AN: this time my lame music recommendation iiiisss... this beautiful classic ghibli soundtrack <3

The water was flowing idly under the boat, creating little waves behind it. It was a familiar sight, the sun showering his body with warmth and light and the wind gently blowing in his hair, awaking in him a drossiness he had been carrying for days now.

Kyungsoo was rowing, his thin body bending over his waist to keep the little boat going, but there was no hurry. When they finally reached a point far enough from the shore, the raven boy picked up the oars, placing them parallel to his legs, and lifted his gaze to meet Jongin.

He was not simply looking at him, he was devouring him with his eyes, not missing a single detail: the little moles on his neck, the glow on his collar bones peeking from his shirt, the crease on his forehead in a mute question… the was something too intimate about that. Never even his mother had looked at him that way, but that was probably not a good example.

“You’re very quiet” said Kyungsoo, looking at him with a smile.

Jongin wanted answers, he really did, but that meant breaking that beautiful unknown they had going on and he wasn’t ready to put himself up to emotional suicide yet. So he just lightly shook his head, adverting his eyes onto his old shoes.

“I just don’t have much to talk about today”

Kyungsoo stretched his arms over his head, yawning, his hair falling all over the place as he arched his spine backwards.

“Silence’s comfortable too. Weirdly enough, you’re one of those people who make you feel like you don’t have to talk to make yourself understood.” A silent chuckle escaped his lips “Sorry, this probably doesn’t make any sense”

“It does!” Jongin shouted, before covering his mouth with his hands “Ehmm… I meant that I get what you are saying and… you too. I feel comfortable with you too even if we don’t talk”

The raven boy seemed amused with his reply, happily nodding through his ivory locks, and Jongin just felt like melting.

Poor my heart, hang in there.

Beautiful minutes stretched themselves between the two, leaving behind a trail of sleepiness. When Jongin closed his eyelids the first time the sun was still up in the sky, when he opened them the clouds were caramelized in orange and everything had changed its sense in rotation. with a shiver down his spine, he realized there was something tangled in his hair, something that really resembled… fingers.

At one point during his sleeping he must’ve had fallen onto the boat’s rail and Kyungsoo had carefully placed his face on his lap so that he couldn’t hurt himself. His hand was drawing little soothing circles onto his scalp down to his nape, much like a mother’s caress, making Jongin want to fall asleep again just to prolongue the moment a little bit more.

Erratic words were crawling at the borders of his lips, searching a way to come alive and make themselves heard, but he relentlessly pushed them back in his throat.

He knew what was happening, of course he knew, but voicing out loud meant making it real, making it tangible and describable. If he said those magical words, people could reply back, they could shoot their opinion at him like bullets, craving for blood and tears, and Jongin knew he was not strong enough.

Nevertheless, he was in love.

He was in love with that boy with marvel eyes that was now singing for him, his voice reverberating through the air in words that could have only been the angel’s language. He was in love and it was crushing him.

He needed something, anything, to make a step forward, so he just waited for Kyungsoo to be finished and suddenly bolted upwards, making him almost fall from his seat.

“Kyungsoo, will you come to the Lanterns Festival with me?”

***

The Lanterns Festival, despite its name, wasn’t an actual festival. People dressed in traditional clothes while walking from their houses to the temple with handmade paper lanterns in their hands. It all turned into a big muster of little lights in the dark, making them look like a swarm of fireflies sifting in the dark.

Jongin remembered dressing up with his aunt and looking at her preparing their lantern all the week before so that they could take their light up to the temple were candy apples and little fun games awaited them. Chara-san had dusted off one of her old husband’s traditional dresses dark blue with a white daffodils print, but it was a little too large for him, leaving his neck bare to the sight, the silver necklace glinting against his tanned skin. It had been ages since he had given himself a proper look in the mirror, not because he didn’t like his body, but because he had never had the desire to look good for anybody else.

How Kyungsoo perceived him, how he looked when he laughed and smiled, he wanted to know. What did he saw in him the first time they had met, what had changed since then…?

And that’s how he ended up spending a good twenty minutes in front of the mirror, nervously combing his hair with his fingers, resulting in him being late.

With his paper lantern carefully protected by his crossed arms, he ran up the road to the place he had told Kyungsoo to wait for him. panting heavily, he was just about to blindly apologize to the dark figure before him for being late but he had to stop and take a moment to catch his breath: Kyungsoo had combed his hair back, showing up his pale forehead and his strong eyebrows that just made his eyes look even darker, everything wrapped up in a black dress with red carps swimming in the fabric, lighting up his body like a fire.

“You look amazing”

The raven boy looked at him amused and grinned widely.

“You’re not too shabby yourself. Mind if I light up the lantern?”

Jongin mindlessly nodded. The only thing occupying his thought was how to get to step two of his masterly crafted plan:

1. Ask Kyungsoo out at the festival
2. Talk about the rumors
3. Realizing it was all a big misunderstanding
4. Kissing him until the next morning

Okay, maybe he had added point four just for the sake of his fantasy, but he blamed it on the raven boy and his ridiculous mysterious charm.

During the walk they talked about nothing, little funny stories about childhood and prospects for the future. It was such a domestic view: begin surrounded by laughing and screaming kids, all with their lantern, and their parents silently following from meters away, just to make them have fun together. The stars were starting to appear in the sky above them, just behind the hidden clouds and suddenly the streetlights , flooding everything in their artificial light.

Jongin felt airheaded, not watching his step nor really thinking about keeping the flame in his lantern alive. In his head something kept on screaming for him to just let his hand tangle with Kyungsoo’s tiny one, keeping his blue fingertips warm.

“Oh… sorry, I still haven’t thanked you for inviting me here today. If it wasn’t for you, I’d sulking in my room staring at the ceiling”

Kyungsoo turned to him, the soft glint of gratitude in his eyes.

“I just thought you could have fun. I remember I waited for this day all year around, so that I could gorge on candy apples and get my future ridden by the old lady in the tent. I was a really naive kid”

Kyungsoo just chuckled at the thought of tiny Jongin being all excited in his dress, whining to his aunt for them to go.

“You must have been a really cute kid”

“Actually, I was an obnoxious child: always running around with my dog and never listening to my parents or my teachers. I could have been a really bright student but I preferred exploring the city, much to parents’ worry, or reading in very isolated places, like the city’s dumpster or here in a secret nook at the beach. I was a never-ending nightmare for adults”

As Jongin was talking, eyes fixed on the ground, he didn’t notice five cold fingers getting close to his body and shyly sliding between his own, squeezing them lightly.

“Still cute”

That was it, Jongin thought, this is how I am going to die.

Well, at least it would have been a really happy death.

***

Jongin passed the paper lantern to Kyungsoo, signing him to place it next to all the others at the base of the Monk’s statue. It was like an ocean of colorful flames, dancing in the wind that managed to slip past the paper borders.

Kyungsoo looked in absolute bliss as their lantern fitted with all the others, a tiny soldier in that fragile army.

“I’ve never done anything like this back in my hometown. It’s beautiful”

After that, Jongin decided to make him try every type of candy and treat they were having outside the temple: candy apples, gyeongju bread, kkultarae, honey and cinnamon biscuits… they ate for a whole regiment, and when they finally let themselves rest on one of the benches, they felt pleasantly full and happy.

“I’ve definitely never eaten this much sweets in my life. My mother would kill me if she knew”

Jongin blew a lock of hair from his eyes, looking satisfied at his companion.

“Then don’t tell her. As far as she knows, we only ate those terribly healthy salted prunes that only the ajummas like”

“Agreed”

They were still hand in hand, Jongin jolting at their every sudden movement. If felt like inflating a rubber balloon: it could stretch to a very big size, but it was destined to blow up. The young dancer closed his eyes for a second and just enjoyed the feeling of his cold fingertips brushing on the back of his palm, tracing his faint veins and bones.

It was a perfect moment: silence enveloping them like a blanket, their eyes closed and their heart warm in the cool night. Jongin was on the verge of asking Kyungsoo that terrible question, the one that had been stuck in his throat for too much time, but the universe wasn’t done with his lifelong bad luck just yet.

“Hey guys, what are you doing?”

A voice, Jongin knew that voice and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Soojung. I could ask you the same thing”

Kyungsoo instantly retreated his hand, lowering his head and shutting his thoughts to the world. The girl and her following of female friends seemed a little too content for his liking, so Jongin took the matter in his hand and stood up, shielding the raven boy with his body. Under Kyungsoo’s dark bangs, two terrified eyes were glued to the floor, hands shaking inside the long sleeves.

“Do you want something?” Jongin questioned, tilting an eyebrow.

Soojung smirked at her friends with a giggle that just sounded ominous in Jongin’s ears.

“We were just passing by. Why don’t you came with us? We can all get our future predictions together” the girl lowered her back so that she could stand at the same height of Kyungsoo “You’ll came too, right?”

The raven boy finally lifted his face, looking at Soojung with wide eyes. Jongin’s stomach twisted on itself at the sight: there was nothing but pure panic in his expression, carved in his every furrow. They were inside and he was above, parallel to perpendicular, two worlds completely apart if not when linked by cruelty.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes. Come on, let’s go”

It felt surreal; standing in the middle of the happy and smiling kids, the two of them were sitting at the wooden table near the tree of wishes, writing on their piece of paper what they expected from their future while the girls were hanging theirs from its branches.

Everything was going so well, were had he gone wrong?

Jongin looked at his wish, scribbled in his wobbly calligraphy:

In the next future I’d want a happy and healthy body.

It could look like a small request from someone else’s perspective, but for him it was the biggest thing he could ask for. With a gentle tug, he glued his paper to one of the highest tree branches, so that nobody could tear it off.

While Soojung was trying to get his attention into whatever conversation she was having with her friends, Jongin kept staring at Kyungsoo: it was clear how much he was uncomfortable, clutching his paper so hard it was beginning to form wrinkles on the edges.

Soojung followed his gaze and pursued her lips in a grimace, walking up to the raven boy and snatching his wish from his hands.

“Let us see what Kyungsoo wishes for… I wish for a normal life everyday” the girl started laughing, immediately followed by her friends “Oh God! What is this kind of lame request? A Normal life every day, what kind of looser would have a stupid wish?”

Jongin was sure if eyes could kill, Soojung would have been covered in blood on the floor by now. Why was this happening in the first place? Why were they being so cruel? Just because they could? There was all this raw powers in humans’ hands, the power to craft beautiful things and to evolve in better versions of themselves, but that was how they were using it.

Butterflies left rotting in their cocoon.

And yet, Kyungsoo didn’t say a single word. Reaching for his paper and seizing it violently back in his possession, he just tilted his head to the side, a slow and horrible grin creeping on his face.

“You know” he said “I think I finally got you figured it out: you’re one of those people who looks just like they are”

With this last words cutting through the silence of the night, Kyungsoo picked up his belongings and started his descent back to the main road.

Parallel to perpendicular.

Those two prospections where better left on their side of the universe.

***

Jongin found Kyungsoo sitting on the side of his boat, near the shore. Blue feet in the water, ink eyes behind the tears.

Gently taking the dancer’s hand into his, Kyungsoo pressed his forehead on their back, muffling the sobs and the cries.

“Stay here please. I don’t think I’ll be able to stand after this”

And so Jongin stood, minute after minute after hour. Until the morning sunlight found them asleep, nestling onto one another’s shoulder.

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Ah! It feels so good to have my laptop back! I swear in my first draft Soojung was a lot less y but I just had to create a character that could give me a reason to say that phrase "I wish for a normal life everyday", which, if you didn't know, is one of the most important quotes from the movie I'm basing this fic on.

The time for answers is coming up guys ^__^

PS: since I'm soft and Kaisoo day is approaching I've started a little experiment with a oneshot "Primroses for first love, Heathers for good luck" that I'll be updating day by day so it can be like a little present for their birthday (At least I hope. my lazy is being very lazy these days) so if you want to check that out, it'd be very nice.

As always, don't forget to let me know if you liked the new chapter and if you have critics. I'm open for anything ^__^