merry go round || nomin ✔

- three -

early in the morning jaemin woke up with less pain than he had the last nap. he rose up to see the sun shining brightly towards him as if it was happy to greet him a good morning. he noticed how old the city was; men and women wearing traditional clothes which jaemin highly admired as his was just like a normal white robe, not that he minded it though.

he walked around the village and saw that there were several people in a stream nearby. curiosity got the best of him when he approached the people who greeted him with a light bow. most of them were men, but women were there too, helping with cleaning the fish's scales while the men held giant spears.

"ow!" he exclaimed in pain as the back part of a wooden spear made a light contact with his arm by accident.

"oh, i apologize, young man. are you okay?" the man in his mid-40s looked at him with a worried expression but jaemin just smiled and replied with a small 'it's okay' before colliding with another man in front of him, but this time he looked younger and taller. his near-to-perfect looks amazed him, making him blink several times before shaking his head. the man across from him chuckled.

"i suggest not getting too close when a person is fishing." fishing? that man was fishing?

"well.. i uh.." jaemin rubbed his nape as spoke while the latter just smiled.

"perhaps you are from the outside?" now that wouldn't quite make sense, as cars and airplanes won't be available at that time. nevertheless, jaemin just smiled awkwardly.

"you seem oddly familiar.."

"me?"

"ah yes, i remember. you are the one who lost consciousness around the stream in the last two days, are you?" jaemin recalled what the doctor had said yesterday, that a man picked him up from the stream and brought him to the doctor. he gasped when coming to realization.

"mr. huang?"

"oh gosh. minhyung must've called me that again." he mumbled to himself.

"just call me renjun, i assume we're the same age." jaemin slowly smiled and nodded. he saw renjun grabbing a spear from the ground and aimed it at the water. slowly, he started pushing the spear back and the next thing he knew, the spear shot right through the fish's body, making it move like crazy, but losing it's movement once renjun pulled out the spear and picked up the fish to place it inside the basket behind him.

"that's.. how you fish?"

"you did not know?" renjun cocked his eyebrows towards the latter who shrugged although he looked at him in amazement.

"you are interesting..."

"chef huang! jaemin!" a voice called out behind them as they stopped speaking and turned their heads to the source of the call. the two gave out different expressions as reactions, jaemin giving out a small smile while renjun gave the 'oh it's you' look. as jaemin observed, renjun and the doctor, whom he assumes that his name is minhyung, seemed pretty close enough as the two didn't really seem to care about honorifics when they chatted. minhyung traded a few words with renjun before turning to jaemin who smiled at him with a small bow.

"oh jaemin, you do not need to bow to me."

"but you're older than me?" jaemin tilted his head in confusion. perhaps just a short age difference? but when minhyung stopped his chuckles, the two, renjun and minhyung, stared at him.

"can we.. talk to you for a sec?"

"w-we are talking." jaemin let out an awkward laugh but the two didn't seem to laugh at all. instead, they dragged jaemin into minhyung's so-called clinic and perhaps locked the doors. they let renjun sit back on the bed he used to sleep in these past 2 days and joined him.

"so tell me the truth, jaemin." minhyung started with a sharp eye, eyeing him up and down while renjun sighed.

"hyung, we are not doing an investigation, okay? just ask normally or whatever."

"okay, geez. you're so moody in the morning." geez? do they use 'geez' these days?

"hyung... you just gave it away. look what you did to him."

"what did I do?? why are you blaming me?"

"you blurted out wrong words that are obviously not used in this era?"

"wait.." jaemin spoke out which made the two stop bickering.

"minhyung... as in our campus senior mark?!"

"was it too obvious?" the guy he noticed as mark asked as he huffed. renjun just looked at him and rolled his eyes playfully.

"why do you look so different though?" indeed, mark looked different than who he was on campus, his hair was let down and it was jet black, unlike his chestnut brown hair which renjun saw not long ago in the music room. not only that, the boy looked way tanner which made renjun stare at him in awe at his beauty. his eyes were also not dark brown but a little lighter shade of brown which he noticed when the sun from the small window shone towards him.

"quit staring, i'm getting the chills." mark joked as he rubbed his outer upper part of his arm, chuckling lightly. renjun shook his head and giggled lowly.

"i can't believe you became a doctor in this life."

"i've always loved helping people, you know?" the male pouted and crossed his arms while jaemin shrugged.

"okay, chill guys. jaemin, i assume you arrived here because of some sort of magical toy running around in a store near your campus?" renjun questioned and the asked boy nodded.

"just for your information, our uncles run that store, but my uncle is out of the country for business during the opening, so mark's uncle took over. and so he was the one who created that magical thing that brought you here. we both knew about it first since we're that close to our uncles."

"so.. you're telling me that you can go back and forth here, at any time that you want?"

"no, we have to wear this amulet. once it's stolen, then we're stuck here forever." the oldest among them spoke up this time, showing the shiny jade amulet that was tied with a brown leather rope around his neck. renjun had the exact same one. however unlike mark's, his has an amethyst as the liontin.

"you'll find yours too, we got these from our uncles."

"then.. how do i get mine?" jaemin asked and the two looked at each other in doubt.

"that's kind of the problem here. the last amulet there is belongs to the king, and no one is allowed to go there, even i can't." renjun said with a shrug.

"and who is this king.. exactly?"

-

ya'll know exactly who the king is 😼🤭