Just Like Magic

The Magic Began the Moment I Saw You

 Hueningkai had fallen in love with magic at the park down the street. It wasn't because of the park, though the park was magical in its own way- ancient trees, sunny clearings in the old woods, even small streams for small children to play in. The park was magical, but it wasn't magic. The only truly magic thing there was the boy that Kai played with every day, from dawn to dusk. Kang Taehyun, the boy who radiated magic like a fire does heat. His magic bubbled over into everything he did, from growing small blue flowers with only a laugh to transforming the clearing into whatever fantasy world the two created that day. Taehyun was magic, and Kai loved it.

He'd tried several times to tell his parents about the magic, but they never believed him. "What a wonderful imagination," his father would say, laughing as Kai told him about their adventure of the day. "What beautiful flowers," Kai's mother would say as she taught him to press the flowers to preserve them, ignoring the story that came with the blue flowers. "What a sweet friend," they'd both say as Kai explained how Taehyun had made them both ice cream to share. After that Taehyun asked him not to tell anyone about the magic, so he never did, letting it remain their shared secret instead.

The entire time they were friends they'd been inseparable, doing everything together- homework, playing, even eating dinner and sleeping over at each other's houses more nights than not. But everything good has to end, and Taehyun had to move, just as they were about to start middle school. They promised to keep in touch, Taehyun assuring him that he'd send lots of letters so that Kai could get his address, so that they could continue being friends, but he never did. Not a single letter, and Kai cried about it for years, mourning the loss of his best friend, but he never forgot the magic.

Magic became his replacement for Taehyun soon after he left. He researched everything having to do with magic he could, finding books, movies, research papers, everything. He even read kid's books on magic, despite his dislike for how simply they were written. But nothing he could find had anything concrete. None of the scientific papers he read said much beyond "Magic. It could be real, and here's some proof that it might be real. Here's some possible scientific answers for those things though, so maybe magic isn't real. Who knows?"- in much more scientific terms, of course, with much fancier, longer words. Slowly, Kai became less and less sure that magic even was real. No one else had ever believed him when he had such obvious stories of things that couldn't possibly happen. Maybe he had been making it up, or hallucinating, or something. There wasn't any proof that magic existed at all, and if scientists hadn't found it, what were the chances that he- an average boy from Minnesota- had found it?

Then the magic world was revealed in his Junior year, and everything snapped into place for Kai. Magic was real. He hadn't been hallucinating it, hadn't made up Taehyun or their adventures, hadn't been lying to himself. Magic was real, and just like that, his passion for something that seemingly didn't exist was now not only perfectly acceptable, it was also something he could do for his life. He could get a job surrounded by magic, live the rest of his life surrounded by magic, and research it fully, finally.

As soon as high school was over he signed up for Black Pine University, the biggest magic school there was. He signed up for everything he could, including a job working as a librarian so that he'd be able to pay for the things that the school didn't provide. The job let him come early so that he could get used to the library, and to help get it set up before the school year began.

The school, as Kai had hoped it would be, was perfect. It was huge, bigger than any school the non-magical population had, with students coming from everywhere across the globe to learn there. The library was amazing as well, stocked with more books than anyone could ever hope to read, probably even more than the entire school could hope to read. From the outside it appeared small, about as big as a normal apartment, but on the inside it looked at least as big as a city block in New York City, if not bigger. The housing that came with admission was impressive as well. It was bigger on the inside as well, each dorm room big enough to fit the Kai's entire old house inside, and then some. He shared with a magical student- a pixy, who loved leaving fairy dust everywhere throughout the room. Kai didn't mind though, since it caused no harm. All it did was make his clothes extra sparkly! The pixy, Sunoo, found Kai's love of the shiny dust hilarious, and made it his daily duty to pour a good amount onto Kai's entire closet every morning, making sure that Kai never caught him. Kai just pretended he never noticed.

The sparkly clothing, though, quickly became Kai's good luck charm once the school year started up. He made the mistake of not wearing it to class one day and managed to spectacularly fail all three of the pop quizzes his teachers surprised him with. It made his Magical Studies, Magical History, and Maths grades all drop horribly for nearly a month.

The sparkly clothing was also the reason he met Choi Soobin, the fae with who he shared a Maths class in his second trimester.