Work Text:
When they first moved into the rickety house by the sunflower field, Daeyoung asked his parents if he could paint the walls of his room. They did what any sensible parents would to satisfy a restless twelve year old: handed him a wide-headed brush and a bucket of baby pink paint. While his dad lugged around the dusty sofa and his mom filled up the cupboards, Daeyoung (unsupervised, of course) streaked his bedroom walls with the color of cherry blossoms.
That same night they moved in, the dust refused to settle. It would be days before the air cleared, or for the clutter to be sorted, or for the bed sheets (which have gone missing) to be found in a box stored mistakenly in the basement. Upon a bare mattress and its itchy thread, Daeyoung would toss, turn, and sneeze until sheer weariness knocked him into a swirling world of dreams. Then—
He would find himself sitting on soft grass under an old willow tree. The sunset bleeds into the sky like crushed peaches and lavender iced tea. Beside him, there’s a boy with his eyes closed sitting back against the grass and soil. Their fingers brush, sticky with the syrup of some long-devoured sweet treat. Daeyoung is older—his hands are bigger, his legs longer, his hair thicker on his head—and he feels bigger and wiser and readier to nurse the cuts on his ankles. His chest thrums with an unknown wonder that melts like cotton candy and burns like sugar boiling.
“We’ll have a house one day,” says the boy, and though Daeyoung struggles to find this boy’s name he feels in his heart of hearts that it is known to him. “It will have pink walls and flowers all over.”
Daeyoung sits back on the grass and closes his eyes too.
“That sounds very lovely.”
The Wishing Willow, as it came to be called, was surrounded by no negligible mystery. Like the shadows in Daeyoung’s bedroom which whispered at midnight, or perhaps his mother’s cards which predicted the right things at odd times, it seemed to have its own whims. On summer and spring days, its old vines would caress Daeyoung and Riku as though content to have them leaned against its trunk. For this alone, they would never make carvings on the wood as Daeyoung suggested once:
“Carvings? For what?” Riku inquired, and though he was only a year older (eighteen, then), it seemed he was aware of some kind of wisdom regarding old trees and their whims that Daeyoung was still naive to.
“I see it on the TV. Like, we put our names next to each other and draw a heart around them.” At this, Riku laughed. “Or we can carve lines. One for each year we’ve been best friends.”
“Then we’d just draw one line around the trunk. A circle, essentially.”
“Why?”
“Dummy,” Riku huffed under his breath, shaking his head. “Figure it out.”
Daeyoung looked out and ahead through the vines, at the sprawl of grass and overgrown meadow—it must have been a flower field once, but only a few stalks of wildflowers remained. There were still bumblebees, specks of soft and sun-warmed black and yellow which drifted here and there in search of sweet pollen.
“One circle is just a never-ending line,” Daeyoung said. “We haven’t been friends for that long.”
“Are you sure?”
This time, it was Daeyoung who giggled. Riku often said whimsical things that made little sense.
“I’m pretty sure, but—if you say so. Who am I to question the omniscience of Maeda Riku?”
“It’s a promise,” Riku sighed as though Daeyoung had failed to understand the riddle. “Of course we haven’t been friends for that long, but we can promise, no?”
“If you’d like to.”
Riku pushed their shoulders together. “Would you like to?”
“Riku, you were the first person to see me fall on my ass in a thicket of ivy. And also the first person to surprise me with flowers on my birthday. And—whatever. We already said we’d leave this little town together, one day. Sure, we can make a promise, but I don’t have a knife on me.”
“Forget carving on the tree. She’s sacred.” In the midst of their conversation, Riku’s head had settled on Daeyoung’s shoulder.
“Sacred?”
“My mom calls her the Wishing Willow. If we make a wish, it’s supposed to come true. It’ll come true across lifetimes.”
“Across lifetimes, huh. So… would the circle then be a sphere?”
Riku laughed and entwined their fingers. He made space between his legs, where the Wishing Willow’s thick and mossy roots protruded from the soft earth. There, he placed their connected hands.
“I wish,” Riku began, a small whisper, “That Daeyoung will find and love me in every life.”
“That’s not what we…” Daeyoung found his voice trailing off. He considered the weight of Riku’s head on his shoulder, which was a weight that compelled the following words, “…I wish I will too.”
Riku hummed a faint song. Too young to understand what promises and wishes were, they fell silent and sleepily succumbed to afternoon napping. It was summer, and quiet, and so much was yet to happen. And the vines, they danced in answer.
As soon as Daeyoung tossed the cap, he hopped into his dad’s beat up 2005 Toyota 4runner and promptly went on a quest to drive the width of the country. The highways were long and winding, and the music he played was the kind of midwest rock one would expect, and of course the windows were rolled down half the time—which meant that there was dust and summer pollen coating the crusty leather seats, and the smell of gasoline always lingered long after he’d refilled the tank.
It rained hard two weeks in, and bad luck eventually caught up to Daeyoung (his mother proclaimed their family was cursed). He missed an exit, ended up on a dirt road lined by tall poplar trees, and promptly got his tires stuck in mud.
He slumped against the wheel in a moment of defeat and exhaustion. Suddenly his spine began to protest all the nights of sleeping in twisted positions in the back seat—and then he straightened, marched out into the squelching soil, and tried (with much failure) to lift his dad’s beloved old can of a car out of its trap.
An hour passed by before Daeyoung admitted to himself that he might need help. There should be a tow truck around these parts, no? And yet—
“Don’t bother calling anyone, the phone lines don’t go this far.” Down the muddy road, a young man in a sunhat, the handles of a big basket hanging from his elbow, walked by the trunks of the poplars. His denim overalls appeared wondrously unmuddied.
“This far?” Daeyoung sighed and his hand fell against his thigh. Faintly, his phone beeped sullenly about the poor reception. “I’m afraid I’m terribly lost.”
“On the contrary,” the man smiled, “It seems you are exactly where you need to be.”
Daeyoung hummed as he looked at the mud-embedded car tire. It had sunk deeper despite his efforts.
“You think so?”
“I felt like making a pitcher of lavender iced tea this morning,” he revealed the pitcher in the basket, along with two cups. “I usually make just enough for myself. Funny that.”
Then the man invited him to his house further down the road, a beautiful old farmhouse standing at the heart of an open, swaying field. Weary and looking for reprieve, Daeyoung went—perhaps enchanted as well by the beautiful stranger.
“Riku, by the way,” came the introduction as they walked.
“Daeyoung,” he replied, tongue coated with the sweet punch of tea and flowers.
Summer was Daeyoung’s favorite season solely because of the sunflower blooms. They were a novelty from his childhood whose magic and wonder simply never faded. Come July, the sunflower field beyond the window would raise itself to life like sunrise upon sunrise upon sunrise.
Daeyoung delighted in spending the afternoon mingling with the buzzing bumblebees as he cut stalks to take into the house, and often on these days, Riku would be in the kitchen crushing pitted peaches in a bowl.
“They’re quite beautiful this year,” Daeyoung announced his entry, several bulbs of sun in the crook of his elbow, “Even the bumblebees are singing about it.”
“You’ve woven such care into the field—that’s why.” Riku’s hands were sticky, the wedding band on his finger stained with peaches, and so Daeyoung began vasing the flowers to leave on the counter. There was magic and life in flowers, something Daeyoung learned from Riku—who liked to keep them in every room for company because “they always have some songs to sing”.
By the window, under the sun, two bumblebees whirled in the soft wind.
“I wonder if our neighbors will send us a housewarming gift,” Daeyoung’s father ponders, looking out from the kitchen window at the old sunflower field outside.
“Neighbors?” Daeyoung asks. The syrup and butter of his mom’s pancakes are faint flavors on his tongue.
His father glugs down a big gulp of black coffee. “There’s another house on the other side of the trees. Seemed too well-kept to be empty.”
“Well,” his mother chimes in, “I’ll bake them some pastries if they do decide to come by.”
“I hope they’re not like our old neighbors,” Daeyoung says. He remembers grinch-like faces pinched in contempt, always complaining about music, or lights, or whatever tiny thing they noticed on the front lawn. The suburban life isn’t for the Kim family, Daeyoung is sure. They’re too eccentric—or at least that’s what the HOA claims.
Perhaps that’s why they live by a sunflower field now. And their house—like beat up broken boxes stacked atop each other, with pink walls and dust and caterpillars in the grass—it feels kinder.
Daeyoung wonders about the home beyond the trees. It is a whimsical thought, that there could be people on the other side of the white and red pines. Are they eccentric too? A family, or a solitary hermit? Do they appreciate the trees, the flowers, the way they seem to all be part of a quiet dream?
The first time Daeyoung met Riku at the Wishing Willow, it rained. The willow vines dripped cold little droplets that left Daeyoung’s hair damp, and the longer he waited to let the rain pass, the stronger the torrent seemed to get. The muddy road down the hill only became muddier, and the path home decidedly became too daunting compared to staying beneath the incomplete shelter of the old willow.
“You’re in my spot,” said Riku, the first thing he ever said to Daeyoung, and he cast his gaze imperiously down the line of his nose. Like the dripping willow vines, his hair is not just damp but soaked to the roots, and his clothing—a pink sweater over a shirt and some shorts—were rain drenched too.
For a moment, Daeyoung recalled the ghost stories his classmates whispered about. They said the willow by his home was haunted by a boy about their age. They said he would come out during the rain, or in the middle of the night, and would stay close to the tree trunk simply drifting—spectral. If one were ever to meet eyes with the boy, they said, then the victim would be cursed to share whatever grief bound the boy to the tree.
“You don’t look like a ghost,” Daeyoung said, not moving from where he sat. He was cradled perfectly by a dip in the earth and the strong, mossy roots of the tree.
The coldness receded from Riku’s eyes. “I wasn’t trying to be one.”
“Did you forget your umbrella at home?”
“No.” Riku kicked aside Daeyoung’s leg and shoved himself into what little space this made for him in the willow’s cradle. Somehow, they fit. Daeyoung felt the cold and wet of Riku’s clothes bleed into his own. Droplets fell from Riku’s hair and onto Daeyoung’s shoulder.
“You might get sick.”
Riku didn’t seem to care. Instead, he turned to Daeyoung, breath laced with maple syrup and pancakes. “The willow loves the rain. You’re disrespecting it by staying dry.”
“Uhm…” Daeyoung searched Riku’s face for the indication of amusement, or impending laughter. He realised quite quickly that Riku was serious. “Should I…”
“Go.”
Riku threw his hand forward, telling Daeyoung to walk out under the rain—and for some reason, he did. With soft mud and slippery grass under his shoes, he let himself be drenched from head to toe. It was cold and mildly unpleasant as his clothes stuck to his skin, but the pitter-patter and the drumming on his head and the incessance of it all seamlessly turned into some kind of relief. His classmates’ voices echoed in the back of his mind, their stories of ghosts and hauntings, their fear of mystery, of the unknown.
Daeyoung realised he’d closed his eyes. Opening them again after a while, he expected Riku to be staring. He was. It was a terribly ordinary sight, and it seemed then that the same coldness which receded from Riku’s eyes earlier had completely gone.
“I’m Daeyoung,” he said through the rain. “Kim Daeyoung. I live down the road.”
“The willows says you’re drenched enough, Kim Daeyoung,” he smiled, and this time with the amusement of teasing. “My name is Maeda Riku.”
The sun set upon the lone farmhouse at the end of the muddy road, and in the kitchen Daeyoung watched dust float in the glowing, burnt honey flooding through the windows.
“Seems like a quiet place out here,” Daeyoung said, “I bet you could see the stars at night.”
“You could.”
Daeyoung watched Riku drizzle honey on some buttered toast, the other man’s back turned away from him. Shadows, revealing, painted the shape of toned muscles coiled all the way down his spine.
“So you just live by yourself all the way out here?”
“What, you assume it’s lonely?”
“Well…”
Riku popped the lid back on the honey jar. “I’ve got my flowers.”
“Your flowers?”
“They sing and talk and dance just like everybody else—and without all the added fuss, too.” Riku glanced over his shoulder and huffed a short laugh. “You think I’m eccentric.”
“No I’m… I’m intrigued, actually.” Daeyoung settled deeper in the chartreuse wood of the kitchen chair he’d settled in, but his soles tapped against the floor, restless. “They talk, you said?”
“And sing, and dance, and—they listen when I tell them about my dreams.”
“You dream often? What do you dream of?”
Riku looked at him, then at the sunset. “Pretty sky, don’t you think?”
“You know what,” Daeyoung pushed off the table with an unexplainable compulsion. His mouth ran without his mind’s permission while his heart hammered, hammered, hammered. “The weather’s not so bad anymore. We’ve got iced tea left. Take that plate of toast and honey outside… let’s watch the sunset if it’s so pretty to you.”
Riku looked at the vase of daisies on the table as if they whispered to him in gossip. He smiled.
It was a rare occurrence in summertime that winds would blow across the field where their house stood. On the nights when the wind did come, the house creaked precariously just as it would during the spells of stormy rain preceding autumn. Daeyoung would wake because of the noise and feel the cold absence on the other side of the bed.
In the dark, neglecting to put on his slippers, he found his way through the home—following nothing but an inkling in his gut which always, without fail, led him to Riku.
Riku was in the attic, where the force of the wind made the home sway enough for it to be felt. There was a creaking, the deep and disgruntled groaning which coaxed Daeyoung from sleep. On the floor, unbothered by the slight layer of dust, Riku lay prone with his ear pressed to the old wood, the shape of him faintly lit up by the moon.
Daeyoung came further into the attic as gently as he could and sat by Riku on the floor, who hummed a soft melody against the groaning wood. The house groaned again and shuddered a sigh which shook dust off the ceiling beams. Riku’s song was like the soft and tender scratch of a bow against violin strings—steady, drawn out, warm. Soon the groaning died down. Although the house kept swaying, it swayed then without fuss.
Riku pushes up from the floor and faces Daeyoung. His hair is mussed and his eyes droop with the want for sleep.
“You’ve brought back the quiet,” Daeyoung said, reaching mindlessly for the warm stretch of skin behind Riku’s ear. A well-known mess of hair and flesh and warmth pressed into his palm.
“All this wood. You need to remind them they were once trees.”
Again the house swayed, but like Riku said—the foundation of the home seemed to remember where it came from. From the woods, from the trees, from the roots which refused the wind and rains and floods.
“Good thing. The roof would have flown off if it weren’t for you.”
It was a funny thing—that a house needed to be reminded it was trees for it to withstand a little wind. But it was a beautiful thing too that it was Riku and his song which weaved strength once more into the old bones of their home. Yet, this was nothing new. Riku’s power has always been in the creaking wood, the singing flowers, the dreams and sunsets. He was mended porcelain, faulty clock hands now-fixed, bulbs of light never flickering. Daeyoung couldn’t imagine a broken thing in his hands if not for the purpose of fixing it. Can’t imagine fire on his fingertips for the way it scorched and burned.
Daeyoung’s hands are never clean.
Perhaps that’s putting it a bit crudely. But it is the truth. If not paint, then syrup. If not that, then the bed of dirt nursing the sunflower field. If not that, then stains of chlorophyll from the lush forest—the one past the sunflower field, the one which hides the only other home along the road, the one Daeyoung’s father explicitly told him not to explore, and yet. And yet.
Daeyoung dusts off his hands on his shorts, which are the same color as the dirt, so he supposes his mother won’t notice when he returns home. Branches poke at his arms as he moves through the thinnest part of the foliage, leaving the forest behind him.
The sunset blinds him, peeking over the shingled roof of a farmhouse. There is no sunflower field, only long, swaying grass. A path lined by poplar trees leads up to the foyer—they rustle in the wind. It is cool and blows in from behind, through the forest, as though pushing Daeyoung toward the house.
He doesn’t understand why he listens to that urge despite not knowing if there was a grouchy hermit inside, or even anyone at all. It’s unlike his curiosity about the forest and what lay beyond, which was a product of not knowing. It makes him restless not to know if the forest was dangerous or not, if there really was another house beyond or not. But the house itself, whatever lay within, whoever resides there—Daeyoung has a strange feeling that it’s all quite familiar already. The farmhouse, the quiet field, the poplars. It felt like coming home, somehow.
The wind blows again, and stronger. Daeyoung steps up to the foyer, but the front door, panelled wood of cream white, is already slightly open. The breeze pushes it in, and the hinges creak.
Dust whirled in static beams of sun. Within, there was a yawning silence. An uncanny absence. Daeyoung welcomes himself into the house and looks around. There is a staircase ahead of him, a homely living room to his left, and a rustic kitchen to his right. There, by the sink, several glass vases lay empty. There are still some flower petals stuck on the surface. But there isn’t anyone.
Nobody barrels down the staircase to investigate why the door is swinging back and forth in the wind. No creaking in the wood above to give away the footfalls of anyone upstairs. There was nobody, Daeyoung realised. Yet the house in its entirety feels incomplete, even with him there. It misses something, someone.
“Daeyoung, what if I leave? Will you still be my friend?”
The question was sudden like the swift turn of the weather two days ago, when a thunderstorm roiled across the fields after the sunniest day in the year. Riku was not destructive, though, but Daeyoung still felt panic. Even the Willow rustled in discontent. Daeyoung leaned harder against the trunk, and he knew that Riku could feel his body tense up.
“Are you? Are you leaving?”
“Maybe.” Riku shrugged his left shoulder to catch Daeyoung’s attention. “So? Answer the question.”
“Where will you go?” Daeyoung asked. It’s not that he meant to ignore Riku’s question—he simply could not fathom why Riku would ever leave. That he would. That he could. This willow, the ghost stories, the whimsy—Riku felt inseparable from it. None of this would make sense without him.
“You look like you’re about to have a heart attack,” Riku pointed out. His teasing laughter fell short of the humor. It occurred to Daeyoung that Riku didn’t want to think about leaving either. Hadn’t even thought of it, perhaps.
“Why?” Daeyoung finally settled. We’re just going to keep asking each other questions, he thought, and in the end none of it would make any more sense.
“My parents don't like it here. Well, they never did.”
“Is it because people make fun of you? I could—“ Daeyoung stopped. He could? Could what? The truth is, there is nothing Daeyoung or his family could do that Riku and his family hadn’t already done for themselves. The best thing they’ve done is to stay away from the rest of the town. Traded community for safety. Outcasts are feared but they are also lonely—this would remain true if they stayed.
Riku was staring at him. “I don’t doubt that you could,” he said. Whatever Daeyoung thought he could do, Riku believed it. “I mean, you’ve sat with me under this tree for so long. People might think you’re a ghost too.”
“They already do.”
“I don’t get to choose,” Riku said. “I would take this over anything the world out there could offer, but… My mother thinks there’s a better life waiting. Somewhere in the city, or in another little town. Maybe there are others who talk to Willows, even.”
“How long do we have?”
“They’re letting me finish the school year, at least. That’s—“
“Less than a month away.”
Daeyoung felt tears well in his eyes. He looked away and coughed into his elbow.
“At least it’s not tomorrow,” Riku said, and laid his head on Daeyoung’s shoulder.
“You know I can’t shake this feeling that I’ve met you before,” Daeyoung said. The sunset blazed over the distant trees, and Riku threw a blanket over a clear spot on the ground.
“What makes you say that?” Riku sat and patted the empty space next to him. He placed the plate of buttered and honeyed toast between them.
“Your face is so familiar. It reminds me of when you see someone in a dream—and you recognize them everywhere but you can’t remember where from or why.”
“You’re a funny guy.” Riku giggled. A vision of swaying willow vines flashed in Daeyoung’s mind.
“See, that! That laugh. I swear I’ve heard it somewhere.”
Riku pushed a piece of toast against Daeyoung’s lips. “Don’t let me eat by myself.”
“Aren’t you weirded out that I’m saying all this?” Daeyoung chewed through the toast. It tasted like a craving finally satisfied. He laughed at himself. “Like, I’m weirded out at what I’m saying but—it feels—I don’t know. Feels right. Somehow?”
Riku poured the last of his iced tea in their glasses. There was just enough left. He stayed quiet for a while after that—which Daeyoung was fine with, too. The silence felt comfortable yet unpracticed, safe without much explanation. It dumbfounded him.
“It is said that we are meant to meet some people more than once. Have you heard of that?”
The sunset was like feeble candlelight, then. Riku glowed like an ember, and the shadows were purple as if by some strange magic. Daeyoung got his degree a few weeks ago. His last assignment was a vast research project that required his brain to squeeze every last drop of logic and reason from his psyche. Where did this whimsy fit into all of his life? Talking flowers, purple shadows, puzzling questions, a familiar stranger—Daeyoung would never have given any of this another moment’s thought. Not until now. His head began to hurt.
“No,” Daeyoung replied belatedly.
“Two people meet for the first time when they mean nothing to each other. For the second time when neither are ready. For the third and final time when it finally counts, when it matters.”
“Just three times? Said who?”
Riku shrugged, smiling. “I can’t say either. Maybe there’s more.”
“Which time do you think this is, then?”
“Could be the first, for all we know.”
Daeyoung found it hard to believe. And when a rumble emerged from the mud road, a tow truck groaning past the poplars, he should have felt relieved.
Daeyoung woke late on a Sunday morning feeling on edge. Riku frowned at him at the breakfast table, his eyes scrutinising over the rim of his teacup.
“Slept badly?”
“I had a dream,” Daeyoung confessed. He almost hesitated—almost. A bad dream was the worst thing either of them could wish for on a sunny Sunday. But Riku also deserved the truth, and he deserved a warning.
It was no secret that Daeyoung’s magic was in his dreams. In his childhood, he dreamt of little glimpses that would unfurl later in the day. Then as he grew, the dreams grew more vivid in clarity, and farther and farther ahead in time.
“The house was burning at night. Our house,” Daeyoung said. The silverware in his hands trembled. “It was… I don’t know who did it. Or why. But the fires were angry. We did not start it.”
“And you don’t know when this will happen?”
“It felt close, Riku. The sunflowers were in bloom.”
“It could be any summer. It could be tomorrow.” Riku hummed deeply, something he only did when extremely worried. He looked over his shoulder at the vase of hydrangeas by the sink. “They said to look out the window,” Riku muttered to himself, walking to the nearest window.
“What is it?” Daeyoung left his breakfast on the table to follow—he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Swarming bees,” Riku said. They gathered above the house, a swirling mass under the almost-noon sun. It was a grim omen. Swarming bees meant that a house would surely burn. “We need to leave.”
Daeyoung didn’t know how they would do it—leave everything behind. This home, its imperfections, all its broken things that Riku fixed, all the flowers. They can’t save all of it from the fire. But before sunset, they had packed what clothes they could into some bags. They took some of Riku’s flowers. Then they tossed everything in the back of Daeyoung’s truck.
Daeyoung kept a firm hand on the wheel while Riku watched the mirror. As he took one last glance at the house’s reflection—like boxes stacked on top of each other, homely—something flashed ahead, and there was a crash. The winding road, the sunflower field in the mirror, Riku beside him. It all spun into darkness.
On the day Riku was supposed to leave, they agreed to meet at the willow.
“You think I’d run off just like that?” Riku said one day. it was a relief, at least, that Daeyoung would get to say a proper goodbye. But he’d rather not have to say it at all.
It was not sunny, but it was not raining either. There were clouds, half-hearted in the way they covered up the big blue sky—thick and dense and dark where they gathered, but sparse and making way for brightness in other places. Daeyoung was already there long before sunset, their meeting time, not at the tree but in a hiding place elsewhere. A thicket on the edge of the flowerless field, where the leaves were soft and lush enough to keep him hidden.
And when Riku came, he stayed there.
Riku paused at Daeyoung’s obvious absence, looking down the distant dirt path as though expecting him to come bounding over the horizon line. And when minutes passed, he sat in their spot. That little nook. Daeyoung thought it was so small the first time he sat in it—but it felt too big now, seeing only Riku there.
How could anyone ever think he was a vengeful ghost? Those rumors seemed far off, even now that Daeyoung could see what everyone else saw. A lone boy under dancing willow vines. Peaceful, quiet, softness in the eyes looking for softness in the grass and the hills and the bees.
The sun sank and sank. Daeyoung’s knees ached in the dirt and he ended up sitting on spiky branches. He stayed. Sweat formed and dripped from his hair. Heat prickled at his ankles, up his neck. He stayed. Riku fell asleep at some point, his head lolling sideways against the tree trunk. A spider crawled up Daeyoung’s leg and he swatted it away, heart thundering. He stayed. And stayed.
And then it was nighttime.
Riku waited hours for him, and Daeyoung waited too. Maybe, maybe if he never showed up then Riku would stay. Daeyoung didn’t know much about himself yet but he can be a little selfish. He believed—hoped—that maybe Riku would refuse to leave without seeing him. That he would stay for this.
But Riku eventually pushed up from the grass. Fireflies floated around him, lighting up the willow in pale yellow. Riku hugged the tree trunk while Daeyoung watched. Daeyoung had sat there for so long he couldn’t feel the earth under him anymore. It felt as though it had eroded. Riku began to walk down the hill.
Branches scraped skin off Daeyoung’s arms as he burst out of the thicket.
“Don’t go!” He yelled, running. He was out of breath already, and he couldn’t feel his legs. “Riku, don’t go!”
“Don’t go,” Riku said. The morning was quiet, the sunrise subdued, and Daeyoung begrudged the way the soil didn’t squelch under his shoes. Because then there wouldn’t be any mud lodged in the wheels of his truck, and no reason to stay longer. Well, the repair folk dealt with that last night, anyway. They wrenched away whatever malfunction stranded Daeyoung here in the first place—and again, he should have felt relieved.
“I don’t know where I’ll go after this,” Daeyoung said, his hand hovering over his truck’s door handle. Even when he did place his hand there, something stopped him from pulling it open and tossing himself in the backseat. “Maybe I really won’t go.”
Riku was close behind him, though his feet were not heavier. He treaded lightly. “Ignore me,” he laughed. “Go, Daeyoung. The world doesn’t end here. Trust that feeling in your gut—it’s telling you that this doesn’t end here.”
“This doesn’t end here,” Daeyoung muttered. There was blood in his teeth and he could taste the metal. The house groaned and swayed—and the attic, once peaceful, felt like a cage.
“I’m sure you think that, witch,” said a man in a black suit. His voice was gravelly and dark, and he had a silver gun holstered at his hip. “But for us hunters, this ends when you’re dead and burned. That’s all that matters.”
Daeyoung couldn’t remember anything after the crash. He only remembered that the black car hit them from Riku’s side at break-neck speed and nothing else—after that, their bodies must have been dragged from the wreck and brought back to the house.
Daeyoung feared the worst as he looked at Riku, curled on the floor a few paces away. Wrists and ankles bound in wire, Daeyoung crawled over. He nearly blacked out from pain blooming everywhere, little sparks of fire in a thousand different places on his body.
Riku was barely awake, his eyes clouded with fragile consciousness. Blood was wrapped around his head like a bandage.
The witch hunter was swift with his work. He said nothing else, just grunted at the sight of them as though it was interesting to watch. Then he turned heel and descended the attic staircase. Several crashes of breaking wood shook the floor.
There was a singular click and a hiss. Then fire whipped through the attic and too late did Daeyoung catch a whiff of the gasoline through the scent of his own blood. He threw his body over Riku’s, shut his eyes tight—
—and blinks at the sunlight. Something tickles up Daeyoung’s arm. He looks down and finds a caterpillar crawling up to his shoulder. It tumbles into the grass as he shoots up from the ground, startled.
Looking around, he finds himself in the field of long grass outside the abandoned house. How did he get here? But more importantly—someone was coming.
A truck rumbles down the poplar-lined dirt road, its trunk loaded with moving boxes, throwing up dirt in its wake. It groans to a stop before Daeyoung.
A boy hops out from the back seat.
Daeyoung knows—he feels—he remembers, like the most vivid dream, a wishing willow, and a muddy road, and a burning house. He remembers lavender peach iced tea, and sunsets, and talking flowers. A circle carved on wood. A wedding band. A promise to return.
Daeyoung becomes breathless remembering all those goodbyes. Walking away from each other under that tree. Watching the farmhouse in the rearview mirror as he drove away. Burning in the home they built together.
Well, here they are. Once more. And this time, it feels right.