Jinsol made many mistakes in her life - she wasn’t exactly the brightest light bulb out there -, but right now, she didn’t exactly care. She ate an apple lazily, watching as Yves danced from her too comfortable couch. The human girl by her side seemed anxious.

One of her mistakes, she figured, was stepping inside that fairy door, even though she didn’t know what it was, at the time.

She hadn’t meant to cross over the fairy realm, but when Jinsol noticed, she wasn’t in any place she recognized anymore, the trees a wrong shade of green, the sky too dark, branches hanging heavy with fruit over her head, a sweet smell in the air. It fascinated her, even if the content of her stomach lurched dangerously, as if, in some deep, primal level, Jinsol was aware this wasn’t a place she was supposed to be. However, even if her guts screamed at her to go back, to find her way back home, Jinsol ignored it - there wasn’t a place for her to go back. Jinsol was alone.

Soon enough she found herself a companion - a girl with long dark hair, bright eyes that shone with inhuman intelligence, pointed ears, a feathery white dress, and bleeding gold from a small wound in her knees, like a child who had fallen in the rough pavement.

Jinsol - more heart than brains - sat with her and picked from her pockets the band-aids she carried for herself. With a silent question and an even more silent answer, Jinsol cleaned the small wound, her tissues tinted yellow-ish, and then, a cute Gundam bandaid to top it off. She smiled at the stranger with pointy years, and the girl’s dark eyes shone.

“It seems I am indebted to you,” The girl started, careful, as if overthinking each and every word she spoke. “Might I ask your name?”

This was yet another of her mistakes, but Jinsol didn’t know that yet. It would be a lesson learned at a later date.

“It’s Jinsol. Jung Jinsol.” She replied, and the girl smiled, bright and dangerous. “What about you?”

“Yves.” The girl rose up, patting her dress, and offered Jinsol a hand. She accepted, and Yves was - too close. If Jinsol wanted to, she could count the eyelashes in Yves’ eyes, her breath warm against Jinsol’s skin, hands cold in her arms. The other girl was too cold, but Jinsol hadn’t had the time to pick up a coat, when she had run away. “You’re quite too nice for this place, Jinsol, but no worries. I’ll help you.”

Jinsol stared at Yves, and Yves simply smiled, stepping back, her cold hands leaving Jinsol’s arms and somehow, leaving an afterthought that Jinsol wouldn’t have minded if they stayed.

As if reading her mind (in a later analysis, Jinsol figured that yes, maybe she was), Yves’ hands found her own, and the girl started pulling her along the dark forest path.

“Uh, where we are?” Jinsol asked, avoiding being hit by a dark red plum by a hair, and Yves giggled, like a mischievous kid. It was a sweet laugh.

The ground beneath their feet changed from old leaves to a beaten dirt path, and small houses started to be seen in the distance, painted in delightfully bright colors. It didn’t seem like they had walked so much. Jinsol didn’t even feel tired.

“We’re in the fairy realm, Jinsol.” She knew she wasn’t supposed to like the way Yves said her name. She enjoyed it anyway, noticing, in the corner of her vision, that the small houses she had seen what she had thought it to be a moment ago were passing blurrily by them, as if they weren’t traveling by foot, but by car, going too fast. “I’m surprised you made it this far without knowing any of the rules, but it happens every once in a while.”

Jinsol furrowed her brow, and Yves looked at her over the shoulder, smiling prettily, fangs showing between her lips. They stopped in front of the entrance to a richly decorated cave, the opening closed with colorful satin, a garden with turquoise grass and furniture sprawled everywhere punctuating the space and welcoming them. The same heavy trees from before were over Jinsol’s head, filled with ripe apples.

The smell made Jinsol’s head feel filled with air, as if she couldn’t think anymore. She didn’t mind. Not thinking was good.

“But don’t you worry. You’re going to be just fine. I’ll help you settle in.” Yves said, letting go of Jinsol, taking an apple from one of the branches, making it jump up and down in her hands, as if testing its firmness. It was sort of hypnotizing. “Come you, you’re hungry. You can eat this.”

It wasn’t a question, and Yves didn’t wait for an answer to the question she never posed before putting the apple in Jinsol’s hands. Jinsol stared from the apple - shiny and red, unnatural to any human standards - and then to Yves, who wasn’t human. She was too deep in this mess to leave, and didn’t even know how to go back home (not that she wanted to, anyway. She had run to a forest for a reason.), for starters.

Jinsol bit the apple.

The first lesson Jinsol learned was that time passed differently in the fairy realm. She met people who thought it was still the 17th century, who thought it only had been ten minutes since they had been playing a card game with the fairies, who thought that a minute had passed when no, it had been a day.

The sun, too, never rose and never died; it was always a sunset, warm and yet cool, giving the world more shadows than it asked for, and she figured it corroborated the idea that time didn’t pass.

When she asked Yves - something of a fairy queen, but she didn’t seem to care for the title; it seemed many fairy queens existed, all clustered together - about it, the girl smiled, pulling her closer, hands in Jinsol’s hand, dragging her closer in the couch they were sitting on, watching a party go by. Yves didn’t seem cold to the touch anymore, but maybe it was Jinsol who wasn’t the warm one now.

“Time is meaningless when you live forever, Jinsol. Why should the sun rise and set, when it doesn’t matter?” Yves replied as an answer, and put a finger under Jinsol’s chin, raising it up slightly, analyzing her face from all possible angles. “You’re going to be this pretty forever.”

The answer to a question Jinsol had never cared about. She sighed, and Yves seemed pleased with herself, putting one hand in the side of Jinsol’s face, and she couldn’t help but lean into the touch, closing her eyes for a moment. It was familiar and comfortable.

“That wasn’t what I was worried about,” Jinsol said, and Yves giggled, letting go, draping herself over Jinsol as the girl opened her eyes. She laid her head in Jinsol’s lap, closing her eyes, and Jinsol knew it was stupid to smile at it, but she did, nonetheless. “You can’t sleep.”

“Maybe I want to,” Yves said, eyes closed, stifling a false yawn. A mimicry of sleepiness Jinsol was sure Yves had never felt. “I always wondered how it would feel to fall asleep like humans do. To dream. I heard it’s very pleasing.”

That was sort of cute. Jinsol couldn’t help but stifle laughter, and pretended not to see the gentle smile Yves had on her face.

“Then let me correct my phrase: you don’t sleep. None of us do.”

Yves giggled, but said nothing. She touched Yves’ face with one finger, tracing the contour of her bones, and thought.

Fairies (and Jinsol was one now, she guessed; something with the apple made her one. She wouldn’t learn until later that eating fairy food would bind you to their realm) didn’t sleep. It had been maddening, the first few weeks, awake and restless, staring at a wall and praying for sleep to come, but now she was used to it. Spending the entire life awake was a bit boring, at times, but she played games with other to pass the times she should’ve been asleep.

She still missed sleeping - Jinsol figured it was something of her human nature that simply couldn’t be changed, fairy or not.

“At least give me an apple, before you sleep,” Jinsol said, carding her fingers through Yves’ hair, and the girl smiled, moving her hand slightly, and a branch filled with apples appeared over their heads, offering soft shadows in Yves’ face, emolduring it like it was a painting. Yves could be a painting that Jinsol loved and went back to see every day (and in a way, she was).

She looked like a forest nymph, sweet and gentle while safely asleep in her lover’s lap, but Jinsol knew better than to trust appearances. She grabbed one apple and bit it, chewing the too sweet fruit.

Jinsol kissed Yves one day. She had been lonely, and that was the reasoning she used, muttering excuses to Yves after they separated.

They both knew it wasn’t the truth.

Yves simply smiled, fangs showing, and she touched Jinsol’s face with unexpected care.

“You like me.” It wasn’t a question; this wa an habit Yves had, and for once, she was pretty glad for it. Jinsol blushed. “Don’t come at me with sweet words about being lonely, Jinsol, when I know your heart so well. If you want to kiss me, you may.”

A pause that was as long as a heartbeat. Maybe two. Time was meaningless.

“Can I? Really?” Yves giggled, warm hands touching Jinsol’s face. She was too close, but maybe Jinsol wanted that.

“I never said you couldn’t.” Yves replied, kissing Jinsol. She tasted like apples (of course. Of course she did, it was all they ever ate), sweet and sour and it felt like home. Jinsol melted into the kiss, putting her hands through Yves’ hair, the smell of apples overpowering any semblance of a coherent thought she could have.

When they separated, a little bit breathless, Yves smiled, fangs showing, and Jinsol could feel that her fangs were showing in her smile, as well. Yves put a strand of Jinsol’s eternally blonde hair behind her ear, tracing the pointy end, and smiled, as if satisfied with the end result of a project. Jinsol couldn’t recall when she had gotten those new features.

She knew she should be horrified at the fact she was more of a fairy she was human, she had been a fairy for more time (probably) than she had ever lived as a human, but the smell of apples didn’t let her think straight, overpowering her senses.

Jinsol, after some thought, also found that no , she didn’t care about what she was. Fairy, human - what was the difference between one and another, at the end of the day? None. Nothing at all. Both were one and the same, and it was plain easy to see, just seeing all the people that were there for so long. Sometimes, Jinsol didn’t know when someone was a human from the past or a fairy with antiquated manners, but who cared, right? Jinsol certainly didn’t, not anymore.

In retrospect, had she ever cared? She had ran away from her home to a forest, and maybe it was destiny. Maybe, just maybe, it was her fate to get lost and find her way to Yves, to giver her real name to the fairy and eat the fairy food, locking her forever in their realm with no way back.

Not that she had wanted one, anyway.

“Kiss me again.” Yves said, breaking her chain of thought, and Jinsol looked at Yves, so close and so warm. Her eyes shone like jewels, and was red like the apples she loved so much, like the apples Jinsol loved so much now.

She kissed Yves and forgot to think.

Jinsol watched Yves dance. The apple in tasted sweet. By her side, a human who didn’t give her her real name, who didn’t eat anything she offered, watched Yves as well, but with careful eyes, looking around every once in a while, as if not wanting to be hypnotized.

“Choerry, right?” Jinsol asked, looking to Yves, the human by her side getting startled by a moment, before looking at Jinsol. She grabbed some cherries from a branch, and offered them to the girl, who looked at her like she had seen a ghost. “Are you sure you don’t want them? They’re very good.”

“No, I’m not hungry.” Choerry replied, careful, measuring her words. Jinsol smiled at her, fangs showing through her lips. She rose up, fear eminent in her eyes, in the too loud beat of her heart. Jinsol didn’t think she had one anymore.“I think I’ll be going, actually. My parents must be worried.”

How cute . Jinsol’s parents were probably long dead.

“The party barely started.” Jinsol said, rising up as well. “Let me accompany you to the door, at least. To see you off safely.”

The girl hesitated - to not say “thank you but no thanks” was really something humans seemed to struggle with, now -, but nodded, and Jinsol silently walked with her to the door of the cave she and Yves lived in.

Choerry was something of a traveler. Jinsol had found her lost in the forest, and guided her to the more or less society they had; now, she came back frequently, as if the fairies had a siren call only Choerry could listen to. Maybe it was that other fairy she always saw Choerry near; if she recalled correctly, her name was Chaewon. Maybe .

At the door, Choerry hesitated once more, and looked into Jinsol’s eyes.

“You… I know you.” She started, slow, deliberating over each word. “When I was a kid, I saw the posters looking for you. Why didn’t you come back? Why you ran here, of all places?”

Jinsol inclined her head, a smile bubbling over her lips. A long time ago, she might have pondered how much time had passed since her disappearance, but Jinsol wasn’t the same person as before.

“I got distracted by the smell of apples.” She said, and Choerry - eyes huge, pools of dark water - nodded once, before all but running away, her purple skirt a blur. Jinsol watched for a moment more, before going back inside to Yves, where her place was.