Mark finally puts his pen down when his hand starts to cramp up. He stretches back in his chair, and when he finishes, his brain belatedly registers the time. It’s so late he can hear Jaemin’s snores, something he’s never heard before since he typically falls asleep first.

Just then, something hits their window. Mark thinks he’s imagining it, but then he hears it again… and again… and again… He thinks it might be someone throwing a pebble, but that wouldn’t make any sense because who can throw several stories high? Mark peeks out the window.

In the low lighting of the streetlamp, he makes out a familiar figure waving to him.

“Lip print jacket boy?” Mark gasps. He covers his mouth and watches Jaemin to make sure he hadn’t woken him up. When the boy only turns on his side, Mark makes a probably foolish decision.

He slips out of the dorm quietly and shuffles down the hallway, down the elevator, and out the entrance way. Outside, he finds lip print jacket boy and only lip print jacket boy waiting for him. Lip print jacket boy offers Mark a friendly smile and everything feels surreal.

“Hey?” Mark greets first.

“Hey, took you long enough,” Haechan says. He tosses a pouch of pebbles into the nearby bushes.

“How did you know which room I was in?” Mark asks, careful not to sound accusatory with his tone.

Haechan rolls his eyes like he expected the question.

“I flew and looked.”

Mark nods. “Right, of course.” Okay… lip print jacket boy just might be one of those crazy fans, Mark’s right shoulder angel warns. Mark’s left shoulder devil tells it to shut up.

Haechan raises a quizzical brow. “No, I was super serious.”

Mark raises his hands in defense. “No, no, I believe you.”

Mark’s tone is actually really convincing and that’s kind of cool, Haechan thinks, but he’s been trained to read body language. Besides, he’s a good actor himself. Dionysus always tells him so.

“Look, Mark Lee. I don’t want you get the wrong idea. I’m not a fan. I’m not even human. I’m just here to do my job.”

Mark’s eyebrows want to join his hairline. “Riiiiight,” he says cooly. “And your job would be?”

Haechan pretends not to see him slowly stepping away.

“I’m pretty sure I already told you, Mark Lee. I’m going to make you fall in love.”

Haechan raises his hand and a golden bow materializes out of thin air along with a matching quiver. Mark’s eyes almost pop out of his skull.

“Am I dreaming?” Mark pinches himself. He winces.

“Mark Lee,” Haechan starts, slipping the quiver over his shoulder and drawing an arrow with a heart-shaped arrowhead, “I’m a Cupid aka an official emissary sent by the goddess Aphrodite herself to forcefully administer the power of love into your life.”

“You’re joking…”

“This isn’t a joke, Mark Lee, nor a dream. I’ve come to make you fall in love for the wellbeing of the universe. You’re spreading too many negative ideals of love via your music.”

“You’re targeting me because I make relatable music? Love is overrated, anyway. You can't do this!”

Mark isn’t sure what’s more unbelievable? The fact that lip print boy could actually be a fairytale creature or the fact that he’s arguing with a fairytale creature. He pinches himself again and prays it doesn’t hurt--it still does.

“I can and I will, Mark Lee. Prepare yourself.”

“You can’t force me to like anyone. I’m fine being by myself.”

Mark holds his ground, almost as if frozen in place, unwavering even whilst being at the end of Haechan’s golden bow--drawn back and held taut with a heart-shaped arrow--aiming directly for his chest.

His glare is icy and it sends shivers up Haechan’s spine, but the Cupid remains poised. Steady. Focused. He ignores the pricking of tiny aches already forming in his right arm, pushes away the self-doubt about being rusty, and then lets out a chuckle to calm his butterfly nerves.

“You don’t have a choice, Mark. In seven days, you’ll fall in love with whom I choose, whether you like it or not.”

Before Mark can say anything else, Haechan relaxes his fingers.

The arrow hits before Mark can blink and knocks him back off his feet before he can gasp.

He doesn’t feel pain when he hits the ground, though. His chest stings, yes. His breathing picks up, yes. But it isn’t from pain. All at once, more and more vivid colors seep into his vision. The hairs on his arms stand up. His skin tingles. He feels lighter. He starts to panic.

“Woah, calm down,” Haechan says as he approaches. Each crunch of the gravel from his black boots echo loud in Mark’s ears and moreover his voice seems like it came from Mark’s own mind. Mark’s heart pounds away at his chest with each step Haechan takes towards him.

What the hell did lip print jacket boy do to him?

Some of Mark’s senses finally kick in and he sits up abruptly. He runs his hands all over chest hastily, flings his t-shirt off of himself, actually, and pats all over his chest where he swears he felt the arrow hit him.

No signs of entry. No scars. No trace. Nothing. The arrow that struck his chest is nowhere to be found. Mark glimpses in Haechan’s direction and doesn’t notice a bow in-hand either. Did he imagine it? For a second, Mark doubts his sanity, but then he slaps himself. Hard.

A self-inflicted injury is interestingly what he needs to brings himself back to reality. Yes, this was reality, Mark thinks. Sure, Cupids can be real. The Greek gods he learned about in school? They’re real, too. Hercules? The realest. Mount Olympus? Real, why not?

Haechan watches Mark’s breakdown slightly concerned, but for other reasons. Right before his arrow struck, he felt Mark’s aura flare up a bit, and ever since then, he could finally sense Orpheus trapped within him. The ancient energy was leaking and at an alarming rate no less.

Could Mark’s body and mind withstand such an admission of energy? Orpheus has clearly already had an influence over Mark if he was writing songs that spread anti-love, but just how far did that influence reach? Was the leak a sign that Orpheus was trying to overpower his vessel?

Possessions were certainly out of Haechan’s jurisdiction. He makes a mental note to tell Aphrodite about the leak and files it away in his brain. He has more important matters to tend to like the shirtless pop idol having a crisis outside of his apartment at three in the morning.

”Are you done being dramatic yet, Mark?”

Mark looks up at him bewildered. “Are you serious?” His confusion then morphs into anger and he stumbles up to his feet, grabbing for Haechan’s collared-jacket with the stupid lip prints, clinging onto him clumsily.

Haechan has to take a step back to counterbalance Mark suddenly throwing all his weight on him, but the image of the brooding, anti-love idol looking so helpless in his arms is strangely amusing.

“Still not used to the effects?”

“Shut up,” Mark grumbles into Haechan’s chest.

Mark finds it hard to breathe. Hard to stand. Hard to think. His body is all out of whack and he hates it. Standing up shouldn’t be strenuous for him so why is it so strenuous for him? He works out five days a week so why do his muscles feel so weak?

“What… what did you do?”

Haechan ignores the question. Voice falling soft, he asks, “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know… weak… useless.”

The pain in his voice doesn’t go unnoticed.

“What did you do to my body?” Mark asks again. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I—” He breaks off into a coughing fit.

Haechan runs his hand in small circles over Mark’s back and whispers for him to breathe in and out slowly. Mark, feeling defeated and exhausted, just listens to him. He focuses on Haechan’s heartbeat, soft and steady unlike his own. His own heartbeat could break a rib, he thinks.

Only when a burst of cold air whips through do they remember where they’re at—outside in the back of BnB’s dormitory—where Mark is currently shirtless and in the arms of some stranger. That would be a pretty image above gossip headlines to wake up to in the morning.

He doesn’t want to leave Haechan’s warmth, but he also doesn’t need lurking fans ruining his life so he tries standing up on his own. He’s surprised when he can. Haechan laughs at his disbelief and the sound causes a funny reaction inside Mark’s chest. His body must still be odd.

Mark has to take his time picking his shirt up off the ground and then maneuvering it over his arms, his head, his body. He feels disconnected, out of place in his own body. Haechan observes him with a impish smile tugging at his lips.

“Not so useless after all, huh?”

Mark sends him a glare, but it’s nowhere as cold as the one from earlier. It’s impossible for it to be.

“This is so weird,” Mark whines. He’s trying his hardest to keep himself grounded. “Why do I feel so weird?” Mark flails his arms around. They don’t even feel like his.

“Congrats, Mark Lee, you’ve officially made it out of shock,” Haechan says, “Your body was rejecting the serum so that’s why you felt helpless. But for this type of procedure, you’ll learn it’s been not to fight it.”

“What’s ‘it’?”

“The ‘Feels’,” Haechan sings.

Woah, lip print jacket boy’s voice does something to him, too, Mark notices, but that sparks a random thought.

“Hey, what’s your name?”

The question catches Haechan off guard and he freezes.

“My name?” he repeats dumbly, pointing at himself. “Uh.. why?”

“Because,” Mark responds simply.

No one has ever asked Haechan what is name was. He’s completed over a hundred assignments and literally no one has asked him what his name was. He usually introduces himself as a Cupid and that’s that. Now, quite frankly, Haechan’s confused.

“Because what?”

Mark shifts back and forth on his heels and shrugs. “I dunno, because I want to know?” He shrugs again. “I’ve been wanting to know…”

Haechan watches the slightly taller boy with skepticism plain as day in his countenance. Mark’s cheeks are red from the cold.

“Do you lose your powers if you tell your name or something? Are Cupids even allowed to have names?”

Haechan snorts. “You’re kidding me.”

It’s three in the morning and Haechan is laughing like he’s at a circus. Mark shushes him, but stops because his body is acting weird again.

“Am I Rumplestiltskin or something?” Haechan says in between bursts of laughter. Mark swears he hears someone shout shut up. When Haechan finally catches his breath, he gives Mark a smile brighter than a rising sun.

“My ‘work’ name is Haechan.”

“What about your real name?”

Haechan winks. “That’s personal, but since you’re looking like you feel a lot better now, I’ll let you go.”

“Wait, what? H-Haechan, what the hell is going on? What did you do to me? Explain something!”

“Didn’t I tell you, Mark? Seven days: you’re gonna fall in love.”

“With?”

Haechan jumps in the air, but never touches the ground. Mark’s jaw does, though, as he watches Haechan lift higher and higher, pulled by seemingly invisible wires.

“Day One starts tomorrow, Mark Lee, see you then!”

Haechan waves before ascending higher into the sky.

Dumbfounded, Mark watches him long after he disappears into the night.

Two hours later, his manger finds him still staring at the sky, blue-lipped and shivering. While carrying Mark back up, his manager asks jokingly if he’s put on weight.

Mark replies, “I think my heart has.”