Archive of Our Own ^beta

A shadow paints the wooden bridge, but it’s warm under his feet. Maybe it’s always this dark, and the bridge itself is what harbors warmth to spread across the bathhouse. Maybe the bridge is always this inky black. Maybe his skin is always glowing, just a little bit. There’s nothing to suggest otherwise. No one else even looks over acknowledge him. Maybe this is normal.

He swears at the beginning of his journey that there was someone else beside him, maybe even more than one person. But the farther he moves across the bridge, gently shining pads of his fingers tracking on the railing, illuminating it red, the farther he drifts from that line of thought. It hangs loose behind him, but he barely feels it. It could all break off without him knowing. Maybe it will. He thinks that would be just fine.

When he greets the owner of this place, he’s polite, just as he always is. Maybe. Maybe this isn’t how he always is. He greets her politely, just as he always will be, just as he wants to always be, just as his instincts tell him to be. He doesn’t know who he is.

She mumbles a name that he doesn’t quite hear before seeming to rethink it.

“Your name is Onew,” she says. And her voice is commanding, and strong. He believes her when she takes away his name, and he doesn’t think twice about it. He believes her when she says he’s a sun spirit, and he’s finally found his way home. He doesn’t remember, even, that he ever had an identity that wasn’t this one.

So, he is Onew. He works for the woman with the booming voice. He doesn’t know how long he’s been doing it for. Days haze together—there is always sun where he goes, and there is always darkness.

He stands, barefooted, greeting the spirits and creatures who walk across the bridge into the bathhouse, and after some time, he sees a young man, possibly his age, glimmering, with shoes in his hand.

-:-

Jonghyun pulls his shoes off to dip them in the stream, smile so bright it forces his eyes closed. The water gliding over his toes sparkles for him.

He doesn’t know how long he’s talking for, about how maybe they should head back for Kibum and Minho and Taemin, because—and not to be superstitious or anything—but it is close to Halloween and, what is this, an abandoned amusement park? It’s beautiful here and the buildings are all such intricate stage pieces, and it’s an artist’s dream to be surrounded by it, but they’d better head back, because it’s bad to split up.

He’s not sure why they decided to do that in the first place.

But he leans back to where Jinki was standing near the bridge, palm pressed into the soft grass. So soft it’s like it hasn’t been stepped on in years, just so well-taken-care-of by the earth around it. And Jinki isn’t where he had been just a moment ago.

It’s without too much urgency that he gets up on his feet and wanders around the places they’ve already passed. Surely Jinki couldn’t have crossed the bridge without him hearing. Or maybe he’s gone back to where the other three wiggled away from them.

Night falls quickly, though, like Jinki’s taken the sun with him, and Jonghyun finds himself wandering back toward the bridge. He holds his shoes with his socks stuffed inside with two of his fingers, a bubble of something floating around in his chest. He walks slowly, and with every step the bubble dissipates, and so does something else. So does everything else.

There are creatures that surround him on the bridge, so much more interesting than whatever he had been searching for before, especially the beam of light directly in front oh him, the shining star that takes him to a woman who tells him his name is Jamong, and he is a spirit of the moon, and he believes her.

Everything else has faded away. There is only this place and that ray of sun and the way the bottoms of his feet push back against the earth.

He’s started working for her, because he supposes he must, when one day he hears a hoard of gasps at the bridge, the boom of something tearing across the bridge, and whispers of human from the creatures around him.

-:-

Kibum has his head in Jinki’s lap, playing with the frays in his ripped jeans with a lazy hand, mimicking the movements of Jinki’s hands in his hair. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been on the road for, but the smell of the city has been long replaced by an ever-present smell of rolling fields and wet grass, though there hasn’t been rain.

They haven’t gotten a chance to get away like this in a long time, not since Taemin graduated high school, but now that they all miraculously have the same week off to spend with each other, it’s a welcome vacation. Like coming home after a long day.

He’s long tuned-out Minho’s chattering behind the wheel, complaining about Taemin in the passenger’s seat and his control over the radio. Their arguing is background noise, like Jonghyun’s casual high notes and Jinki’s humming. So, when there’s a bump and a rattle, it nearly blows past him.

The second bump, though, like Minho’s managed to drive over a curb, is punctuated by Jinki clutching Kibum’s hair so hard in his hand that it crunches and nearly rips straight out of his skull. He shoots up in his seat, letting his feet fall off Jonghyun’s lap.

“What the hell?” He swears he asks, but his voice is so lost in the noise of their car speeding down a cobblestone-pathed hill, light blocked off by trees, and the static in their speakers, and the screaming of his best friends, so that Kibum can’t hear anything at all.

Minho lands the car, somewhat gracefully in front of a short, humanoid statue. And for a moment they’re actually deadly silent.

“What the hell?” Kibum repeats, breaking the silence, if only to make sure that there is actual noise in the world at all.

“I have no idea,” Minho says, steering wheel gripped so tight in his hands that his knuckles are shining white. “Is everyone okay?”

Kibum takes quick inventory of everyone in the car. Minho is frazzled, eyes wide as he looks around. Taemin is quiet, a little unusually, so Kibum reaches out to press his fingers into his shoulder, just for some reassurance. Jonghyun has a hand gripped hard at his seatbelt, the other clutched on Kibum’s knee. Jinki is holding Kibum close to his body like he’s afraid he’ll break.

“Out of the car,” Minho says, and they all follow his instruction.

They’re all standing outside, huddled pretty closely, staring at the car, without a scratch on it. Kibum just hopes it doesn’t burst into smoke and flames. They can’t afford to reimburse the rental company. They can’t afford to explain whatever this was to people in a completely different country than where they’re from. Kibum has too much student debt.

Slowly, they make their way into the clearing.

The statue they’ve parked themselves miraculously in front of is covered in moss, and it’s guarding the open mouth of a tunnel that Kibum can’t even see all the way through. The air that had been still is drawing them inside to get swallowed up, but they go.

Kibum wobbles on his heels at the entrance, hesitant. Jinki grabs one of his hands with a gentle smile and he goes, because of course he does.

Sometimes it goes like this, where Kibum is hesitant—and this doesn’t happen often, because Kibum is often times too bold for his own good—but Jinki will wring encouragement out of him like a wet towel, the way he always has, since they were little kids. Jinki sometimes shines in an inhuman way, like he’s built from the stars. Like he’ll move the earth for Kibum, so Kibum moves the earth for him.

Minho and Taemin’s voices echo around the tunnel, and their footsteps are swallowed whole, and when they reach the other side, it’s like they’re in an entirely new world.

Kibum doesn’t even have to look over at Jonghyun to know that his eyes are the size of the moon at the architecture of this place, like they’re walking around a child’s pop-up book, and Jonghyun is the child. The ground they’re walking on is pressed dirt that doesn’t pick up onto the soles of their shoes, and lanterns hang in between the stage-pieces around them, and nothing here feels particularly real.

“What is this place,” he finds himself asking, sort of like a statement.

“It looks like an amusement park,” Minho says. “Like an old abandoned amusement park.”

“I’ve heard about these,” Jinki wanders off to the side with Jonghyun, while Minho and Taemin wander off in the other direction, so his voice is fading off as he goes on. Kibum has to follow Taemin and Minho, because they’re starting to wander off deep into the stalls and stands.

And Jonghyun and Jinki will be fine, but Taemin and Minho are aimless rodents, and someone is going to need to make sure they don’t get lost, so Kibum follows them down winding paths. He tosses a glance over his shoulder at the last moment before Jonghyun and Jinki find themselves settled at a bridge, Jonghyun’s head tossed back in uncontrollable laughter. His heart races comfortably in his chest, blooming.

They’ll be fine.

“Are you hungry?” Taemin asks, grabbing Kibum by his wrist with wide eyes, shaking him back to the present. His voice goes up at the end, excitable as always. “I’m starving, suddenly.”

“Oh, suddenly? We ate before we left,” Kibum lets himself break out into a smile sort of despite himself. The air around him presses itself into his skin, humid. He’s feeling claustrophobic, all of a sudden.

“No, I’m hungry too,” Minho says, a little way ahead of them, like he’s headed towards something. “Something smells really good.”

Kibum doesn’t smell much other than old broken-down wood.

“I don’t smell anything,” he says. Tentative.

Taemin releases Kibum’s wrist, surges ahead towards Minho. “It smells amazing, do you know where it’s coming from?”

“You guys are crazy,” Kibum starts walking faster, following the other two as they advance through the park, just out of sight. His skin is very quickly feeling very cold, and pale. Maybe it’s that it’s Halloween. “Guys, you have to slow down! We should go back with Jonghyun and Jinki.”

“That’s not surprising, coming from you,” Minho says, teasing.

He follows them around a corner to a long bar table under an overhang, with piles and piles of food that they’re already starting to get their hands on.

“What the hell is wrong with you guys, that’s not ours,” Kibum sort of feels like he’s in the mouth of a whale. He blinks, in his head there’s a little voice saying they’re never like this they’re never like this they’re never like this because they aren’t. “We don’t even have money to pay for it.”

They don’t answer. Minho grabs a leg of chicken and starts devouring it. The world sort of feels like it’s spinning.

And when did it get so dark?

“Go get Jonghyun and Jinki, I’m sure they’re starving too,” Taemin says, in between mouthfuls. Maybe he has a point.

When Kibum spins around it’s although the sky itself is an inky black, like they’re onstage and the lights have been shut off. The lanterns around him hanging from the stage-pieces are starting to flicker on instead, so he can at least see the paths in between fake buildings and real restaurants. Although, it feels like reality is bending under his feet, like he’ll trip over it if he’s not too careful.

But he’s running, running, running, trying to backtrack, trying to force the sound of Minho and Taemin devouring the food to the back of his mind.

It’s all so weird, he doesn’t know when it got weird. When the sun disappeared from the sky and the moon didn’t come to replace it. All that’s left are the little stars in the lanterns, and wind that pulls him towards the bridge where he last saw Jonghyun and Jinki. There’s a sinking feeling in his chest, like this isn’t a dream, like Jinki isn’t going to shake him awake on his lap, like Jonghyun won’t stir him awake with a breath on his neck.

It’s loud, then, air whooshing past him, edging him towards the bridge, when he starts to see it. Starts to see them.

There are creatures surrounding him, all around him, pushing past him on their way to cross the bridge. Gigantic round ducks and frogs, faceless creatures with royal red coats, filing in. None of them seem to pay him mind, even recognize him, acknowledge that he’s there while he stands, toes inches from the start of it. One plank flush against the pressed dirt. The creatures pass through him like water.

It’s when he takes his first step across that it changes.

“Human!” One of them says, long, gray, crooked finger jetting across the bridge, pointed directly at him.

So, he runs again, across the bridge, hollow under his feet. He passes by all the creatures gaping at him, at his modern clothes and modern hair, while they’re storybook characters from centuries ago. He presses past a cluster of formally dressed women and into the arms of a creature shining so bright it must be the moon.

-:-

Kibum has spent his whole life in a mirror of what he thinks his life should be. He’s waiting, waiting, waiting for something to change, so he can do what he was meant to do, what he really wants to do, if only he knew what that was.

It wasn’t until he met these people he calls his friends, one by one, that pieces of him began to move, finally, propelled into what he wants to do, who he wants to be. He’s unsure still, but there’s a safety-net. There’s a breath, a whisper, always in the back of his mind now, that he will figure it out. Taemin, and Minho, and Jonghyun, and Jinki, who have grabbed him by the hands, by his waist, by the nape of his neck, the collar of his shirt.

He can’t lose them, he can’t.

-:-

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

“He’s breathing, so I suppose so.”

“He’s moving; do you think we should get Yubaba?”

“We should wait until he’s fully awake at least.”

Kibum’s in the middle of coming-to when he realizes that someone is shining a light directly into his eyes. While effective, it’s not pleasant, and it’s absolutely not helping his blinding headache. He feels pinned down by it, or maybe he is pinned down, he can’t tell.

“Shit,” he says under his breath.

When he does end up opening his eyes, it’s not exactly what he expects. He’s in a room with a high ceiling, lined with the same beautiful red boards he remembers from the bridge. The glass door next to him opens from an entirely glass wall, and with the door slightly ajar it sends a cool breeze inside, chilling his arms. There’s a fireplace right behind him though, keeping him pleasantly warm.

But when he looks in front of him, he’s blinded again, but it’s not as painful as he was imagining. The two creatures, bright enough to squint at, are like nothing he’s ever seen before. Looking at them, they register very clearly as the sun and moon, but it’s not at all what they look like. They’re so clearly boys his age, maybe a little older, but it’s like he can’t make out their features, like they don’t have any at all. Like they’re creatures only meant to be thought of abstractly. And when they speak, it registers the same way.

They seem nice enough, and the one on the left has at least stopped shining so bright that Kibum had to look away.

“Where am I?” seems to be a perfectly valid question, to which the two creatures regard each other before answering.

“Yubaba’s bathhouse,” the one on the right says, the one who looks like the moon, and draws Kibum in just the same. “But this is a place for spirits, and you’re a human.”

Kibum blinks. “I am.”

The one on the left grabs Kibum’s hand, smooths his own over it, soft as light. “She might just tell you to leave, but she’s the only one who would know how.”

This is strangely comforting for a moment. Kibum’s heart beats perfectly, if not a little loud, in his chest before he’s hit with a pang of something that sits him up straight immediately.

“I can’t go. I have to find my friends,” he remembers Jinki and Jonghyun and how they headed in this direction, apparently unphased by the food, and were probably around here somewhere as well. He remembers Minho and Taemin, turning into monsters before his eyes before he couldn’t bear the sight and ran away. “Two other humans came. Just before me. What did Yubaba do with them?”

The two look at each other again, and although Kibum can’t make out any of their particular features, he knows bad news when he sees it.

“I’m the most recent addition to this place,” the one on the right says. “And that was a week or two ago. And a few days before that was Onew.” He makes a gesture towards the sun.

He shakes his head. “No, this just happened. Maybe a half hour before I came in. Maybe you guys haven’t found them yet.”

“We would notice humans right away. That’s how we found you,” Onew says, voice so gentle and airy that it takes a moment to register that his friends might not be here after all.

It’s Onew’s shining hand on his knee that keeps Kibum from standing up and running out the door in a probably foolish attempt to escape. Out the window he sees a vast sea where there wasn’t one for miles before. The likelihood that he’d be able to find his way out alone is slim to none. There’s another pang in his chest.

He doesn’t have time to panic or ask where he is before a woman walks through a door on the left side of the room. Her head is massive and wrinkled and the bun sitting on top of her head is perfectly round and balanced. She barely regards him, like there’s always a frazzled and panicked and half-asleep human in front of her fireplace.

“Onew, Jamong, you can leave,” she says, voice booming. This must be Yubaba, the owner of the bathhouse, from the way Onew and Jamong act suddenly very formal. Jamong, Kibum registers, looking at the glimmering moon, like the fruit. They both go, hesitantly, Kibum wonders from his spot on the ground if they will wait for him outside.

When they’re gone, Kibum finds his strength to stand on his own, knees wobbly, like gravity works differently here, though he’s not sure how that’s possible.

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice is rusty and echoes around the entire room. Kibum very suddenly wishes he was with Onew and Jamong again. They didn’t give him good news but at least they were soft spoken.

And he doesn’t know how to answer this question. He’s here to find his friends, if Jonghyun and Jinki are here at all. But it’s not like he planned on coming, as if this was one of their pit-stops on their Japanese cross-country road trip, and it was a highly anticipated photography destination. And, so it seems, according to Onew, his friends aren’t here. There would be nothing for Kibum to do here but wait.

“I came by accident,” is what Kibum ends up saying, as politely and formal as he can manage. “I just want to know where my friends are, and then I’ll go.”

Pleading with a bathhouse CEO or whoever this woman is was not exactly high on his itinerary this morning. Or yesterday. Or however long ago it has been since he was in the comfort of all of his very best friends, the ones he misses very dearly, and the ones he miss very dearly but are gigantic fucking pains. The thought makes tears prick at the corners of his eyes, but he stares straight through them.

Yubaba clicks her tongue, maybe at his response, or maybe at the way he’s trying to fight away tears. He’s not sure.

“Who are your friends?”

“Lee Jinki and Kim Jonghyun,” he says, and hesitates before continuing. He’s unsure if it matters enough to this woman that he says their full names, like she’d recognize them. “They might be stuck here somewhere. And we have to get back to my other friends. Choi Minho and Lee Taemin.”

There’s a roll of complete disgust on her face at their names, like he had spit them at her.

“I only help people who work for me, or people for whom I am working,” she says. “You’re neither.”

At last, there’s a shred of hope. “Let me work for you,” he says, advancing slowly at her desk.

“No, you’re a human.”

“I can work!” It’s true, he can work, he’s been working his whole life. He’s been working hard, so hard, these past few months so he could afford to take this week off with his friends. He is no stranger to labor.

“You can’t. You’d be no help to me,” Yubaba says, deadpan. She is not trying to be convinced. Her face has shifted just a little bit, like it weighs on her to resist.

“Please, let me work here. I can do anything you want; I just need to find my friends.”

Yubaba holds her breath for a second, red in the face. Kibum doesn’t breathe either, just balls his hands into little fists like he’s standing his ground. Maybe this is something he’s learned from Minho, so stubbornly against someone telling him what he can or cannot to. Maybe it’s a trait drawn from Taemin, someone so annoyingly persistent that it works every time. Just when his lungs start to hurt from lack of oxygen, it’s Yubaba who gives way.

“Fine!” She booms, voice scaring birds away from her overhang. Kibum, eyes shining, notices distinctly the way the ruffled wings flap away. “You can have a job. I hate that you asked.”

“Thank you so much. And what’s going to happen to Minho and Taemin while I look for the others?”

“They’ll be fine.” Yubaba slides past her desk, pressing a piece of parchment into Kibum’s nose. “This is the contract. If you want to work for me, you have to sign it.”

Kibum is too elated and still recovering from the loudness of her voice to think it through too carefully. So, he signs it, his full name, Kim Kibum, at the bottom of the paper. And when he pulls back with the quill still in his hand, the letters in Hangul shift under the ink.

“Key” is what’s left to dry on the paper. When Kibum looks up, she’s looking at him expectantly. He is Key, he guesses, mind suddenly a little numb.

He barely processes what she says to him, but when Key goes back out into the hallway, Onew and Jamong are waiting for him just like he hoped they might be. He’s sure he looks a little far-gone, and they’ve never met before this day, so it’s impossible for them to know this, but he would like very much to be out in the fresh air.

“Can you take me somewhere where I can be alone?” he says, voice a little hoarse. The sun and moon nod, like they know the perfect place, and they go.

-:-

They take him out to a clearing behind the bathhouse, right against the water where Kibum sits at the shore. The water is full and much more like a flowing river, where it had been a trickling stream before he made his way across. It filters out into a gigantic lake behind the structure, maybe even an ocean. It could go on forever. It’s both comforting and not. His heart squeezes tightly in his chest.

He’s sitting with his knees pulled into his chest, chin balancing on top, looking out, regretting very deep in his stomach crossing the bridge in the first place. He has to wait here now, and work for some frightening old woman at a bathhouse for spirits, for god knows how long. He wonders what would happen if he just walked right back across.

The spirits behind him are comforting, at least, not saying much but a shining presence. It’s hard to be put off by two creatures like these. Kibum just wishes he could tell exactly what they look like.

They’re standing sort of off to the side, speaking with each other just out of earshot, and Key rests one ear on his kneecaps while he watches them talk. He can see their mouths moving and their faces expressing, but it’s like there’s a mental block that keeps them from registering as anything other than two beams of light. He wishes he could just see through it. He wonders numbly if they see him the same way, if he’s just a shifting piece of light that they see as human.

He doesn’t know what the plan is, now, is the thing. He digs his bare feet into the sand (he doesn’t know where his shoes and socks went, doesn’t remember if he saw them when he was back in Yubaba’s office, or if he left it in the amusement park area, a blurry mass in his memory) and tries to force himself to remember bits and pieces of information as they float away from him.

“Hey,” he calls at the two spirits, interrupting their little conversation. They both shine in unison, glide towards him. “How did you guys say you got here?”

They end up squatting down on either side of him, miming his position.

Onew is who speaks. “I don’t remember much before walking across the bridge. I just ended up coming across, and Yubaba helped me out, and started me on an apprenticeship.” Kibum reads the spirit’s face for any evidence of distain or discomfort but finds none. He doesn’t know what he was expecting.

“You don’t remember?” Key—Kibum—turns towards him. “Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s like,” Onew starts, letting himself contemplate it for a second, put his words together. “It’s like I didn’t exist before I came here.”

“I think we didn’t know we were spirits,” Jamong says, one hand grazing gently at Kibum’s wrist. “Other spirits I’ve talked to since I’ve been here have their memories perfectly intact, the ones who come to retreat at the bathhouse at least. But not us. Like we didn’t even exist until we crossed the bridge.”

“But I swear I did. I feel like there’s more that I’m forgetting,” Onew says, voice on the incline.

“Did she take your names?”

“It was more like she told us our names. I don’t remember anything before I came here, I don’t know if this has always been my name, or if she would even know if it was anything different,” Onew says. He’s playing with his shining fingers. Jamong is nodding to Key’s right.

“Do you guys want to know?”

“I think everyone would want to know who they are.” It comes from Jamong, almost wistfully. Despite himself, Key feels pity for him. They let silence hang between them for a little while before he speaks again.

Key takes a deep breath. “Do you think she could really take my name?”

“Well what’s your name?”

“Key.”

-:-

Key knows who he is. He is here for his friends. He couldn’t forget his friends, like he couldn’t forget the way the sun and moon used to hang from strings in the sky. He couldn’t forget the way they made him feel, how safe he felt. He knows who he is.

He looks across the deep river that was completely barren when he walked across it a few hours ago, or a few days ago. Maybe he doesn’t have a solid sense of time. Days move very quickly and very slow. But he knows Minho and Taemin are on the other side, turning into animals.

He comes to the water every day, feels the soft dirt in between his toes, gets used to the way the earth pushes back against his feet. He gets used to walking around the bathhouse, feet behind Yubaba, a quarter her size. He gets used to all of this, but he doesn’t forget why he’s here.

He knows who Key is.

He doesn’t know who Kibum is, though. The only good thing about that, is that he doesn’t know what he’s missing.

-:-

In the mornings, if you could call them that in the black darkness, Key sneaks to the balcony outside his room. He speeds down the tumbling stairs, farther and farther every day, exploring the parts of the bathhouse that Yubaba never shows him.

The first night he only makes it partway down the stairs, peeking into kitchen windows and basement cellars, hoping to maybe catch a glimpse of his friends. Every morning since then, he makes it just a little farther, testing the waters.

Key is determined. There’s a stirring in his chest whenever he does this. He thinks it might be hope. He doesn’t want to crush it.

This, at least, makes him feel like he’s doing something.

He makes it to the bottom, around the back of the castle, past the boiler room where the susuwatari tickle his nose and finds himself on a short clearing that opens up into the vast, inky sea.

It’s what he should have expected, he supposes.

There’s a part of him that had hoped that maybe Jinki or Jonghyun would be there, wading their feet in the water, laughing, loud and gentle. They’re not.

He stays that day for a little longer than he thinks he should, wading into the water just before it reaches the cuffs of his pants, lets his tears fall in, swim around him. He has to wait until the heartbreak is over before he can go back up.

This time, when he reaches the top of the stairs, wet feet on concrete, Jamong and Onew are sitting on the balcony waiting for him. They don’t ask him where he goes. They don’t say anything about how defeated he is. They let him go. They hold each of his hands in theirs when it’s time to start the day.

And their hands are soft and solid in his. Onew's is warm and small, Jamong's colder and bigger, but inviting all the same. But they're nothing like he's ever felt before: tingly, like they could float away. Much like the way they look, and the way they sound, there's a distortion in the way they feel. Maybe that's what it's like to touch a spirit. He's glad they don't crumble apart.

-:-

Key doesn’t know what his job really entails. Part of him wonders what his function is while he wanders around in Yubaba’s tow, feet tapping across the wooden expanse of the bathhouse, learning its creaky floorboards and foreign smells. Part of him wishes he read the fine print back then. But she said she was going to help him find his friends, and so maybe he just had to wait. He had his morning routine, at least.

It’s dark, and the lanterns that have taken the role of the moon shine through the windows, cast shadows of their frames in long black bars along the floor. Key’s gotten used to how dark it gets, and how dark it stays, and what time of the day are the real waking hours.

It’s only ever bright when he’s around Onew and Jamong. His skin prickles for them when they’re not around.

“I’m looking for an apprentice,” she tells him, not looking at him. Like it’s come to the time where it doesn’t matter that he knows. “Someone who’s good enough to really help me take care of this place.”

Key knows he’s not in the running, as a human.

“Are Onew and Jamong good enough?”

Yubaba doesn’t even answer him this time. Key thinks about the little dragon boy who’s just come around, the way he is kind of cold and just as confused, just as determined to be something important. The way Yubaba has attached herself to him with a dark gleam in her eye.

It’s silent then. Key wonders if she’s going to kick Onew and Jamong out, or if they have contracts as well that she has to honor. He knows that’s the only reason why she’s kept him around.

“Are they really the sun and the moon?” He finds himself asking when they get to a room where there are no customers. He doesn’t know why they make these rounds. He doesn’t ask.

“You think there’s only one sun? Only one moon?” Yubaba doesn’t turn back to face him, so her voice booms forwards and bounces around the hollow walls. He looks out into the night beside them.

Key doesn’t have a witty response to that. Maybe he does think that. “Why is it always dark, then?”

“Maybe our world works different than yours,” she says. Hesitates. Considers. “Maybe you’re looking for something right in front of you.”

He takes that as a hint, keeps his eyes peeled. He doesn’t know if she’s talking about Taemin and Minho, if they’ve become unrecognizable across the bridge while he’s worked for her, or if she’s talking about Jonghyun and Jinki, hiding somewhere. He ignores the way Yubaba doesn’t seem to want to help him, doesn’t give him anything other than straws to grasp at. When it’s all he wants. He is eager, and determined, and he sees his friends everywhere.

He sees Jinki in the ornate designs on the ceiling when he lays in bed at night. The water, glowing all by itself, illuminating the ceiling. They are delicate and beautiful. They were carefully crafted. They are impossible to understand. They are all he wants to understand.

He sees Jonghyun in the reflection of the water by the bridge when he sets his feet up on the rocks, when he lets his hand lay as an obstacle in the stream and it grazes gently across his hand, the way Jonghyun does.

He sees Minho in every young passionate spirit who walks through the door, loud and stomping and the most intriguing conversationalists. Who don’t care that Key is a human, maybe because he’s been in the bathhouse for so long, they can’t smell it on him anymore. Creatures who are ultimately gentle and lift him back up when he slips on water or trips over something he shouldn’t.

He sees Taemin in every songbird and squirrel, quick and curious and everywhere. They look at him with their heads tilted, because he’s foreign to them, and because they probably know more about this world than Key could ever hope to imagine.

Every day that passes, it’s harder to tell if Yubaba is bringing him closer or farther away from them.

-:-

The room where Key sleeps is small, and his mat is close to the ground, and he faces the open window for the breeze the helps him sleep. Every night he curls himself into a little ball, lets his bangs fall over his face. This night, like most, he sits in silence. The other employees at the bathhouse have gotten used to him by now, and are friendly, but don’t spark up conversation or comfort the way he’s used to.

It’s nothing like being back home, the times since high school where Jonghyun would sneak up his fire escape on nights when he couldn’t sleep and just hold him with cold noses buries into each other’s necks. It’s nothing like how, as a more grown person, he finds himself falling asleep on Jinki like he’s a flat surface even and especially during the day. No one’s ever minded, no one ever would.

Tonight, he’s exhausted. A particularly long night for the bathhouse, after they were forced to escort a particularly disruptive spirit back across the bridge. Keeping himself from crossing and looking for his friends out there had been almost impossible to resist.

There’s more than one thing that stops him:

One: the contract that he’s signed with Yubaba. He’s unsure of what would happen if he were to break it. He hasn’t seen what she’s capable of but knows it’s a lot.

Two: the fear that the second he leaves, Jonghyun and Jinki would show up. He knows they must be looking for him too. And he’s stayed put long enough.

Three: the understanding that whatever has happened to Minho and Taemin is completely out of his hands, and entirely in Yubaba’s. He has to find his other friends in order to find them. He can’t stand the idea of finding them in the same state he left them, doesn’t want to have to turn back on his heels.

Four:

Onew and Jamong sit, legs straddling the wooden planks that hold up the stair railing that leads down, down, down to where he goes every morning. They leave the door open when they sit like this on the balcony, maybe out of habit, maybe out of courtesy. They’re glowing a little bit, the way they always are, not too bright as to be what’s keeping Key awake.

He doesn’t know what they’re saying to each other, but every once in a while, one of them will lean his head against the wood and turn to eye him, their face shining brighter into his. He can’t tell if they can tell that he’s awake, but neither of them moves. Sometimes they’re just looking, Key through his shade of hair, and then he’ll turn back to the other spirit to say something else.

Key feels safe with them.

He feels close enough to them that he’s able to fall asleep most nights while they sit out there. Some nights they come and talk to him when Yubaba sends him out of her sights, and he tells them about what he’s done that day. He doesn’t talk about his own friends back home, doesn’t want to get upset about it, hold himself very tightly and strongly as he always has done, strong enough to cry but determined enough not to.

Some nights they just sit outside, and he watches them.

They’re a pair, the two of them. They came around the same time, into the bathhouse, with no memories of anything before then, and they found each other, and held on with a grip so tight that Key can feel it himself. A gentle fire ignites in his chest when Onew smiles and the rays of light pulse brighter. It burns higher, bluer, when Jamong lets out a cackle. It’s inhuman and golden and a lullaby.

Key would feel like he's intruding if he didn't feel so completely invited in.

And some nights, like tonight, when the angle is just right, they turn their heads so each other’s glow bounces off each other’s noses, so near to each other, and it’s like he can almost make out their faces. He can almost tell they’re beautiful.

Exhaustion usually closes in on him too quickly to really see, hair tickling his nose, soft light steaming him asleep.

-:-

It’s become something of a routine, in the weeks since Key found himself passing along the bridge: waking up to the dark, and spending the rest of the day like that, relying on the lanterns outside and the glowing water to keep up the brightness, at least until Onew and Jamong catch him in their stride. They make rounds around the bathhouse more often than he does, following Yubaba more closely.

But they wait for him when they know he’s awake. Sometimes he sees them at the top of the stairs, and they escort him to his day. Sometimes he sees them at breakfast. They’re always there.

Every day they get brighter, he thinks, and they’re the only thing that has.

The sky, impossibly, gets dark and darker as time goes on, like it’s going through its own moon cycle, like they’re in a twenty-four-hour eclipse, every day. Like he really is in a different world entirely. And he tries to let himself not be bothered by this, really.

It isn’t until the sun comes up one morning that he notices what he’s been missing.

When he peels his eyes open this morning, it’s not to a blinding light, like Onew is sitting right in front of him, or like the way he would wake up back home, with the sun casting brightly through his window. But it’s not pitch darkness either. The light that hits him isn’t direct, it hides behind the bathhouse.

It’s with pure adrenaline that Key finds himself racing down the stairs outside his room, nearly tumbling over himself, forgetting to greet Kamaji when he passes the boiler room, not caring how much noise he’s making with his feet against the concrete stairs, only hoping he doesn’t actually trip and fall all the way down.

For a moment he almost expects Onew to be standing where Key usually does, shining for some reason brighter than usual.

When he reaches the bottom of the stairs and finds his way to the clearing in the back, he sees the absolute sliver of light behind the horizon, but no Onew. He stares at it for as long as he can. It’s not moving the way the sun moves in the sky, it is completely still, like he’s caught a picture the first second of its arrival. It still reflects across the water and against the clouds, and it’s not scary bright, it’s just there.

The rest of the sky is a deep lavender in color, not the beautiful pink and orange that comes after the sun starts to rise, not yet. He waits and waits, but it stays, so he turns his heel and heads back up.

Key is about halfway up the stairs when he sees him.

He thinks it’s a figment of his imagination at first, maybe a trick of the light of the new sun, because he’s not close, but he thinks he could recognize him from miles away.

“Jonghyun!” He says, suddenly out of breath, taking the stairs two at a time. His mind races with confusion and adoration and a heartbeat so loud that he can feel blood pulsing in his ears. “Jonghyun,” he says again, when he gets closer to the top, closer to him, has the urge to run the pads of his thumbs across Jonghyun’s cheekbones, let his pinkies play on the lobes of his ears, kiss the breath from his lips.

Jonghyun has always been shorter than him, so when Key gets to the balcony, he’s blocking the light of the sun—

It’s the moon that stands in front of him, now, face indescribable and impossible to pin down.

“No,” he breathes, his heart a rock in his chest, sinking lower and lower. He can’t keep the disappointment out of his voice when everything crumbles underneath him. He mumbles for the spirit of the moon, absent and broken. “Jamong.”

Jamong blinks, little and worried, but not hurt by his tone. Key admires that he’s like this, never more than jokingly offended when someone takes something out on him in a moment of distress, much like Jonghyun. But he’s not.

“What did you say?” Jamong asks, voice clipping in and out of something recognizable— Key thinks it’s the last broken-down piece of hope. “What did you call me?”

Maybe he is a little wounded at Key’s mistake, then, he wonders. The rock in his chest falls lower.

This is why Key never talked about Jonghyun and Jinki when Onew and Jamong were around, didn’t want to hurt them, because they were becoming friends, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to speak about them without it being so glaringly obvious how badly he wanted to leave. The closer they got, the more he wanted to make sure he didn’t hurt them.

So, he turns towards the door to his room, leaving a hand behind him for Jamong to hold while they walk into work for the day, hoping the comfort of it will wick the sting from his eyes.

But Jamong doesn’t slide his fingers in between Key’s. He grabs him, gently, but firmly, around his wrist, spinning him around. And without his shadow blocking his face, he sees it again.

“What did you call me?” Jonghyun says, his voice so beautifully his this time, his features so prominent and glowing, like he’s still the moon, has been the whole time.

“Jonghyun,” he says it breathily, crashing like a wave in front of him. And when he bounds forward to wrap his arms around Jonghyun’s shoulders he lets himself cry into the nape of his neck, lets his tears pool there, and Jonghyun holds him.

“Kibum,” is what he hears, muffled by his own shoulder, so it doesn’t register right away. And then it hits him: that’s his name.

He’s Kibum.

They’re both laughing sort of in disbelief, unable to pry away from each other, so they stand like that for long, too long, until they realize something is missing, because of course it is.

They pull back from their hug, cheeks sticky with tears, still holding each other. “Where’s Jinki?”

Jonghyun trips over his words while he explains. He’s out of breath too, Kibum can only brush his hair behind his ears and listen.

Because the sun rose this morning, the spirit of the sun went to go talk to Yubaba about it, because the sun hasn’t been around since Onew had arrived either. They had mentioned this early on, when Kibum had been going on about how he missed the way the sun and moon used to shine in the sky, and Onew and Jamong had said they’d never known anything different from the way the sky worked now.

They separate themselves from each other, but Kibum starts again into and across the room and into Yubaba’s office, holding Jonghyun’s hand so tight he fears it might break.

It won’t; he’s the spirit of the moon, strong, resilient, solid under his hand.

When they get down to Yubaba’s office, she’s standing behind her desk, face just as red as the day Kibum asked to work for her. Two small, small piles of ash sit on her desk, next to a piece of parchment he can’t read under her flat hand crushing it. Onew—no, Jinki, in his Onew costume—stands in front of her. He can’t see past the haze of the sun he emits, but he knows he’s in there.

Kibum breaks away from Jonghyun, bare feet turning over from hard wood to wool rug, calls out to him. “Ji—”

For a brief moment, all he hears is Yubaba’s harsh, booming NO crash into his side, knocking the wind out of him, ripping the rug from under his feet. But he doesn’t fall, he’s brought back to standing by another force of wind, this one propelled by Onew, warm and shining underneath him. He booms right back, papers flying around the room, cradling the small of Kibum’s back.

“Jinki,” Kibum says, one hand grasping tight onto his arm, hoping he’ll get it the same way Jonghyun did.

Before he notices a change in Jinki’s face though, because he wants to watch the sun become less hazy and blur into him, he’s distracted by another shout from Yubaba, who holds the last contract, flaming in her hand. When he turns back, Jinki is right in front of him.

Kibum’s heart is racing so fast, he nearly kisses him just to slow everything down, just for a moment. He can hear Yubaba’s yelling from the other side of the room, but none of it processes in his mind. The feel of Jinki under his hands is enough, for now.

-:-

Kibum doesn’t remember meeting Taemin, who was always there. Kibum’s grandmother would meet up with Taemin’s parents for events and meals and at the playground from the moment they Kibum was able to sit up straight. He’s always been annoying and ferocious and a thorn in Kibum’s side, but he’s always always been there.

Kibum was in elementary school when he met Jinki, and Kibum was a prickly little thing. The sugary chocolate coating he’d wrapped himself in like a vanilla soft serve was hard and frozen solid, even so young, even so bright and curious. The way Jinki melted him was so different from anything he’d ever known.

Kibum was in high school when he met Jonghyun, when he was ready to meet Jonghyun, when he had finally learned to open up to people, when Jonghyun was bright and charming and everything Kibum loved.

It wasn’t until college when he met Minho, and he realized that the people in his life, that he’d met at every stage, were going to be the people in his life that he would love forever, in different ways, but all the same.

-:-

When Yubaba sends them back over the bridge, with a huff, because they’ve all completed their contracts, she tells them: “your friends are okay. They don’t remember what happened to them. They went to sleep, and they’ve woken up.”

“Was it real?” Kibum asks, almost afraid of the answer.

Yubaba grumbles, hooked nose, pointing right at him. “Only if you learned something.”

Kibum, a hand given to each of his friends, or, whatever they've realized they've become, thinks that he has. And when they cross the bridge, he finds that their hands are just solid and real as they always have been. And the frozen sun starts to rise the way it usually would, painting the sky purple and then pink and then orange, and finally blue, while they walk back to the food stand Taemin and Minho fell asleep at. The three of them find themselves running into their arms, their drowsy bodies.

“What’s wrong with you people?” Taemin asks, crushed between Jinki and Kibum, bangs poking into his eyes.

Minho’s basking in it, like he always is, holding Jonghyun just as tightly.

When they get back into the car, Minho driving, Taemin in the passenger seat, and the other three in the back, Kibum grabs both of their hands. This time he doesn't let go.