“I’m not scared. Open it.”
“You sure?”
Yeonjun pushes the door himself. It’s warmer inside, and more colorful. He smells a hundred different things at once, all blended into one familiar scent that reminds Yeonjun a wizard’s shop he frequently visited at home to exchange contract bounties and dust for information on contract seekers. He never purchased potions that weren’t part of an ongoing contract, never explored the insides. There were animals in cages hanging from the ceilings, but they usually weren’t for sale.
In front of them, a human waits behind a waist-high stand where two other humans have brought items to purchase. To his surprise, human shops appear to run in a similar fashion to potion shops. There is no animosity between the shopkeeper and the patrons like Yeonjun expected.
“Welcome in!” the human behind the stand greets, making direct eye contact with Yeonjun that sends his mind into immediate defense.
They don’t want to hurt him. If they did, Soobin wouldn’t have brought him here.
The human’s gaze doesn’t linger as Yeonjun’s does. They turn to a machine and press a series of buttons that ends in a sound similar to the monotone beeping of the machines Yeonjun was hooked up to through tubes and wires under his skin.
The operating room flashes in front of him, replacing the human at the machine with a doctor wielding an injection. It doesn’t last. Soobin’s hand on Yeonjun’s back ushering him further into the shop makes the image disappear. He didn’t lose any dust. He is okay. Soobin is here.
“What do you want to look at first?” Soobin asks.
“I want to see the snakes.”
“Me too.”
Yeonjun takes Soobin’s hand in both of his and lets Soobin guide him guide him away from the entrance, past colorful boxes and crates and bags, all displaying various fauna of Terra. Soobin pulls Yeonjun to an area where shelves stretch higher than Yeonjun can reach, lined with glass and dividers, each housing a habitat filled with foliage and terrain in similar fashion to the animal’s natural habitat.
Yeonjun stops to stare at the cluster of glass cages exhibiting different Terra amphibians and reptiles until he lands on a familiar looking frog he met in a documentary. He drops Soobin’s hand to bend down to the level of the enclosure and stares at the neon green red-eyed tree frog.
“How do they get the animals to agree to staying in the cages?” Yeonjun asks.
“They ask nicely,” Soobin lies.
“They don’t ask, do they?”
Yeonjun presses a finger to the glass in front of the tree frog, unmoving and unblinking on the highest leaf. He remembers being behind a glass wall against his will, not even considering escaping for so long because every attempt felt pointless. He wonders how many times the tree frog has tried to escape without succeeding.
“How do we free him?”
“You buy him.”
“Are we going to buy him?”
The cheerless tune in Soobin’s heart tells him no. Soobin kneels next to him and places his hand on Yeonjun’s back. Yeonjun doesn’t feel any better.
“Is that a doctor?” Yeonjun asks, looking at the human at the counter again to get a read on his heart.
Their heart beats so calmly and quietly Yeonjun has to concentrate directly on them to get a read on their emotions. The human longs for something.
YOU ARE READING
hold me 𐦍 yeonbin
Fanfiction❝ So humans are happy when they do a kiss? ❞ Oh, no. That was adorable. Soobin doesn't need to be a fortune telling warlock to know where Yeonjun is going to take this. "That's the general idea, yeah." "I want to do a kiss." Say no, and Soobin will...
