❄  Breath (Zhang Liyin & Chen)  ❄

This was not the welcome he expected.

Minseok and Luhan, with much difficulty, battled strong winds and heavy, pelting rains all throughout the distance of the long bridge, only to be greeted with an empty village. Of course, in this storm, no one in their right mind would be frolicking outside, but Minseok can’t help but feel betrayed to a degree. This is not the Corona he imagined. Where is the sunshine? Where are the townsfolk, happily dancing and singing in celebration?

They hurry under the shelter of a small shop with a small, elegantly written closed sign hanging on the glass door. Luhan ruffles his dripping hair, sending water droplets flying everywhere. He reaches for a rucksack sitting at the bottom of the cart where it’s kept dry, and grabs two carrots for the reindeer. Minseok, meanwhile, peeks his head out from under the shelter of the small shop, a hand shielding his face from the rain.

It’s the day of Jongdae’s birthday, if the letters Minseok was sent were any truth, yet Minseok didn’t have any indication as to where it may be held. He swings his backpack off one shoulder to rummage through it, producing a slightly-crumpled swirly-bordered piece of paper and hastily smoothing it out.

“What does it say?” Luhan peeks over his shoulder, still running a hand through his hair.

Minseok frowns, scanning the invitation.

JONGDAE 20^TH BIRTHDAY

YOU ARE INVITED TO CONGRATULATE PRINCE JONGDAE OF CORONA ON HIS 20^TH BIRTHDAY

CELEBRATIONS WILL BE HELD IN THE CENTRE OF TOWN—THE CLEARING OF THE SUN EMBLEM, ADJACENT TO THE FOUNTAIN FROM EARLY NOON TO LATE AFTERNOON AT YOUR OWN CHOICE.

WE EXPECT TO SEE YOU IN THE AFTER PARTY THAT SHALL BE HELD IN THE MAIN BALLROOM OF THE CASTLE OF CORONA.

IN CASE OF BAD WEATHER, LATE CELEBRATIONS WILL BE MOVED TO OUTSIDE THE CASTLE GATES, AND THE BALL WILL STILL BE ON.

DRESS WARMLY IN PREPARATION FOR RAINY WEATHER—BE PREPARED FOR THE LATE NIGHT BALL.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU

And at the bottom, that Minseok’s traced many, many times with his eyes and finger, Jongdae’s signature.

Luhan sticks his head out of the shelter of the shop, squinting up at the sky and the ceaseless rain.

“I think this is what they mean by ‘bad weather’. How did they know it was going to rain?”

“They might not have,” Minseok points out, pointing at the half-strewn purple banners with yellow suns on the washing lines around some streets. The townspeople must have been halfway through preparations when the downpour started.

Minseok vaguely, vaguely wonders why Jongdae blocked out whatever word came before his name.

“Should we head straight to the castle then?” Luhan peers up at the looming, grey clouds. “It doesn’t look like the storm’s gonna stop any time soon.”

Minseok nods, gently packing the invitation away neatly in his backpack again before stowing it away in the carriage. “Okay.” He peers out of the shade of the shelter, squinting up and around through the rain in hopes of spotting the castle.

“Why on Earth is he holding it at the Royal castle of Corona?” Luhan muses aloud. “How rich is this guy?”

“Maybe he’s the son of a Duke or one of the Lords or the King’s men,” Minseok mumbles, pointing up through the rain at a grey splotch rising up in the distance into the low clouds. “There.”

“Jongdae, if it doesn’t stop, we’re gonna have to cancel the town celebrations, dear,” Rapunzel worries, blinking her large, emerald eyes at her son.

Said boy shows no interest in what she’s saying, playing with a length of string he ripped from his pure white cuffs of his sleeves. The birthday boy’s dressed in all black, as usual—the leather of his boots were polished to a gleaming brightness, and his dark suit is rimed with fur at the collars with strands of silver sprouting from his shoulders, speckling the black with dashes of white until the ends of Jongdae’s suit became pure white.

The maids had given up on his hair, though.

Jongdae sticks his tongue out to moisten his cracked lips, shooing a maid away from his jet-black hair to run his hand through it, fingers clad with brilliant silver rings. A wave of sparks run throughout his messy hair, and with one easy sweep of his hand, his hair sticks together instead of flying out everywhere, appearing a little more silver than his usual dull black.

Rapunzel has her lips pursed, unsure of the static in her son’s hair, but before she could say anything, a butler’s running up the stairs and knocked on the door of the small lounge.

“Come in,” she calls. “What is it?”

“We’ve got a guest,” the small man pants, fishing what first seemed to be an ordinary invitation to the party from his coat pocket.

Except…

“Wait,” Jongdae says, before his mother could intervene and ask further. “Give me the invitation.” The butler, with a glance towards the Princess, hands it over, Jongdae’s breath catching at the blocked-out word right before his name.

In a few seconds flat, he’s charging past the butler, sprinting out the door and down three flights of stairs, heading straight for the large oak doors at the main entrance.

“Prince Jongdae!” the guards standing at the main gate greet, surprised. “Th—”

“Move away,” he barks, panting a little irregularly from flying through the castle in his haste.

No way…

But Jongdae just couldn’t get his hopes down. He only sent that invitation to one person, the invitation where he crossed out the word Prince.

The guards swiftly moved aside, Jongdae’s heart almost flying straight out of his chest.

There the boy is, dressed in a nice fur coat, with his pale hair slicked back as usual, and he looks so adorably lost, his pink lips parted slightly, large blue eyes darting everywhere until they landed on Jongdae.

“Minseok!” Jongdae gasps. “M-Minseok?” he repeats again, just in case. “W-why… How…?”

“Happy birthday, Jongdae!” the boy chirps, and Jongdae watches as the boy’s pretty lips quirk upwards in the most delicate, precious way possible, his smile alone showering Jongdae with sunshine.

But it isn’t his imagination—he could hear the guards behind him begin to marvel, heads turned upwards. The clouds were parting, the rain stopped, and the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the clouds, light pooling around the castle.

“It stopped raining,” only then did Jongdae realise Minseok came with his friend, the blonde Jongdae got a glimpse of when they first met. Luhan?

“You came here through the rain?” Jongdae asks incredulously, eyes running up and down Minseok’s figure. The boy seems fine, though his hair was spiking up more than usual and some parts of his coat were covered in a thin layer of ice from the rain. He instantly grabs Minseok by the elbows, dragging him through the towering doors and into his home.

“Maids!” Jongdae shouts as he brings Minseok to the fireplace in the sitting room, sitting him down on one of the large, plush couches. “Bring hot tea, cookies and blankets for our guests! And the blonde to a hot shower.”

Minseok watches Luhan being dragged away, looking bewildered. He turns back to Jongdae, who sits himself beside him infront of the fire, blue eyes wide.

“Surprise?” Jongdae says meekly, noticing Minseok’s eyes take in the servants’ obedience to his every demand. Jongdae gazes out his tall windows instead of meeting Minseok’s eyes, and watches the clouds seemingly dissipate into thin air, sunbeams shoving their way through and warming the town of Corona.

“Oh!” Minseok says instead, Jongdae turning to him in slight confusion. Out of everything he thought Minseok would say, out of all the reactions he envisioned Minseok to adopt upon discovering the royalty in his blood, he didn’t expect this. “As a matter of fact, I do have a surprise for you!” the silver-haired boy chirps. “You’ve always been good at guessing, Jongdae.”

Minseok jumps off his large couch and skips over to kneel on the rug infront of Jongdae, and before the latter could quickly usher him back to his feet or say anything, he holds out his hands and draws a shimmering circle in the rug. With a small upwards-heaving motion with his palms facing Jongdae’s high ceilings and fingers apart, Minseok stands, and Jongdae watches with his very own eyes magic arising out of his old great-grandparents’ rug.

The perfect icy circle Minseok drew on the carpet rises out of the floor, turning into a stout little stand made of entirely ice.

Legs sprout from the flat disk that has risen from the original circle, standing securely on Jongdae’s floor. He glances up in awe only to be met with the same excitement reflected in Minseok’s round, brilliantly blue eyes and then, the slow stuff is gone—in a flurry and explosion of snow flakes, Minseok brings his hands up to his own full standing height, and entirely ice bars rises from the base he had created. In front of Jongdae’s eyes, a few make way for an arch before splitting up into thinner, smaller bars. Towards the top, the bars bind together, swirling into a tip…

Minseok stands on his tip toes, Jongdae standing up too for a proper look. Minseok reaches out his index finger and pokes the tip the ice has come to, and a brilliant star blossoms from the point Minseok has touched.

Jongdae steps backwards in order to take in the full glory of the majestic thing, tripping over his couch in the process and landing himself on the floor, but that’s okay because from here he could see the entirety of the glimmering ice cage.

“Woah.” Was all he trusted himself to say.

“What? No, no, it’s not done!” Minseok cries.

He smiles, uncurling a fist, and deposits a small shower of glittering silver and white into the centre of the cage and from the ice dustings erupts life in the form of a small, round bird. It flutters, testing its teeny, tiny wings, left over specks of snow drifting off its wings. Minseok, after nudging the edges of the cage and giving the beautiful thing a perch, turns to Jongdae with a sheepish smile.

“Happy Birthday.”

Jongdae doesn’t know how to react.

All he does, after a short while, is bring his hand up to loosen the silvery tie around his neck.

“Good Lord, Minseok,” he heaves, bright green eyes not daring to blink—what if all this was just a cruel dream, and this light feeling of elated euphoria would be shattered the moment he—

“Do you not like it??” Minseok frets, even beginning to raise his hand. Jongdae panics.

“What?? No, no, no, for ’s sake Minseok, I absolutely love it! I can’t ing believe—I do not deserve this for my birthday.”

“What are you talking about Jongdae,” Minseok laughs. “Too bad, you’re stuck with it. As long as you like it,” he adds quietly, pinking around his ears.

Jongdae heart clenches. He’s never been so happy he could die.

It’s so painful, looking at the cage, with the bird fluttering around and watching the two of them with large, curious eyes—it’s even more painful looking at Minseok, the boy’s so precious Jongdae kind of wants to drag him by the cuff of his expensive-looking coat and throw him into the cage along with the bird so he could keep him forever.

“You know what, Jongdae?” Minseok suddenly pipes up. He ruffles his hair a little, the ice spiking up the silver strands just beginning to melt in the light of the fire and the sunlight streaming in. He sticks a finger between the bars of the cage, softly crooning and beckoning the bird. It bursts into song.

Jongdae really wants to cry.

Minseok stands back, letting Jongdae forward to play with his present as the bird sings it’s pretty little heart out. And just like everything else that has to do with Minseok, the boy’s eyes, lips, nose, skin, hair, fingers and the ice and the cage and the bird in it, the bird’s song is beautiful, too.

“Thank you,” he finally whispers, regaining his manners, and envelopes Minseok in a crushing hug. “Thank you. I don’t know how to repay you, this is so incredible… never in my wildest imagination could I have imagined…”

Minseok giggles, albeit a little too school-girl fashioned, and squeezes Jongdae back, the trail of his fingers down Jongdae’s cape leaving pretty patterns of ice in their wake on the surface of Jongdae’s dark suit.

“No actually, I do know how to repay you.”

Minseok pulls back, startled, a frown between his brows. “What? No! No, Jongdae, this is your birthday present, I did it for you becau—”

“And I want to do this for you.”

Jongdae throws off his trailing cape from his shoulders and then his suit. He only has his white dress shirt underneath, slightly ruffled around the edges, collars and down the middle, but Jongdae doesn’t mind the ruffles, for once.

“What are you waiting for? Don’t you see the sun?” Jongdae grins, pointing out the window. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to go outside in that heavy coat. That’s so not fun.”

Minseok’s blue eyes light up, shimmering like a diamond with torch light shone through it. He throws his travelling cloak off, revealing him in an all-white suit before, like Jongdae, he abandons it altogether, dressed in a shirt not unlike Jongdae’s, though his is patterned with silver.

With the cloak on, Minseok’s outfit had been obstructed, but only now does Jongdae fully get an eyeful of beauty—Minseok had obviously dressed appropriate for the ball in the castle; even his sleek, long boots had ripples of silver through the black. Minseok’s shirt collar was rimmed with white fur, and the tie he’s tugging off right now shines almost a metallic blue at certain angles—it brings out his eyes, Jongdae notes happily.

Why in the world would Minseok recklessly leave for a party dressed inappropriately for a party? Let alone Jongdae’s party.

He stops Minseok just as he’s moving to throw his pretty glimmering blue tie on the floor along with his outer coat. Instead, Jongdae takes it and wraps it around Minseok’s head, tying it at his forehead, and cracking a smile.

Minseok doesn’t question it, the boyish grin on his face showing no signs of shrinking only growing as Jongdae takes his hand and leads him back out the great wooden doors of his palace.

❄

If you're confused, the two boys brought a change of clothes for the party in their luggage but didn't wear their expensive suits on the journey and then changed into them.

And in case of any misunderstandings, judging by Jongdae's awkwardness and the behaviour of the servants etc., Minseok is smart enough to figure out Jongdae's identity, however, he does not yet know about Jongdae's parents. (aka he doesn't know rapunzel an eugene are royalty and Jongdae's parents.)

If you're confused about Jongdae's present, I got the idea from this but on a smaller scale (with a smaller type of song bird)

Happy New Year!!

❄