let things flow as they would, but he’d come to the realisation that leaving things to the flow only means an end in which he’d never actually tried. To try in a life that’ll disappear eventually, he’d always believed it to be pointless.

He finds Jinyoung just as his thoughts run across the layers of arguments he’d had with himself. To love now and to lose eventually, was it really worth it? Whether it was the curse that’d tear them apart or Youngjae himself, why should he give anyone or anything the chance to tear him apart?

Mark starts to stride across the beach, the waves of the sea barely tickling at the soles of his feet. Jinyoung has his hands stuffed into Mark’s hooded jumper, his hair dancing in the wind exposes the sullen look on his face.

To love and to lose.

To love and be happy.

Even for a short amount of time?

Even for the shortest amount of time.

Even though the pain will last forever?

Pain is inevitable, love is a miracle.

Mark in a deep breath just as he tugs on Jinyoung’s arm. He swivels him around, and forces Jinyoung to face him. He stumbles a bit, his heels digging into the sand and he leans awkwardly into Mark’s hand, a look of surprise on his face. He didn’t expect me to come, is what Jinyoung’s face tells him. More than that, it tells him he doesn’t expect much from Mark at all.

“You followed me out here?” Jinyoung asks in a mumble, gaining back his balance and tugging himself out of Mark’s grip.

“Of course I would.” Mark retorts, a sting of annoyance has him clamping his hand down onto Jinyoung’s elbow. “Look, Jinyoung, I’m sorry for being so insensitive. I didn’t mean it.”

Jinyoung’s eyes drop from Mark’s and lands upon the ground between the two of them. “I know, Professor-”

“Stop!” Mark snaps, pulling Jinyoung by the arm. He looks up at the older man with wide eyes, clearly caught off guard by the sudden rise in his voice. “Just stop, okay? Stop calling me Professor like you’re trying to patronise me, you think I don’t catch the difference between when you call me Mark and when you call me Professor?”

Jinyoung growls and then tugs his arm out of Mark’s grip violently. “No, I don’t think you understand anything at all, Professor. Because it’s you that uses that title to put a space between us. You think I don’t notice it?”

Mark bites his lip in irritation. “Notice what, Jinyoung? What could-”

“The border you’ve put up between us since the first time you met me. Way before we knew who we were to each other, I knew things were different between us, I saw the way you looked at me. But you… you,” Jinyoung shook with what seems to be a bubble of frustration and anger that’d been slowly growing and was finally going to pop. He takes a deep breath, the fury still clear in the tightness of his voice. “I don’t know what you’re thinking at all. Is it pity, Mark? Do you feel you need to protect your student to such an extent you can’t reject me? Or is our connection chaining you down now?”

“Chaining me down.” Mark huffs exasperatedly, taking a step back to throw his hands in the air. “Chaining me down!? Are you kidding me Jinyoung? After all the things we’ve told each other, after everything we’ve been through, this is how my feelings have translated to you?”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? You don’t speak! Barrick’s been in your head for so long now, understanding you in and out, now you feel like that’s just the way to communicate? You always keep things to yourself, whether it was about him, about Turku, about Professor Choi, or about your feelings. I’m always kept in the dark, so don’t you dare snap at me for being patronising.” Jinyoung takes in a shaky, short breath, his fists balled up tight at his sides. “I fell in love with you way before I knew who you were. Then, I fell in love with you more and more every day, and yet I couldn’t help but feel you get further. Do you know how much I regret that day you kissed me in the car? I was so damn happy but at the same time I knew you were thinking of something else. I could see it in your expression, I could see guilt.”

Mark puts a shaking hand to Jinyoung’s shoulder, pressing his fingers into his muscles until he could see Jinyoung wince. “You’re right, okay. You’re right. I’ve never been good… at expressing myself. But the one thing you don’t understand is what it’s like to grow up and feel so out of your body, to feel so unattached to the people around you- to living itself. I was filled with so many memories, so much life. I was twenty at the age of twelve and I’d seen the world crumble. I’d seen death. I’d felt death. I’ve always thought there was no point in living if it was all going to end anyway.” Mark puts the other hand on Jinyoung’s shoulder, his grip now weaker as he gave himself up to the truth. “I was always one to think logically before emotionally. But with you... with you that started to change, and I didn’t like it, okay? I didn’t understand it and I shut it away. Even when I had to admit I had feelings for you, feelings for a student-”

“I’m not some minor-”

“I know! I know. But I’m six years older than you, I’m your teacher, and I’m meant to protect you so when I started to… fall for you, somehow I felt like I was the one putting you in danger. I was scared, Jinyoung, of how much this feeling could grow. I didn’t know at what point my need to protect you would turn into monopolization, I didn’t want it to become like that.” Mark let’s his hands drop from Jinyoung now, bringing his palms up to his face and rubbing harshly. “You know, Carl once told me that humans are built on emotions and that’s what destroys them too. Of all the things, I’d never forgotten that. Of all the things, it was what I was afraid of most.”

“So you shut your emotions away?” Jinyoung asks, voice so small the wind could have easily taken it with it.

“Yes, and when we became closer, I let myself get easily distracted with all the things going on. I guess I was afraid of what would happen if I let this feeling go any further only to lose you. I was afraid, Jinyoung, of turning-” Mark bites his tongue, but Barrick could hear his thoughts loud enough.

“Of turning out like Barrick?” Jinyoung sighs.

“Yes.” Mark roughly brushes his fingers through his hair and quickly turns to the sea. “He feels so much pain and regret, it’s numbing. It takes over him and it morphs and twists. It’s a feeling you can lose yourself in so easily.”

“I get that.” Jinyoung says and then goes to flop onto the ground beside Mark’s feet. He tucks his legs into his hoodie and curls into a ball, his chin propped upon his knees. Mark peers down at the top of his head and then follows him down, settling himself into the sand beside Jinyoung. “You know, since I remembered everything, I just keep thinking about Hiroshima. I didn’t feel as surprised to remember as I thought I’d be, as if I knew all this time, as if the feeling of that life had never really left. Does that make sense? I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Like the feeling of pain, you know it’ll hurt but you can’t remember the feeling exactly?”

“Exactly.” Jinyoung mutters, his finger tracing patterns in the sand. “I feel like Hakim was trying to protect me this whole time. The Jinn had locked itself away, it didn’t want to remember anything anymore and Hakim took advantage of that, but I guess there was only so long till the inevitable.”

“I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.” Mark swallows down the grief, but it’s already become evident on his face.

“What do you mean it’s your fault?”

Mark gives Jinyoung a quick look from the side before turning back too look at the sea. In the distance, grey clouds begin to swell. Mark wonders if it’ll rain later. “Youngjae… Professor Choi told me that he’d been trying to trigger your memories but nothing worked until I came, until we met. I’m sorry.”

Jinyoung is silent for what feels like too long for Mark. He tries to focus on the subtle sounds that surround him; the children laughing in the distance, the soft whistles of the wind, the splash of bodies hitting the water. Mark shivers, a cold sensation travels up his spine and there’s a dull ache in his chest.

“I see.” Jinyoung finally says. “I didn’t lie before, you know. I don’t regret remembering, Prof- Mark.”

“You don’t?” Mark asks, wondering himself if he does.

“No,” Jinyoung hums and closes his eyes. “There’s so much to see, there’s so much that no one will ever see again and I have it, all in here.” He smiles, giving his temple a little tap. “I have something so precious, how could I regret it?”

“Because it hurts, because it brings nothing but pain.” Mark mutters.

“There’s happiness in there though, and love. And in a world full of constant pain and suffering, those little moments- those tiny, tiny seconds of pure bliss are so much brighter.” Jinyoung exhales deeply, opening his eyes. “It’s easy to slip into those dark feelings, so easy. You know, there’s a life… I remember, a few lives after Hakim, where I lived in an orphanage in England. You were there too. In those early lives I used to hate seeing you, hated the fact you wouldn’t remember me, couldn’t remember me no matter how much I tried. I couldn’t stand seeing you around. I realised later it was only because I was lonely. I loved you and sometimes you loved me back, but I never thought it was real, because I remembered and you didn’t. That life though, that life especially, things were too… grey. Being an orphan was one, but we were both girls with no families, children with no future. If we were lucky we’d become servants, but in the end I knew we’d be separated. So selfishly I killed myself… I remember the River Thames being so dark that night. When I fell, I felt like I was falling into the universe.”

Jinyoung clenches his jaw, breathing thinly through the gaps of his teeth. “It was selfish because I knew that no matter what, you’d follow soon. I knew it didn’t matter because I’d wake up in a different life and I’d see you again. But you, you wouldn’t remember. You just had that one life, that one small life, and I left you in it and ultimately I killed you too. I swore after that, for all the lives that followed, I would protect you and stay with you till whatever was going to come and tear us apart. I’d make sure that no matter what I did, it wasn’t me that decided to leave.” Jinyoung’s been crying, but the tears have fallen silently and Mark turns to his soaked face to wipe them away with the back of his hand.

“Jinyoung... not everyone can be so strong. Being weak doesn’t mean you’re being selfish. To take your life, to not think about the others you leave behind, how deep in the darkness do you think someone has to be? You know it yourself. As much as you regret it now, there are some feelings you cannot burrow yourself out of.” Mark comforts, placing his palms to either side of Jinyoung’s cheeks, his skin cold from the tears.

Jinyoung leans into his palms with a slight tilt of his head and closes his eyes. “I want this to last forever but I know it can’t.”

“A moment of brightness in a world of darkness.” Mark whispers.

“To be remembered forever.” Jinyoung grins small, and Mark presses his lips to Jinyoung’s. The touch is light and soft, feelings of loss and love twisting between them. A kiss as light as air, as wistful and erratic as life.

A kiss made of the present.

They have seafood at the hostel’s restaurant. There’s a more relaxed air between them now and in the silence, a mutual understanding had come about. That Mark may need to take time to be able to show his emotions without feeling like he was cutting and opening up his insides. That the two of them now may need to focus more on the present, than a future that although seems bleak, has yet to happen.

Nothing is set in stone. Even a curse.

Things have changed and will continue to change. For a curse that has worked simultaneously for five hundred years, Mark and Jinyoung are proof that there is a way to shift it, or possibly even break it. That is a plan for another day however. For now, Mark just wants to grasp what he has.

“Remember you said you can see a desert sometimes?” Jinyoung asks out of the blue. They’re both sitting on the floor of their balcony, their legs dangling between the bars. It’s dark out now, the moon had swept up the sky and scattered the stars across the scape. The sea, like a warped mirror, drank in the darkness of the night and and let the stars swim in its waves.

Mark slips his ice lolly out from between his lips and looks down at the space between them where their hands are knotted together. “I did?” He replies, his memory vague.

“Yeah, at the cafe?”

“Ah… yeah, sorry, that day is still a bit of a blur to me. I don’t know what Youngjae did.” Mark says, looking back out onto the sea. The coast in front of them is cluttered with mismatched buildings, some made of wood and others made of brick, all small and a little slanted.

“Maybe trying to do something to your memories?”

“He made me remember some things but somehow I feel like that was just a side effect for whatever he was really trying to do. I don’t know, I don’t want to think about it.” Mark shakes his head and goes to bite a chunk of out of his ice lolly. “Anyway, what was that about the desert?”

Jinyoung watches him chew, and then blinks away in thought. “I don’t know I was just thinking about whether Barrick wasn’t the only one to slip in when you died. Maybe Sadiya did as well?” There’s a sound of hope in his voice and Mark has no idea of assessing whether the hope belongs to him or someone else.

“I don’t know, maybe? But the images only come in broken pieces. I don’t see anything but the sun and the sand.” Mark mumbles, staring down at the road just below them where a woman pushes a baby in a buggy. He thinks the child is looking up at them and wiggling its arms but it’s too dark to be sure.

“I see.” Jinyoung mumbles, and Mark turns to find him looking down too, staring at the baby. “Cute.” He half smiles and wiggles his finger down at the child. The baby giggles, as if in response, before his mother pushes him into the building next to their hostel. Jinyoung sighs heavily and leans forward, pressing his forehead between the bars in front of him.

“What are you thinking about?” Mark asks, inhaling the last of his ice lolly, nothing but the stick left in his hand.

“Thinking about how I don’t want to think about anything.” Jinyoung chuckles and then swings back to lie against the marble floor. “Oooo, it’s cold.” He wriggles on the spot and then tugs on Mark’s hand.

“It looks uncomfortable.” Mark deadpans and Jinyoung laughs.

“It is, join me.” He says with another tug and helplessly, Mark falls back. Above them is just another balcony.

“Well, that was anti-climatic.” Mark chokes whilst Jinyoung shakes from beside him in silent laughter.

“I bet you were expecting some great flood of stars or something.” Jinyoung wheezes. Mark rolls his eyes and gives him a slap on the thigh before sitting back up, grateful for the beach view still being where he left it.

“You don’t get to see them as much as we used to. Makes me feel like I should have appreciated the Turku nights more.” Mark says as he eyes what looks like a cliff hidden in darkness, at the edge of the beach, the outline looking like the open mouth of a dragon.

“Appreciating things once it’s gone is so typical.” Jinyoung snorts, pushing himself back up.

“It’s just like missing something you’ve lost.” Mark absentmindedly replies.

“Do you, you know… miss your family or something sometimes? I know you move around the place a lot.” Jinyoung takes a stab in the dark, his hand almost itching to move away from Mark’s as if he’s nervous.

Mark tightens his hand around Jinyoung’s and leans back to look up at the sky in the slot between the bars and the bottom of the balcony overhead. It didn’t end up raining. “I do and I don’t. I never got along with my mum, I think she sensed there was something different about me when I was growing up. She isn’t the emotional type either, now that I think about it. She didn’t know how to handle my constant mood swings and nightmares. My father was more kind about it, he kept more of an understanding distance.”

“Did you not have someone to comfort you? Growing up?” Jinyoung asks, almost cautiously.

“I did. My older sister was there, she was the only one I ever told about my memories. Even though it became something I refused to talk about as I grew up, she was always there.” Mark mumbles, realising now just how much he missed her.

“I didn’t know you have a sister…” Jinyoung mumbles under his breath.

“I have two, one older and one younger.”

“Ah…” Jinyoung nods.

“What about you? Do you have any siblings?”

“No… it’s just me. I’ve always been an only child.”

“Always?” Mark repeats.

Jinyoung has a distant look on his face, what is most likely memories flooding out the stars in his eyes. “Always.” He mutters, mostly to himself.

Mark looks away from him, somehow feeling like he needed a moment alone to his thoughts. He wonders if he’ll remember today, if he’ll remember this life at all when the next one comes. It’s a dark thought that sets off an anxious switch in his chest. Even though he remembers Barrick in this life, there is no guarantee things won’t return to how they were in the next.

He shuts the thoughts down immediately and takes a deep breath. Looking down at his hands, he lets the darkness play around with his mind, his fingertips dipping into the shadows like ink clinging to his skin.

“What are you thinking about?” Jinyoung asks, his voice rough.

Mark doesn’t look up at him, his eyes settled heavily into his palms. “How I don’t want to think about anything?” He says, and it earns him a short chuckle from Jinyoung.
Jinyoung gives Mark a quick look and scratches the top of his lip. “I know we said we wouldn’t talk about it but what are you planning to do once we get back?”

“What do you mean?”

Jinyoung makes a face, “I’m not an idiot. I know you haven’t given up on trying to break… whatever this is. What are you planning to do?”

“I’m going to talk to Youngjae.” Mark says. “See what he knows. I’m not sure but he’s been able to connect to his Jinn enough to use its powers or something.”

Jinyoung nods slowly, a thoughtful look on his face. “You know as much as he’s tortured me over the last few hundred years… I think if he wasn’t around, I’d really have lost it. All this inside my head, his presence was the only thing that made it reality.”

“Who was he… back then?” Mark asks.

“In the beginning?” Jinyoung ponders on his answer, his head tilted up to the sky. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me, I just assumed he was someone from the… city. Someone that wanted to revenge I suppose.”

Mark lets out a heavy sigh and leans forward, placing his forehead against the bars. The metal is cold against his skin, refreshing in the humid summer night. “If we could make all this stop… what would you want to do? How would you live after it all?” Mark asks looking down at the small street that’s currently desolate and quiet, the town seeming to have fallen asleep in the shadows.

“A family.” Jinyoung quickly replies.

Mark turns his head to the side, a little surprised. “What? Don’t you have one?”

“No, as in my own family.” Jinyoung says, his hands gripping the bars tightly. “I want a kid. I want to grow old with the person I love, and I want to die not having to think about how I’m going to suffer for the next few hundred years. Is that too much to ask?” He trails off, his head dipping as he tries to hide his face in his hair.

Mark instinctively reaches out for Jinyoung and brushes his fingers through his hair, his thumb tracing the end of his eyebrow, going across his temple. Jinyoung clears his throat and looks up at Mark sheepishly. “Is that too simple? A regular life?” He tries to ask lightly but there’s a crease between his eyebrows. His eyes are a deep black, with what little light there is around them, the moonlight barely illuminates his face.

A bittersweet feeling floods Mark as he looks at Jinyoung. A feeling stuck between love and helplessness. His hand glides through Jinyoung’s hair as he thinks about what kind of life that’d be, a regular life. He wasn’t exactly sure of what it’d be exactly but if it meant days like today then he’d take it in an instant.

Mark gives Jinyoung a half-smile and leans towards him, pressing his lips to his forehead. “I think it’s perfect.”