It Meets You Where You Wait • Yeonbin

NINE AND THREE QUARTERS

Yeonjun

The boy has a soft face, and he's tall, so tall.

He glows around the edges.

He puts an itch under Yeonjun's skin from the moment they meet, at the pool on that sunny Monday afternoon.

Yeonjun knows immediately several things about him: he is innately good, he has suffered heavily, and his soul shines almost pink.

On the day Yeonjun first heard his name, first saw his picture, he knew that Choi Soobin would not be any normal case.

It had been during winter, during December, that they were made aware of his existence. Taehyun had sat down on Beomgyu's couch, feet propped on the shabby coffee table. He'd kicked Yeonjun's feet off the couch before plopping down, waking him from his nap.

"Gyu saw a new one."

Yeonjun, waking up, swung his legs over and groggily sat up.

"Really?"

Taehyun's wide eyes stared at Yeonjun curiously. "Yeah. But he said that it's.... different. That this time, you won't take him."

Yeonjun's eyebrows furrowed, mildly confused. "I won't? But if he is coming here, and he's been seen, then what could stop me?"

Taehyun sighed, "I don't know. All I know is that this time it's gonna be difficult."

Looking back on it, on that day, Taehyun had been right.

Because on that sunny Monday afternoon, the boy had stepped out into the light from the concrete of the locker room, and Yeonjun had known that it would be different this time.

He'd watched Beomgyu and Taehyun hold their introductions, spine buzzing.

Because his fingers twitched for just a moment, where they rested in the pool water.

He wants— he doesn't know what he wants. But he knows he feels something evil settle in his stomach, a gnawing feeling that he wants to quash the boy's glow until it's diminished to nil.

Because the boy, Soobin, he knows, isn't like every other wanderer who'd ended up in Mare.

The first day he speaks to the boy, it sparks an evil feeling in Yeonjun. Taehyun introduces Yeonjun carefully, though he senses no magic in the boy's blood.

Soobin won't know any better of the things he says, and it makes a twisted part of Yeonjun's brain light up.

"You must be Soobin," Yeonjun says lightly.

When the boy smiles and nods, slightly unsettled, like he knows something is off, Yeonjun's itch comes back. He thinks for just a split second, what it would be like to hold him under the water— and like he's been burnt, he steps away from the boy. He rambles an excuse that he has to use the restroom, and leaves.

He has to force himself to back away, force himself to walk away. The strain of his own blood in his veins is pounding; he feels only a sense of unbearable rage under his skin. Red surrounds his vision, and he wants, he wants, to— to kill him.

Because that's all he does when people show up; he calls to them, and he claims their life for himself. How he aches to do the same to this boy, for a reason he can't explain.

He forces himself to backtrack and follow Beomgyu into the locker room. His magic is telling him to leave, practice restraint, get away from the boy.

As soon as the door closes, he's being grabbed by the collar and shoved back up against it. Beomgyu's holding him up against the way, fury in his eyes, keeping his hands balled into fists.