Do you want to come and visit a magical land? A land where the ceiling burns bright with little pricks of wormholes that’ll let you peek into even wilder places if you can get close enough to them. And floating in between all that, is a giant silver disk. Perfectly round and glowing magnificently. Brighter than anything I’ve seen before.

 

“Mom…? Mom it’s back. Mom please, it’s back.”

 

A magical land covered in the softest, warmest moss that I’ve ever touched. Soft, yet firm, and doesn’t disintegrate when you touch it. It felt almost like if somehow we could collect enough fog and compact them into a solid matter. And yes. They’re everywhere. Hanging on the ceiling, spread all over the ground, draped over the terrains. I believe if I lay down on it and fall asleep, I will never wake up again.

 

“You have to believe me, it’s there. It’s really there! It’s back! I heard it walking around my bedroom. I swear I heard it!”

 

Everything there is so soft. The walls, the ground, the furnitures that are angular but not jagged, even the air. Light and clean as the dust that swirled at the top of a cave. I feel like I could eventually fly if I stay there for too long. Stuck on the ceiling like a bat, but never knowing how to get back down.

 

“I’m not lying! It was there! The glass man was there mom!”

 

It was quiet too. So quiet and peaceful. There was no annoying blasts of high pitched chirps at random interval, no constant deep rumbling coming from the ground. Just soft swishing of the wind, hitting the glass partitioning that separated the inner chamber from the outside world.

 

“It touched my foot! Look! Look mom, look, it scratched me right there! Please believe me mom, it was really here!”

 

One downside to this land is… there’s a creature guarding it. It’s usually sleeping, under a layer of moss that it’d fashioned into a blanket. But if we make too much noise, or if we venture too far from the portal, it will stomp its calloused feet on the ground and fire upon us this magical weapon that channeled the unknown power of the wormholes. Condensed into one everlasting blast of light so powerful, that if you dare look at it with your own eyes, they will melt out from your sockets like rotten fish guts.

 

“Please, you have to believe me mom. Please, please, pleaseeeee! There! There, at the back of the wardrobe. It lives there! The glass man lives behind the walls just right there!”

 

But however terrifying this mighty guardian is, I still longed to visit the magical land. I longed to run my hands against the curtain of moss that swayed with just the merest of touch. I longed to dip my toes on the ones that grew from the ground like those rare sighting of grass. And I longed to listen to the calm breathing of the mighty guardian. It’s an odd thing to do, and stupidly dangerous, but I’ve never heard something breathe in their sleep as smoothly and soundlessly as it does. Yes, I have to admit, I’ve never went further than the small open area immediate to the moss cave that hid the portal. But I felt like it was enough.

 

Because I found a magical place. And found a magical creature. A magical sky that burned alongside a magical silver disk. As long as I could spend my day lounging around on the dreamy, mossy bed, imagining where those tiny wormholes could take me to, it was enough.

 

_

 

His mother closed the doors to the wardrobe, and turned around to face the still terrified looking child with a tired sigh escaping out of her, “Jisung, nothing is there.”

 

“But,-”

 

“Okay. So, here’s what we can do,” she said, kneeling in front of his bed so that her eyes were in line with his tiny ones, “you told me the glass man is terrified of light, right?”

 

Jisung nodded, glancing at his sun-shaped bedside reading lamp as if he was trying to gather strength and courage just from the sight of it.

 

“Next time the glass man is here, you go and turn on the light!” She animatedly demonstrated the act with an exaggerated jump, the sleeves of her fluffy pajama brushing against his nose in the process, and causing Jisung to let out his first genuine laughter since he was abruptly woken up by the sound of something ambling through the length of his bed. The glass man, he was sure of that, even if his mother didn’t.

 

“You turn on the light, and count to twenty.” His mother then helped him back to his bed, picking up the haphazardly thrown blanket from the floor and swishing it over him so that it once again snugly covered him up to his chin, “then shine your flashlight to your wardrobe and say, ‘is anyone there?’ as loud and bravely as you can.”

 

Jisung repeatedly mouthed what his mother said, something so mundane but he somehow knew, would hold a magical power over the glass man. “If there’s nothing that answers me, does it mean that I’m safe?”

 

“Yes dear,” she whispered back her answer as she bent down to give him a second good night kiss of that evening on his forehead, “it means you’re safe.”

 

“But what if it answers back?”

 

His mother only smiled at that, then used her index finger to give his rosy nose a playful flick, “then I will come here with a baseball bat in hand, ready to fight whatever monster dares to scare my Jisung.”

 

She told him that she loved him, and he answered with a quiet I love you too. Nothing too loud or complicated because Jisung’s attention was fully given to his wardrobe door. ‘Please don’t come back again,’ he wished inside his head, replaying it over and over until his eyelids couldn’t bear to open against their own weight and slumber descended upon him for the second, and thankfully, last time in that night.

 

If only Jisung stayed awake for a little while longer, he would’ve seen his wardrobe doors swing open for just a tiny little bit. Just like a peek of an eye that bridges something mundane with something magical.

 

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

 

It was there.

 

It was there again.

 

The glass man was there again.

 

And it was still there, even when Jisung has his bedside lamp and counted quickly to twenty.

 

Ten, eleven, twelve.

 

The thin wood planks that lined the sides of his wardrobe cracked under the weight of something , and all Jisung could do was pull his blanket further up his face. Feeling the warmth of his breath being blown back to his nose and in the end he didn’t know what it was that was making his cheeks wet. Tears of fear, or the condensation of his shallow, rapid breathing.

 

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.

 

The monster was still making such a ruckus inside his wardrobe and Jisung wondered, how could his mother not hear all this? And when one of his coat hanger fell into the plastic boxes with a dull crash, the need for him to scream out for his mom almost suffocated him. Stuck at the base of his throat and pushing down on the content of his stomach so intensely, he was afraid it would cause him to throw up.

 

Eighteen, nineteen… twenty.

 

The raspy, tearful start of a ‘mom’ was just about to be pushed out of his lips when it stopped. The knockings, the struggle, the glass man stopped moving, and so did Jisung.

 

He counted another five before shakily reaching out for the silver flashlight that laid on top of the books on his bedside table and turning it onto its brightest setting. ‘Maybe it’s gone,’ he thought, the bright beam of light creating a perfect circle against the carved wooden doors that were sloppily painted into a pale shade of eggshell green by his dad, ‘maybe the light has scared it so much it disappeared.’ Guiding the circle so that it shone at the brass handles of the wardrobe, Jisung had to muster up everything in himself to be brave and do what his mother had told him the night before. Take a deep breath, and say as loudly as possible,

 

“Is anyone there?” His voice did come out slightly faltered, and it sounded more like a raspy whisper than anything courageous. But the intent was potent behind his words, and Jisung believed that it should’ve been enough.

 

‘Nothing. Nothing. Nothing is there,’ Jisung chanted, as he once again slowly counted up from one to twenty. Because he decided that if by his second twenty the glass man did not return, he will be a good boy and go back to sleep by himself. But if the glass man returned… ‘nothing is there. It’s gone. It’s gone. Please please please be gone.’

 

But he’d only reached up to thirteen when he heard, lilting out of the gap of his wardrobe’s doors,

 

“I beg you, please don’t hurt me.”

 

Everything instantly disintegrated around him. Voice? Lost. Words? Gone. Hands? Trembled so violently his flashlight rattled out of his fingers and rolled down to the folds of his blankets. His vision was blurred from how quickly his heart was beating and without him realising it, little Jisung has just gotten his first taste of what true and unadulterated fear of his own mortality is.

 

But before he could screech out for his mom, before the chattering of his teeth could grow so terrible that it’d cause cuts to the inside of his mouth, Jisung realised something about the eerie sound that seeped from inside his wardrobe. A fact that somehow managed to instantly banish all the thick fog of fear from his mind.

 

That fact that the glass man sounded just as terrified, if not more so, as him.

 

And the fact that the glass man sounded more like a glass boy.

 

Jisung was still scared out of his wits, that one was true. But it wasn’t as bad as the crippling dread that he’d felt just a few seconds before. He no longer feared for his life, or the life of his mom, or the life of his colourful fish living inside the tank near their kitchen. He feared more of the fact that something he’d done had caused the glass man to suffer from some sort of mortal danger. And once it’s recovered? Jisung was convinced that it would bring with him all of its glass friends and enact its revenge.

 

“Who are you? How did you get inside my wardrobe?” And so, Jisung’s sleep-laden mind thought that the best way he could deal with this situation was to somehow make an unbreakable pact with the glass man, like the ones he and his mom would usually make to keep important promises. A promise that it would go away and leave his family without harm.

 

“My name is Chenle, oh mighty guardian. And I beg you, please spare my life? I’m just a young little child, too curious for my own good. I never intended to disturb your sleep. I wandered into your realm in peace. Please believe my words.”

 

At first, when Jisung only heard the glass man’s glass shoes scurrying against his carpet, only heard its sharp glass nails tapping against his window, only saw the glimpse of its transparent skin reflecting the faint rays of the moon, Jisung imagined it to be a seven foot tall monster of uncanny proportions.

 

Long, thin limbs with fingers twice as long as his, sharp fangs for teeth, and one big eye in the middle of its cylindrical head.

 

But now, listening to the child-like voice coming out from his wardrobe caused Jisung’s mental image of the glass man,- glass boy, to shift. Little by little. From long, thin limbs to arms just slightly shorter and smaller than his. Round, perfect teeth like those he saw in the many illustrated books that his dad gave to him for his birthday. Fingers as plump as the ones attached on his grandmother’s collection of porcelain dolls. And round, wide eyes that shone a bright blue under the silvery wash of moonlight at midnight.

 

‘He talks and sounds like an old timey young prince in the movies. So he must’ve looked like one.’ And with that change of mindset, gone was the fear that haunted him for the past few months. ‘This thing cannot be a monster, he’s just a curious boy!’

 

A curious boy, just like he was. Because all of a sudden, Jisung was awashed with the strong need to get closer to this boy-prince- creature. To see with his own eyes how a being that could travel between worlds through wardrobes would look like. And maybe, to strike a friendship with said being.

 

Maybe if he’s nice enough, he’ll take Jisung into an adventure in his own world.

 

And so, Jisung then pattered his tiny hands all over the fluffy cloud of his duvet, stopping only when he got ahold of his dad’s silver flashlight once more. Slowly, he slithered out from under his blanket, and made his way ever so carefully to his wardrobe. “Are you okay?” He asked, voice sounding far more sure and brave than his last attempt. And this time, far more empathetic too. “Did you hurt yourself?”

 

There was a long beat of hesitation before the creature inside his wardrobe answered, “I think I managed to get myself stuck on something while I was trying to stop myself from disturbing your rest. If you’d be so kind and allow me to sort myself out… that’d be perfect, Mr. Great Guardian sir.”

 

Jisung abruptly stopped on his tracks when he heard the sound of pained wincing coming from the tiny slit of the doors, before he used the beam of his flashlight in the effort to get a better look at what was happening between all the clothes hanging from the ceiling of his wardrobe. But when he remembered what light could do to the glass boy, Jisung immediately realised that his action was the one that was causing such distress to the poor creature.

 

After juggling the cylinder in between his hands as he couldn’t seem to find the switch in between all the panicked hand tremors and racing heartbeat, Jisung finally managed to turn off his flashlight and tossed the thing back onto his bed. “I’m sorry! I forgot light will hurt you, I never want to hurt you! Well, as long as you don’t want to hurt me back, that is…”

 

“Oh no! No, no, no sir I never intended to hurt you, not even in my worst dream. I know you’re just doing your duty by guarding your realm.” His words were followed with another frustrated grunt.

 

“Chenle?” Jisung asked after taking one careful step closer to the wardrobe. He heard a few knocks and bumps coming out from it as the glass boy must’ve still struggled to get himself out from whatever tight situation he’d managed to get himself in. Although now, they sounded far less urgent and fearful. And for that Jisung was glad. Because he didn’t want this Chenle, this prince of glass, to hurt himself even further. “I am not a great guardian. Well, I wish I am,” he said with a giggle, thinking of how easy his life could’ve been if he really was the larger-than-life sounding character that Chenle thought him to be, “but I’m not. I’m a kid, just like you.”

 

“Oh…?” His new acquaintance stopped his struggle for a few seconds just so that he could fumble with his words and said, with much difficulty, “you’re a child? That’s… that’s a revelation.”

 

After listening to Chenle’s advanced command of the English language (or the fact that a being from another dimension could even speak English in the first place), it should’ve been Jisung that went all perplexed and question Chenle on his claim that he’s a little kid himself. But he digressed. Maybe, the world where he came from has a really strict school system that gives grade ten level of reading materials to grade one students. Jisung didn’t know if he should envy Chenle, or pity him. “Why did you say it as if it’s a bad thing? Do I look like I’m a weird kid?”

 

“No, that wasn’t my intention. You’re the first being I saw in this world of yours, and so I might’ve needlessly jumped into a wrong conclusion. You just look… far too strong and capable to be a child, at least to my simple standard,” his glass prince explained after he seemingly had given up on sorting himself out, when a sigh, followed by a soft thudding sound of him resting his tired legs on the ground, resonated from inside the wardrobe.

 

Strong? Capable? Jisung’s eyebrows scrunch in a sense of wonderment as he raised his arm and poked his thin, boney limb with his thin, boney index finger, “I don’t think I’m strong…”

 

“Oh trust me, you are.”

 

And suddenly Jisung wondered. Maybe Chenle is a dwarf! A garden-gnome sized being that could fit comfortably inside his mother’s ornate trinket box. But if so, then how could he still get trapped inside his sparse wardrobe? If Chenle is so small, shouldn’t he be able to just shimmy his way out of any tight spots?

 

It was then that he noticed the thin sliver of light that sliced through the darkness of the interior of his wardrobe. ‘Light!’ he thought, jumping on the ball of his feet before he dashed back to his bedside table and punched the switch of his sun-shaped reading lamp with much urgency, ‘the light is making him weak!’ He rolled onto and over his bed, leaping to his window and pulling the blackout curtains shut to bar the room from the last source of possible light. Which was the full moon hanging low on the midnight sky.

 

“I’m so sorry! I should’ve done that sooner,” he said with a pant, after he was happy with the pitch black state of his room and used his bum to skid himself to a stop in front of his wardrobe. The excitement that ran thickly inside his body caused his voice to jump up one pitch and Jisung almost sounded like an over excited mouse because of that, “are you feeling better now?”

 

Jisung swore he could catch the faint relieved sigh that escaped from his glass prince’s mouth, and it brought into himself a certain feeling of joy. One that you can only feel after seeing other people beam up in happiness after you’ve helped them with a simple, selfless good deed.

 

“Thankyou for that.” Now that they were sitting so near to each other, Jisung could hear his voice much more clearer. And for him, Chenle sounded funny. Because not unlike him, he sounded like a mouse. Something high pitched, chipper, and jolly in the way he talked, even if there was still a heavy undercurrent of fear running beneath his words.

 

“Do you want me to help you?” Jisung asked, not thinking of how he could help if he himself was not able to see the digits of his fingers even when he put them up in front of his nose. Although, one tiny peek into the wardrobe and Jisung was rewarded with a faint peculiar gleam of blue light. The way it spread through the inky darkness reminded him of those glow sticks his aunts and uncles would buy and give away during their family’s new year’s celebration. Viscous. Heavy. Flowing against the grooves of his beige carpet like water in a calm stream.

 

But before Jisung could reach for the brass knob to get a better look, Chenle’d beaten him to it and instead of opening the door further, closed it shut in front of Jisung’s face.

 

“There is no need to,” once again, Chenle’s voice came through in a muffled way, and it would be a lie to say that Jisung was not in the least bit disappointed. “I can do this myself, but thankyou for asking.”

 

“Can I at least stay here and talk with you?”

 

“Of course,” he heard Chenle said with his voice soft in a breathless surprise. Chenle seemed to be surprised by me a lot, he thought. Why didn’t he seem to be surprised by Chenle in return?

 

Maybe because he sounded human. And he sounded so nice and excited when Jisung began to question him about his own world.

 

Maybe it was because he was so tired, and sleepy, that when he somehow managed to drag half of his duvet down and curl himself up into a snug little ball of fluffy blanket, Jisung’s eyes instantly were glued shut once he laid his head down onto his folded arm.

 

“Will you be back tomorrow? I hope this little accident won’t stop you from visiting,” he managed to mumble out one last question, before the rockings of those phantom waves inside his mind were successful in pulling him down and under into the realm of dreams.

 

“If you allow me to.” Chenle’s voice seeped into his ears in echoes. Some parts louder than the other, and some seemingly coming from a place far closer to him than his supposed spot, hiding behind the closed doors of his wardrobe.

 

Of course you can! I like talking to you, listening to your stories, having someone that will listen to me in return. I like you so much, even if for the last three months you’ve made my life a bit messy. I like you. So please come back tomorrow.

 

Those were the words that Jisung would’ve said if he was given the chance. But sleep had gently guided him away from his ability to speak and only left Jisung with a few incoherent mumbles of “of course”, “like”, and “come back”.

 

Although, when your waking hours were just as surreal as your dreams, the barriers that separated the two of them would grow thin. And words would fly out of your mind as if they were shadows that danced thickly behind you at dusk. Because then he heard a voice that sounded, for the first time in that night, devoid of any fear and terror. Just wonderment and bliss. And the smile that adorned Chenle’s transparent face looked like the faintest of crescent moons.

 

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

 

_

 

Today I learned the name of the Great Guardian himself. He’s called Jisung.

 

Ah, pardon me. What I meant to say was the third grade student, Park Jisung. I still have yet to understand why they would grade their students as such, but educational policies. It’s a complicated thing no matter which world you ended up in.

 

He’s really nice. And he seemed to have built some sort of genuine curiosity over me. Just like me to him and his world. He called me ‘the glass prince’, because my skin look transparent and my words reminded him of little princes on this thing he called movies. A sort of theater play, but recorded with a mechanical eye thingy so we can rewatch it however many times we want, he explained to me. He truly lives inside a magical world.

 

We agreed to talk with the doors closed between us. With him outside and me inside this wardrobe. Wardrobe, he called this transitional space. And the soft moss that hung from its ceilings are shirts and pants. I had to tell him that my clothes are slightly different from the one he has. More coarse, more loose. Something that he decided would look like a robe in his world.

 

But yes, we agreed to talk with the doors closed between us. Not because I was afraid he’d be afraid of me. Screaming at the top of his lungs when he realised how different we looked. Oh, that truly would be a lashing to my self esteem.

 

No. It was I that was afraid. I was afraid, of him.

 

I was afraid that he somehow had lied about everything that’d came out of his mouth once I stepped out from the threshold, suddenly proving himself to be the great guardian that I thought he was and devour me right to the bone.

 

It shamed me, this lingering fear that I still have. Even when on the flipside of everything, Jisung had seemingly accepted me fully to be his friend. Not caring that I came from a world way different from his. Not caring that I was once  the source of his constant sleep terrors everytime I’d give his world a visit. Not caring that once, my curiosity had caused him physical pain, when I couldn't help but touch his unusual looking skin, just to see if it’s as invulnerable as it looked.

 

It wasn’t, I quickly learned. Surprisingly, he seems to be much more fragile than I am. Even though my skin looked more delicate than his.

 

He accepted my deepest of apologies with a light laughter and proceeded to continue asking me to tell everything I knew about my world.

 

“Are there more worlds like yours? Something that are different but still kind of the same? Can you travel to somewhere else other than here?” He asked me once, and even though I wanted to join him on his wonderful sentiment, I couldn’t.

 

So no, I told him, or more accurately, I don’t know. I don’t know, Jisung. Maybe there are more portals like this. Maybe there are more things out there that are curious about a world named Earth that’s made out of warm and soft materials.

 

“Then how do I know it’s you that visited me? What if,- I don’t know, the portal got scrambled and what’s waiting for me behind this wardrobe is not you?”

 

I will knock three times, I told him. You will know that it’s me if you hear me knocking on this soft surface of a wardrobe three times.

 

“And you will also know that it’s me waiting for you in front of the wardrobe, if I knock back three times.”

 

Fair enough, I told him. That’s a fair enough plan for us.

 

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

 

Jisung was struggling to fall asleep this one night. A purely frustrating inability to fall into the dreamworld that was waiting for him, even if his whole body was begging him to get some rest.

 

One sheep, two sheeps, three sheeps.

 

With a pillow pressed over his head, Jisung hoped that the sound of his whispers, counting up on some imaginary sheeps hopping over rundown fences on some lonely farmland, would mask the voices that seeped into his room from the gap of the door.

 

But it didn’t work. Not even the measly addition of his boney arms over the pillow could mask the intrusing sound.

 

Four sheeps, five sheeps, six sheeps.

 

It’s been so long since Jisung found himself unable to fall asleep. His night terrors hasn’t even started the last time he was kept wide awake like this. With anxiety pressing firmly against the top of his lungs and his stomach, making it hard for him to breathe and to swallow the saliva collecting at the nooks of his mouth. Those things never failed to cause him to feel physically nauseated.

 

Seven sheeps, eight sheeps, six sh,- no eight sheeps no, ten sheeps no,-!

 

He couldn’t do this, Jisung decided, not anymore.

 

And so he used one strong kick of his feet to get his heavy duvet off from his body, for a split second taking in the refreshing feeling of the cool night air on his clammy skin, before he dragged his blanket with him and jammed it into the small gap between the door of his room and the carpet on the floor.

 

“That helped,” Jisung breathlessly mumbled to himself. But it wasn’t enough. He could still hear the highest tones of his mother’s voice. The sharp cadence in her words that would only come out if she’s feeling especially miffed. He could also still hear the rumbling gruff of his dad’s response to whatever mom previously yelled at him. And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to listen to that. Not anymore.

 

Jisung gave his tiny room one quick sweep and his eyes fell onto the imposing figure of his wardrobe. His only hope to get some refuge for the rest of the night.

 

Without hesitation, he ran up to the rickety structure and swung its doors open. But just as he put one of his foot onto the elevated platform, Jisung hesitated. If in the past he was afraid of stepping into his wardrobe for the fear of finding something terrifying that his mind would conjure up, offering a different nightmare on each and every night, now Jisung was afraid that his impulsive action would cause his glass prince, his nightly companion for the last few weeks, to feel offended that he’d broken their promise by stepping beyond the barrier that they’d agreed on.

 

But he quickly decided that because Chenle wasn’t there, it meant that the promise was yet to be initiated. And so Jisung shrugged his shoulders and swiftly climbed into the wardrobe, shutting the door as quietly as he could before pushing himself tightly against the back of the boxy chamber, trying to make himself as comfortable as he could while sitting on top of one of those flimsy plastic compartment boxes. ‘I will explain why I did this to him when he’s here.’

 

Jisung’s curiosity has always tempted him to climb inside his wardrobe and investigate the means of Chenle’s travel to and from his own world. But the sense of loyalty towards his friend and the promise that they agreed to keep, proved to be stronger than the itching that he’ll usually feel everytime his mind wandered to his wardrobe during the day.

 

But this night was different.

 

He needed to be inside this place. To find the peace and quiet that was robbed from him since the moment he heard the gravel on his porch crunching under the weight of his dad’s car. And much apologies to Chenle, but this wardrobe is in his bedroom. So his wardrobe is his first, and anybody else’s second.

 

_

 

Even if he didn’t manage to turn on the bedside lamp before he climbed into the wardrobe, it didn’t take long for Jisung to get accustomed to the darkness around him. It was then that he noticed an out of place stain in the shape of a squiggly half circle at the very back of the wardrobe. A stain that looked more like a gaping entrance of a long tunnel than a botched paint attempt, judging from how much more darker it looked against an already dark surroundings. ‘Is this the portal?’ Jisung wondered. But the sharp, excited jump of his heart had to be quickly quelled as he found out that it was just a stain, when his fingers were met with a soft thud of flesh bumping against wood when he went and touched the out-of-place spot.

 

To say that he was disappointed was an understatement. He’d hoped for his fingers to meet no resistance and to finally find a way to join Chenle in his own world, instead of vice versa. Because Earth is boring. His house is boring. His room is boring, boring, boring.

 

He wanted to see the majestic caves that have come to life inside his mind’s eyes night after night with the help of Chenle’s vivid description. See the great big bats, the gigantic fruits, the blind fish, the fluffy moles, the shiny mushrooms. But not today, he huffed, head already heavy and his thought languid from the fatigue that suddenly hit him with a vengeance. Jisung’s head softly collided against the side of the wardrobe, neck cushioned by the rogue sleeve of his mom’s fur coat that’d somehow made its way to his wardrobe. ‘ Tonight ,’ he thought, ‘I could only visit Chenle’s world like how I always did.’

 

Through his dreams.

 

_

 

Jisung was awoken from his slumber when he heard the thud of something resonating through the flimsy material of his wardrobe. The strong vibration crawling through his shoulder and into his ears, causing him to jolt up in shock.

 

Add to that the fact that he was disoriented from having fallen asleep in a strange, claustrophobic place, and that her mother’s fur coat has somehow gotten free from the hanger and was fully covering him like a stuffy cocoon, Jisung began to trash his limbs in a bout of panic and would’ve started to choke on his own uneven breathing if he didn’t feel a strange hand placed gingerly on his shoulder.

 

“It’s alright.”

 

‘Something familiar,’ Jisung thought, ‘I need something familiar.’ And if that thing is the voice of your newly forged friend that came from another dimension, then so be it.

 

“Just take a deep breath. It’s alright.”

 

‘Chenle,’ visualised in some sort of neon billboard sign on the back of his eyelids, his name flashed everytime Jisung took one shaky breath in, ‘Chenle, Chenle, Chenle.’

 

Nobody else mattered. As at that moment, there was only them, the sound of his now calmed breathing, and the creaks of the old wood as it groaned and stretched to accommodate the sudden addition of miscellaneous merchandise inside her bowels.

 

“I’m sorry,” Jisung meeped while he struggled to shrug off the heavy material of his mom’s fur coat off from his body, “I didn’t mean to fall asleep here, I really didn’t.” But just as he was about to be free of the pesky fabric, he felt it once again. Those strange, elongated fingers that felt so odd yet comfortingly cool on his heated skin. It felt like they were covered in a layer of soggy wax, or something spongy, like the flesh of an aloe plant. And a tiny peek that Jisung managed to take before Chenle pulled the hood of the coat over his eyes, granted him the sight of delicate streams of glowing greenish veins running underneath his thin, milky white skin.

 

“You can stay, it’s alright.”

 

“But the promise,-”

 

“Just keep this on,” Chenle emphasised his words by pulling the hood even further down Jisung’s face, which was met with an annoyed huff when Jisung had to readjust the fluffy thing up a little bit, to prevent him from ingesting the dusty fur on the coat and getting suffocated once again.

 

Chenle’s laughter sounded so funny. Peculiar, like he himself is. Sharp and ringing and Jisung told him once that his people must’ve thought that he’s imitating the chirping sound of the great bats that populated his world. And it never failed to make Jisung laugh too.

 

Something that he never knew he needed dearly until he felt how easier it was for him to breathe the moment both of their laughter fizzled to a giggle, then to a long, satisfied sigh.

 

“How’s your day?” Before Chenle could possibly begin to interrogate him on why he was sleeping inside the wardrobe, which Jisung knew he would do because why wouldn’t he question such an out of line act, Jisung quickly scrambled into the conversational steering wheel and did a hard turn away from anything that he didn’t feel like discussing that night. Or on any night, for that matter.

 

Thankfully for him, Chenle understood, and proceeded to fill the night’s silence with this wonderful tale about mushroom hunting with his school friends.

 

“That sounds so fun,” Jisung wistfully sighed, after they’ve finished giggling about a blunder Chenle somehow managed to do that caused half of the party to be stranded inside a stony quarry. They had to be saved by a team of disgruntled firefighters and Chenle exaggeratedly said that it was the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to him. “I wish I can do that.”

 

“Why are you wishing? Why can’t you just do it?”

 

A fragment of a smile was still perching on Jisung’s lips when he realised that he’d walked head first into a trap. He’d totally slipped. He’d totally not mind where his feet were going and slipped into the exact same stone quarry that Chenle just described. And in this case, Chenle is the firefighter. He was staring down at Jisung, holding the ladder behind his back, and he won’t get Jisung out of there if he didn’t start talking.

 

He should’ve known that the lack of a wooden door between them would lead to this. To him not being able to pretend that he didn’t hear Chenle’s question before forcefully dragging him away from topics Jisung never wanted to discuss.

 

“Well… I can’t.”

 

“Why not? I’ve told you so many stories about my adventures. Don’t you think it is your turn to do so?”

 

“I just can’t! I cannot!”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Well! One, there’s no fun place to do adventures around here! And two! You,-” Jisung’s anger rose and rose following the pitch of his voice, before it was suddenly stuck at the roof of his mouth, cutting his sentence short before he could blurt out the truth. The next time his voice came back to him, it was pushed out of his lips by the nausea that suddenly swelled from the back of his throat. His words were spat in fragments, squeezed out of him just like how he was squeezing the hems of his pajama shorts, and dripping wet with the tears that he’d never imagined could be shed in front of this interdimensional being.

 

“You’re the only friend I have.”

 

Jisung didn’t know if Chenle’s silence was caused by shock or indifference, and Jisung was too busy stealing the moment to wipe his tears and gather what little bit of bearing he could get to care to find out.

 

“I don’t want to talk about this.” His mumble sounded bubbly, caused by his unwillingness to fully open his mouth and the tears, snot, and saliva that had pooled on the corners of his lips, “please?”

 

“Why?”

 

‘Is this what it feels like to be mom,’ Jisung wondered, when Chenle’s endless barrage of ‘why’s was only this close from blowing his wit to smithereens.

 

Jisung wanted to ask Chenle if he didn’t care about him, if not for a little bit. Because he should’ve been able to see his tears, feel his sobs, hear the distress in his voice and take from them the hard-to-miss fact that Jisung was upset.

 

‘I hate you,’ those words were dancing at the tip of his tongue, just waiting to be said. A culmination of years and years of never having the choice to be heard when he wanted to and the choice to not hear when he didn’t want to. ‘I hate you so much.’

 

He’d imagined saying it for days, and months, and years on end. Ever since he understood how much the word ‘hate’ can hurt someone, Jisung’s wanted to scream it to the kids in his classes, his teachers, his dad. Imagined how the weight on his shoulders would be lifted by just saying that one phrase. Imagined how satisfying the sound of his tongue hitting the roof of his mouth would be when he said that hard T. Imagined how their expressions would change and they will look at him, for the first time in his life, as if he’d just won.

 

It would’ve been so easy to say it.

 

But he decided not to.

 

Because the shame that came to him for just thinking of saying those words were already far too much for his little heart to take.

 

“My dad, he’s home.”

 

Silence had grown in the small distance between Jisung and Chenle. The words that bounced through the cramped wardrobe came off as sounding far too loud for his liking and Jisung couldn’t help but cringe at hearing his own voice.

 

Chenle, however silent he’s gotten, didn’t seem to mind though. He asked, with so much concern in his tone it caused Jisung to feel bad that he ever doubt Chenle for having anything in him but the best of intentions, “did he hurt you?”

 

“No.” Yes.

 

“No, he,-” Yes.

 

‘Yes. Just say yes,’ Jisung heard something mad and guttural rumbling from deep within him, ‘tell Chenle he hurts you and maybe next time he will bring with him an army of angry bats ready to tear dad apart.’

 

“No!” In the end, Jisung had to physically shout to keep that stray thought away from his mind. It surprised him, truthfully, to find that he was capable of wanting such macabre fate to befall on someone that he still loves, no matter what's happened (or the lack thereof) between the two of them over the last few years.

 

Besides, Jisung knew, deep inside his little heart, even though the devilish whispers inside his mind might want him to believe otherwise. He knew that his story is not one that can be solved with that kind of fantasy. Or with any kind of fantasy, for that matter.

 

“No, he didn’t,” Jisung paused for a short while before deciding that he has nothing to lose from telling his friend everything anyway, and if what Chenle wanted to do was listen, then Jisung figured the least he could do was talk. “But they fought, again. And I overheard. And I know, it’s my fault for not listening to mom and not fall asleep right away. But the book I was reading was so good. So good! You have to understand? And when I really did want to sleep… it was already too late.”

 

Chenle might’ve come from a world completely different from his. But from the way his soggy fingers slowly crawled on top of his and took them into a clammy yet strangely comfortable cradle, Jisung knew that he understood. The conflicting game of tug-and-war in his heart, the desire to forever hide inside this wardrobe and spend the rest of his life just hanging out with him, Chenle understood it all.

 

Jisung then used the sleeve of his mom’s fur coat to wipe the already-drying tracks of tears from his cheeks, “can I see you? I really want to see you. Or do you think we have broken too many promises today?”

 

Chenle let out a short, jumpy laugh at that, and it made his stubby fingernails feel like they were dancing on Jisung’s skin.

 

“I promise I won’t be afraid,- No. I know I won’t be afraid.”

 

“Have you ever thought that it is I who is afraid of you?”

 

If only Chenle could see his expression under the fluffy hood, it would’ve caused him to have another fit of loud, uninhibited laughter, “I don’t,-”

 

Jisung was going to say ‘I don’t understand’ , because in all of the films that he’s watched, humans always look so feeble, so measly, when compared to any extraterrestrial or interdimensional beings. But then a distinct grating sound of wood being pulled against carpet, followed closely by a loud bang echoed through the dead of the night and Jisung finally found out what it was that awoken him earlier.

 

It was the sound of his parents’ door harshly hitting its frame.

 

“Chenle…”

 

With no other noise present in an otherwise peaceful night, the sound of someone’s feet thudding against the small stretch of carpeted corridor between Jisung’s and his parents’ room stuck out like a sore thumb.

 

Or like bioluminescent hands, whose soft hold have suddenly turned into a claw that gripped Jisung’s fingers with such a bone crushing intensity it caused fear and pain to seep into his voice the next time Jisung spoke. “Chenle you have to go.”

 

Yes, Chenle was the one that caused him to feel pain, from how deep his fingernails were digging into his vulnerable skin. But it wasn’t Chenle that he feared.

 

The moment his bedroom door was roughly yanked open, Jisung began to understood how Chenle could be afraid of this pathetic being called humans. Because never before has Jisung felt as frightened as that brief moment of panicked silence when he tried to blindly shove Chenle even further into the wardrobe. A pocket of calm before storm filled only with the wordless sobs that signified Chenle’s unwillingness to leave and Jisung’s own strangled breathing before their private little bubble burst with the wash of blinding light when his dad threw the doors of his wardrobe open.

 

A din of chaos erupted all around the cramped space. Pushing the silence away to cower at the darkest corners, desecrating the purity of their private hideout, the secrecy of it unceremoniously thrown out of the window alongside Jisung’s desperate screams of him begging for his friend to go before it was too late.

 

“Chenle run! Run!”

 

It was interspersed with his mom’s own raspy almost-yells. ‘He’s only a child,’ she begged, voice all choked up with anxiety and exhaustion, ‘please leave him alone.’

 

When his dad got ahold of Jisung and dragged him out of the wardrobe, when his grip around his arm quickly turned from uncomfortably tight to bone-achingly painful, when Jisung stared up and was met with a blurry, watery vision of his dad’s twisted expression, only then did Jisung fully understand.

 

Humans are terrifying.

 

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

 

“He apologised.” Jisung told me exactly one week after the incident.

 

After he firmly said to me that no, he doesn’t want me to unleash the giant army of fire ants that I have at my disposal. One of my friend’s parents’ disposal, truthfully, but Jisung didn’t need to know that. He only needed to know of the things I was willing to do for him if he ever needed me to.

 

And with that, I would’ve thought that everything would return back to normalcy. With us talking for hours on end before Jisung couldn’t keep sleep from entering his brain any longer and lost his consciousness on the floor. But somehow, it didn’t happen.

 

His answers were curt, not curious. And he only responded to my tales with an absent minded hum.

 

“Is there anything wrong?” I finally asked him, when I could no longer bear the coldness that he was giving me.

 

I thought Jisung would mull over my question for a little bit like how he always does when I threw him a more personal question about his day, which would have then allowed me to orient myself to a more serious conversational branch. But no. He answered it right away, telling me without him saying that he would’ve probably spill it himself without me asking, and it completely caught me off guard.

 

“I’ve been waiting.” His voice trembled and I wished I could’ve been there to hold his hand once again. Just like how I did on this day one week ago. But there was a closed door in front of our faces and however much I told myself to push them open, I never could.

 

“I was so worried. I thought I might never… I will never see you again.”

 

And then he asked me why. Why did I leave him for so long?

 

“There was an emergency situation back home,” I answered. I lied.

 

Because when the truth painted me as a coward who didn’t want to return to a friend’s side, even though he probably needed my presence the most in these past few days, my weak heart decided that lying would be an easier thing to do. Because what would Jisung say to me if he knew that I spent the week cowering on my bed, ridden with terrifying visions of the human monster he called ‘dad’ that came to hurt him. To hurt me.

 

I might be curious, but I am definitely not courageous. And from now till forever I would have to live with that realisation tattooed to the back of my mind’s eye.

 

Jisung must’ve known that I lied. Even if he tried to hide it with a barrage of worried questions about what had happened, he must’ve known. Because the other option, of him believing everything that came out of my mouth like a blind follower, or even worse, him forgiving me so easily for things that shouldn’t be so easily forgiven, left a much bitter taste on my mouth than any poisonous mushroom could.

 

Once he was happy with the amount of fake information he got from me, Jisung suddenly did that thing. That thing where he would repeatedly call my name in a rapid succession, going from something slow and sounding as if he just remembered a fact that he wanted to tell me, to something fast and chaotic that caused all the letters to be jumbled together into one big pile of garbled mess.

 

“I got a new friend yesterday!”

 

Jisung told me he was a boy from fourth grade who had to stay behind because he was ill for almost a whole year. The new friend, Jaemin, he told me, was the nicest person he’s ever met.

 

I would lie if I said that I wasn’t jealous.

 

He told me Jaemin likes to hike. He told me Jaemin was going to show him his favourite hiking track after they were dismissed from school earlier that day. But Jisung told me he said no.

 

I asked him then, why did he say no to the promise of adventure that he’d always wanted so much?

 

“I wouldn’t be able to talk to you if I go, I will be too tired.”

 

I won. I thought. He chose me, so I won.

 

Or do I?

 

_

 

Often I asked myself, why do I keep on returning to a world that terrifies me so?

 

My own adventure on Jisung’s earth started as an accidental stroll. Turned to breathless wandering, turned to a desire to let everyone know about my findings and getting hailed for it. Before everything was scrapped and it finally turned back into something that I hold close to my heart. So close. A secret shared only between me and Jisung.

 

Because if I tell others about it, then it won’t feel as special. There will be no more of that thrilling sense of secrecy you feel when you’re the only keeper of a special secret. That swelling I feel at the bottom of my stomach that makes me feel as if I glowed brighter than anyone else, everytime I came across something that reminded me of him.

 

That is the answer, I told myself. Jisung. And how much I cared for him. How much I knew he enjoyed, and needed, my company. A fact I’ve figured out since so long ago, and it satisfied me, that feeling of being wanted. I never thought I’d ever want to let it go.

 

But now, Jisung has found someone in his own world that fits the glove. Fits the glove that used to be mine. So what’s the use of me still going back? When I don’t even have the guts to push these flimsy wooden door with my own two hands and further my adventure, when Jisung kept on failing to hear my knockings because he spent more and more time playing with his Jaemin, why am I still staying here when we no longer gained anything from my visits? When he, instead, lost more and more light in his eyes with each yawn he let out as he fought to stay awake just to speak with me.

 

I first found this place by accident, but I don’t have to rely on fate to tell me when I should leave it behind.

 

And so I told him, after a few weeks have passed since I made my mind, after I collectively counted that there were already five times when Jisung had missed my knockings because he was too tired to get up in the middle of the night, I told him this.

 

“Your light has seeped through and has begun to poison my world. We have to close the portal before it got burned away.”

 

It should’ve told me something, regarding human nature, regarding Jisung as a person, when he reacted to my lie with something so genuine.

 

“Please don’t go.”

 

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

 

When he was a toddler, Jisung had a favourite storybook. A fancy, sparkly pop-up book about an adventure of a child lost in an enchanted forest. He loved it so, so much and would ask his mom to read it for him anytime he could. And once he learned how to read, Jisung would be more than content to spend the entire hours of a day sitting on the dining table and running his fingers against the glittery edges of the book’s illustrations.

 

But one day, he came back home, and the book was nowhere to be found.

 

“The enchanted forest wants one of its missing pieces back.” That was the scenario presented to his unconsolable, tearful, five year old self by his mom.

 

‘That book smells of death and decomposition, and I’m tired of reading it every night before you sleep, so I threw it away.’ And that, was the truth. Something that he never actually heard coming from his mom’s mouth, but just something that he naturally figured out on one odd day.

 

Jisung often forgot that something so habitual could change in a snap of a finger. He often forgot that other people have their own inner workings, their own agencies and agendas that sometimes are not aligned with his own.

 

And so it was his own fault that he took Chenle’s constant presence for granted, thinking of him as a mere possession of his, like his toys and books that he knew would always be there for him whenever he needed them. It was his own fault that Jisung forgot that just like him, Chenle is a living, sentient being. And he couldn’t fault him for doing what he also was doing. Be.

 

“There must be something we can do, please don’t go?”

 

“I’m sorry.” After a long pause, his friend’s weak voice seeped from the cracks of the wardrobe and it broke him down. His disappointment in himself, in his inability to accept something as natural as change, turned to tears, then they blurred the lines that separated him from the forbidden land that’s always waited for him at the horizon. All this time. The wardrobe doors.

 

Let him be selfish. Just this once, he thought. Let him be mad at me for a little bit if it meant I could finally see him before he has to go. Just this once.

 

And it seemed that Chenle also understood the place where Jisung came from. Because instead of screaming, or yelling, or throwing at him one of his fallen blouses before running away into his portal, Chenle only sat there, on top of a plastic compartment box, trying as best as he could to not do any of those things that Jisung thought he would.

 

“Hello.”

 

Tiny. Chenle’s voice was so tiny. And Jisung wondered how, then, could he hear them so clearly with that pesky wooden barrier standing in front of them all this time.

 

It didn’t take long for Jisung to digest the fact that he has inside his wardrobe, a beautifully blinking Christmas decoration in the shape of a lanky human child. The glass prince himself. He couldn’t believe this. All this time, they could’ve marvel at each other’s beauty of creation but was stopped by what? The fear of facing something that has the barest potential of hurting them? The unwillingness for Jisung to persuade Chenle to open up because he feared, that if anything happens to his friend, it’ll all be his fault?

 

So they hide. Inside the wardrobe, under the blanket, too content with something so bare and comfortable, only willing to break them down at the very last moment of their time together.

 

And thus it didn’t take long for Jisung to surrender to his own desire, to give his friend something that was so long overdue.

 

A hug.

 

“Jisung, I,-”

 

“As long as I’m not hurting you, I’m not letting go,” he mumbled, voice all shaky and nasally from his tears and snot that were running like two sets of waterfalls. Chenle’s stringy, silvery hair tickled his forehead and it reminded him of the time when his dad took him for a swim at the beach and he got his legs tangled on some pesky seaweed.

 

From that day on, Jisung decided that he hates it when anything sloppy and wet were to wound around his limbs.

 

“I’m not hurting you, right?”

 

But surprisingly, when Chenle decided to join him on this Earthly custom of hugging by awkwardly slinging his spongy arms around Jisung’s back, right at the moment when he’d begun to worry that maybe he’d killed his friend (maybe because Chenle was secretly deathly allergic to human sweat particle), Jisung learned that in the correct circumstance, some things he could learn to live with.

 

Some things he could learn to like.

 

Some things he could learn to love.

 

“No. No, I don’t think so.”

 

‘He sounded so much like me,’ Jisung regretfully thought, ‘ Why can’t he be me? Why can’t I be like him?’  

 

“What can I do to help?” Even with his eyes closed, too tired and puffy from all the tears, Chenle’s glowing veins still managed to seep through his eyelids, somehow. Reminds him of those faint memory of when he flew back home after visiting his grandma’s house, sleepily peeking at the haunting sight of city roads at night viewed from ten and thousand meters up in the air.

 

Cold light pulsing, snaking around a pitch black background. Hypnotisingly beautiful.

 

“Just stay back. We have a way to seal the portal but it’s dangerous for any living being with only one heart,-”

 

“You have more than one hearts?” Jisung’s hand, powered by his ample amount of curiosity, instantly shot up and plopped itself on top of Chenle’s chest. His robe felt leathery to touch, and so thick, that he could only felt the barest of beatings under his fingers, “where’s the other one?”

 

Jisung couldn’t tell if Chenle’s giggle was caused by pleasant amusement, or if he was ticklish from Jisung’s shaking fingers pattering against his glass-like skin. Are cave dwellers like him capable of feeling ticklish? Oh, Jisung felt like he could cry even more thinking of how there must be so many questions for Chenle he has yet to discover.

 

He soon felt Chenle’s moist fingers that never failed to remind Jisung of those seaweeds, carefully guiding his own to a place near the base of his lungs, if he has lungs, that is. And there it was, another set of heartbeat going strong underneath their palms.

 

“You’re awesome.”

 

Chenle’s giggle grew from something soft, to his much beloved ringing laughter and somehow, such notes of happiness only made Jisung cry even harder.

 

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, almost yelled, because if not he didn’t think his closed up throat would be able to spout such painful words. Jisung didn’t even need to go that far to show how much he was unwilling to let Chenle go. Just by looking at his fingers, all curled up into a claw, digging past Chenle’s robe and onto his crystalline skin, everyone could’ve easily tell what Jisung was feeling without him having to say it. “Will you visit me, ever again? One visit every month or so should be fine, right? It shouldn’t mess up your world too much, right?”

 

Chenle’s silence only caused Jisung to splutter even more panicked words. His anxiety was enough to cause him to do something just a minute ago he thought was unthinkable. Let go of his hold around Chenle so he could stare deeply into Chenle’s eyes, as Jisung hoped it would give them something more than a mere silence. “Once every three months? Every year? Just please, tell me you will visit.”

 

Blue. Green. Purple. Chenle’s eyes shimmered and gleamed like how oil looked spilled on top of a cup of water.

 

And just when the silence was stretched to its breaking point, Chenle smiled.

 

Chenle smiled and for a split second Jisung’s unconsolable heart was calmed. Enough that he managed to complete the simple task Chenle wished for him to do without shedding even one drop of tears.

 

Which was for him to sit there on his bed, like at the night when he first met Chenle. Blanket pulled up to his nose and counting to twenty. Slowly, slowly. Because Chenle promised him, that by the time he reached twenty, the procedure would’ve been completed and he would be gone.

 

A voice at the back of his head told him to stop counting at nineteen. Because then maybe, time would be suspended inside his wardrobe and Chenle could stay with him. Forever.

 

But he knew, deep inside his little heart. That it wasn’t how the world works. Not in his, and not in Chenle’s. Time runs. Wherever it may be. Time runs and doors get closed and Jisung finally knew the source for the wetness on his cheeks. They sure were not caused by the condensation of his breath.

 

“When it is nighttime in your world, and it is the lightest day of the year in mine, that is when I will give you a visit.”

 

 

 

 

 

_ _ _ _ _

 

 

 

 

 

Weeks come, weeks go.

 

Months.

 

Years.

 

Nothing. Not even once.

 

As Chenle didn’t keep his side of the promise, his memory quickly faded to the back of Jisung’s mind, not unlike a recollection of a vivid dream. He was reduced to an anecdote that Jisung would use as a door opener for people he thought he could use having a deeper relationship with.

 

I had an imaginary friend when I was eight.

 

‘Eight?’ 80% of the time they would response with a muted surprise, ‘that’s quite old to still have imaginary friends.’

 

Well, I was a very imaginative kid. Can’t you tell?

 

Usually, they would agree. Because Jisung is an imaginative person. Even without him saying it, the fact that his hair looked like a bubble of uncontained ideas frothing out of his brain in messy curls of ashy grey, and the fact that he was perpetually dressed in unwashed tattered jeans and a cable knit sweater that’d turned from its original off white colour to something off, his entire being strained to yell out Creative Arts Major.

 

A creative arts major who tried so hard to rewrite his memory and announce that his childhood experience, which other artists might’ve resorted to murder just to have, was nothing but the product of his own imagination.

 

_

 

It was the winter holiday of his second year in university, and unlike the years before, where he spent it doing study exchange on the weirdest countries he could get his hands on, Jisung found himself having to hole up in his old house as he’d run his savings dry after his ‘I’m going to Europe on a whim’ stint last summer. Being a part-time librarian can only take him so far before Jisung had to swallow his pride and amble back home in search for warm food that was not instant ramen.

 

And it was just like how it always was. Mom, dad, a little sister, which was given to him by the heavens, like a replacement goldfish, on the exact same year when Jisung stopped playing with his imaginary caveman friend.

 

“I’m going to bed,” he announced to his family who was lounging lazily in the living room, giving more attention to whatever it was they had on their phones in lieu of watching the Christmas-y movie playing on the tv set.

 

“Oh, it’s a Christmas miracle!” His sister, just entering fourth grade and so was in the height of her little ness, shouted over the pinging sound of the game she was so busy playing. It cost her a firm swat over her head.

 

His parents’ understanding smile though, grant them soft pecks on their cheeks.

 

“No need for your mom to tuck you in, eh?” Jisung heard his dad shouting at him as he rounded over the stairway, and he could only let out a chuckle after hearing that.

 

“I won’t protest if she still wants to do it.”

 

Jisung walked the length of the rickety corridor and softly opened the door to his childhood bedroom. The nostalgic smell that hit his nose, a blend of mothballs and old books, still managed to give him the most potent case of goosebumps. He hasn’t seen his childhood room for almost three years and it was the first time in so long that he could give it a good look. Trying to play with himself a version of spot the difference between the sight presented in front of him and the memory he’d kept so carefully inside his brain. Because although he did spend his first night back home sleeping in it, the extreme fatigue that came in the same package as late night flights caused him to only able to flop onto his bed like a dead fish and fall asleep the moment his head hit his sunken, old pillow.

 

It was clear from the fact that the entire mood of the room has suddenly shifted into something that fit more into the… childish-slash-juvenile target demography, that his sister has been using it for the time he was off attending university.

 

It was also clear that his body has grown so much since the time he graduated highschool, from the fact that his legs would now dangle out from the edges of the small bed.

 

It was also clear, that it took a miracle for his old wardrobe to still be standing (or to just still be there, instead of lying pathetically in a desolate landfill). Not strong, not even proudly, just a humble furniture happy to be given the opportunity to live another day. The cheap paint flaking like snake skin and the cracks showing all the layers hidden from the many years of his dad’s repainting. White, then red, then green and blue and purple, lastly. Little roses carefully hand painted to its surface by his mom and his sister.

 

Jisung ran his fingers across the soft wood, slightly sagging due to age, and wondered, ‘how the hell did I ever fit inside this thing.’

 

Because it looked so small, the highest point of it standing only up to Jisung’s eyes, and so fragile, that he wouldn’t even think that it could hold the weight of any child without it collapsing in on itself, yet alone two .

 

Two.

 

There has always only been one, isn’t it?

 

For the sake of nostalgia, Jisung opened the doors of the wardrobe and was hit face first with the strong whiff of his mom’s detergent.

 

“Home will always smell the same,” he mumbled as he navigated through his sister’s collection of dresses, setting aside her orange cardboard toy boxes until his saw the black stain at the back of the wardrobe.

Jisung couldn’t believe that it’s still there. After so many things that’d happened, he found it magical that his dad hasn’t taken his paintbrush and douse the interior of this wardrobe with paint.

 

“Knock three times,” he whispered with a pleasant smile hanging on his lips. Memory of the archaic ritual washed over him and Jisung swore he could feel something rumbling from beneath his palms. It felt like the earth just shuddered, like waves crashing against the side of a rocky cliff. Or it was probably just his heart, palpitating from the sudden excitement that somehow ensnared him without any rhymes or reason.

 

He expected his knuckles to make a sharp rapping sound when it hit the stained wood, but he got nothing . It took him a few seconds to fully process the fact that half of his palm has just disappeared into darkness so black it fooled him into thinking that it was a solid surface.

 

“This is…”

 

Impossible.

 

The word came out of him in a breathless surprise. Impossible. The small part of his heart was yelling at him to reconsider. To rethink, which is a silly thing for a heart to command him to do. But Jisung’s brain was telling him to go on all fours and investigate the anomaly more closely. Jisung followed that order, faithfully and obediently and with an effortless ease that truly showed in whom the reign of Jisung’s life truly laid.

 

When he’d managed to scramble onto his hands and knees and his sight was aligned with the stain,- with the portal, Jisung noticed something that made him question his initial observation. Was it really pitch dark?

 

Because he swore he saw something greenish, something bluish, a prick of something phosphorescent glowing at the center of it. Making it look as if it wasn’t just a small, half-circle anomaly in the fabric of space and time, but a long tunnel that Jisung knew, even if a decade and a year have passed since he last heard his voice, would lead him to Chenle.

 

‘Chenle,’ he mulled over that name in his mind, over and over and over, as the veil of his denial was slowly being craned up and over his eyes, his brain, his heart. Lies that he told himself to believe, as it would be far less painful than hoping for something he knew will never come, quickly dissolving into nothing.

 

‘Is he still there,’ he wondered, because what if this portal worked like the one in Narnia. What if in this short span of separation, Chenle’s underground kingdom has spun and tumbled through time and Jisung would be left alone, knowing nothing and no one in a world he was never meant to find himself lost in.

 

Does it really matter?

 

The voice at the back of his brain spoke, clearer than ever, and Jisung at last realised the reason for why he always find that clear, ringing voice to be a bit too familiar. Like a phantom word that you can’t ever make yourself to remember, hopelessly stuck at the end of your tongue.

 

Chenle.

 

Jisung then easily came to the decision that he was going to finally fulfill his childhood longing and go on a fantastical adventure. His childhood friend was telling him to do it. Who’s he to say no?

 

He crawled into the dark tunnel and something familiar greeted him. He was expecting the tunnel to be covered in jagged rocks and slippery gravels. But surprisingly, the ground felt spongy under his palms and instantly it reminded Jisung of how his first friend’s skin felt against his.

 

Chenle, Chenle, Chenle.

 

Here I come!