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The Realm of Xiah

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Yoochun is pretty sure he's a good person.

But when he was in middle school, he rented a crappy manga from the local library and hasn’t returned it since.

Granted, at the time, he believed that really crappy manga – and all of the bug-eyed, gloriously-endowed female characters in it – to be the absolute greatest man-made invention since microwavable dinners. And he was convinced that some lame corporate library didn’t need it more than him, a lonely hormonal teenager who enjoyed living vicariously through black-and-white cartoons. So yes, he most certainly took advantage of the fact that he was accidentally in possession of his brother’s library card, and permanently borrowed what would soon become his primary source of material (is that too much information? Sorry, Yoochun doesn’t care).

Like, he was just a thirteen year old kid. He knew the library, and all of its thousands of books, wouldn’t miss some painfully crappy manga that had a “turn to page 34” scribbled next to the table of contents, with the elegant phrase “succ my dicc” written on said page. It was frayed at the edges, lost some of the glossiness newer manga always seem to have, and some kid actually went through the entire book to color in the protagonist’s hair with a purple crayon – so Yoochun knew it probably had less than zero importance to anyone and everyone who has ever learned how to read. So keeping it well passed the thirty-day limit hurt absolutely no one (except maybe an oblivious Yoohwan, who still has to pay a yearly fee for a book he swears he’s never even heard of). No children were harmed, no buildings burned down, no elderly women robbed. It was just a ing so bad manga that even Yoochun stopped caring about it once he realized that anime was where the real action was at.

So that raises the question: did he really deserve to be sent to Hell over an unreturned library book? Really? Is that how low the standards are?

Yeah, okay. Yoochun isn’t the purest person out there. He’s had his fair share of dickhole-ish moments where even he, through all of his anger and pettiness, questioned whether his behavior was necessary. Like the time he got into a playful fight with his friend Hyunjoong during recess and then got mad when the guy unintentionally scuffed his sneakers. So alright, maybe Hyunjoong didn’t deserve to get punched square in the face, so hard that he nearly lost a tooth, just because of a careless mis-step. And maybe it was a bit on the “too much” side for Yoochun to then snatch Hyunjoong’s own shoes off before throwing them over the school yard fence. But dude, Yoochun’s sneakers were so ing cool and yeah, the muddy scuff would’ve disappeared after a good cleaning, but they were so cool, you don’t understand.

“You’re a piece of ,” Hyunjoong had said to him as they both sat idly in the nurse’s office. He had an ice pack smooshed against his face, cheeks numb and red as he glared daggers at Yoochun from the corners of his eyes. “I hope you go to Hell.”

They weren’t friends after that.

Which reminds Yoochun of the time when he dipped his cousin’s ponytails into a can of industrial paint and laughed at her when she cried. In hindsight, the moment was actually a lot funnier than he remembers, but neither Yoona or his mother seemed to think so. After that, Yoona had to get her hair chopped into a short and ugly bowl cut. And despite being five years younger than him and only ten at the time, she still had enough sass in her tiny body to screech for him to (you guessed it), “go to Hell, you rotten jerk!”

There was also the time when Yoochun decided to prank his mother on April Fool’s Day. They lived in America at the time, and since April 1st is a national holiday there that everyone is obligated to celebrate, Yoochun thought it would only be customary to do the same. When in Rome, and all that. And considering Yoochun occasionally lives by the saying “go big or go home,” it was only obvious that he would decide for his prank to be the most hilarious thing he could come up with.

“Mom, Yoohwan got hit by a bus!”

“What?” Yoochun remembers his mother looking as if she were seconds away from having a heart attack. She was holding a hand to her chest, eyes wide and already glassy, and Yoochun prattled on while dabbing his own (fake) tears away.

“Yeah, I saw it with my own two eyes!” he wailed. “Oh my god, all the blood – all the blood, mom! Oh, his poor little organs, good lordy. They were all over the street, painted the asphalt red, I tell you! Oh, you should’ve been there, mom! Guess I’m an only child again, boohoo...”

Yoochun only got the memo that his prank wasn’t as well-planned as he thought it would be when his mother started screaming like a banshee, scorning the ceiling for not taking Yoochun instead. Her usually pristine makeup was all over the place, snot and spit and tears making her face look so disgustingly moist that Yoochun couldn’t believe she wasn’t drowning in her own bodily fluids. She was pounding at her chest, crying this and that about her poor favorite son. And as offended as he was, Yoochun still managed to snap a picture of his mourning mother, hanging it up on his wall so he could commemorate the priceless day the woman nearly throttled him for making up such a “inhumane” (but so funny, right?) lie.

“Dude, I can’t believe you said that,” Yoohwan said hours after he walked into the house perfectly alive and with his organs in tact. Their mother had spent the entirety of the afternoon kissing his cheeks and hugging him and thanking the gods that he was safe, and Yoochun cackled at the mere sight of such frantic affection. All of the lipstick marks on Yoohwan’s stupefied face made him look ridiculous. Yoochun wished he could get a picture of that too.

“She was really hurt, you know,” Yoohwan continued as Yoochun merrilly began planning next year’s prank (something with stuffed hamster toys and a hot glue gun). And noticing that his brother wasn’t listening, Yoohwan thwacked him over the head and hissed, “burn in Hell, you .”

Looking back, Yoochun was actually called a lot of rude names by those around him. Yoohwan often called him every colorful word in the book. His mother sometimes whined that he was too much to handle and not worth all of the trouble. His roommate called his personality distasteful. When Yoochun tried to steal Han Jimin back from Yoohwan, she called him a greasy weirdo. His boring therapist called him a potential sociopath or whatever. And then there was all of his forgotten friends who all joked (?) that he would probably own real estate in Hell one day for how much of a terrible person he was.

But that’s all besides the point. A library book really shouldn’t be the deciding factor between a life in heavenly paradise and eternal damnation. Yoochun’s going to have to write an e-mail or something to somebody because this is just unfair.

It doesn’t help that he’s stuck here with a bunch of complete whackos. His left lung feels as if it’s about to collapse. His throat is drier than a desert. And the constricting (but somewhat comfy – okay, really comfy, who is he kidding) hold Yunho still has around him is making him feel more pathetic than he already is. He’s petting him too, making weird shooshing noises and rocking their bodies back and forth and wow, if this isn’t humiliating. Jaejoong is, as expected, howling up a storm about only god knows what. Changmin is threatening to slap him in the teeth if he doesn’t shut up right now.

And then there’s Satan. Watching all of them with a tilt of his head and his army of fish-monsters purring around him.

Oddly enough, the scene is so downright bizarre that it reminds Yoochun of a chapter in that one ty manga.

“Why did you bring us here, Shim? We have so many other safe houses, but you chose this hot cesspool?” Jaejoong barks angrily, flailing his arms around as if his wild gesticulating will somehow make the air less dense. He gives Satan a half-assed apologetic look, sniffing. “No offense. Love the new decor, by the way.”

Yoochun has enough oxygen to snort. Unfortunately, Yunho takes that as a sound of dying and proceeds to start sobbing about losing his little man so soon after meeting him, and Yoochun has to wordlessly calm the man down before he does something drastic. Like CPR...yikes. Yes, Yunho is most certainly stupidly handsome, but he’s also most certainly not Yoochun’s type (read: single). If Yoochun is going to get lip-to-lip resuscitation by anybody, it’d be someone like Lee Jehoon or maybe even that one guy from BTS. But...if Yunho were to ever dump Jaejoong’s flat , then well, Yoochun would certainly welcome him with open arms – absurd clinginess and all.

No one needs to know that bit of information though. Especially not the perpetually livid vampire who’s finally seemed to notice his boyfriend is not by his side. Spotting them almost instantly, Jaejoong makes a noise that sounds like straight-up hissing and flies over to where Yoochun is lowkey basking in Yunho’s incredible hug.

“Excuse me,” Jaejoong begins in a saccharine voice, “but if you don’t get your grubby little germ-infested human fingers off of my Yunho, I will gladly let you burn from the inside out in this lovely climate your weak body has yet to adapt to.”

“Wow,” Yoochun wheezes, “an entire sentence without a single swear. I didn’t know you had a vocabulary broad enough to—” The jibe gets lost in a bout of pained coughs and gasps and Yunho’s dramatic, “whatever you do, don’t follow the light, little man.”

Jaejoong raises his eyebrow in a smug look, as if to silently say try me , and Yoochun wishes he had the strength to give him another black eye. But alas, his entire body feels like fiery gelatin and he doubts Yunho would let him pummel his dumb boyfriend, no matter how much he deserves it.

“Oh, just give him the damned antidote, Kim,” Changmin demands as he makes his way over to the three of them. “Stop being such a prick for one second of your goddamn life! We’ve already got a captive human on our hands, let’s not make him a dead one.”

“And whose fault is it that we’re even in this situation? You’re the one who brought him to the apartment!”

“And you’re the one who creeped after him in the first place,” Changmin sharply retorts, matching Jaejoong’s glare with his own. He also has a good few inches on his side, so Jaejoong looks more like a pissy chihuahua when having a staring contest with a lamppost like Changmin. “Look, this isn’t the time to argue. I know you have the antidote on you, Jaejoong. You always do.”

“So? Why should I save the person who nearly got us caught back there?” Jaejoon