Chapter Text
Long long ago, in the time when tigers used to smoke, a Lady sat at her fine piano in the window of her house, watching the fresh snow fall as she played.
“How I wish I had a child with skin as white as the snow, and hair as black and glossy as the black keys of this piano,” she said to herself.
That very year, she gave birth to a baby, just as she wished. She named him Yoongi, for the gloss of his hair.
As the boy grew, she marvelled at him. His skin was as soft and pale as the fresh snow. His hair was as glossy and black as the black keys of her fine piano. His lips were as pink as his elbows and knees. His eyes were as sweet as a cat’s. He stood at her knee and pressed the piano keys and smiled.
But she feared for his future. She could provide him with no fine connections, nor any real education in subjects other than music. And so, though it broke her heart, she sent him away, to the care of a Lord.
The Lord was her cousin, and a powerful noble of the Kim Kingdom where Yoongi and his Eomma lived. But she did not realise that her cousin had become a cruel, greedy and, above all, vain man, who dabbled in dark magic and darker crimes. The Lord believed himself the fairest and most beautiful in all the land, and desired the admiration he thought his due.
When the Lord set his eyes upon Yoongi, he was filled with envy. Yoongi had only become more and more beautiful as he grew.
“I suppose you think yourself very beautiful,” he said to the boy.
“What?” asked Yoongi.
“You will never be as beautiful as I am,” the Lord said spitefully. “You should admit it.”
Yoongi cocked his head, taking in his Eomma’s cousin. The man had fine features, but they were stiff with bitterness.
“You know you’re only going to get older, right?” Yoongi said to him. “Beauty standards keep changing, but I doubt the socio-cultural fetishisation of youth is going to change anytime soon.”
The Lord flew into a rage. Yoongi hurried from his presence, hoping to find a piano somewhere in the Lord’s manor.
That evening, the Lord’s Huntsman came to Yoongi’s chamber.
“You must come with me, boy,” he said. “There is something I must show you.”
Yoongi was uneasy, but also very bored. He donned his fine, hooded cloak and left the manor with the Huntsman by the light of the rising moon.
The Huntsman took Yoongi down the path to the forest, and through the trees. On and on they walked, as the night grew deeper around them. The Huntsman did not answer Yoongi’s questions with any detail, merely pressing him to keep walking.
Finally, the Huntsman came to a stop in a clearing.
“Okay,” Yoongi said, tired and ill-tempered. “What the fuck do you want to show me?”
“This, I’m afraid,” the Huntsman replied, and he drew a narrow hunting knife from his belt, the sharp blade gleaming in the moonlight.
“Yah!” Yoongi yelled, raising his fists before him and stepping back. “What the shit?!”
“The Lord wishes you disposed of,” the Huntsman said. “I apologise.”
“I don’t accept that apology!” Yoongi complained. “Shit, is this really what you want to be doing with your life?!”
The Huntsman paused, the knife bared and ready.
“Okay,” Yoongi said. “Okay, look, uh -- what’s your name?”
“Sehun,” the Huntsman said.
“Look, Sehun-ssi,” Yoongi said. “May I call you Sehun-hyung?”
“Uh, sure,” Sehun answered.
“Look, Sehun-hyung,” Yoongi continued. “You feel like obeying that crazy asshole is your only option, but it’s not true. You’re the architect of your own destiny, hyung, and you could do a hell of a lot better than a destiny that involves vanity-motivated murders in the middle of the fucking forest.”
Sehun the Huntsman listened to Yoongi’s persuasive voice, and lowered his knife.
They both agreed never to return to the Lord’s manor. Sehun directed Yoongi towards the nearest main road, and they parted ways as friends. As a gift, Sehun gave Yoongi his narrow hunting knife, the blade with which he did not kill the boy.
Yoongi walked on, but he was tired and the forest was dark. The moon and stars were veiled now by clouds, and he could not be sure he was walking in the right direction to meet the road. Fearful of accidentally circling back to the Lord’s manor, he looked for any signs of where he was.
Finally, he caught sight of a gleam of light through the trees. He hurried cautiously towards it, to find a low stone house, modest but finely built, at the base of a rocky hill.
“Hopefully they won’t object to a house guest,” he said to himself, and knocked on the door.
As it turned out, the house was the home of 8 boys of small stature, who called themselves the Stray Children. Yoongi did not consider himself tall, but he was taller than even the tallest of the Strays. Their leader, Chan, welcomed him cautiously.
“You may stay the night,” he said, “But if you wish to remain longer with us, you must earn your keep. It is already difficult to feed so many hungry mouths.”
Yoongi agreed.
The next day, he set to work in their house.
“Perhaps you could clean and tidy and bake lovely treats, hyung!” suggested little Felix.
“Fuck off with that,” Yoongi answered. “Clean up your own shit. I will, however, assemble that glass cabinet you’ve got half-built in the corner, and cook dinner.”
For several days, Yoongi enjoyed his time with the Strays. He liked assembling their furniture and cooking big meals. Still, he was worried that his Eomma must think him dead, and worried too that the Lord might not...
One day, while the Strays were out and Yoongi was alone in the house, fitting a new shelving unit, there came a knock on the door.
“Fresh fruit!” called the voice of an old woman.
“No thank you, halmeoni,” Yoongi called back, concentrating on tightening a screw. He preferred not to speak with anyone but the Strays, lest word got back to the Lord that they were harbouring a pale young man of Yoongi’s age.
“I have beautiful apples!” called the fruit seller hopefully.
“No thank you,” Yoongi repeated.
“Strawberries?”
“No thank you.”
“Tangerines?”
...
Yoongi opened the door.
“How much?”
“Try one first,” the old woman said, offering a plump, vivid tangerine in her wizened hand. “The first bite is free.”
Yoongi happily peeled the tangerine, and put the first segment into his mouth.
At once, he fell to the ground, tangerine peel strewn by his lifeless body and the rest of the tangerine in his limp hand. The Lord - for it was he, in a magical disguise - laughed in his spiteful victory. Perhaps he would have done worse, too, but, hearing the sound of the Strays returning, he hurried away.
The Strays were distraught to find their beautiful hyung collapsed upon the floor. His white skin was now as cold as the snow it resembled.
At first they thought him dead, but of course, a mundane corpse would not be so very cold as this. The Strays realised that Yoongi had been cursed by a wicked poison in the tangerine.
In order to keep him safe, they laid him gently in the glass cabinet he had built, the tangerine cupped in his long hands at his chest. Then they began to quietly search for anyone who might be able to break such a terrible curse...
One day, a fine Prince rode along the road near the Strays’ home.
“Hi! Hi, excuse me!” he called to Felix and Lee Know, who happened to be travelling home. “I’ve heard there’s a boy under a terrible fruit-related curse near here. Do you know where to find him?”
Excited, they brought him directly to their home.
“Ohhhh,” the fine Prince said, staring at Yoongi in his coffin of glass. “Wowwww!”
“Do you think you can help him?” Chan asked anxiously.
“Can you--” the Prince asked, miming expressively. “--open up the box you put him in, please? I need to be able to touch him to see if this will work.”
The Strays obliged, opening the lid and walls of the glass cabinet to leave Yoongi exposed on the narrow bed of the cabinet. Without the glass, the fine Prince found him even more enchanting.
“Forgive my rudeness, beautiful,” the fine Prince said, stepping closer.
He bent over Yoongi’s lifeless body, and pressed a warm, sweet kiss to Yoongi’s petal-soft lips.
“Brrrr, he’s cold!!” the fine Prince laughed.
“...rude,” Yoongi mumbled.
The fine Prince cried aloud in shock and joy, and the Strays leapt and cheered, and Yoongi grumbled that everyone was far too loud. He awoke fully and sat up, entirely restored to his health and warmth. And of course, he asked the fine Prince how this came to be.
“My name is Prince Hoseok of the Jung Kingdom,” the fine Prince said.
“My name is Min Yoongi, of the anarcho-socialist nation of Kissing Unconscious People Is A Form Of Assault,” Yoongi answered.
“Would you have rathered I left you in the box?!” Hoseok cried.
“Suppose not.”
“You see, a wise seer with a strange name came to me recently,” Hoseok continued primly. “He told me to seek a boy poisoned by fruit. I honestly thought he was fucking with me at first, but hey, I thought, if there’s a fruit-cursed kid out there somewhere and I’m supposed to help him, I’ll feel so guilty if I don’t go and try! So here I am. And you turn out to be twice as beautiful but ten times as ungrateful as I imagined you!”
Although the Strays were overjoyed to see Yoongi restored and Yoongi did enjoy living with them, Hoseok invited him back to the Jung Kingdom, and Yoongi greatly desired to go. He would be safer once he was out of the Kim Kingdom, away from the Lord who was so spitefully determined to cause him harm. And he found sunny, no-nonsense Hoseok just as enchanting as Hoseok found him. So he said his farewells to the Strays, and set off with Hoseok to the Jung Kingdom.
As they travelled, Yoongi came to know Hoseok very well. The brightness of his smile and the sharpness of his eyes. The flick of his narrow wrist as he gestured. The soft brown curls that fell to his neck. The heart his lips formed.
One night, as they rested under the stars, their horses tethered nearby and the embers of their campfire glowing, Hoseok sighed.
“I really do apologise for kissing you,” he said.
“Oh,” Yoongi answered.
“It was just because of the curse!” Hoseok said anxiously.
“Well,” Yoongi said, his heart dropping. “I suppose I’m sorry that you had to do it then.”
“No no no!” Hoseok replied. “I don’t mean that it was a chore! And even then, I quite like chores! It’s satisfying to get things nicely squared away, you know?”
“Um,” Yoongi answered. He was uncertain. But Hoseok was so beautiful in the moonlight, his features so fine and his heart so warm.
“It wasn’t a chore,” Hoseok insisted. “It just... wasn’t how I would’ve liked to... go about things You know. If there hadn’t been a curse, and everything. I would’ve... done a better job. A more romantic job...”
Yoongi shifted a little closer to Hoseok. Their hands met, Yoongi’s long, pale fingers lacing with Hoseok’s narrow, tan ones.
“Well,” Yoongi said softly. “Would you like another chance?”
There, below the moonlight, near the border of the Kingdoms, Yoongi shared the most romantic kiss of his life with Prince Hoseok. That it was only his second kiss, and the first while fully conscious, was of no consequence to him in determining its exceptional romance.
