“ARE YOU SCARED?” Taehyung asked. His head was tilted sideways, his blond hair disheveled by a soft breeze. He was holding him, and while his grip was firm around his waist, it was as smooth and light as a silk sash. His own fingers were laced behind his shirtless neck.

Was he scared? Of course not. He was with Taehyung. Finally. In his arms. The truer question pulling at the back of his mind was: Should he be scared? He couldn’t be sure. He didn’t even know where he was.

He could smell rain in the air, close by. But both he and Taehyung were dry. There was only a little light left in the day. Jin felt a stabbing regret at wasting the sunset, as if there were anything he could do to stop it. Somehow he knew these final rays of light were as precious as the last drops of honey in a jar.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked. His voice was the thinnest whisper, almost cancelled out by a low groan of thunder. A gust of wind swirled around them, brushing Jin’s hair into his eyes. Taehyung folded his arms more tightly around him, until he could breathe in his breath, could smell his skin on his.

“Forever,” he whispered back. The sweet sound of his voice filled him up.

There was a small scratch on the left side of his forehead, but he forgot it as Taehyung cupped his cheek and brought his face nearer. He tilted his head back and felt the whole of his body go slack with expectation.

Finally, finally, his lips came down on his with an urgency that took his breath away. He kissed him as if he belonged to him, as naturally as if he were some long-lost part of him that he could at last reclaim.

Then the rain started to fall. It soaked their hair, ran down their faces and into their mouths. The rain was warm and intoxicating, like the kisses themselves.

Jin reached around his back to draw him closer, and his hands slid over something velvety. He ran one hand over it, then another, searching for its limits, and then peered past Taehyung’s glowing face.

Something was unfurling behind him.

Wings. Lustrous and iridescent, beating slowly, effortlessly, shining in the rain. He’d seen them before, maybe, or something like them somewhere.

“Taehyung,” he said, gasping. The wings consumed his vision and his mind. They seemed to swirl into a million colors, making his head hurt. He tried to look elsewhere, anywhere else, but on all sides, all he could see besides Taehyung were the endless pinks and blues of the sunset sky. Until he looked down and took in one last thing.

The ground.

Thousands of feet below them.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When he opened his eyes, it was too bright, his skin was too dry, and there was a splitting pain at the back of his head. The sky was gone and so was Taehyung.

Another dream.

Only this one left him feeling almost sick with desire.

He was in a white-walled room. Lying on a hospital bed. To his left, a paper-thin curtain had been dragged halfway across the room, separating him from something bustling on the other side.

Jin gingerly touched the tender spot at the base of his neck and whimpered.

He tried to get his bearings. He didn’t know where he was, but he had a distinct feeling that he wasn’t at Sword & Cross any longer. He could feel every part of the dream slipping away— everything but those wings. They’d been so real. The touch of them so velvety and fluid. His stomach churned. He clenched and unclenched his fists, hyper-aware of their emptiness.

Someone grasped and squeezed his right hand. Jin turned his head quickly and winced. He’d assumed he was alone. Hoseok was perched on the edge of a faded blue rolling chair that seemed, annoyingly, to bring out the color of his eyes.

Jin wanted to pull away—or at least, he expected to want to pull away—but then Hoseok gave him the warmest smile, one that made Jin feel somehow safe, and he realized he was glad he wasn’t alone.

“How much of it was a dream?” he murmured.

Hoseok laughed. “That all depends,” he said, massaging Jin’s fingers. “But never mind dreams. I know that whenever I feel my world turning upside down, nothing grounds me like a massage.”

Jin glanced down. Hoseok’s words reminded him of his mother, who was always suggesting they go for massages whenever Jin had a bad day. As Hoseok’s slow hands worked over his fingers, Jin wondered whether all these years, he’d been missing out.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Lullwater Hospital.”

His first trip off campus and he ended up in a hospital five minutes from his parents’ house. The last time he’d been here was to get three stitches on his elbow when he’d fallen off his bike. His father hadn’t left his side. Now he was nowhere to be seen.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

Hoseok looked at a white clock on the wall and said, “They found you passed out from smoke inhalation last night around eleven. It’s standard operating procedure to call for EMTs when they find a reform kid unconscious, but don’t worry, Bo young said they’re going to let you out of here pretty soon. As soon as your parents give the okay—”

“My parents are here?”

“And filled with concern for their son, right down to the split ends of your mama’s permed hair. They’re in the hallway, drowning in paperwork. I told them I’d keep an eye on you.”

Jin groaned and pressed his face into the pillow, calling up the deep pain at the back of his head again.

“If you don’t want to see them …”

But Jin wasn’t groaning about his parents. He was dying to see his parents. He was remembering the library, the fire, and the new breed of shadows that grew more terrifying every time they found him. They’d always been dark and unsightly, they’d always made him nervous, but last night, it had almost seemed as if the shadows wanted something from him. And then there was that other thing, the levitating force that had set him free.

“What’s that look?” Hoseok asked, cocking his head and waving his hand in the air in front of Jin’s face. “What are you thinking about?”

Jin didn’t know what to make of Hoseok’s sudden kindness toward him. Nurse’s assistant didn’t exactly seem like the kind of gig Hoseok would volunteer for, and it wasn’t like there were any guys around whose attention he could monopolize. Hoseok didn’t even seem to like Jin. He wouldn’t just show up here of his own accord, would he?

But even as nice as Hoseok was being, there was no way to explain what had happened last night. The grisly, unspeakable gathering in the hallway. The surreal sensation of being propelled forward through that blackness. The strange, compelling figure of light.

“Where’s Junghwan?” Jin asked, remembering the boy’s fearful eyes. He’d lost his grip on him, gone flying, and then …

The paper curtain was suddenly slung back, and there was Jimin, wearing in-line skates. He rolled in, carrying a tray on which sat three coconut shells topped with neon-colored umbrella party straws.

“Now lemme get this straight,” he said in a throaty, nasal voice. “You put the lime in the coconut and drink ’em both up—whoa, long faces. What am I interrupting?”

Jimin wheeled to a stop at the foot of Jin’s bed. He extended a coconut with a bobbing pink umbrella.

Hoseok jumped up and seized the coconut first, giving its contents a sniff. “Jimin, he has just been through a trauma,” he scolded. “And for your information, what you interrupted was the topic of Junghwan.”

Jimin tossed his shoulders back. “Precisely why he needs something with a kick,” he argued, holding the tray possessively while he and Hoseok engaged in a stare-down.

“Fine,” Jimin said, looking away from Hoseok. “I’ll give him your boring old drink.” he gave Jin the coconut with the blue straw.

Jin must have been in some kind of post-traumatic daze. Where would they have gotten any of this stuff? Coconut shells? Drink umbrellas? It was like he’d been conked out at reform school and woken up at Club Med.

 “Where did you guys get all this stuff?” he asked. “I mean, thank you, but—”

“We pool our resources when we need to,” Jimin said. “Seo-joon helped.”

The three of them sat slurping the frosty, sweet drinks for a moment, until Jin couldn’t take it anymore. “So back to Junghwan … ?”

“Junghwan,” Hoseok said, clearing his throat. “Thing is … he just inhaled a lot more of that smoke than you did, honey—”

“He did not,” Jimin spat. “He broke his neck.”

Jin gasped, and Hoseok hit Jimin with his drink umbrella.

“What?” Jimin said. “Jin can handle it. If he’s going to find out eventually, why sugarcoat it?”

“The evidence is still inconclusive,” Hosoek said, stressing the words.

Jimin shrugged. “Jin was there, he must have seen—”

“I didn’t see what happened to him,” Jin said. “We were together and then somehow we were thrown apart. I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t know,” he whispered. “So he’s …”

“Gone from this world,” Hoseok said softly.

Jin closed his eyes. A chill spread through him that had nothing to do with the drink. He remembered Junghwan’s frenzied banging on the walls, his sweaty hand squeezing his when the shadows roared down on them, the awful moment when the two of them had been split apart and he’d been too overcome to go to him.

He’d seen the shadows. Jin was certain of it now. And he’d died.

After Yi Jung died, not a week had gone by without a hate letter finding its way to Jin. His parents started trying to vet the mail before he could read the poisonous stuff, but too much still reached him. Some letters were handwritten, some were typed, one had even been cut from magazine letters, ransom-note style. Murderer. A Curse. They’d called him enough cruel names to fill a scrapbook, caused enough agony to keep him locked inside the house all summer.

He thought he’d done so much to move on from that nightmare: leaving him past behind when he came to Sword & Cross, focusing on his classes, making friends … oh God. He in his breath. “What about Ken?” he asked, biting his lip.

“Ken’s fine,” Jimin said. “He’s all front-page-story, eyewitness-to-the-fire. He and Mr. Bogum both got out, smelling like an East Georgia smoke pit, but no worse for the wear.”

Jin let out his breath. At least there was one piece of good news. But under the paper-thin infirmary sheets, he was trembling. Soon, surely the same types of people who’d come to him after Yi Jung's death would come to him again. Not just the ones who wrote the angry letters. Dr. Sanford. His parole officer. The police.

Just like before, he’d be expected to have the whole story pieced together. To remember every single detail. But of course, just like before, he wouldn’t be able to. One minute, he’d been at his side, just the two of them. The next—

“Jin!” Ken barged into the room, holding a big brown helium balloon. It was shaped like a Band-Aid and said Stick It Out in blue cursive letters. “What is this?” he asked, looking at the other three guys critically. “Some sort of slumber party?”

Jimin had unlaced his skates and climbed onto the tiny bed next to Jin. He was double- the coconut drinks and laying his head on Jin’s shoulder. Hoseok was rubbing Jin’s coconut-free hand.

“Yeah,” Jimin cackled. “Join us, Kennyloafer. We were just about to play Truth or Dare. We’ll let you go first.”

Hoseok tried to cover up his laugh with a dainty fake sneeze.

Ken put his hands on his hips. Jin felt bad for him, and was also a little scared. Ken looked pretty fierce.

“One of our classmates died last night,” Ken carefully enunciated. “And Jin could have been really hurt.” He shook his head. “How can you two play around at a time like this?” He sniffed. “Is that alcohol?”

“Ohhh,” Jimin said, looking at Ken, his face serious. “You liked him, didn’t you?”

Ken picked up a pillow from the chair behind him and chucked it at Jimin. The thing was, Ken was right. It was strange that Jimin and Hosoek were taking Junghwan’s death … almost lightly. Like they saw this kind of thing happen all the time. Like it didn’t affect them the way it affected Jin. But they couldn’t know what Jin knew about Junghwan’s last moments. They couldn’t know why he felt so sick right now. He patted the foot of the bed for Ken and handed him what was left in his frosty coconut.

“We went out the back exit, and then—” Jin couldn’t even say the words. “What happened to you and Mr. Bogum?”

Ken glanced doubtfully at Jimin and Hoseok, but neither made a move to be obnoxious. Ken gave in and settled on the edge of the bed.

“I just went up there to ask him about—” He glanced at the other two guys again, then gave Jin a knowing look. “This question I had. He didn’t know the answer, but he wanted to show me another book.”

Jin had forgotten all about his and Ken’s quest last night. It seemed so far away, and so beside the point after what had happened.

“We took two steps away from Mr. Bogum’s desk,” Ken continued, “and there was this massive burst of light out of the corner of my eye. I mean, I’ve read about spontaneous combustion, but this was …”

All three of the other guys were leaning forward by then. Ken’s story was front-page news.

“Something must have started it,” Jin said, trying to picture Mr. Bogum’s desk in his mind. “But I didn’t think there was anyone else in the library.”

Ken shook his head. “There wasn’t. Mr. Bogum said a wire must have shorted in a lamp. Whatever happened, that fire had a lot of fuel. All his documents went right up.” He snapped his fingers.

“But he’s okay?” Jin asked, the papery hem of his hospital gown.

“Distraught, but okay,” Ken said. “The sprinklers came on eventually, but I guess he lost a whole lot of his things. When they told him what happened to Junghwan, it was almost like he was too numb to even understand.”

“Maybe we’re all too numb to understand,” Jin said. This time Hoseok and Jimin nodded on either side of him. “Do—do Junghwan’s parents know?” he asked, wondering how on earth he would explain to his own parents what had happened.

He imagined them filling out paperwork in the lobby. Would they even want to see him? Would they connect Junghwan’s death with Yi Jung’s … and trace both awful stories back to him?

“I overheard Bo young on the phone with Jung-hwan’s parents,” Ken said. “I think they’re filing a lawsuit. His body is being sent back to Florida later today.”

That was it? Jin swallowed.

“Sword & Cross is having a memorial service for him on Thursday,” Hoseok said quietly. “Taehyung and I are going to help organize it.”

“Taehyung?” Jin repeated before he could control himself. He glanced at Hoseok, and even in his grief-stricken state, he couldn’t help reverting to his initial image of the guy: a pink-lipped, blond seducer.

“He was the one who found the two of you last night,” Hosoek said. “He carried you from the library to Bo young’s office.”

Taehyung had carried him? As in … his arms around his body? The dream rushed back and the sensation of flying—no, of floating—overwhelmed him. He felt too tethered down to his bed. He ached for that same sky, that rain, his mouth, his teeth, his tongue melding with his again. His face grew hot, first with desire, then with the agonizing impossibility of any of that ever happening while he was awake. Those glorious, blinding wings weren’t the only fantastical things about that dream. The real-life Taehyung would only carry him to the nurse’s station. He would never want him, never take him in his arms, not like that.

“Uh, Jin, are you okay?” Ken asked. He was fanning Jin’s flushed cheeks with his drink umbrella.

“Fine,” Jin said. It was impossible to push those wings out of his mind. To forget the sensation of his face over his. “Just still recovering, I guess.”

Hoseok patted his hand. “When we heard about what happened, we sweet-talked Bo young into letting us come visit,” he said, rolling his eyes. “We didn’t want you to wake up alone.”

There was a knock at the door. Jin waited to see his parents’ nervous faces, but no one came in. Hoseok stood and looked at Jimin, who made no move to get up. “You guys stay here. I’ll handle this.”

Jin was still overcome by what they’d told him about Taehyung. Even though it didn’t make any sense at all, he wanted it to be him outside that door.

“How is he?” a voice asked in a whisper. But Jin heard it. It was him. Hoseok murmured something back.

“What is all this congregating?” Bo young growled from outside the room. Jin knew with a sinking heart that this meant visiting hours were over. “Whoever talked me into letting you hooligans tag along gets a detention. And no, Kim, I will not accept flowers as bribes. All of you, get in the minivan.”

Hearing the attendant’s voice, Jimin and Ken cringed, then scrambled to stash the coconut shells under the bed. Ken stuffed the drink umbrellas inside his pencil case and Jimin spritzed the air with some serious vanilla musk perfume. He slipped Jin a piece of spearmint gum.

Ken gagged on a floating cloud of perfume, then leaned quickly into Jin and whispered, “As soon as you’re back on your feet, we’ll find the book. I think it’d be good for us both to stay busy, keep our minds off things.”

Jin squeezed Ken’s hand in thanks and smiled at Jimin, who looked too busy lacing up his roller skates to have heard.

That was when Bo young barged through the door. “More congregating!” she cried. “Unbelievable.”

“We were just—” Ken started to say.

“Leaving,” Bo young finished for him. She had a bouquet of wild white peonies in her hand. Strange. They were Jin’s favorites. And it was so hard to find them in bloom around here.

Bo young opened a cabinet under the sink and rooted around for a minute, then pulled out a small, dusty vase. She filled it with cloudy water from the tap, stuffed the peonies roughly inside, and set them on the table next to Jin. “These are from your friends,” she said, “who will all now make their departures.”

The door was wide open, and Jin could see Taehyung leaning against the frame. His chin was lifted and his gray eyes were shadowed with concern. He met Jin’s gaze and gave him a small smile. When he brushed his hair away from his eyes, Jin could see a small, dark red gash on his forehead.

Bo young steered Ken, Jimin, and Hoseok out the door. But Jin couldn’t take his eyes off Taehyung. He raised a hand in the air and mouthed what he thought was I’m sorry, just before Bo young shoved them out.

“I hope they didn’t wear you out,” Bo young said, lurking in the doorway with an unsympathetic frown.

“Oh no!” Jin shook his head, realising how much he’d come to rely on Ken’s loyalty and Jimin’s quirky way of lightening even the most sober mood. Hoseok, too, had been truly kind to him. And Taehyung, though he’d barely seen him, had done more to restore his peace of mind than he could ever know. He’d come by to check on him. He’d been thinking of him.

“Good,” Bo young said. “Because visiting hours aren’t over yet.”

Again, Jin’s heart picked up as he waited to see his parents. But there was just a brisk clicking on the linoleum floor, and soon Jin saw the tiny frame of Mr. Bogum. A colorful autumnal pashmina was draped over his thin shoulders. Behind him walked a short, bald man in a suit, and two police officers, one chubby and one thin, both with receding hairlines and crossed arms.

The chubby police officer was younger. He took a seat on the chair next to Jin, then—noticing that no one else had moved to sit down—stood back up and re-crossed his arms.

The bald man stepped forward and offered Jin his hand. “I’m Mr. Schultz, Sword & Cross’s attorney.” 

Jin stiffly shook his hand. “These officers are just going to ask you a couple of questions. Nothing to be used in a court, only an effort to corroborate details from the accident—”

“And I insisted on being here during the questioning, Seokjin,” Mr. Bogum added, coming forward to Jin’s hair. “How are you, dear?” he whispered. “In a state of amnesiac shock?”

“I’m okay—”

Jin broke off as he caught sight of two more figures in the doorway. He almost burst into tears when he saw his mother’s dark, curly head and his father’s big tortoiseshell glasses.

“Mom,” he whispered, too low for anyone else to hear. “Dad.”

They rushed toward the bed, throwing their arms around him and squeezing his hands. He wanted to hug them so badly, but he felt too weak to do much more than stay still and take in the familiar comfort of their touch. Their eyes looked just as scared as he felt.

“Honey, what happened?” his mom asked.

He couldn’t say a word.

“I told them you were innocent,” Mr. Bogum said, turning to remind the officers. “Eerie similarities be damned.”

Of course they had Yi Jung’s accident on record, and of course the cops would find it … remarkable in light of Jung-hwan’s death. Jin had enough practice with police officers to know that he was only going to leave them frustrated and annoyed.

The thin cop had long sideburns that were going gray. His open file in his hand seemed to require his full attention, because not once did he look up at him.

“Mr. Kim,” he said with a slow southern drawl. “Why were you and Mr. Jung alone in the library at such a late hour when all the other students were at a party?”

Jin glanced at his parents. His mom was chewing off her lipstick. His father’s face was as white as the bed-sheet.

“I wasn’t with Jung-hwan,” he said, not understanding the line of questioning. “I was with Ken, my friend. And Mr. Bogum was there. Jung-hwan was reading on his own and when the fire started, I lost Ken, and Jung-hwan was the only one I could find.”

“The only one you could find … to do what with?”

“Hold on a minute.” Mr. Schultz stepped forward to interrupt the cop. “This was an accident, may I remind you. You’re not interrogating a suspect.”

“No, I want to answer,” Jin said. There were so many people in this tiny room that he didn’t know where to look. He eyed the cop. “What do you mean?”

“Are you an angry person, Mr. Kim?” He gripped the folder. “Would you call yourself a loner?”

“That’s enough,” his father interrupted.

“Yes, Seokjin is a serious student,” Mr. Bogum added. “He had no ill will toward Jung-hwan. What happened was an accident, no more.”

The officer glanced toward the open doorway, as if wishing Mr. Bogum would relocate himself outside it. “Yes, sir. Well, with these reform school cases, giving the benefit of the doubt is not always the most responsible—”

“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Jin said, balling up his sheet in his fist. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

He took them through it as best he could, speaking slowly and clearly so he would raise no new questions for his parents, so the cops could take notes. He didn’t let himself slide into emotion, which seemed like exactly what everyone was expecting. And—leaving out the appearance of the shadows—the story made a lot of sense.

They’d run for the back door. They’d found the exit at the end of a long corridor. The stairs dropped quickly, steeply off the ledge, and he and Junghwan had both been running with such force, they couldn’t stop themselves from tumbling down the stairs. He lost track of him, hit his head hard enough to wake up here twelve hours later. That was all he remembered.

He left them very little to argue over. There was only his true memory of the night for him to grapple with— on his own.

When it was over, Mr. Schultz gave the police officers an are-you-satisfied tilt of his head, and Mr. Bogum beamed at Jin, as if together they’d succeeded at something impossible. Jin’s mother let out a long sigh.

“We’ll mull this over at the station,” the thin officer said, closing Jin’s file with such resignation, he seemed to want to be thanked for his services.

Then the four of them left the room and he was alone with his parents.

He gave them his very best take-me-home look. His mom’s lip trembled, but his dad only swallowed.

“Bo young’s going to take you back to Sword & Cross this afternoon,” he said. “Don’t look so shocked, honey. The doctor said you’re fine.”

“More than fine,” his mom added, but she sounded uncertain.

His dad patted his arm. “We’ll see you on Saturday. Just a few more days.”

Saturday. He closed his eyes. Parents’ Day. He’d been looking forward to it from the moment he’d arrived at Sword & Cross, but now everything was tainted by Junghwan’s death. His parents seemed almost eager to leave him. They had a way of not really wanting to deal with the realities of having a reform school son. They were so normal. He couldn’t really blame them.

“Get some rest now, Jin,” his dad said, bending down to kiss his forehead. “You’ve had a long, hard night.”

“But—”

He was exhausted. He briefly closed his eyes and when he opened them, his parents were already waving from the doorway.

He plucked a plump white flower from the vase and brought it slowly to his face, admiring the deeply lobed leaves and fragile petals, the still-moist drops of nectar inside its center. He breathed in the flower’s soft, spicy scent.

He tried to imagine the way they would have looked in Taehyung’s hands. He tried to imagine where he’d gotten them, and what had been on his mind.

It was such a strange choice of flower. Wild peonies didn’t grow in Georgia wetlands. They wouldn’t even take to the soil in his father’s garden in Thunderbolt. What was more, these didn’t look like any peonies Jin had ever seen before. The blooms were as large as cupped palms, and the smell reminded him of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

I’m sorry, Taehyung had said. Only Jin couldn’t figure out for what.