ACT ONE. HIRAETH

Hiraeth. /'heer-eye-th'/. A longing for a home you can no longer return to, or one that was never yours.

The evergreen forest comes alive at the first blush of dawn.

Hand in hand, two ragtag orphan boys run for their lives through the underbrush, hearts pounding rhythmically in startling rushes of adrenaline.

Every so often, one of them will trip on snarls of shrubbery littered throughout the forest floor, scraping his skin raw at the knees. The fifth instance over, he cries out in anguish.

“Kuanlin-ah,” he sobs. “I can’t… I can’t possibly go any further. I’m tired, and my feet hurt, and I… I want to go home.”

He buries his face in both hands, dirtied with grime and smeared in blood.

The blood is not his, and it pains him to know this.

His companion skids to a halt and helps him patiently to his feet, looking restlessly over his shoulder for any signs of their pursuer.

“We’re almost there, Jihoon-ah,” he whispers. “A couple strides more and we’ll make it to the clearing.”

Jihoon refuses to budge, utterly spent and expended of energy. Instead of forcing him into an upright position, Kuanlin stoops before him instead, hoisting both arms over his shoulder and both feet on either side of his waist.

“Rest now,” he beckons. “I’ll take it from here.”

Upon his back, Kuanlin carries Jihoon, trudging silently through the desolate thicket. His head turns towards the skies, squinting at the blinding rays of sunlight peeking eagerly through dense foliage.

The night has come and gone, and with it, their only hope for cover.

“Where are we going, Kuanlin-ah?” Jihoon whispers, tickling Kuanlin’s nape with his soft respirations.

“Home,” he whispers back. “We’re going home.”

Moments later, they make it onto the clearing, a vast expanse of arable land stretching outwards for miles in either direction. Whereas the plains are lush and matted with turf, a long-winded patch of barren land straight ahead snakes through the flatlands and towards the horizon, paving the way uphill.

Uphill? He wonders. This isn’t right. This path through the woodlands… was meant to lead us to the coastline and out onto the sea.

“Where are we?” he ponders aloud, crouching forwards to allow Jihoon’s descent from his perch.

“Are we lost?” Jihoon adds, studying the unfamiliar vista before them. “I thought Dowoon-ahjusshi agreed to a rendezvous at the harbour.”

“He did,” Kuanlin confirms, puzzling over where it might’ve been that he’d taken the wrong turn.

Impossible, he thinks. The path due north was the only one.

“Kuanlin-ah,” Jihoon whispers, interrupting his inner monologue. “Look.”

Kuanlin follows Jihoon’s line of sight, latent anxiety kicking in all at once. His gaze comes to rest upon the crest of the hill, where a medieval castle—entrenched and fortified—sits forbiddingly in the faraway distance.

“No,” Kuanlin murmurs, immobilizing fear upending his senses. “No…”

Jihoon reaches for him, tiptoeing slightly to wrap both arms around his neck.

They’re trembling, and yet he finds the strength enough to offer Kuanlin what little courage he has left to give.

“Kuanlin-ah,” he whispers. “We’ve made it. This is where it ends.”

“Don’t you say that, Park Jihoon,” Kuanlin demands, engulfing him in a fierce embrace. “Don’t you dare even say that.”

And don’t you dare leave.

Not again.

“If by chance,” Jihoon carries on, resting his weary head upon the base of Kuanlin’s shoulder. “If by chance you make it out alive, then know this: one day soon, in this life, or the next… I’ll find you. No matter what. And then I’ll come to you, give you everything—joy, comfort, kisses goodnight…”

His hands fist in Kuanlin’s shirt, bloodied palms staining the pristine, ivory fabric. Kuanlin takes them in his, kisses them one by one.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “In this life, I gave you pain, and nothing else.”

Jihoon shakes his head slightly, pressing Kuanlin’s right hand ever-so gently against his chest.

Where his heart pulsed in steady measures, b earnestly with life.

“Hear that?” Jihoon says, staring intently into both of his eyes. “It beats for you.”

His mouth pulls at the corners into the makings of a smile, as if to allay Kuanlin’s fears and say, it’s alright. I’ll be just fine.

And yet his eyes, open windows into the truth to his soul, betray a hopeless melancholy Kuanlin can do little else than wish away.

“If only,” Jihoon whispers, tears cascading in rivulets down the sides of his face. “If only it could beat for just a moment more.”

 “Don’t,” Kuanlin pleads, tightening his grip on both of Jihoon’s wrists. “You can’t… this isn’t…”

“Remember me, Kuanlin-ah,” he says. “And remember how I loved you.”

“Ji-Jihoon-ah…” Kuanlin begins.

He barely has time enough to gather his bearings, time enough to think, to speak, say his final goodbyes… before Jihoon is held at knifepoint from behind, blades digging into the skin at his throat.

Slicing it mercilessly open.

Kuanlin wakes up with a start.

“Nightmares, again?” his roommate inquires, jogging over to his bedside to offer him a glass of lukewarm water. Kuanlin takes it, downing its contents in one go.

“I take it you’ve dreamt of the exact same one.”

Kuanlin peers at him, brows knitting together in reluctant suspicion. “How come you know that?”

His roommate his head sideways, gesturing towards the area in Kuanlin’s anatomy his dominant hand still rests upon, shielding it reflexively in response to stimuli developed by his restless subconscious.

His throat.

“You know,” his roommate mumbles. “I am getting tired of that recurring jungle chase your psyche has on playback. Why a forest? Why a castle on the hill? Why Park Jihoon? Ten years in the making, and here I am still waiting on the sequel.”

“Not even a minute out of my slumber,” Kuanlin grumbles. “And I already have you cracking jokes at my expense. Thanks, Jaehwan-hyung.”

“You do know I say these things to enliven the atmosphere, right?” Jaehwan says, ruffling Kuanlin’s mop of unruly bed-hair. “Take care of yourself, kid. Catch up on some z’s. Those bags under your eyes… what even are those?”

“A decade’s worth of sleep lost to nightmares,” Kuanlin replies. “Why? Something the matter?”

“Don’t quote me on this,” Jaehwan says. “But I’m almost certain the concealment of those monstrosities will require of mankind a breakthrough in the field of cosmetics.”

Kuanlin grimaces at him, offended.

“Hook me up with a Chemistry major, then,” he mutters. “Tell them I’m down for a collaboration.”

“I know of one,” Jaehwan grins. “Park Jihoon.”

Something dreadful and sharp stabs at Kuanlin’s insides, embedding itself deep within him.

“Haha,” he deadpans. “Very funny.”

“Hey, Kuanlin-ah,” Jaehwan asks. “You don’t think those dreams of yours… are connected somehow to your history with Jihoon, do you? That night at the Promise Tree, when you made your escape and left the orphanage for good.”

“I don’t think so,” Kuanlin shakes his head. He pulls his shirt up and over his head, tossing it onto the floor. “In my dreams… he appears. And neither Jihoon nor I have ever met him before.”

“And you never will,” Jaehwan says. “Trust me.”

“That,” Kuanlin says, scrambling out of bed. “Remains to be seen. I’m not discounting the possibility, no matter how negligent.”

He plods over to his closet, rummaging lazily through its contents.

“You don’t actually believe he exists, do you?” Jaehwan asks. “Because he doesn’t, this Alchemist character. He’s a myth.”

“And what if he isn’t?” Kuanlin challenges. He detaches a jersey from its hanger, putting it leisurely on. “What if… what if my nightmares are meant to foreshadow his return?”

“After five hundred years in hiding?” Jaehwan exclaims, incredulous. “Kid, this Alchemist’s supposed to have been around since the Joseon Dynasty. If he’s still around and traipsing about in the streets, we might as well just consider him immortal.”

“Don’t you believe in that? Immortality?” Kuanlin asks. He makes his way to the kitchen, scouring the fridge for his jug of water. “Should the legends hold true, he was after immortality in the first place. And in his pursuit of eternal youth, he tampered with nature through alchemy, heavily manipulated the laws of the earth… by virtue of an ambition for his legacy to last forever.”

He touches the spout of the jug to his mouth, drinking thirstily from its contents.

“And in the process of making that happen,” he adds, wiping away the moisture on his lips with his sleeve. “He unleashed our abilities into the world by accident, hence the name we go by today: Legacy.”

He settles the jug onto the counter, as if to rest his case.

“To see is to believe kid,” Jaehwan shrugs, entirely distrustful. “To see is to believe.”

“That’s discriminatory against blind people,” Kuanlin huffs. “How are you to explain away our existence, then? These powers we were never meant to carry?”

“Beats me,” Jaehwan shrugs. “But if I were to explain, I’d do it with empirical evidenc