Chapter Text
'it's so cold...'
yunho shivered badly as he stared into the horizon. his journey hadn't even been that long, only a few hours, yet it felt as if he had been travelling for years. he was heaving, his body quivering from how cold he was, yet he could not do anything about it.
the snow was thick, literally sinking into his feet and weighing him and his clothes down.
he wished he was home, drinking hot chocolate while in front of the fireplace, watching the flames burn.
alas.
"only a few hours more, yunho," he whispered to himself, looking up to the sky. "you're almost there."
he had to persevere. just a bit more until he reached the place.
with that in mind, he hastened his steps, not wanting to waste time.
***
“what are you thinking about?” wooyoung asks yunho, plopping down beside the man sitting in the small hut outside of the village house while looking at the sky.
yunho’s eyes are glazed, lost in thought, or maybe memories that he’s quite fond of. when he’s going through something darker, yunho tends to sit in his room, locked. they’re not completely healed yet, of course he’d do that more.
it’s scary, sometimes, when yunho does this, contemplating about something that he usually isn’t willing to share. not that wooyoung is forcing, of course.
they’re broken mirrors, after all.
he doesn’t push, yet he stares at yunho, awaiting an answer, though wooyoung is never sure he’ll get one. he can see that yunho has heard him, so there is a good chance he’d get an answer this time.
“the first time i came here,” the taller replies, eyes closing as they lose the glaze over them. “the journey, of course, not the… incident happening before.”
wooyoung stares at his friend, a little surprised. has he progressed from the first time? he tries to convey his question to the taller, not really one to voice out his questions.
yunho smiles. "it's not as painful as my other traumas, so i'm okay with thinking about it here," he replies, ever so sharp about the friend beside him. he stares back into the starry night, sighing fondly.
"besides, a years ago, today, we met changbin and bangchan."
***
"i... am finally here."
yunho heaved a sigh of relief, dropping to his knees when he saw the wooden building in front of him, not bothering with the cold of the snow. he's mostly numb to it already. a wooden village house, humble in its foundation yet sturdy in its structure, stood before him. he had to take a moment to marvel, he supposed.it didn’t feel fair if he hadn’t.
he could hear footsteps coming from behind. with a bit of difficulty, he turned round, meeting the eyes of someone who seemed to be the same age as him, looking just as tired and numb as he felt. the person seemed to be dressed similarly to him - clothes barely thick enough to withstand the cold, a bag with something seemingly unimportant.
it was like staring into a broken mirror.
his thought process was broken by a surprised "oh!" from someone, and yunho turned to see a short, muscular man looking at the both of them in surprise, before smiling. "you must be the ones bangchan was waiting for!"
and for some reason. everything went to black after that.
***
wooyoung chuckles softly. "ah, of course, how could i forget," he purrs in a teasing voice, nudging yunho softly with an elbow. "my first time meeting you and the first thing you did after staring at me was passing out."
yunho nudges him back just as softly, faking an offended look.
“of course, that just meant you fell for me,” wooyoung continues, voice soft as ever, though his grin is widening like a silly cat. yunho has to crack a smile at the bad joke. it is in a literal sense, after all.
***
yunho opened his eyes - when had he closed them? - before sitting up slowly, his head pounding erratically. he groaned, struggling to open his eyes while he tried to figure where he was.
was he atop a bed? there was something springy below him, together with the feeling of bunched up fabric below his palms. there was something soft under his head, possibly a pillow.
god, his head hurt.
"are you alright?" a voice asked, and while yunho had to take a while to open his eyes, the voice sounded like he was relieved. was his groan that loud that it was heard from another room?
the voice only chuckled, and yunho felt a smaller, softer (still calloused, though) hand slid into his. "you're already awake, aren't you?" they continued, and it sounded as if they were smiling. "do try to open your eyes slowly. i'm pretty sure you'd like to know who's looking and talking to you right now."
'damn right.'
it took a while for him to actually open his eyes, but when he did (while fighting the urge to kill the sun because he would be killed), he was looking at a male he hadn't seen before.
the guy had dimples when he smile, and he was pale, like he had loads and loads of baby powder on. yet he looked kind, though his eyes bore into him as though he had seen more than what was possible for his age. he seemed to be a lot older than yunho himself, but something told yunho that he was only two years older than him.
"i'm bangchan," the male introduced himself, smiling wider towards him. 'dad smile,' supplied his brain, but yunho ignored that thought, opting to stare at him. then, bangchan grinned. "also known as the one who knows how to see the future and either change it or keep it as it is."
ah.
that bangchan. the one who was also the one to scare a lot of people in the whole country and was shunned by the literal government. the one he was actually looking for.
"how long..." yunho trailed off, and wow, his voice is hoarse. he cleared his throat again, trying again. "how long was i out for?"
bangchan shrugged. "about a minute. you were dehydrated, and maybe a little more than a bit hungry. nothing 500ml of water send from the palm of a water user into your throat slowly wouldn't fix."
that sounded... violent. though if executed by a water user, it didn't really sound immoral, yunho guessed.
he went to stand, surprised to find that his energy was replenished. he faced bangchan, about to ask a question, but before he could, bangchan opened his mouth to speak. "your magic - which i'm pretty sure you just awakened - drains your stamina quickly, but it enhances it just as fast. the time for replenish it still stays the same, though," he explained, never losing the smile that adorned his face.
well, that's something to look forward to.
***
wooyoung cackles when he hears what yunho just explained. "did you actually think he looked older than his age?" he asks, still laughing, not actually managing to cease his laughter. it worsens when yunho nods. "oh, seungmin and jisung are going to have a field day when i tell them!"
yunho widens his eyes, shaking his head. "no, don't!" he warns, but he's giggling too at this point. "you know what hongjoong will say!"
a glance at each other... and then a collective grimace appeared on their faces. there is no way in their trauma-filled lives will they risk incurring hongjoong's calm fury. that's almost as bad as wooyoung losing control of his necromancer abilities.
"that's also the day i first talked to you, didn't i?" wooyoung asks, eyes sparkling. yunho hums in answer, answering his question.
"honestly, it was like i was looking into a reflection of myself through a window i could only see," yunho muses, his lips jutting out in contemplation. "you get that?"
wooyoung nods.
***
yunho stepped out of the infirmary, sipping his plain water in a bottle with a straw (he thanked bangchan when the seer (?) handed the bottle with a straw, because bless the guy, he knew yunho would be extremely thirsty. though how he knew yunho loved using straws to drink from a plastic bottle was beyond him) while trying to see the structure that managed to hold the house he was in.
it wasn't being held by magic of any kind, just pure physics. it was really modest, yet it felt really homey. it was bigger than the typical huts he' d usually see in indigenous peoples' houses, nor did it looked close to the village houses he'd see in either minecraft or america or korea, built on bricks or rocks as they were. rather, this was build purely on wood, maybe a little metal for the roof. to make sure that when rain fell, their house wouldn't be flooded, maybe?
either way, it's really pretty.
maybe it was because he was too absorbed by his thoughts, but he didn't see until it was too late the guy who was walking towards him, holding an extremely cold cup of orange juice filled with ice cubes.
they both collided, cold orange juice landing on yunho's white t-shirt that was his favourite shirt.
immediately, a sharp pain erupted from his chest, making him wince sharply. he clawed on his clothing, feeling a sudden burning sensation forming from the drink, though it felt eerily similar to a reaction from ice and salt. it was cold, extremely so, to the point where it felt like he was in acid, hot and cold receptors messing his body up. his vision blurred as the agony intensified, making him cry out.
“…didn’t see you! oh my god, are you okay?! you sound very hurt!” some voice sounded frantic, and the guy seemed to take out some… wipes to clear out the orange juice (with pulp. blergh) from his shirt.
and for some reason, he suddenly felt better, or enough so that he wasn’t feeling like he could die at any given moment.
it took a while, but he managed to get his sight back to look up... and he widened his eyes.
one, because his shirt had a huge orange juice stain that his powers probably would have a hard time clearing out due to its untrained status, and the pulp (blegh) was still apparent (as one could see, he hates pulped orange juice) on his shirt.
two, he was staring directly into the face of the guy he swore was a mirror to him.
there was a small, pensive silence occurring between them, before the guy (who had spilt the pulpy abomination of a cup of OJ) laughed nervously.
"i was not the only one that felt as if i was looking at myself, was i?" he asked, and for some reason that made yunho relax a little bit, a tension he hadn't realise he was carrying seeping out of him like water through a river. he shook his head, and the guy let out a huge sigh of relief. "i'm wooyoung, by the way. necromancer."
"yunho. freshly awakened mage." yunho replied, putting on a trained smile on his face,
"...ah," wooyoung replied, nodding. "generational family trauma?"
"that, and exiled."
wooyoung shrugged. "eh, happens to all of us. though i'm pretty sure we would not feel like we are broken mirrors of each other if that is the case."
yunho hummed, lost in thought. that was true, what wooyoung had just stated. logically, it was true, they would not look at each other and think that they were either looking into a broken piece of themselves in the mirror or a foggy reflection in the window, but they were both magic users. granted, they were using different types of magic, but they still have to reach out to a core to actually use it.
however, it was not magic. maybe it was something else…
***
wooyoung has to grin. “yeah, that day was crazy. can’t believe it was today, a year ago,” he mutters, snuggling into yunho’s side. can’t help it if his friend is warm. he has a free heater who won’t push him away if he even tries to initiate skinship, unlike a certain youngest…
yunho nods in silence, before humming. “what do we tell our younger selves? that they found an inverse version of themselves in the form of a friend, stuck to them the whole time even though they don’t trust others a lot and then found out crazy things about themselves?” he ponders, and wooyoung has to smirk.
“bet they’d still have crazy trust issues with us even,” he teased, and yunho snorts in an undignified manner.
“trust no one, not even up yourself. such an us thing to do.”
they both laugh again, grinning at each other. their eyes bore into each other for a really long time before yunho stands up, wooyoung scrambling to follow. “let’s go back inside,” yunho suggests, and wooyoung nods.
they went back into the kampung house, as jisung had told them the name of it. the house still has the homey, village vibe wooyoung and yunho both felt when they first entered. it’s good.
when wooyoung passes the kitchen, he pauses, making yunho halt in his steps. “you know,” he hums, “i always wondered how changbin, jisung and bangchan first met each other.”
yunho blinks, before nodding slightly. “like, we knew we saw bangchan and changbin that day, and then jisung came back after a ‘long day’, but we never actually know-”
before yunho can say anything else, a face appears between the both of them, making them yelp out loud. the face chuckles, before the body of a male comes into view.
wooyoung lets out a sigh of relief. “jisung!” he chastises, hitting the shapeshifter’s shoulder. jisung merely giggles again.
“heard you guys say my name,” jisung says, turning to face the both of them. “then i heard something about first meetings?”
yunho nods, grinning. “we were discussing about our first meeting, cause, you know, anniversary.”
jisung blinks, surprise colouring his face. “really?” he questions, his eyes widening. “today is the day we met a year ago? damn.”
yeah, time goes so fast when you’re having fun. or when you have people you can low-key vibe with having the same trauma. jisung lets a smirk appear on his face.
“and you want to know how the three of us first met?” jisung asks, tilting his head.
wooyoung makes an affirmative sound, while yunho just nods. of course they’re curious! they’ve kept it between them, and while it isn’t some kind of secret they (bangchan, changbin, han - who also calls themselves 3RACHA when they’re producing music) won’t share to the rest, it was clear that bangchan himself will rather it not be shared by new members until jisung or changbin were already acquainted with them.
jisung purses his lips, before whistling, a tick wooyoung understands as his way of showing ‘his eyes lit up.’ “aight, i think i could tell you, but!”
”but?” yunho asks.
“i’m going to bring you guys to my room with my powers.”
oh no, wooyoung thinks, widening his eyes, because that is actually even worse than-
“hold tight!” jisung exclaims, before pulling both of their hands into a woozy bend of reality.