hold me 𐦍 yeonbin

020 ᯓᡣ𐭩

Yeonjun feels one of his favorite human emotions, excitement, when he hears Soobin and Bora approach the house. It is difficult, though he manages to hold back his dust. He lost enough yesterday while his panic attacked him. His dust reservoir has barely grown since then.

Yeonjun turns down the volume on the documentary he wasn’t following at all. Instead of animals, this documentary is about humans themselves, and the human hierarchies in work on their public spaces. Instead of a narration, the humans talk to the screen. The depiction of doctors in the documentary are vastly different from normal doctors.

Bora sounds content when her heart is within range, but something buzzes in Soobin’s that has him shaken.

“Study party!” Bora sings as the door swings open and hits the wall.

Soobin is clearly upset about something. Bora doesn’t appear to notice.

“We brought a lot of genres, so don’t feel like you have to read them all. Just find the ones you like,” she says as she sets two bags of human literature in front of Yeonjun, blocking the TV as she unloads them onto the table.

Soobin walks into the kitchen and disappears behind the cabinets. He didn’t look at Yeonjun. Avoiding eye contact is a tactic humans use when they are trying to hide their intentions. Yeonjun would press, but Soobin doesn’t like it when Yeonjun makes him talk about his negative emotions.

“This one,” Bora says, holding out one of the books to Yeonjun, “has pictures in it. Do you have comics at home?”

Yeonjun takes the book, flipping through it to find more pictures than words, each drawn in the same animated style as the movie about the unicorn.

“Oh, wait.” Bora takes the book from Yeonjun. “Ah, this one is in Japanese. Wait, can you read Japanese?”

She opens the book to Yeonjun, revealing a page with several monochrome pictures. White spaces circle above one of the human-like drawing’s head. Not only do humans know of the existence of unicorns, and to some extent, pixies, but they appear to know about the practice of alchemy as well.

“Shit, I should have checked first. Maybe you can learn to read Japanese before you leave!”

“I can read it,” Yeonjun says, taking the book from Bora and rereading the glyphs in the bubble to make sure he read it right the first time. “Since when do humans practice alchemy?”

“You can read Japanese too? How many languages do you know?”

“There’s more than one?”

Bora’s jaw drops, then she pulls out another pile of books and tosses them aside one by one until she finds the one she is looking for.

“What does this say?” she asks, holding it up so close to Yeonjun’s face he has to lean back to be able to read all the text.

Yeonjun squints, having a hard time recognizing the glyphs with the added embellishments of swirly golden lettering and a purple cat-like figure hanging between them.

“A-lice in Won-der-land,” he sounds out.

“Do all these letters look the same to you? Even these?” Bora shoves the first book back in his face. Her heart is pounding with something like anticipation.

“They’re the same language.”

“Incredible.” Bora turns back to the kitchen. “Soobin! Did you know Yeonjun can read in every language?”

Soobin reappears with his arms full of bags of chips and the beverage ramune. His heart has calmed, but there is still something he wants to say.

“Like, they all look the same to him.” Bora continues. “French, Japanese, all of it.”