notlettuce

The truth was, Soonyoung hated feeling like a weight around Wonwoo’s ankle, but he hated it less than the idea of having to define himself without his magic. There was no timeline for things like this, except there was, and being a twenty-one year old witch without a familiar usually meant that you just weren’t powerful enough to need one.

[dreamy sigh] Magic boarding school AU... familiars... a magical version of Seoul... something to read while listening to the Little Women soundtrack.

In a world where being magic means you'll get a familiar when you come of age, Soonyoung can't help but feel like he's missing something by not having one of his own. When he moves to the city with Wonwoo, strange things start happening, and it comes to light that Soonyoung's familiar is a tiger - a rare, centuries-old sign that he is a chosen one. Neither of them ever expected it, and it takes them on a big crazy journey that I truly wish I had the power to write. Either way. Here is what 72 hours of crazed writing and group brainstorming with friends brought.

(T / 4911 words / yes it was going to be childhood friends to lovers what else is soonwoo about)

When Soonyoung was sixteen years old, he saw a tiger in the mountains.

It looked at him with bright green eyes and twitching ears, crouched between two overgrown yezo spruce trees. Some part of Soonyoung knew he should be afraid, but the fear never came. He simply held up a hand and waved. The tiger flicked its tail once, then it disappeared.

Nobody believed him.

“There are no tigers here, Soonyoung-ah, don’t be ridiculous,” said his teacher, as though they were not in the middle of a clinical alchemy lesson at a boarding school for witches. They were learning about the correct management of Aconite in case they ever had to administer medication to a lycanthrope. Magical first aid, Soonyoung wrote at the top of the page.

“Maybe you were so hungry, you hallucinated,” Wonwoo had suggested with a snicker. Soonyoung humoured him only because he refused to admit that it hadn’t happened. It was always easier to pass things off as a joke. But the truth was, that day haunted him for months. He went back along the same trail multiple times, to see if the tiger would appear in the same spot. It never did.

Eventually, the obsession faded under the weight of homework and high school and weekends sprawled across the grounds and over textbooks with Wonwoo.

Summer froze into Winter, and Soonyoung forgot about it.

“Sorry, sorry, excuse me!” Soonyoung hugged his suitcase as close to his chest as he could manage as he shouldered his way through the thinning crowd on the platform. A few people threw sour looks his way and he nearly tripped over the tail of an iguana milling on the ground beside an old witch with scales on her cheeks.

“Careful, boy!” she hissed.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung said, wide-eyed at the way the whites of her eyes were flooded with yellow. He slowed his pace to a brisk walk in order to avoid another collision. Not everyone was so magnanimous about a stranger bumping into their familiar.

The platform was a riot of sound and sights. Owls and hawks and ravens swooped around the pale morning sky, stretching their wings before the journey. A young girl sat on the shoulders of her father, who had a ball python wrapped from his left wrist up to elbow. She waved with both hands and a teenage boy waved back from inside the carriage. He had a toad sitting on his head.

It was the end of another semester. Jirisan Academy was a small school, nestled at the foot of the mountain in a smattering of dark-wood dormitories and classrooms. As was tradition, most of the students lived away from home while they studied to allow their magic to grow independently of their families’ influence, and to encourage the adoption of a familiar only when they came of age. The timing was important--Soonyoung heard about a girl in Gwangju whose familiar found her on the eve of her eighth birthday, expectant and already attached. But the girl hadn’t known how to cast a single spell, and they found the cat sprawled dead on the front doorstep three days later.

Soonyoung didn’t have to worry about the family problem. For better or for worse.

He paused to check the ink on his palm, smudged from the way he was sweating. He squinted at it, then craned his neck to look for the numbers on the side of the train.

“Excuse me,” he asked the attendant, a woman with cropped blue hair and a simple uniform, “Is my name on the register?”

“Jirisan kid?” she asked, magicking a sheet of paper out of thin air. Her hummingbird familiar fluttered around its edges.

“Yes. Kwon Soonyoung.”

She hummed. “Yes, you’re here. Cabin 403. Any familiars?”

Soonyoung smiled tightly. “Nope! Just me.”

The attendant looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. No doubt she had seen his age on the register. Soonyoung braced himself for the question, but it never came. “On your left. Four doors down. Your companion is already registered. Safe travels.”

The interior of the train was lined with light wood and gold detailing, and it smelled like carpets and wood polish. It was an ancient thing, spitting and hissing steam into the sky, creating clouds on the other side of the windows that someone was spelling into shapes. Soonyoung slowed to watch a horse gallop past the glass with a delighted smile.

The family in front of him spent so long organising their luggage that the train was already in motion by the time he reached his cabin.

“Good morning!” he said brightly, stepping inside.

Wonwoo looked over his shoulder. His feet were tucked up onto the window seat and he was wearing his glasses high on his nose. Forever too cold for any weather, his broad shoulders were draped in a hoodie that pooled around his torso, the sleeves folded over his knuckles and pinched under his thumbs.

“I thought you had gotten lost,” he said. Soonyoung made a show of lugging his suitcase inside, but Wonwoo made no move to help him.

“I wasn’t lost, only late.”

“As always.” Wonwoo rolled his eyes. They used to make this trip once every few weeks, escaping the confines of the dormitories to run around Seoul, buying exotic food and getting lost in the alleyways and the strange shops. Wonwoo, unlike Soonyoung, had a family to go back to, but he never did.

Soonyoung had been prying about it for years, but the best he could get was a mumbled excuse about being estranged from his parents due to a difference in opinions. They still sent him money and birthday cards, but Wonwoo only paid attention to the former. Soonyoung thought it was rather strange, but he didn’t like the way Wonwoo curled into himself when the topic came up, so after a while he stopped pushing. It was nice, the illusion of having someone else who lived like he did--a teenage boy fumbling through things with only his own nose to guide him.

But that was a while ago. They had graduated now. They were no longer teenagers, and this train trip was not simply for a day spent squirrelling ingredients for potions they weren’t supposed to know how to make.

“Is that really all you have?” Wonwoo asked, nodding at Soonyoung’s suitcase.

“Well it’s one of those bigger-on-the-inside kind of joints. But yes.” Soonyoung shrugged. “Not like I’ve got any furniture to bring with.”

“True.” Wonwoo scrunched his nose.

Soonyoung collapsed into the seat opposite and kicked his feet up beside Wonwoo. “Show me my child,” he demanded.

As if excited to be summoned, Wonwoo’s familiar popped their head out of the confines of his hoodie.

Sherlock--an arctic-white ermine the length of Soonyoung’s arm, if you included the tail--had turned up two years ago on the morning of first snow, perched upon Wonwoo’s sleeping chest. Wonwoo had smiled like he was expecting it.

Soonyoung celebrated with him and cooed over the creature like it was his own, but it was hard to sleep that night, so aware of the lack of movement on his side of the room. It only got harder as the year went by and more and more familiars began to fill the spaces purposefully created for them in each classroom.

Soonyoung’s side remained empty. Wonwoo did his best to stick close.

“I missed you,” Soonyoung cooed at Sherlock as he ran along the bridge that Soonyoung’s legs created between the seats.

“He’s been antsy.”

“As opposed to what?” Soonyoung laughed, chasing Sherlock’s tail with his fingertip. “You’re the most anxious person I know and he’s just feeding off whatever energy you’re pumpin’ out. I’m surprised he’s not bouncing off the walls.”

Wonwoo crossed his arms. “We’re moving to a new place! It’s a big deal.”

Soonyoung sighed and pulled his feet off the seat so that he could lean forward. He tugged one of Wonwoo’s sleeves back to reveal his hands and clicked his tongue--the nails were all bitten and skew, a nasty habit that started around their entrance exams and never quite went away.

“We’ll be fine,” he said, letting Wonwoo take his hands back. Sherlock leaped into Wonwoo’s lap and crawled up his arm to settle around his neck, tail swishing. It pushed two degrees of tension out of his shoulders, and Soonyoung smiled.

The train wrapped around the edges of the mountain on its way North. Autumn began last week, and already the trees were weaving a tapestry of fire and ochre that bled together as they sped past. The journey was short, but Soonyoung always wished it would last a little longer every time, so enchanting was it to watch the world whiz past on the other side of the glass.

He had not lived anywhere but Mount Jirisan since he was eleven years old and deemed old enough to be transferred from the cold corridors of the orphanage to the warmer halls of the school. There, he met Wonwoo. There, he learned his magic and his worth.

Now, as they soared towards the city with all their worldly possessions crammed into the overhead lockers and a set of apartment keys tucked safely in Wonwoo’s pocket, Soonyoung felt a murky mix of nerves and excitement stir in his belly.

He even thought he heard it, but that just turned out to be hunger.

“Already?” Wonwoo laughed.

“I’m still growing,” Soonyoung pouted. “Please feed me, Wonwoo-yah.”

Wonwoo rolled his eyes, but Sherlock was already crawling over to flick the cabin attendant switch to Food Service.

The apartment, like many buildings influenced by magic, was not what it seemed from the outside.

Soonyoung walked into the high ceilinged living room and turned in a circle with his mouth hanging open, arms slack at his sides.

“Do you like it?” Wonwoo called up to him, voice echoing slightly. The apartment was a graduation gift from his parents. As Soonyoung made a hurried tour between the kitchen, the bedrooms, and the loft overlooking the sitting area, he couldn’t help but wander, once again, just what kind of class the Jeon family occupied. In magic, and in wealth.

“Are you kidding?” he cried. “It’s incredible! I was expecting us to be fighting each other for space and dealing with a pixie infestation, but this is...”

Wonwoo rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. My mother is quite particular,” he said, more to himself than to Soonyoung. He looked around the apartment with his mouth pressed into a line, shoulders inching toward his ears.

“Well, I love it.” Soonyoung slid down the bannister and landed before Wonwoo with a flourish. “How could I possibly repay you for such a gift?”

He swept into a bow and looked up through his eyelashes, smile crooked. Wonwoo seemed frozen for a second, eyes wide behind his glasses, then he flicked Soonyoung’s forehead and laughed when he groaned in pain. That was more like it.

“Just help me unpack. And don’t break anything.”

They spent the better half of daylight emptying their suitcases and rearranging the furniture to fit their tastes. It was all light pine and cream upholstery to match the floorboards. Sherlock’s fur blended in so well with the rug that Soonyong pretended to weep in grief as if they had lost him forever.

Sherlock bit him on the nose in response, and Wonwoo didn’t stop laughing for almost five minutes.

“It’s your fault!” Soonyoung whined, rubbing the bite mark. “He just does whatever you need him to, subconsciously or not.”

“If I could bite you on the nose, I would,” Wonwoo said, folding his sweaters into a neat pile.

“Nothing’s stopping you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Hand me that pile, would you?”

Soonyoung looked at Wonwoo then back at the crisply folded shirts. He began to smile.

Wonwoo’s face fell. “No, no, no, we are close enough to pass things to one another, don’t--”

Soonyoung ignored him and concentrated his magic into his fingertips, just as he was taught, revelling in the warmth of it pulsing through him like a second heartbeat. He levelled his breathing, held his hand palm-down over the shirts and slowly lifted it, fingers bent like he was controlling a marionette.

The first shirt on the pile floated two inches into the air.

In his excitement, he made the mistake of looking up at Wonwoo. See, he wanted to say, I can do it! However, the sight of Wonwoo’s smiling eyes and open-mouth made Soonyoung’s concentration falter, like missing a step in the dark.

The shirt wobbled.

His magic instantly began to go haywire, spitting out of him like an exposed wire. The ceiling light burst. Sherlock hissed and ran behind Wonwoo’s body.

“Wonwoo--”

“I got it.” Wonwoo rose onto his knees and spun his hands around each other like orbiting planets, inviting a swell of rose-coloured magic that he clapped together and instantly pulled apart. It expanded around them like a bubble, soothing Soonyoung’s magic like a balm. Something about magnetic fields. Something about counterspells. Soonyoung didn’t know. He had always glossed over the theory of things.

“Breathe, Soonyoung-ah,” Wonwoo said gently. Their hair was floating around their heads like it did when they used to swim in the river behind the Academy, air bubbles charmed over their noses and their eyes, fish scurrying away from them with distaste.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung said on an exhale. His cheeks were burning, whether from the magic or the embarrassment, he wasn’t sure. He really thought he had gotten better. He hoped that leaving Jirisan would flip some kind of switch and he would arrive in Seoul with his chin held high and his magic worth more than simple potion-making and the ability to stay warm in winter without an extra pair of socks. Perhaps he really was just... average.

“It was only a lightbulb, we can buy a new one tomorrow.”

“It’s not about the lightbulb,” Soonyoung muttered. Wonwoo tried to reach for his hand but he pulled it away, ignoring the way Wonwoo’s face fell in response. “I feel better. Thanks. You can--” He waved his hand at the magic around them.

Wonwoo nodded stiffly and did something complicated with the fingers on his right hand. The magic melted back into his body, and Soonyoung’s hair fell limply over his brow.

He left the room without another word.

Soonyoung had never been very book smart. He got through his years of theoretical classwork largely because Wonwoo believed that the library was the most sacred place on earth, and he was good at relaying information to Soonyoung in a way that he actually understood. It would be a lie to say that Wonwoo did all of Soonyoung’s homework for him, but he did a lot.

The teachers were patient, but they weren’t saints, so it often fell on Wonwoo to clean up after Soonyoung, and this pattern followed them out of school and into the real world.

It caused a strain on their relationship. Soonyoung was very proud and Wonwoo was very blunt. They bickered a lot. Naturally--they were two teenage boys living in constant close proximity with magic thrown into the mix like a volatile third roommate. It was never going to be a smooth ride. And though they had mellowed with age, they were still prone to bouts of yelling (Wonwoo) and dramatic door slamming (Soonyoung).

The truth was, Soonyoung hated feeling like a weight around Wonwoo’s ankle, but he hated it less than the idea of having to define himself without his magic.

There was no timeline for things like this, except there was, and being a twenty-one year old witch without a familiar usually meant that you just weren’t powerful enough to need one.

Wonwoo’s gentle knocking roused Soonyoung from his nap. The door had been left open because Soonyoung was so used to the lack of boundaries between them that closing it felt unnecessary. He hadn’t had his own bedroom in... ever. It felt strange.

“I ordered food,” Wonwoo said quietly, leaning against the doorframe. The smell of garlic and chilli wafted in from the living room like an invitation. “Did you know we can get instant delivery? I even saw an ad for takeaway that cooks itself in your kitchen.”

“Incredible,” Soonyoung yawned. Sherlock leaped onto his bed and curled atop his knee, shiny eyes trained upwards, searching, swirling with the hazy pink of Wonwoo’s magic. Soonyoung softened instantly. He ran gentle fingers over Sherlock’s bristly fur, head to tail. Wonwoo watched them quietly for a few moments before pushing off the doorframe.

“C’mon. Food’s getting cold.”

“Do you want me to warm it up?” Soonyoung wiggled his fingers and laughed when Wonwoo’s face paled. “I’m joking! It was a joke.”

“Good, because last time you tried that I got a face full of udon.”

“Ah,” Soonyoung sighed wistfully, “one of my best.” He dodged the fingers Wonwoo aimed at his side, rushing into the living room with breathless laughter and Sherlock at his heels.

They ate on the floor around the coffee table. An enchanted candle filled the edges of the apartment with honey. The thick navy curtains covering one side of the living room were tied open to reveal Seogyo-dong at nighttime.

Their apartment was stacked above two cafes and an unmarked boutique that smelled like burnt moth’s wings; their street was a steady flurry of traffic. Unlike Jirisan, Seoul was a melting pot of magic folk. It was too hard to tell from such a distance, but the crowd milling about the bars and shops certainly consisted of more than just witches and their familiars. Wonwoo pointed out an abnormally tall man that was probably half giant, or a troll, or both. A group of beautiful girls with hair whiter than ice parted the crowd, drawing the longing gazes of everyone they passed.

“Fae?” Soonyoung asked. Wonwoo had a good memory for these things. He aced all his cultural studies exams.

Wonwoo shrugged. “Probably mixed. Pure-blooded fae don’t tend to spend time in such crowded places. They’re more attracted to high-end neighbourhoods or like... the forest.”

“Eloquent.”

Wonwoo flicked some rice at him. “At least I listened in class. You’ll probably end up talking to a fish and asking them what it means to be a mermaid in modern society.”

“I am dying to find out,” Soonyoung sighed. Wonwoo pet his knee.

“I know.”

Energy sapped, they left their dishes and went straight to bed. They brushed their teeth side by side as always, making faces at each other in the mirror and trying to get the other to laugh around a mouthful of toothpaste. But afterwards, instead of jostling each other on the way to the same room, Wonwoo went left and Soonyoung went right.

They paused at opposite ends of the corridor and looked at each other.

“This feels weird,” Wonwoo said.

Soonyoung exhaled in relief. He thought he was the only one. He pretended to wipe away a tear and said, “I’m going to miss your snoring.”

“I’m not going to miss yours,” Wonwoo said, but he made no move to go into his room.

The city sounds danced between them, too loud to be contained by the windows. It was nothing like the mountains. Everything was big and bright and overflowing with magic; Soonyoung could feel it all over his skin like the minutes before a thunderstorm. Wonwoo, too, was different here. Something about the angle of his posture, the way he held himself as he walked, as he used his magic. Soonyoung couldn’t quite put his finger on it yet, but if he was good at anything, it was understanding Jeon Wonwoo.

“Well, goodnight,” he said quietly, stepping into his room.

“Goodnight,” Wonwoo echoed. “Sleep well.”

Neither of them closed their doors. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, Soonyoung felt a feather-weight atop his covers, and he blinked wearily to find Sherlock curled at the foot of his bed, tail kissing his nose, breath inaudible.

Soonyoung smiled and fell back into a deep, comfortable sleep.

Seoul during the day was a fireworks display. Soonyoung loved it. He loved the thickness of the air, the clashing colours and the noise of it. Magic layered on top of itself and left untethered was a messy thing, but the city was teeming with enough folk and familiars to keep it under control. Unlike the river-flowing calm of the magic around the mountains, the magic around the streets of Mapo-gu crackled like candy on Soonyoung’s tongue.

He could hardly sit still as he and Wonwoo took the street-car down the main street to buy supplies for Wonwoo’s internship. His stellar grades at school and glowing recommendation from the headmaster earned him no less than eight different offers from witches looking for apprentices. Alchemists, abjurers, carers of both mythical and ordinary creatures--you name it, Wonwoo had been scouted to do it. When Soonyoung saw the stack of letters on his bedside table his eyes had almost bugged out of his skull.

“How are you going to choose?” he asked, watching Wonwoo shuffle through them with a frown.

“Half of these people probably saw my name and stopped reading after that,” Wonwoo had said, almost bitterly. “Apprenticeships are usually more about politics than they are education. Like this guy.” He pointed to the letter from a man specialising in elemental magic. “He’s been bothering my father about aligning with our coven ever since I was a kid.”

“But you’re not...” Soonyoung trailed off, unsure what was okay when it came to talking about Wonwoo’s family.

“Part of the coven?” Wonwoo finished for him. “Technically, no. Nothing is decided until we come of age but...” He shifted uncomfortably. “I still carry their name.”

Soonyoung had leaned closer to him, eager for any morsel that Wonwoo would share about his family, but as always, the shutters came up behind his eyes and Wonwoo careened away from the conversation like his life depended on it.

“Elemental magic doesn’t interest me, anyway,” he said, tossing the letters on his bed.

“I don’t know, there’s a guy in Daegu who can breathe fire. That’s pretty cool.”

“To you, maybe. We better go--Ms. Liu said she’d lock us out of the classroom if we were late again.”

He ended up accepting the apprenticeship from Moon Iseul, an old woman in an apothecary two blocks from their apartment. It was far less glamorous than his other offers, but she had been kind to them during their previous visits to the city, sneaking them food and stacking their bags a little heavier than they should be with beetle skins and nettle. She was blind, but she always winked when she sent them off, cloudy eyes following them like a spectre.

“Tell me about your creations when you return,” she would say. Her familiar was an old English sheepdog with hair so long it covered his face. He always lay flat on his belly beside the counter, and he never moved for anyone, but Soonyoung definitely saw his tail wag once when they walked in the store.

“What do you need to buy?” Soonyoung asked Wonwoo when they descended at their stop. The street car whizzed off in a scentless cloud of green smoke, hovering two feet off the ground. The driver sat on the roof like he was manning a horse-drawn carriage.

Wonwoo checked the list in his hand. “Porcupine needles and sage.”

“Sounds easy,” Soonyoung shrugged, but he wanted to swallow his words when they walked through the revolving door of the markets. If outside was an assault on his sense, then this was almost enough to knock him off his feet. Markets like this were scattered all around the city, rows and rows of stalls and merchants hawking their wares to the people wandering past. The ceiling was a glass dome, but it had been stretched into an illusion of the sky, and Soonyoung craned his neck to watch the formations of sparrows spearing in and out of the clouds, turning into parakeets, and then eagles, before scattering into cherry blossoms. Fae work, most likely. They were the best at illusionary magic. Soonyoung itched to learn how to do it.

A young girl bounded over to them. There was a fishbowl full of water sitting on her head and the glass amplified the size of her eyes almost comically. Her hair was the texture of seaweed and the gills on her jaw fluttered like daisies in the wind.

“Welcome to the Mapo-gu Emporium!” she said, voice clear despite being underwater. “What can I help you with?” Wonwoo showed her his list and she nodded with a smile. “This way!”

She led them through a complicated maze of stalls to an exotic-looking shop stacked with jars of varying sizes. The witch behind the counter stood up to greet them with a smile. There was a rat on her shoulder. Soonyoung waved hello.

While Wonwoo haggled for a handful of porcupine needles, Soonyoung perused the stalls nearby. He was eyeing a pot full of what looked like choking vines when something caught his attention.

Green eyes.

Soonyoung would know them anywhere.

The tiger looked at him for a careful second before walking behind a row of stalls, out of sight. Soonyoung took off after it without a second thought. He weaved through the crowd, stretching onto his toes to see if he could catch a glimpse of the black and orange tapestry of the tiger’s hide. He ended up in a smoky cluster of food stalls, coughing on the cloying scent of sugar and meat, but he caught it: the swish of a tail.

He took off at a run, bursting out of the food section with heavy breaths and no idea where he was. Books. Enchanted ink. Colourful birds.

No tigers.

But he could have sworn he saw it. Those eyes were so familiar, even after all these years of pretending he never saw them--pretending they didn’t lurk in the corner of his dreams, sometimes, bright enough to give off their own light, leaving Soonyoung’s chest tight when he woke up.

He turned in a circle with his hands in his hair and came face to face with an out-of-breath Wonwoo.

“What the hell, Soonyoung?” he panted, hands on his knees. “Don’t run off like that. This place is enormous.”

“You found me,” Soonyoung pointed out. Wonwoo held up Soonyoung’s wallet before tossing it to him. “Did you use a tracking spell on me? You know how creepy that is.”

“Stop disappearing and I won’t have to,” Wonwoo shot back. “What was so important that you had to run to the--” He looked around and frowned. “--literature section?”

“I saw it again,” Soonyoung said, voice hushed with excitement. “The tiger.”

Wonwoo squinted at him for a few seconds before his face opened with understanding, and immediately dipped sideways into dismissal. “There are no tigers in here, Soonyoung. The city has pretty harsh restrictions about exotic animals and I can guarantee that nobody is walking around with a familiar like that. Unless we landed ourselves a hundred years in the past and Lee Seung is just hanging out in Mapo-gu.” He chuckled at his own joke. “It was probably just some illusionary magic.”

Soonyoung deflated. Of course. Wonwoo’s logic was always too strong to push against. It was like an oak tree rooted so deeply into the earth that it barely faltered, even under the most violent storms. Soonyoung often felt like one. Like all he did was batter against Wonwoo’s branches. He kept waiting for the day that Wonwoo would snap and tell Soonyoung that he was sick of it, but he never complained. Not really.

“Come on,” Wonwoo said, “I’ve got everything I need. Let’s get some lunch.”

Soonyoung pouted. “You buying?”

“When am I not, you leech.”

“Love you, Wonwoo-yah,” Soonyoung cooed, hanging off Wonwoo’s arm and rubbing his cheek against his shoulder like a cat. It didn’t feel the same as it used to. Wonwoo had filled out over the past year, his body becoming less of a bony configuration and more a collection of hard planes and rounded edges. Now, when Soonyoung poked at him or crawled all over him on the couch, there was a bit of give. Wonwoo had always been pleasant to look at, with his straight nose and angular brows, but maturity was certainly doing him a lot of favours.

Soonyoung found himself staring as Wonwoo rambled about the different shops he wanted to visit, hands flying, Sherlock perched on his shoulder. When Wonwoo finally noticed, he did a double take and stopped walking.

“What?” Soonyoung asked airily.

Wonwoo narrowed his eyes. “You’re being weird. Why are you so quiet? Is it the tiger thing? I’m sorry if I was harsh, but you really can’t believe everything you see in these places or you’ll go insane and empty all your savings on like... dried mermaid scales.”

Soonyoung laughed. “I’m fine. Stop worrying so much.”

“Alright,” Wonwoo said, sounding unconvinced.

“Dried mermaid scales? Is that really a thing? Sounds unethical.”

Wonwoo shoved at him and walked ahead, muttering under his breath. Soonyoung went to follow him, but something was still itching under his skin, hot like magic, wired like nerves.

He looked over his shoulder one final time.

Nothing blinked back.