yaebin hadn’t been able to sleep all night. she had been lying in bed ever since her parents had gone to sleep, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes. she could hear their snoring from her bedroom. she watched the sun rise over the horizon until it was breaking through the leaves on the trees outside her window. there was a knot in the pit of her stomach, growing steadily with every passing hour, and she felt like she was probably going to explode before the day was over. she didn’t know if it was excitement or nervousness or fear or a mix of all three, but it was exhilarating.

when it was finally darker inside her bedroom than it was outside, yaebin jumped out of bed and barreled down the stairs. her parents were still asleep, but she knew they wouldn’t worry too much. they knew she had been waiting for this day all year.

the merchants were awake already, standing outside their shops or behind their booths, setting up for the day. one of them yelled at her when she almost knocked something off his table in her hurry, but she just apologized loudly over her shoulder and kept running. she didn’t feel too different than she had the day before, when she was twelve years old instead of thirteen, but her mind was buzzing with everything she knew was about to change.

the streets were lined with cobblestones, the sunlight reflecting off the golden and pink leaves on the trees overhead and making the light from the streetlights dance. most of the town were still asleep in their towering stone estates. a couple of children were giggling from a balcony somewhere above her, their excited voices reverberating around the square. yaebin smiled to herself as she climbed onto the edge of the fountain in the center of the square outside her best friend’s house, trying to make herself taller to see into the window.

“hey, jung eunwoo!” she called up, straining her eyes to see movement inside the room. the red curtains rustled lightly in the wind. “calling jung nunu!”

after a minute, the curtains were pulled back and her best friend’s face appeared at the window, looking down at yaebin with a playful grin. yaebin knew eunwoo was excited too, even if just out of empathy for her. she raised a hand to wave her over and eunwoo nodded before disappearing back into the room.

yaebin sat down on the fountain’s edge, crossing her legs under her and dipping her fingers into the water restlessly while she waited for eunwoo. she could hardly sit still in her excitement, though she knew the time she was really waiting for was still hours away.

“kang yaebin! happy birthday, dummy!” eunwoo called as she ran across the square towards her.

yaebin looked up again just in time to get smothered in a tight hug, and she came very close to falling backwards and pulling them both in the water. eunwoo was laughing when she pulled away, and yaebin used one hand to splash her in retaliation before breaking out in her own fit of giggles.

“are you excited?” eunwoo asked, even though she obviously knew already. yaebin didn’t bother directly answering.

“i’ve been dying to try all night,” she said instead. “i’m thirteen now, so it should work, right?”

“wanna try?” her best friend pulled her own legs under her, mirroring yaebin’s position and sitting across from her, near enough their knees were touching.

yaebin bit her lip. she had been lying awake all night in anticipation of finally getting to do magic, finally being able to feel the spells work between her fingertips and feel what it was going to be like for the rest of her life. she was almost sick with impatience. thirteen was the age when her people finally got to choose who they wanted to be for the rest of their lives, what they wanted their one true talent to be forever, what they wanted to offer the kingdom’s army when they were old enough to fight. yaebin had known she wanted to train as a mage since she was six years old and had spent the last seven years just waiting. she knew it was against the rules to make that decision without her parents and the elder elves of the city present, but she had been waiting for years now. the prospect of being stuck so normal for even the next few hours felt stifling.

eunwoo was only a few months older than her, but yaebin already felt like she was falling too far behind. eunwoo had gotten to start training over the summer, months before yaebin, and she had had to put up with eunwoo’s constant showing off, practicing magic, sparring wooden dummies for months now from the sidelines. she knew her best friend was as excited to study with the mages as she was, but it still felt unfair.

“yes,” she answered anyway, feeling her heartrate speed up. “show me again.”

eunwoo smiled, raising her hands and taking her eyes off yaebin for a few seconds while she focused on her magic. yaebin watched with admiration as eunwoo’s hands started glowing, a soft yellow light surrounding her. she could feel the raw power emanating from it all the way down to her bones.

eunwoo extinguished the light in one swift movement and yaebin sighed, her lips forming a jealous pout.

“stop that,” eunwoo scolded her, using one ungentle finger to poke yaebin’s pout. “you’re thirteen. you can do it now too.”

“but i’m not supposed to. not yet.”

“that’s only because they don’t want you to make an impulsive decision that you can’t take back,” she pointed out. “you’ve been talking about this your whole life. i don’t think you’re gonna change your mind last second.”

“i don’t even know how.”

“have you forgotten that you’re best friends with one of the new generation’s best prodigies?”

yaebin wrinkled her nose. “no one calls you that.”

“shut up.” she didn’t deny it, yaebin noticed. but eunwoo kept talking, so she was kind of forced to let her get away with it. “i can teach you. just a little, so the adults won’t really know anything is weird.”

she hesitated a second, but yaebin couldn’t deny that her heart was threatening to pound out of her chest at the thought. she really didn’t stand a chance against it.

after a moment she nodded and eunwoo grinned. “teach me your ways, master jung,” she relented easily.

“you have to imagine what you want to happen. but not in the i-want-to-cast-a-spell kind of way. you kind of have to pretend you don’t know what you’re trying to make happen. just focus on the power and making it appear when you want it to. think about warmth and light.”

yaebin frowned. “i don’t think you’re very cut out to be a teacher.”

 

 

 

 

yaebin really didn’t understand what was happening.

she had been awoken that morning by her mother in a panic, her green eyes flashing bright with anxiety. she had always been told she looked a lot like her mother – they had the same nose, the same teeth, the same long dark hair. seeing her upset immediately put yaebin on edge.

her parents hovered near her while she got dressed, but they wouldn’t say anything. every time they asked what was happening, they just looked at one another. her mother looked upset, but her father looked distinctly angry. yaebin couldn’t remember doing anything that would make him look like that. unless he knew about her trying to learn magic with eunwoo the day before, but she was pretty sure they had gotten away with that.

the entire town was in the square. yaebin’s family lived in a particularly tall tower, a particularly nice estate. her father had been something high up in the warchief’s army at one point, she knew, but to her he had always just been her father. and her house was just a house, like eunwoo’s or sungyeon’s or anyone else’s. apparently she had underestimated the level of popularity they had, because there were faces crowded around the square that she had never even seen before. yaebin’s heart flipped over. what kind of public humiliation was this? if she had done something wrong, couldn’t her parents just yell at her from the privacy of their own home?

then she saw the warchief.

she was covered in armour from head to toe, and yaebin couldn’t actually see her face for the hood of the long cloak she wore hid it in shadow. her eyes glowed.

yaebin had never seen the warchief in person before, but it was unmistakable. she felt a knot in the pit of her stomach, and this time it was definitely fear.

desperately, she looked towards the fork in the road that led to eunwoo’s house. she saw eunwoo’s parents first, standing gravely still. and in front of the crowd of onlookers, eunwoo was staring at the warchief with undeniable admiration. yaebin tried to catch her eye, but she clearly wasn’t paying attention to her.

yaebin’s mother grabbed her hand suddenly, her fingers ice cold. yaebin looked up at her in surprise, but her mother was looking past her, past even the warchief. yaebin had been so surprised to see the warchief there that she hadn’t seen anyone past her. now she saw the old woman.

there weren’t many old people in the city where she lived. everyone trained as a fighter first and foremost, so a lot of people never lived long enough to get old. everyone was expected to fight until they couldn’t fight anymore. she knew even her parents would eventually rejoin the army. but this woman was old, wrinkles folding her skin like crumpled parchment and her grey hair hanging in wisps around her face. her eyes looked slightly insane, and yaebin didn’t think she could get any more unnerved by the situation but was quickly proved wrong.

the old woman lurched forward on unsteady feet, like her legs weren’t really capable of holding her up anymore. she was looking directly at yaebin, but yaebin couldn’t tell if she actually saw her or not.

“that is the girl!” she exclaimed suddenly, and the crowd went silent. her mother’s hand tightened around hers. no one moved. “the girl from the prophecy! the girl with the black destiny!”

she took a tilting step with every word until yaebin could smell the breath exhaled with her voice. her eyes shifted in and out of focus on her. yaebin glanced up at her mother, who wasn’t looking at her, and her father, who was looking firmly at the warchief, and finally, desperately, looked over at eunwoo. her best friend was frowning now, her eyebrows knitted together as she watched the woman and yaebin, the warchief seemingly less important now.

“take the girl.” the warchief’s voice was low and laced with something yaebin couldn’t put her finger on. it sent a chill down her spine. “it is time to leave.”

two members of the warchief’s guard stepped towards yaebin, and the old woman retreated back to the warchief’s side. the guards each grabbed one of yaebin’s arms and she looked up at her parents in a panic. her mother wordlessly let go of her hand, refusing to look her in the eye. she felt like she was going to hyperventilate as the guards pulled her roughly away from her parents and towards the rest of the guard, the warchief already turned to take her leave.

“no!” an unmistakable voice complained loudly, and yaebin turned quickly to watch eunwoo try to pull her arm from her father’s grip, her face panicked. eunwoo looked at her, her eyes b with tears as they met yaebin’s for the first time that day, and she wanted nothing more than to run to her, but the guard’s grip on her arm was like iron. the guards pulled her in the direction the warchief was leaving in and she stumbled, trying to look back at her best friend until she disappeared in the crowd.

 

 

 

 

yaebin tapped her fingers against her knee, watching the bursts of purple light bouncing against her skin. the sun had set a while before and there was a biting chill in the air, but the scattered bonfires throughout the war camp were flickering with stubborn light. someone was singing. someone else was shouting. someone else was sharpening a sword on a rock. no one ever really talked to yaebin. they kept a wide distance from her. once, someone had actually turned suddenly and fled another way when they saw her walking in their direction.

so she was by herself, the magic in her fingers the only real sort of company she kept these days. she was only eighteen, but she felt old. she could hardly remember the last time she had spoken to someone about something other than the war.

this camp was bigger than the ones she was used to, and she knew they were preparing for a battle. that was the only reason her battalion would join with others in the area. she tried not to pay attention to the plans and technical aspects of the war. she just went where they told her to and used the spells she was good at. if she thought too much about it, she would go insane.

“nice trick.” yaebin was so surprised by the fact that someone was sitting next to her, and talking to her, and acknowledging her magic in a normal sort of way that she almost didn’t recognize the voice. “i bet i can do it better than you.”

she had grown up, of course, but the girl sitting next to her, close enough their shoulders were touching, was undeniably eunwoo. she had the same grin. yaebin felt like bursting into tears when her brain finally caught up and processed that it was really her.

“speechless, huh?” eunwoo continued, bumping her shoulder. “you should be. it took forever to find you. people really don’t like talking about you.”

“what are you doing here?” yaebin asked when she found her voice.

“same thing as you. gonna kill some cockroaches.” she smiled teasingly. “and i missed you, stupid.”

yaebin dropped her head onto eunwoo’s shoulder, hiding her face because now she was sure she was going to cry. it had been over five years since she had seen her best friend. everything had changed so quickly that day and most of it yaebin had learned to deal with, but there wasn’t a day that went by that yaebin hadn’t wished eunwoo was around to train with and joke with and talk with.

“hey, kang yaebin,” her best friend said scoldingly. “you better be careful, people might think you’re actually capable of emotions and not just some dark cloud of black energy.”

yaebin looked around quickly at the mention of her name, but no one was looking at them. "you shouldn't call me that. if they hear you--"

"you're always gonna be kang yaebin to me, dummy," eunwoo interrupted. it had been a long time since she heard her actual name spoken out of someone’s mouth. sometimes she forgot she had been a person before, not just a machine to fight someone else’s battles. "if they don't like it they can answer to me."

yaebin felt a rush of warmth in her chest, like she was comfortable in her own skin for the first time in years. she had almost forgotten that eunwoo always made her feel that way.

“come on,” eunwoo said, lacing her fingers around yaebin’s. yaebin’s heart turned over. “we should get some sleep before tomorrow. you need to cuddle me.”

right. tomorrow. the battle. yaebin’s heart sank. for a second there she had forgot what she was doing in that godforsaken camp. someone was still yelling in the background. bonfires were still crackling. it was supposed to be a big battle. yaebin’s gut twisted thinking about it.

“you’ve gotten good, by the way.” eunwoo kept talking, even as she pulled yaebin back towards her tent. yaebin never had to share her tent with anyone like eunwoo did, which she was grateful for now. “last time i saw you you could hardly get any light started at all, remember?”

yaebin smiled despite herself. maybe, she figured, she could worry about tomorrow in the morning.

 

 

 

 

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my twitter is @kangyesbian19. this was not proofread in the slightest so ignore mistakes. someone bother me every day until i finish the full minkyebin au pls bc i really wanna finish it but i am Lazy. also this was written solely to make up for the fact that eunwoo isn't in the full au at all so don't go there expecting more yebwoo tbh.