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They were nights away from the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, but already, the town was teeming with excitement. Its inhabitants, ever ready to seek respite from the drudgery of everyday life, had begun preparing for a grand celebration. Catching onto the festive atmosphere the quickest, cheerful young children broke free from their indulgent parents and roamed the streets, stopping only to ogle at the craftsmen who built extravagant kites and translucent lanterns to sale the streams and skies. Competing for space were the merchants, who lined the roadsides with their stalls of exotic wares—jade, silk, candles, soaps—and so it was that the happy clinking of silver coins exchanging hands accented the delightful laughter of children. Throughout it all, the aroma of freshly baking moon cakes settled over the cool night air like a delicious warm blanket.

            Merchant Lee was especially pleased with himself. He had just sold a large swath of delicate silk to the Song family, one of the wealthiest in the region. Their youngest daughter, the beautiful Naeun, had just reached marriageable age and in a few days, there would take place a grand competition at the Song estates where men would battle for her hand. It would surely be a spectacle, and the villagers had spoken of little else in anticipation.

            Not that any of it mattered to Merchant Lee, who planned to depart for the South before any competition or festivities took place. No, what mattered to him was that the Song family had been willing to spend a hefty sum of money on his silk, a beautiful diaphanous red silk that would be sewn into an eye-catching wedding gown for pretty Naeun. Merchant Lee wore a gleeful grin as he bounced the weighty pieces of silver in his hand. It would be a good Moon Festival for his family this year.

            Indeed, so pleased was Merchant Lee with himself that he hardly noticed when five slender, dexterous fingers swiped across his display table like a flash of lightening, quickly whisking away a pouch of coins that the merchant had carelessly left lying about in his eagerness to chat up the Songs. At the end of the evening, Merchant Lee would angrily find himself short some sum of money, but he would be hard-pressed to recall the slight young man who had glided by his stall, silent and unobtrusive.

            The buoyant mood of the village carried through the night, happily unaware of those outsiders who dwelled at the margins, slithering away among the shadows.

            The young man walked nimbly out the village gates. No one questioned his presence, inconspicuous as was he. He gradually slowed to a more leisurely pace upon reaching the outlying forest. Under the gentle moonlight and among the friendly rustle of leaves, the young man’s eyes, which drooped peculiarly at the outer corners, twinkled with mirth. He bounced his pouch of coins up and down in the palm of his hand and reveled at its weight.

            Moments later, he reached a clearing among the trees. There in the clearing stood an old decaying building of rotting wood and torn paper windows. In truth, the structure used to serve as the village’s temple, but as the village grew in size, the villagers had built a more opulent replacement at the town’s center. The old temple remained standing alone and abandoned, creaking in the wind.

            But on this evening, it took on a new life. Through its cracked paper windows, the temple was alit in a warm yellow glow, and tufts of smoke drifted out from a hole in its roof that served as a makeshift chimney. The sweet aroma of roasting yams wafted through the air, bringing a smile to our young man’s lips. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. With newfound energy, he bounded up the rickety front steps of the old building and pushed open its doors.

            At the center of the temple, there used to lie a mat on which villagers kowtowed from their knees to pray to the large bronze Buddha statutes stood just beyond for good luck and prosperity. Now, only the dirt floor remained. A small but blazing bonfire cackled on that earth, yams hidden among its flickering flames and charred sticks of wood. The figure of a young boy knelt at the fire’s side, tending the yams. He appeared not to have noticed that he was no longer alone; an expression of shock colored his youthful face when our young man crept close and sprung upon him with a playful shout.

            “Byun Baekhyun!” the boy exclaimed in surprise, plush lips parted and wide eyes blinking owlishly.

            Baekhyun smirked and plopped down to the ground beside the boy with a cheerful chuckle. He ruffled at the boy’s hair and said boisterously:  “Yes, it is I. I have returned, triumphant!”

            Having calmed, the boy sighed peevishly at Baekyun’s antics and batted away his hand. With an annoyed frown, the boy turned his attention back to his yams.

            A few moments of silence passed before Baekhyun pouted at the lack of attention. He began to prod impatiently at the boy’s arms. With a slight whine to his voice, he said, “Kyungsoo ah, aren’t you going to ask about my day at all? I had the best luck today!”

            Again, the boy Kyungsoo batted his hand away and responded with a piercing glare. “No, I don’t want to know.”

            “But Kyungsoo!” Baekhyun insisted, “I was so successful! We might never have to eat yams again! Just look at this!” With a proud grin, Baekhyun waved his pouch of coins before Kyungsoo’s eyes and it into the latter’s hand. Kyungsoo eyed the pouch skeptically before opening it. A small gasp of surprise escaped his parted lips.

            “Where’d you get all this money?” he asked, staring unblinkingly at the gleaming coins.

            Baekhyun stalled and hesitated for a moment. Kyungsoo’s turned and leveled a piercing gaze his companion. “Don’t tell me you sto—”

            “It wasn’t stealing, per se!” Baekhyun cut in quickly with a placating smile. “It was ... finding, you know? I mean it was just lying there, because some merchant had left it around, and I happened to see it and no one was looking—it was practically abandoned, honestly—so therefore I—ouch!” Baekhyun let out a cry of pain as Kyungsoo smacked him upside the head. “What’d you do that for?”

            “Stealing is wrong, Byun Baekhyun!” Kyungsoo responded, arms crossed righteously over his chest. “You know that. Teacher always told us that we should live honestly, by the toils of our own labor.”

            “A fat lot of good that did us,” Baekhyun grumbled as he rubbed at his smarting head.

            “What was that?” Kyungsoo asked, eyes narrow and hand poised to strike again.

            “Nothing,” Baekhyun said quickly. “I was wrong!”

            Kyungsoo nodded in agreement. “Yes, you were.”

            A few moments of silence passed. Baekhyun fidgeted uncomfortably and snuck questioning glances at Kyungsoo, who serenely poked and prodded at the yams with one hand and held tightly to the pouch of coins with his other.

            “So...I’ll take the coins back tomorrow?” Baekhyun volunteered, voice uncertain and slightly sullen.

            Kyungsoo whipped around with a blasé stare. “Of course not. Merchants are all conniving s. We’re keeping the money. We need clean clothes and anyway, I’m craving meat buns.”

            “Wait then why’d hit me!” Baekhyun protested.

            Kyungsoo shrugged. “Your face was asking for it.”

            “Do Kyungsoo!” Baekhyun shouted, frowning as he waved his fists at Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo shrugged again and turned away to continue tending his roasted yams. Face hidden out of sight, a small, playful smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

            Eventually, after enduring Kyungsoo’s persistent silence, Baekhyun sighed in dissatisfaction but calmed again. With chin resting on his knees, he quietly studied Kyungsoo’s profile from the side. The boy’s pale face, illuminated by the flickering flames, was slightly charred by dirt and wisps of black hair escaped from his loose ponytail. His worn robe’s collar was beginning to fray at the base of his neck and all in all, he looked so far removed from the meticulous Do Kyungsoo that Baekhyun had known all his life that Baekhyun almost did a double take. How differently they lived now.

            But, as he caught the golden glow upon Kyungsoo’s face and his little mischievous smile, Baekhyun thought to himself that he liked the present Kyungsoo just fine, temper and violence and all. Indeed, he had never felt so content as when he sat by Kyungsoo on those autumn nights in the abandoned old temple.

It was his sanctuary.

            Baekhyun was awakened the next day by something prodding persistently at his side. He cracked an eye open and discovered it was a foot. Kyungsoo’s foot.

            “Get up, Byun,” said Kyungsoo. “We’re going to town.”

            Baekhyun groaned and rolled the other way, to no avail. Kyungsoo was now kicking at his with increasing force. “Come on, we don’t have all day.”

            Baekhyun sighed in resignation—who was he to defy Kyungsoo’s demands—and pushed himself up from his makeshift straw bed. Kyungsoo grinned in triumph.

            The early morning autumn air was chilly but refreshing. Fall leaves swept from the trees by gentle gusts of wind descended to the ground in showers of gold. Baekhyun soon escaped the clutches of sleep-deprived grogginess and began traipsing among the wet leaves with renewed energy. He made the unfortunate mistake of jokingly tossing a bundle in Kyungsoo’s face—yah! Byun Baekhyun!—an act he paid for by running for his life all the way to town with the angry, smaller man hot on his trail, fire shooting from his eyes.

            The two slowed down as they approached the town gates, and Kyungsoo settled for a less menacing but still displeased frown. Baekhyun chuckled but cleverly kept some distance between himself and his companion as they ambled through the gates.

The town was already going about its morning routine: hungry children crowded around breakfast stands with steaming hot buns, wives and servants bartered with farmers for their fresh produce, and merchants began to set up their stalls of dazzling trinkets. Confronted with this scene of peaceful provincial activity among the simple everymen, even Kyungsoo had to smile. With uncharacteristic excitement, he tugged Baekhyun to a breakfast vendor and peered eagerly at the fluffy white buns.

“Baekhyun ah, what should we get? The plain buns are cheaper but the pork ones smell really good...but we should save money right? What do you think?”

Baekhyun smiled at Kyungsoo’s torn expression and exchanged coins for two pork buns before the latter could protest. Handing one over, he said, “Don’t worry. We have enough, we can buy whatever you want.” With that, he ruffled Kyungsoo’s messy hair. “And anyway, we have to fatten you up again. You look pretty unattractive skinny,” he added.  Kyungsoo growled in response and swatted his hand away, but it was a light swat and he struggled to conceal the smile that burgeoned at the edge of his lips.

As the two bit into their breakfast, they ambled down the busy streets, poking their heads into this stall and that. With a sense of wonder, they picked out a pair of cloth shoes here and a sturdy blanket there; the light chill of early autumn provided the perfect weather for their carefree wandering.

Yet soon enough, their silver pieces began to dwindle and Kyungsoo sighed forlornly at their gradually emptying pouch.

“We should come up with a plan,” he said as they slowly meandered down the main road at the town center.

“Hmm? What plan?” Baekhyun responded carelessly as he took another bite of his candied hawthorn berries. He offered one to Kyungsoo, who quickly batted his hand away, annoyed at being deterred.

“Like a way to make a living. I mean, we’ve almost burned through just about all of my savings and we’ve pawned off most of our more expensive possessions and we can’t keep stealing,” Kyungsoo said, eyes widely earnest as he contemplated their situation. “Maybe we can start cultivating yams in the forest or something and we can bring them to market like those farmers.”

Baekhyun snorted.

“What?”

“You? A farmer? Have you looked at yourself recently?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kyungsoo said tightly, but his cheeks burned pink with embarrassment. After all, it was true. Even under the dirt and the tattered robes, Kyungsoo’s smooth pale skin and small, un-calloused fingers betrayed his background. Narrow-shouldered and tiny of stature, Kyungsoo couldn’t be further from the weather-beaten farmers that lined the streets.

Baekhyun smirked and extended a hand to run a finger down Kyungsoo’s cheek. With a sleazy expression, he suggested: “I have a better idea. You know who really makes a lot of money?”

Surprised, Kyungsoo jerked his face away from Baekhyun’s hand, but he stared at Baekhyun attentively. “Who?”

“High class courtesans,” Baekhyun replied, eyes glittering conspiratorially. “And with your looks, I’m sure some local official’s gonna wanna take you as his mistress. Now there’s a plan—ouch!”

Baekhyun screeched in pain as Kyungsoo swiftly kicked him between his legs. “God dammit Byun Baekhyun!” Kyungsoo growled as locked Baekhyun’s head in the crook of his elbow and proceeded to strangle the other. “Knew I shouldn’t have listened to you!”

“Kyungsoo, Kyungsoo, stop! Teacher said violence is wrong! And so is cursing! One should respect—”

“Shut up!”

Curious townsmen peered at the bickering twosome but passed it up as a typical boys’ fight and quickly passed on their way, ignoring Baekhyun’s pained cries for help.

It was only when the unexpected sound of horse hooves hitting the ground reached Kyungsoo’s ears that he paused in what he was doing and let Baekhyun go. Looking up, Kyungsoo was surprised to see two magnificent stallions trotting along the dirt road. Villagers glanced up from their every day tasks to ogle as well.  The town, though far from poor, was also not quite so opulent, a regional capital at most. Such beautiful horses were a rare sight. Excited villagers pointed and whispered as they beheld the beasts.

Even more surprising were the two men sitting atop the horses. Clothed in expensive robes and bestowed with handsome features, the two young men were decidedly good-looking. One small and fair, the other tall and tanned, both haughtily aloof and set worlds apart from the mere commoners dotting the streets. More than one village girl swooned.

“I wonder who they are,” Kyungsoo marveled, staring curiously at the approaching men.

Baekhyun rubbed tiredly at his abused neck and rolled his eyes. “Who cares. Probably just the sons of some rich merchant or government official.”

As the horses slowly ambled past, Kyungsoo briefly locked eyes with the taller of the two men and found himself unable to look away. Unexpectedly, the man stared back at him with unreadable dark eyes and an expressionless face.

A few breathless moments passed, and then, the horses had moved on.

Kyungsoo peered at the men’s retreating backs with some puzzlement but was snapped out of it soon enough by an impatient Baekhyun who dragged him onward to the next shop, discussions of money making and courtesans all but forgotten.

Yet the stranger’s dark eyes lingered in Kyungsoo’s mind.

***TBC***

A/N: New genre for me~ Let me know what you think :) xoxo