#that first flashback of y/n and Soob in Neverland… i thought it was like Winnie the Pooh for a bit where you forget about it due to growing

[robin-obsessed]

WHEN I SAY MY JAW DROPPED :O

this has gotta be the one of the best Soobin plotted stories i’ve ever read, real and genuinely

i did in fact read the entire 43k words in one sitting but hey, i’m on a crazy long road trip so what better time than now? and it’s taken me too long to read this fic so now or never 💪

but this entire story was a roller coaster in the best way possible, lissie. also, using blonde Soobin was so fatal to me as a person 🧎‍♀️

cast: soobin ✗ fem.reader (ft. le sserafim's chaewon, billie's suhyeon, nct's jaemin, treasure's jihoon, txt, and other idols)

synopsis: a story of you, a girl from the forest, and the crowd you meet as you move to the city. all of them pique your curiosity, but one stood out the most. a blond boy who you’ve never met, but it’s as if you’ve known him all along. in between the familiar and the unknown you have entered, the said boy will do anything to keep you alive and by his side; for now and forevermore.

genre: magical realism, psychological thriller, slice of life, slow burn, reincarnation au, angst, a tiny bit of fluff, mature content (obsessive behavior, corruption of innocence, drug(s) consumption, explicit smut)

based on: music björk's "isobel" (1995) (genre: art pop) and literature peter pan

word count: 43344 (43.3k) (wow!)

warning(s): deaths (this is a reincarnation au), amnesia, disassociation, reality warping, recreational drugs consumed and mentioned (cigarette, alcohol, cannabis), blood, gore, murders, insects (specifically butterflies and moths), morally gray characters, toxic relationship, obsessive and possessive behaviors, stockholm syndrome, mention of missing person incident, mention of parental abuse and neglect, explicit sex, unprotected sex (safety first!), oral job (f & m receiving), handjob (f & m receiving), marking, manhandling, creampie (if there is something that i forgot, let me know!)

message from the moon: remember that this story is fiction and do be careful and read the warnings at the top. all the idols mentioned here are not what they are in real life.

it was the end of january 2023 when lissie was on her way home from her relative’s house, her parents in the passenger seat as she drives out of the residential area. the radio was playing a fm that specifically plays 80s and 90s music. a song came on. she didn’t recognize it but she knew she heard it before—a style of an artist so unique embedded in her memory. “this is definitely a björk song” she states, her mom sitting shotgun replied, “of course it is.” the song stayed in her mind until she came home, still obsessed with the newest txt comeback, especially the daydream concept photos, the peter pan-esque story, and the track “farewell neverland”. that was the spark that created this brainchild, an ambitious one, and much more abstract than ashen.

after about 4 months in the making, it is here! i struggle with writing this story because there is no clear path beginning, middle, and end when i was writing it + college is hectic. but i’m proud of how it becomes! this is also part of my milestone open collab "discover: 200" which you can check out! hope you enjoy :D p.s. (y/f/n) = your full name

soundtrack / moodboard

there is a glimmer of light in the darkness.

slowly.

slowly.

it’s falling away from your embrace.

“don’t leave me.“ a voice calls. a voice that you’ve never heard. but it’s like you’ve known it ever since the start of what you are.

“i’ll find you.“ the voice faded past as fast as the blowing wind.

the light became a speck before being enveloped in the vast nothingness.

-

the stumbling of the floor comes to a slow and fading halt. the scenery behind the vertical glass stops. the people inside the small space stand up and grab their stuff from shelves hanging from the ceiling. any time they take a step, the floor sways. they’re heading the same way: to the exit.

a suitcase landed on the platform of the train station before its handle is being pulled up and dragged the weight above and underneath it. the suitcase moves along with its owner, weaving through the legs of the passengers that arrived at their destination. wheels trailing along the concrete floor where people have stepped on, the owner heaves in the noonday. the suitcase sat on the pavement as its owner tried to text the taxi driver they ordered from an app. multiple cars passed by before one arrives in front of the owner, their suitcase, a hand-carried bag on top of it, another one slung on their shoulder, and a backpack on their back.

one taxi stops nearby. a man steps out from the driver’s seat before looking at the pieces of luggage. the owner reads the taxi’s plate number, the same one from the order on their app.

“miss (y/n)?” he said a name.

“yes, i am,” you answered.

the man helps to put your luggage into the boot of the car, leaving you with your backpack as you enter the backseat. stickers and other paraphernalia greets you as it’s the first time you ride a taxi. the seat you’re sitting on is much softer than the one the train has, not believing it has only been hours since you left.

the solemn atmosphere makes you look at the concrete towers around you much more calmly, admiring the walls of it that are made of tinted glass. the sun’s reflection is on the layered surface of the towers as the vehicle moves. rumbles coming from cars, vans, and motorcycles along the road muffled by the thick body of the taxi. eyes never fail to widen when seeing colorful moving pictures on a large screen—advertising a product you’ve never tried.

“first time here?” the taxi driver says. you glance at the rear-view mirror, his smiling eyes meeting you underneath his salt-and-pepper hair.

“yes. i’m moving here,” you answered.

“well, good luck, young lady. moving to a city is hard.” the driver added a small comment, making you nod.

your head looks behind you to the road you are passing; recalling the land vehicles you rode to be here. the station you departed from and the house you left to go here. the house that another tenant has bought at the price that was offered, well, at what your grandma had offered to be sold in the will she gave to you.

none of your parents was there when you were little—your father left and your mother died in childbirth—your maternal grandmother took you in as there is no other living relative. yet, even with decades between both of you, she still has the energy to care for you. you recalled one time when she mentioned how you resembled her daughter back when she was young, telling you stories of your mother’s shenanigans back when she was your age and older.

“it’s as if her presence is in you.“

“i’m raising my daughter again through you.”

every time she says those words, you see her eyes glisten under the light before she holds them back and swallows them.

your grandma was always a green thumb. having a house near the crowded trees lets her have her own backyard—a gift from her husband when searching for land to build a house on. when you went home from school, you always found her in the backyard garden, watering the flowers and vegetables she grew or having tea by the terrace. your curiosity led you to see her doing her activities in the garden: cleaning weeds, putting manure for the nutrients and even letting you put seeds in the soil when you were just a wee little human—helping her plant another patch in the bed of dirt.

“you should always be grateful for nature, darling.“ you recall what she said, seeing the ends of her clothes covered in the dirt she didn’t bother to clean. “without it, our species might not even survive.“

your distinct memories of her landed when you catch grandma humming and singing in the garden as she cared for her plants. they danced, moving their stalks in rhythm with how she vocalised each note. she turns around to see you, letting out a small smile—as if they told her you’re there. she taught you the same thing and more when she realized you could do the same, seeing a sprout moving along with you as you dance around it on the emerald grass, its leaves waving in your direction following your jumbled hands.

the backdrop of the forest is always there when you help your grandma with her garden, doing the heavier labor as she picks out the seed and nurtures the plants in whatever she tries to make them happy and grow. the rustling sound of leaves by the breeze makes you lift your head, letting the moving air grazes your face. grandma has always taught you that the forests have something in them she connected with, a communion of fairies, magical animals, a pack of boys living in the woods who stayed together because they were ‘lost’—led by one of them. those were the connection she made while she read the fairytale books to you, making it as if it happens in real life. but the story of that lost boys always stuck with you as she reminded you that you might meet them someday.

“they’re nice boys, (y/n). all of them have sacrificed something to live in the forest. magic and perseverance help them continue living their lives. i can see you being friends with them.”

shivers will run down people’s spines if someone tells them there are things inside the forest where their house sits near, but you always think that it means new friends, new and interesting people to meet because you don’t have many friends—chastise from your lack of parents and social skills. the only friend you have is your grandma, but you always have an inkling that the lost boys your grandma told you are your friends, especially the leader that she called pan.

you and your grandma lived your lives in harmony before her old age gets to her health. while you were there beside her, sobbing your eyes out, you remember what she said that night.

“you will call mr. jung, the mail carrier who helps us send the flowers and vegetables we sell, and tell him to come here. he will help you with who to call and your next steps.“ you looked at the wrinkled skin on your grandma’s hand, holding yours in it with your warmth transferring to her slowly cooling touch.

“i, i don’t know what to do, grandma.“ you sobbed.

“you don’t need to worry. mr. jung will help you on how to be an adult, (y/n) my darling. i’m satisfied with my life and i’m glad you’re my granddaughter. i apologize if i’m not the best parent in your life, making you live this lifestyle with me��“ you don’t find a sorrowful person on her deathbed. instead, you catch a glowing smile on her face, a woman satisfied with her life.

“promise me, (y/n).“ you see her lift your hand onto her stomach.

“i promise, grandma.“ her hand lets go of yours before cupping your cheek, the warmth from her palm dissipating more and more.

“spread your butterfly wings and don’t stay here, darling.” your eyes widen at her words.

“live your life somewhere in the city and make her dream a reality. sell this house, sell the furniture in it so you have enough extra money along with your will. mr. jung will help you how to take care of it. your mother, your grandpa, and i will follow and guide you from the skies.“

you couldn’t rebut what she said. but you can only nod your head, letting her thumb brush away the fallen droplets from your eyes. your breathing is shaking as you felt the weight of your responsibility and your promise to her on your shoulders.

the dream of living in the city has always been a dream of your mother’s ever since she was together with your father—grandma relayed. but when he left, her footing crumbled as she tried to survive so the baby inside her live to see the world. your grandma told you the story the day of your graduation, but you didn’t take it in you that you will have to do it. even if you could, you’ll always want someone near and dear to you by your side.

“i- i promise. i’ll do that.“ you continue nodding your head as you stand up to call the man with your phone. hand trembles as you turn around to focus on the call, letting her close her eyes. the air seemed heavier as you talked to mr. jung, telling him to come to your home. your figure turns around when the heavy air lifted away, something reminds you to lift your shoulders and chest—a reminder to be confident. your grandma sleeps on the bed peacefully. stepping towards her figure and holding her wrist, you find no pulse as you let go of her for the last time.

the will she gave you read the same thing: “go to the city and live your life there.“ and you do just that. you learned lessons upon lessons about how to be an adult with mr. jung, who your grandma considers a partner that helps her with her business—a long-time friend of your family as his mother is friends with your grandma. he was the last person you recognized as you enter the station, hugging him tight as you left him, a streak of tears trailing down his cheek as the last person of your family left your little village.

“here is your apartment.” your landlady opens the door as you enter the open space, daylight coming in from the windows and balcony. boxes upon boxes litter one side of a wall of the living room, tracing the sticker with your fingers to recognize a few of them to be from your old home address.

with the will she gave you, you can afford a one-room apartment near a college campus. you liked how your bedroom splits from the living area as you want to divide your privacy if you ever have someone visit you here. she shows you the pieces of furniture she received from your orders based on recommendations by mr. jung—considering the size of the room and the look you want it to be with his and the landlady’s consultations. she is a sweet lady from the conversations you had with her on call or chat. and she can’t help but sympathize with your situation when you told her why you move here, making her help with your moving and even buying decorations for your first apartment.

“i didn’t unpack what you order or send here so that you can arrange it yourself.” the landlady spoke as you entered the bedroom. it is as spacious as you thought from the picture she gave you. a mattress rested on the floor with unassembled frames of a bed near it right by where the bathroom is supposed to be. you dropped your pieces of luggage right in front of a covered oval mirror leaning beside the wardrobe. a small smile emerges with your eyes marvelling at the unit back and forth, making the landlady giggle with joy. you walked to the living area when she holds your hand and give you a note on how to reset the keypad lock for the front door.

“take care of the apartment like how you want to take care of yourself. rent is due at the end of the month. and if you have settled, you can come to my apartment for dinner. my treat.” she said as you both walk to the front door.

“i, thank you so much,” you spoke in disbelief.

“you’re very welcome, (y/n). i hope you enjoy your stay here.” the landlady said as she waves you goodbye and left to go to the lift. your eyes scan the other five doors in the hallway of your floor before following the instructions to reset the code to your home on your own. she mentioned how all the tenants living on this floor are also young adults like you when she brought you here.

hearing the clicking of the closing door, you turn around to gaze at the space that you can call your home. one thing, in particular, catches your eye; the only thing on the balcony. the same little sprout who danced with you is now in a clay pot, white petals tilted towards the soil as if a dark cloud is resting above it. as you walk closer, it notices your presence—letting you see it straighten its stems with a little wiggle signalling to you “i’m okay!“ from the journey it went through as you shipped it here along with your other belongings.

after picking up the swiss army pocket knife from your backpack—a gift mr. jung gave before you part ways—you open the boxes one by one. pulling out the little racks that you’ve bought online but also the items you’ve shipped from back home. specks of dust are flying everywhere and even making you sneeze as you note to wipe the items one by one with a washcloth. you open a box full of story books grandma used to tell you as you put them on your dining table, fairytales that you’ve remembered from every cover of the books before the word “pan“ meets your eyesight.

you gaze at the cover as the memories are coming back to you. how you remember to look towards your forest in your black outfit, coming back from your grandma’s funeral as you sat on the back porch—the floras she took care of are wilting without her presence. a mix of determination and fear mixed into your head as you say goodbye to the boys that come into your dreams and imagination, specifically pan.

a bell ring startles you.

you glimpse towards the door before going to the small monitor that the landlady showed you, putting your pocket knife on the table. you didn’t expect her to come back faster as she seems to be busy with other errands. but when you see the grainy footage from the front door camera, you were startled at seeing people around your age. five people, to be exact.

are they the neighbors she mentioned who lived in the other five rooms?

you thought about it as you walked to the door and unlock it, letting a small crack enough for you to gaze at the five figures.

“hello, neighbor!” one girl said. she has a short hairstyle with the inner layer bleached—a black tank top decorating her figure. your eyes widen as you let the door ajar, glancing at them one by one. beside her is another girl with her long black hair straight down, and three guys with variations of hair colors. one of them stood out, having blond hair and taller stature than the other two.

“h-hi…” you stammered as the other girl lets out a small laugh.

“the landlady told us that there’ll be a new neighbor moving in on our floor a few days back, so we prepared a welcoming gift for you. she mentioned that you’re our age so i guess it’s proper for us to welcome you here since all of us are college students and buddies.” the other girl said, holding a cake that is sliced so you can see the colorful flecks inside it, as one boy who wears a red bomber jacket nod at you.

“well, thank you. i didn’t expect any welcoming gift. you can put the plate on my dining table.” your words reached their ears, leaning away as you let the people come into your messy apartment. you block the mess from their view with your body, making them stand on their own shoes after pulling them off by the door.

“i just arrived here an hour ago. so, i’m really sorry for the mess.”

“nah, don’t worry. i relate to you so much right now.” another boy said. you give a glimpse to identify the boy as the one with the green oversized t-shirt, colorful tattoos scattered on their forearms.

“crap, we haven’t introduced ourselves.” the boy in the red jacket as all of them line up.

“i’m jihoon.” the boy said before nudging the girl beside her.

“my name is suhyeon and the other one is chaewon.” the girl with long black hair continued before nudging the short-haired girl.

“i’m jaemin and this is…” the boy with the green t-shirt said to the blond one.

“i’m soobin.” he lets out a small smile before looking away. the intimidating aura coming from him makes you cower before you regain your courage and take in everybody.

“nice to meet you, everyone. i’m (y/n),” you speak as they all look towards you, even soobin turns his head back when you said your name. the other four seem to nod their heads at each other before shifting their focus to you.

“you know what? we can help you, (y/n).” jihoon spoke as he stray from his group, moving to the makeshift path you made from the floor that is full of bubble wrap by its side.

“i guess-“

“i agree. more workforce to help you around doesn’t feel wrong, isn’t it?” jaemin continues what jihoon is thinking as both boys let out a small smirk at each other.

“then after this, we can chat about you and us too, if you want. introducing one another.” suhyeon answered as you turn your body to find the four already scrambling the living room full of boxes and plastic-covered furniture, other than soobin who is standing with an unreadable expression.

“okay, but- wait.”

“guys…” you heard a booming voice beside you as you turned toward the source. soobin has his forearms on his back as he stares at the others, all of them facing him—including you discreetly.

“chaewon and suhyeon can help in (y/n)’s bedroom. jihoon, jaemin, and i can help here. i’m also guessing that you haven’t made your bed frame?” his head turns to you, making you instinctively nod your head before soobin continues, “we assemble it at the end, got it?”

the other four said a ‘yes’ as you turn to soobin, stunned. soobin seems to notice as you catch him taking a peek from the corner of his eye.

you walked to your bedroom following the two girls as they stood around your luggage. it feels weird to know someone so easily tells others to do things. but you realize if it’s not you, the owner, how will they arrange your stuff in your apartment?

“well, i’m thinking of putting the clothes in this suitcase into this wardrobe, then the shirt and pants on the shelves inside.” with that comment from you, all of you get to work.

the two girls nod their head from your guidance, opening the suitcase and bags of clothes you brought as you glimpse outside the room to view the boys opening the boxes with anything that they could of. you wanted to help your new acquaintances, but when you turn to grab your pocket knife off the table, you were met with an empty one. the search for red knife goes one by one, lifting the leftover bubble wrap and empty boxes then glancing at both jihoon and jaemin’s hands who are helping you unpack your orders—assemble if needed. lastly, you land your eyes on the blond boy’s, the blade folded as he grips it in his palm. you tried to approach him, finding his head drooped while looking at his other hand. the same fairy tale book you saw is now in his grasp: the one with the lost boys and pan.

though you can’t see how he looks at it, his vision lingers there—a beat too long—before he shook his head and turn to the side, letting him glance at you from the corner of his eyes. you give a brief tight-lip smile before you look at your pocket knife in his hand, the one that he holds so tight.

“i’ll do the box opening. you can do the arranging.” his voice, soobin’s, said as he give the book to you before pulling away and following what the other boys do, letting you stand there, collecting your thoughts before you arrange the stuff you’re putting in your new home.

the sky has moved from a light blue to an orange as you all rested in your new living room. empty boxes stacked near the entrance and dust still gathered on the floor as you told them you’re alright to sweep it by yourself. the toolbox that jihoon brought from his room saved the assembling part of the bed frame as he sat near suhyeon. chaewon lets out a victorious cheer as she rests her head on the cushion near where jaemin is sitting. you and soobin sit side by side on the floor as you held back a wide smile whilst looking at the tidy room, imagining any other decorations to be added if you have the money and time, and certainly a friend for your little flower on the balcony.

“i-“ you let out a small giggle. “i can’t thank any of you enough.” your heart palpates as you heard the chorus that came from the others.

“you’re welcome, (y/n). it’s the least we can do for our new neighbor.” chaewon reaches for your hand, giving it a small tug.

“not the least, if i consider it. you’ve all done so much yet i don’t know enough about any of you.” you chuckled, staring at the rest of them and how you were the only one out of place in terms of fashion and style. you’ve noticed how each of them are stylish in their own way, urban streetwear being the main look that you’ve connected between all five of them—making you feel left out once again in your hand-me-down overalls and shirts. the sense being left out coming back after a long time it has disappeared since the day of your graduation.

“well, now that we’re done.” suhyeon stands up and grabs the fruitcake she brought and nudges it to you. “we can get to know each other more.”

you give a small gaze at the cake and tea spoon right beside it before retrieving it from her. “okay.” you replied.

“i don’t know if mrs. bae is kidding or not, but you are around our age, right?” jaemin asked. you chuckled as you cut the fruitcake.

“i am 21. all of you are too?” you said, knowing deep down what they will mention after it.

“yeah. we are!” chaewon enthusiastically said, earning a head shake from jaemin as she continues, “oh, did you move here to go to college here? you’ve transferred your credits, right?”

“i-“ you hold on to the plate, hand on the spoon as you scrape the cake into it. “i don’t go to college.” your shoulder shrugs down as the rowdy atmosphere is now unnaturally quiet, making you able to make out the distant sound of engines running down the road from fathoms below the floor you are in.

“i couldn’t afford college. i move to this area cause i find it the cheapest and i could blend in, you know.” you give a taste of the fruitcake, letting the sweetness melt onto your tongue as if fairy dust was sprinkled on it—reminding you to one of your fairytales where the fairies eat cake like what you’ve described. it tastes like something your grandma bakes, letting the memories simmer in your thoughts that you hope none of the people in front of you notices how the mix of emotions you’re feeling makes your eyes tear up.

“hey…” jihoon leans forward from his seating posture. “you don’t have to be ashamed for not going to college…”

you nodded your head, remembering your grandma’s message on how college doesn’t equate to success. but, when you found out you were the only graduate of your high school year to not leave the small town for college, you were devastated. you wanted to be equal with your peers, though not in a friendship sense. but the resources you have couldn’t afford it and you don’t know if you can repay a loan if you take one out. so you gave it up and let yourself be until grandma told you to live here.

“thank you. i risk everything to be here. i don’t have a safety net until i got a job and i haven’t applied to anything.” you then continue to eat, wallowing with yourself as you realized how unprepared you are. how you want to punch your brain for not thinking of any plans once you came here. sporadic is a word that can be defined for you, but grandma always reminds you that life is an adventure, no matter how planned or unplanned it is.

“wait.” you heard suhyeon exclaimed. “speaking of a job, all of us are working at the same place. and they overloaded us with customers that we may open a position up to help and cover more.” she added, making your eyebrows raise.

“you do?”

“yeah, soobin knows, right? we need more people?” suhyeon asked the boy beside you.

“uh yeah, but i don’t think that is (y/n)’s cup of tea.” soobin replied. you tilted your head towards him, eyebrows furrowed.

“why? where do you all work?”

“it’s a pub near here called neverland.” jihoon answered.

you’ve never seen yourself working at a pub. you don’t even recognize what job prospect is available here in the city because you only ever see yourself as either a gardener or a florist—most of the time you spend is with the floras in your house. but you guess it’s much better than working somewhere unsafe and you could use the cooking skills you learned back when you replace your grandma to care for your household���s everyday meals. you desperately need money and grandma asked you to spread your wings—try new experiences—and it’ll be much better if you work with people you know rather than complete strangers.

“i could work there.” you said, “but one of you has to teach me how to mix the drinks if i’m being put at the bar…”

“of course, we will.” chaewon said, a warm smile on her face as the light outside shone on her. the dark has shown up as they pushed the light of the day away. one by one, all of you looking outside the window to figure out the time that has passed. “i guess it’s our time to go, right, guys?” she added.

the chorus of agreement sounds as all of you stand up and you brought them to your front door. you replied to their farewells as they scurried one by one in the hallway, doing whatever they planned to do, leaving you alone with the blond boy.

“i guess i’ll get going?” he asked as he turned to face you, his figure leaning against your doorframe.

“yeah, i have to sweep the floor and clean myself up because the landlady asked me to join her for dinner.” you lick your dry lips. “it’s, it’s been a long day for me.” you exhaled.

“you definitely deserve a rest,” soobin looks down at the floor, “and can i ask for your number?”

“m-my number??”

“yes, for the job and for joining our group chat. we love for you to be there.” soobin replied. your mind recalibrated from thinking outside of the realm. he wants you to join in as a friend, not whatever imagination that shows up.

“yes, yes, definitely.” you grab soobin’s phone and insert your number, giving yourself a small “test” message as you catch a chime coming from your phone deep inside the living area. when you looked up to give the phone, you catch how soobin nips his bottom lip. a look of something radiating in his eyes: warm and sweet. a slight shine that you’d seen before. but you shook your head as a sting suddenly surges in your head.

“you okay?” soobin asked, noticing how you grimaced even though you tried to not show it if possible.

“i’m fine. sorry for concerning you.” soobin shook his head, letting out a smile as you notice how dimples form on his cheeks. he stepped backwards as you step closer to hold your door open. you examine the five other doors on your floor and how each of them is where the friends you made today live. soobin walks to the door right next to yours as he punches the code into his keypad.

“see you soon enough, soobin.” you peeked behind the small space of the ajar door of your new apartment as soobin stepped in and turn around to close his door, giving one last glance at you.

“it’s good to see you, darling.”

the door close as your mind is stuck on the last word he said. a word you haven’t heard in a long time from a voice you’ve newly identified, yet you get a recollection that you’ve heard that same voice before.

closing the door of your apartment, you rush to go to the balcony and fling yourself on the railing that splits you from the outside world. your heart thumps as you collect yourself, dropping yourself to your knees as you breathe the open air. eyes staring at the buildings littering your view and one open space of shaded green that is the campus where your new friends go to.

you know you’ve listened to that voice before, but every time you tried to dig deeper, the sting comes back.

resting yourself down on the floor as you leaned your back against the railing, your eyes landing on the pot with a flower you’ve known all its life wilted as if it recognizes the sentiments you’re feeling. you let out a small smile as you stick your hand out, smoothing its petals to soothe it from a distance, seeing how your fingertips turn green just like your grandma’s.

your fingers sway in the air as the flower and leaves follow you. another leaf grows as you trace it from a stem and two shadows come into your vision. a butterfly comes and rests on your flower, but there is also a moth sitting by the side of the pot.

the way their wings contrast the shade coming from the darkening sky behind you, you let out a small smile as you watch them together. but as you stare at them closer, your head spins as it gets heavier. shaking it away, you step inside your apartment and brought yourself to clean up after a long, tiring, yet exciting day.

-

“i’ve never seen a butterfly and moth at the same time, you know?” your spoken words fly into the vast space. the bustling sound of moving leaves enters your ear, masking the waves of the ocean behind it away.

you gape at the beautiful butterfly and moth pairing under the faded illumination of the purple and orange sky—letting the day go by once again in this place. all the magical things that you’ve seen mesmerized you, making you think back on how you are here in the first place. the sensation of nature that you haven’t felt in a long while, associating it with the freedom you had without the weight of expectations.

“you could see more of this island, darling…” a warm touch rests on your shoulder and the ends of your flowy dress graze your calves. turning your body around, you gaze at the being that brought you here. his blond hair all over the place, the outer garment he wore stretches down until his covered legs, leaving the middle of his torso bare as you view how his skin glistens in the sunlight.

“if, you stayed with me here, in neverland, with the boys too.” one of his hands grazes the apple of your cheek with his knuckles. a confident gaze in his eyes with doubts speckling in. the ground crunches under both of you from the dead leaves he stood on as he steps closer.

“pan, you know i can’t stay, right?” you reminded him as he answered with a small nod that is so short and fast, you almost didn’t notice it if you hadn’t focused on him.

you can’t count how long time has gone for you back in your home, but it has been three days since you arrived in neverland. on that day when pan arrived, you were struggling to do your homework. you were mad at yourself to succumb to your adolescent life. the life you now realized is full of limbos as you can’t seem to define yourself. how your parents expected you to be proper and poise and teachers expect you to do well in your studies.

all you wanted to do was to play as you used to after seeing your younger siblings play with their friends by the street while you have to do your chores—haven’t experienced that euphoria when you are forced to face adulthood. you miss seeing stains on your dress from playing at the park where fancy-looking people also enjoy themselves, trailing down a path full of beds of flowers as you grazed your fingertips against their petals, feeling them coil to the touch. how only on this island that you can touch them again and they reciprocate by wrapping their petals around your fingertips; missing you, as if they learn about you from the plants you sightsee back home.

you wish you didn’t grow up.

it sticks into your mind as long as you remember it by the time you’ve entered secondary education. when the thought of it showed up as you detect the ink dried out from your quill���blotches of them leaving a stain on the paper you were supposed to collect to your teacher, that was when pan arrive. the boy who gave you the choice to escape your routine.

“you can stay young with us, darling,” he spoke the words that has formed in your mind to combat the specific sentence showing in your head. the corner of his mouth slightly raised as the mischievous yet sweet small smile he shows when he sets down at your bedroom door appears once again. you can’t help to be enamored by it.

pan is the most enchanting boy you’ve ever seen, much more than what the girls at your school called handsome. he is a tad bit shy but when the boys pry him to open up to you, he is the sweetest, even sweeter than your younger siblings—which you can’t believe as they are as sweet as honey. yet, he also has a sense of dauntlessness in a way, especially facing the pirates and other beings you’ve met days before as he travels with you throughout the island.

“but i can’t let go of my family either, pan,” you respond, eyes glancing at the sky above as if you can look at their phantoms back home. it is how you came here anyway, recalling caressing the cloud as the magic dust he brought levitated you to bring you here.

“aren’t they worried about me?” you sighed, speaking your mind before closing it, bracing for the answer from him.

“you know they aren’t.” you clenched your eyes. “they have not been ever since your younger brother was born.” pan told you the painful truth that is lodged into your consciousness.

you never wanted to be the oldest child in a patrilineal world. the consequences of the period you lived in where men are seen to be the wisest, even if they have older sisters. you love your siblings. you do. but you wished you were an only child so that your parents won’t set you aside.

you have told none of that information to him.

“how’d you know that?” you open your eyes and glance toward him. pan lets out a knowing smirk, eyes glinting at how you’ve caught something that he didn’t notice. it impresses him how intelligent and careful you are.

“i’ve tried to see if there are people who are similar to me, similar to the boys too. people who just want to escape the world and stay in peace, even if we have pirates such as hook who barges in.” he chuckles before continuing. “then i come across you and i saw myself in you. how you wanted more than the world had to offer to you now. when you live in that city block with your pot of flowers beside the windowsill, you’ve always looked out as if adventures are waiting for you to start it.”

and adventures did indeed start when you came here to neverland. you remembered seeing a moth resting on one of your flowers as pan introduces himself to you, witnessing you floating in your room before he grabs your hand and take you away. other than the pirates you encounter—the ink-covered captain hook and his mates, you recalled how the boys helped you save yourself from a siren’s song when you play by the beach. as they describe it to you that very night, they’re holding your body back and put rolled-up leaves to plug your ears, muffling its melody as you slowly gain your consciousness back. pan got so furious that he even encounter the siren itself, similar to what he did to the captain of the pirates. he lets you sleep with your head on his shoulder by the campfire—the only one that stays awake as his other boys are also asleep—warming you up after having 2/3 of your body submerged in the wavy ocean as you follow the siren’s melody.

you knew there were unrecognizable auras as he stares at you when you regain your consciousness, hands cupping your face as your trance falls away similar to the water by the beach, only seeing him in your sight as it clears out. your muffled hearing still helps you listen to the ocean waves as he checks all over your body for any injury you could’ve got. his eyebrows furrowed and creases formed on his forehead before you soothe him with your palm behind his back and on his shoulder blade, letting him hug you to calm him down; while he wraps you tight in his arms.

“i used to live in your world too, but circumstances in my household left me no choice but to escape. that’s how i find the boys, how we came to neverland, and how i got this magic after volunteering myself as the leader.” he stares at you with known sadness in his eyes. one part of the look he gave you is the same one as when he saved you from the pirates and the siren before the flame of anger seems to take their place as he faces them on behalf of you.

“you wanted to save me, then?” you questioned him.

“i don’t want you to be alone. you will not be when you have us. when you have me, darling.” he replies, blinking away that sadness as that unrecognizable gaze from the rescue and campfire yesterday came back. the shattered light coming from above the leaves you’re under shines on pan in the best way possible. his eyes look more alive because of it, while a few of them land on his cheeks and the area where you can catch his dimples forming.

you nodded your head, “i understand now from what you said earlier.” your hands rested on his forearm as he catches yours in his.

“nobody understands me as you do. it’s a terrifying choice for me to take, pan. but…” you wet your lip as you paused.

“i’ll stay. but you also have to let me visit them if i can.” you propose to him, to which he replied with a wide smile that makes his dimples show up. he tugs you closer to him and you felt his arms around your back, making your head fall onto his shoulder. his warmth against your skin makes your heart swell, how it can only be heightened if you’re hugging each other skin on skin. the tightness of the grip lessens as he pulls back from you but then pushes his head near yours, his forehead touching yours when you realized something plump is on your lips. his lips.

your body froze when he leans back, licking his own lips as you see his eyes looking down at your face. your cheeks started to heat up as you try your best to glance at him—eyelids fluttering—before the lights on his face faded. turning your head, you see the slowly descending sol touch the ocean surface.

“i’ll promise to take care of you, darling.” he declares, a small smile on his face. you lean your figure forward, making you have to tilt your head back so you can catch his eyes.

“it’s (y/n). my name is (y/n).” you correct him, a small smile embracing your appearance as he follows. you never told him your name as he also calls you darling, akin to how your mother called you. if you want to stay with him, surely you can trust him with your name, correct?

“you know, my name isn’t actually ‘pan’”. his reply making your eyebrows rose. pan always introduces himself as pan. even the boys call him pan every time they’re with you. but his story of staying in your world catches your attention once again. yes, his name is different compared to the boys, yeonjun, beomgyu, taehyun, and kai. it is as if pan is a title of some sort, a title given to a person who will take care of neverland and balance them. you’ve heard that name before from your world, maybe even read it in a book you’ve read, but you forgot which one is it and what it means.

his hands embrace both of your cheeks as he told you something sacred, only for you and the other lost boys.

“my name is soobin.”

-

“hey, (y/n)!”

you shake your head when someone calls your name. in front of you is a silver long table mirroring a distorted reflection of you wearing your apron and uniform for work. your eyes cast towards the source to see jihoon at the other side of the counter where the bar is, pushing his hand that is holding a piece of paper.

“order for table 6,” he told as you step towards the divider, scanning in the hand-written order for the table—you recognize is jaemin’s handwriting—and turning around when you listened to the water running and dropping into the sink as it pierces the mostly quiet room. the blond boy lets it run as he cleans a few of his kitchen utensils whilst he shifts to look at you.

“divide and conquer, (y/n)?” soobin stated which you nod, letting the note slide into his vicinity as he scans it.

“i’ll do club sandwich,” you tell him as you heard clinking coming from the bar jihoon is tending.

after the night that soobin left your unit, you received a notification from a group that is named “the lost children“, recognizing the names of your five neighbors in the member’s list. they gave you the name of the manager and co-owner of the pub, jungkook—or, as the others like to call him “kook”—to you. you expected little when you texted the manager, thinking he’ll have a much more crowded pool of candidates that are waiting to get a job too since it is one of the more popular hot spots near the campus. that’s when he called you in a few hours after you reached out and interview you the next day, meeting the tattoo-covered man with his menacing piercings resembling the appearance of pirates that your grandma has described in the fairytales you’ve remembered. he tests you on your cooking skills and many more before he then hired you on the same day, especially interested in you joining when you said you can work full time.

“our pub is full of part-timers for a reason. but we need a full-timer who can be versatile as well. help the kitchen, tend the bar, facing the customer. though your skills are rough, polish them enough and you can work here effectively.” kook said as you nodded, secretly cowering from his enormous presence. indeed, he also gave you more trust because of your scheduling, holding onto the list of ingredients and ledgers full of business numbers that you have learned to identify yourself.

students from the near campus come and do their shifts, most of them are around your age like felix, aeri, lia, and jongho. but in night shifts, your friends are your saviors. ever since you’re here with them, you’ve been following their guide on the art of serving food and beverages, rotating each of your position so you could try it all and gain every information you could get. but especially in night shifts, you’ve noticed how you—coincidentally—have been with soobin most of the time. either in kitchen staff, bar staff, or servers.

and the boy, well, he reciprocated it as if it was a pleasure for him to be with you most of the time. as if he planned this with jungkook or mingyu, the other co-owner and kook’s second in command, to put both of you together.

with a few gazes at him, your headache also comes back from time to time, bracing yourself against the nearest surface if the dice rolls and lands on the chance it happens. and each time it came, soobin is the one mostly on your side. the throbbing pain you suffered against your head piercing even your skull before his touch on your shoulders soothes you down. but now, more and more are forming as you rather waited at the kitchen staff, where only a few heads can notice than let the customer see how “unwell” you are. even with the rotation of staff, soobin is the one that stayed with you the most, with suhyeon and jaemin having a few rotations with you too.

each time, more things trigger you. seeing jihoon and his skills with his tools, seeing jaemin slouching down with a book in his hand, seeing chaewon and suhyeon giggling with each other, and even kook and his second-in-command with his hands wrapped in front of his torso. it’s like experiencing déjà vu from time to time. but you are being bombarded by them one by one. it doesn’t even feel like one to you anymore. yet, you struggle to find the right words to describe it. the memories that are being brought up come from within you, but whose memory is it from, and when did they burn them into your mind?

many nights have gone since you moved. you’ve decorated your apartment much to your liking and much more with your friends’ contributions. a lava lamp rests on the coffee table—bought by jaemin and chaewon, suhyeon gives you a scrapbook that you filled with journals and small doodles, jihoon gives you a set of kitchen utensils, and soobin gave you a music box that plays a song with a mermaid? siren? perched on top of a boulder, singing a song to you. it’s so familiar like you’ve heard the song being blown with the wind before, entrancing you before your conscience falls back.

your plants also react to your joy and pain in ways that you’ve never seen before. sprout now having friends of its own—though not much as the plants back then. they decorate the balcony of your apartment as if it’s a sanctuary that reminds you of your old house, grandma’s garden, and the forest as its background. vines grow even from the cracks of the wall as you try your best to accommodate every flora that grows in your small area. but you also see dead leaves falling onto the soil as time only moves forwards. yet even that, your green thumb helps to heal them, telling them they’re amazing as you visibly look at them repairing themselves from your energy.

in those many nights too, you’ve tried to join in on the activities your new friends do. walking around the night, eating street food in a busy neighborhood, looking at the rows of racks at thrift shops that are cheap enough for your budget, and many more. you stand at the back with soobin most of the time, trying to blend in with his street-style ensemble, reluctant to join your friends who are openly having fun. yet even being your usually quiet self, you still have fun and try to open up more.

as time goes on, you learned the dynamic of the group much more. sure, all of them are mature in their own ways, but soobin gives off a sense of dominance within the group, not just when you hang out but also when you all are working. his domineering demeanor resembles a father figure, something you experience little in real life but can also pinpoint from the many stories that you’ve learned and faded memories that have shown up.

your relationship with the others is as smooth as a sail, but with soobin? you sensed something unusual. the air around both of you is heavier than it is. how his round eyes are cold as you can feel them biting your skin. how his blond hair stands out so much it pulls out a vivid memory of yours—like you’ve seen it in an illustration before. a cartoon, maybe. all of them becoming blurry to you.

but, you also see something with soobin when you hang out with him and your friends. how he laughs with them freely. how he openly talks to them about his struggles with his homework—you learned all of their majors and found out that soobin is a literature major. how he blends in well with the thrown teases within the group, including a few thrown to you, which you tried to come back as good as they are. yet you could detect that shield he puts on whenever he nears you. it’s as if there is danger for him when he is with you, or danger for you when you are with him.

the door of the walk-in fridge needed both of your hands to be pulled, the gushing cold air coming out into the kitchen as you step inside. produces like vegetables, fruit, and meat stacked on shelves. there are the ones you have cooked with before but also ones that you are still learning to cook based on the recipe book kook gave to you; complete with instructions on how to cook it. the recipe of the club sandwich is nudged into your memories—a staple food that many came here to consume—as you pull out the fresh ingredients that you needed. each step of your movement echoes in the medium-sized room, yet it is masked by the hum of the cooling fans above, not letting you pick up anything or anyone stepping closer to you.

“hey.” you flinched from the voice as you shift to meet soobin’s towering figure beside the shorter rack—hugging your ingredients close to your chest. soobin’s eyebrows raised as he looks at how you huff and puff to let the shock out of your systems.

“soobin, don’t scare me like that.” you nudge him with your elbow as you heard his giggles before returning to scan the shelves for any missing produce you might not have grabbed.

“you know what i see this walk-in fridge like?” soobin hums as you turn to watch him with a cut of beef on his, waiting for his answer.

“a cave by the ocean.”

your eyes stayed on his figure as he picked up the ones he needed effortlessly with his long limbs, “the cold air is like the wind blowing from the sea. the ocean has an inlet into the cave that is right below a small hole in the ceiling, letting the sunshine in and reflect the blue on the walls of the cave, like how the white light of this room creates a sort of blue tint to the metal walls.” soobin gazes towards you, “anyone that likes the beach would love to stay there.”

“have you been to one?” you turn to face him, the door of the fridge at the wall across from you, eyeing him curiously.

“i have. you also, right?”

your body stiffens from his words as unidentified memories swirl up once again. closing your eyes to shake it off, you find yourself in that cave instead, overlooking a beach that stays halfway into the mouth of a wide cave. the walls reflecting the rippling water as you gaze up to find a hole that lets in a ray of sunshine. it’s like an illustration. an illustration that you’ve seen before in the fairytale book you’ve read where you finally remembered where it is from. pan.

you thought your ears were deceiving you as you didn’t mean to catch the noises in the memory. but your ears picked up the sound of laughing as you turn around to find people sitting by an unlit campfire. five figures all wearing battered clothes with ripped fabrics on their top or by their calf-covered pants. stepping closer, you felt the softness underneath you as you stare down to see yourself bare-footed on the sand and the white skirt of a dress sticking to your calves from the blowing wind.

it felt real. too real.

“darling!“ someone calls as you lift your head, seeing one of them turn head towards you. the face is fuzzy but you note how bright their hair is.

blond.

darling.

“darling.” you close your eyes and shake your head as you open to see soobin now right in front of you. the ingredients he held now gone, replacing it with your shoulders on each of his palms. his eyes in line with yours, close enough that you can look at the creases on the outer corners on both, how his bottom lip slightly jutted out—creating a discreet pout. his irises move to watch all around your face, not landing on your sight at all. you receive a light rhythmic brush on the sleeve of your upper arms, letting your breath follow the rhythm that you captured.

“fuck…” he looks down. you never heard him curse before in the weeks you have moved here, and that’s with how you, he, and the others almost hang out every night outside of your work hours. but, by the looks of it, he didn’t say it as a usual exasperation. how soobin’s face twitches to different emotions in microscopic ways amazed you. but it creates something heavy in your heart as well. soobin is very much concerned about you if he is feeling this way. his head turns away, facing the shelves nearest to you both while trailing his eyes down the ingredients inside. that’s when you picked up his mumbles, catching a few cut parts of the sentences that he spoke in rapid fire.

“- that’s too far.”

“shouldn’t push too hard.”

“she’s in pain again.”

“i knew she remember.”

“almost there.”

“soobin!” your call reaches his consciousness as you stare into his eyes, reflecting the expression he gave to you before right back to him. his rambling’s sudden stop is what you predicted as his wide eyes stare towards you. how panicky he seems like he knew what you’ve experienced is coming before you do. putting down the ingredients you held on the shelf, you turned towards him.

“i’m okay…” soobin hears you sound as you soothe him down more than when he soothes you, something that seems so natural to you even though you never had this kind of interaction with him. his figure relaxes from every caress you give. your hand rubs onto his upper arm as you sense goosebumps forming on the exposed skin of his sleeves. the hum of the walk-in fridge filled your hearing sense as you stare at his face. his tousled blond hair disarray as you trail your eyes down his apron-covered front.

a second too long. feels like millennia of knowledge injecting into you who you don’t know how to decipher.

retracting your fingers back to your own figure, you immediately pick up the ingredients and retreat toward the warm doorway. soobin not following you as you let him collect his thoughts while you quickly prepare the ingredients.

“customers are waiting, soobin,” you said to him as loud as you can from behind the counter.

“coming,” he replies as you went back to work, shaking your head from the weird yet recognizable look in the boy’s eyes.

hours pass as you both do your job, the sun already set from the glimmer of light you can see through the hole between the kitchen and the dining area. suhyeon greets you with a small smirk as you both stand by the employee’s locker room. her hand holding onto your shoulder as she asked, “you’re coming right? it’s not that often that kook has to close the pub early for the match in a few days.”

“yeah, i heard from him we could work until the latest of nights especially if your college won.”

kook’s strategy to cut your work hour for today in preparation is admirable to others. his lip and eyebrow piercings shining under the light from the ceiling as he told all six of you so. but you still can’t believe what the others said about him. how they describe him as a manipulative boss that is slowly lowering the supply cost the pub needs and the reason the ingredients are sometimes not enough. you thought he might be saving for something, but even with your limited business knowledge and scanning the sheets full of numbers he trusted to you, it shouldn’t have to cut the cost of supplies. right?

every time you checked the ingredients and brewery, you count how the quantity has dwindled more. you wanted to check on it with mingyu, but you remember he said “just trust him” every time you tried.

other than that, whispers fly between the part-time workers about how kook is a gambling addict and womanizer—even hitting up on lia at some point. you want to give the benefit of the doubt, but you remembered mr. jung’s advice to you in one of your adulting lessons that are always sticking in your mind.

“play hard to get with your trust. not everyone is as trusting and reliable as your grandma.”

a hand wraps around your shoulders as you see chaewon letting out a cheeky smile, “what took you both so long? the boys are waiting.”

you heard the chain strap from her bag clinking against her side of the body. your eyes glance between her, yours, and suhyeon’s outfit. how you’ve blended in with all of them with your own style too. the color is still your signature earthy tone, but you are confident enough to wear something a little tighter and expose more skin but with a baggy outer that they suggested to you as you all thrift shopped. the black tank top you’re wearing sticks to your torso and you felt the lightweight earthy green coat covering you from the chilly night air as you all walk out to the empty area full of dining chairs stacked on top of the table.

the boys are waiting behind the glass windows when you can catch the usual white stick already in between jaemin’s lips; clouds of smoke flowing out of him. suhyeon lets you and chaewon out as the boys turn towards you, jihoon showing an annoyed voice as he nags on why it takes so long for the three of you. your vision glance at soobin, who is in a black ensemble, sweater, jean pants, and a black beanie that accentuates his blond hair. a tight smile formed on his face as he saw you, letting you reply with your own before chaewon and suhyeon pulled you to be by their side.

your eyes still haven’t adjusted to the neon lights and signs that the city has offered to you even with the days you’ve settled here. the many heads you can’t even count by the street, especially the ones full of shops and restaurants. faces you pass by seemingly familiar in ways that you might see them or feel their presence, mindlessly live their lives that you are curious with too. the lights shining in blue, white, and pink illuminate all of your friends’ dark attires as you all approach a street that is famous for its restaurants. jaemin leading all of you into one that is full of people, the crackling sound of the grills filling your ear as you smelt the smoky aroma before seeing the rising gray cloud.

the six of you sitting face to face, three on each side with suhyeon and chaewon not wanting to let you go. jihoon orders what all of you want as jaemin and soobin talk about something you can’t understand because of how rowdy the place is. you like to make homemade food, but with your work schedule, you don’t have time for dinner, so you went out a lot and eat the cheap street food that is offered on your way back. you still like to read the recipe book you inherit from grandma and want to cook each of them up. even using the fruits and vegetables that you grew yourself like what grandma has someday in the future. but you don’t feel right to exploit your savings that way, so you try to keep it for yourself, mostly.

“how many bottles do we want?” jihoon’s voice heard.

“soju?” chaewon asked. “maybe three for now. different flavors. get the original one.”

your eyes trail to chaewon, enlarged as you lean into her ear. “i never tried alcohol before.”

“never?!” she turns as you nod your head. the three boys seem to notice chaewon’s exclaim as suhyeon leans in.

“you should remember, chae. she’s literally an independent woman who moves to the city for the first time. i don’t expect her to drink any kind of alcohol,” the long-haired girl said as you watch jihoon lean in.

“yeah. not only that, we can help guide her to her first time drinking,” he said, weirdly enthusiastically that jaemin who sits two seats away has to lean in and rebut his friend.

“wait, (y/n). do you actually plan to drink?” the four turn their heads to you as your eyes move between them before landing on soobin’s who sits across from you. something nudges your shoe-covered foot as you lean down to see soobin’s shoe on yours, smoothing it down slowly as you face all of them. grandma’s phrase rings in your mind once again.

“i’ll try. maybe just one glass. i don’t know what will happen but i’m with you all and i trust you. so, why not?” you replied as chaewon shook your body as you all waited for the food you order.

by the time the food arrived, you helped grill the barbeque as they trust you to cook it well—a perk of being placed in the kitchen most of the time. when you met the green bottles full of alcohol, you see jihoon picking up one bottle and giving them to suhyeon as each of you passes the small glass that came with it. hearing the small crack, you view suhyeon with the bottle and cap’s seal broken, waiting to be opened and drunk.

“this is the original flavor. it’s gonna taste like water but bitter and you’re gonna feel something hot after drinking it in your stomach. that’s the alcohol.” you listened. then chaewon gave you the small glass which you hold carefully as suhyeon helps pour it. raising your glass that is nearly full of liquid, you put it against the light beside the cooker hood, analyzing how clear it is. it does look like water, you thought as you see suhyeon pouring the soju into her own glass; the others holding onto their own filled glasses.

“we can’t let the meat too overcooked. let’s do a toast.” jihoon says as chaewon giggles beside you. “soob, give ‘em”

“ahh okay…” soobin said as you watch him smile, his dimples appearing on his cheeks. “i don’t know what i’m thinking about letting (y/n) be part of us, the lost children. but i’m glad to see her with us now. we listened to your stories as well as we share ours, though you heard more of the other than mine—but i listen and i care. we all are glad to be your friends, (y/n). and fuck the people back in your hometown for not seeing you that way.”

“hear, hear,” suhyeon exclaimed beside you, yet you continue to gaze at soobin as he continues.

“let’s give a toast to our new friend, (y/n), and for her new life here with us.”

“cheers!!!” the words bouncing from one person to another as you follow, clinking your glass with the others as they throw their heads back and drink the liquid in one try. your glass meets soobin’s last, pursing your lips as you stare at the object in your hand before returning to him.

“slowly, darling,” he mumbled even from across the table as soobin drinks his shot before putting the glass on the table. there’s a sound of a knock on the wooden table from his glass before he returns to the tongs he used as you both cooked with the grill.

letting the rim of the glass close to your lips, you lean the glass as you get the taste of alcohol. the liquid is so familiar yet it also isn’t as it tasted weird on your taste buds. you familiarize the bitterness that suhyeon mentioned but didn’t expect the subtle sweetness in the aftertaste—the glass was half empty. you notice all of them expecting your reaction before your mind said, screw it, and down the other half down. the soju arrived cold at the table so it refreshed your esophagus before you put the glass down on the table before you. your face grimacing from the weird taste as you look at jihoon’s concerned expression.

“it’s… okay. i’ll try the other two flavors too but only one shot,” you comment as you caught the four loudly sigh. you continue to get your own tongs and help soobin cook, who is staring at you with an unreadable expression.

for you, it was another two shots of two different flavors of soju. but for the others, they order two other bottles. even with that, you can perceive how tipsy you’ve become, almost similar to when you’re lacking sleep. but you were awake enough to see all of your friends unhinged, seeing their bodies wobbling and drunkness overcoming them. yet, when you look at soobin, he’s not like the others. sure, he drank more shots than you, but you notice that he never pours his own drinks again after a while as the others scramble around to get the green bottles until they’re empty.

after putting the food in your stomach, you feel the fullness from eating but the tipsiness from the alcohol as you let your eyes wander. glancing at soobin, you see him giggle, watching the way suhyeon and chaewon are leaning their head against your shoulders.

“we should end the night, shouldn’t we?” jaemin mumbles as jihoon picks up his belongings, not saying anything before soobin lets out a nod.

the other four leans near your body as soobin pays for the food before all of you scurry away into the streets. the walk to your apartment building comes in variations of volume—from the crowded street full of people—before it slowly fades away as you all walk towards the residential areas.

the other four are at the front of the group as you and soobin stay behind, giggling to yourself as you see them doing their usual shenanigans, but more hyper and chaotic than ever before. you knew with your mostly sober mind, you’ll probably be the one to help them if you could. but you are glad soobin is here without you, not letting you wallow in your thoughts about what is happening right this instance, what happened in the pub, and what happened between the two of you: senses are more hyperaware than ever.

you always thought that the soobin you met—a colder and intimidating guy—was really him. but at the barbeque restaurant, you now recognize that it is a mask. and it’s slipping more and more as he drinks. soobin becomes a bit more talkative with you under the influence of alcohol. usually, he only does small talk with you and it’s jarring to hear that compare to his dynamic with the rest of the group. though you both just met the day you move, you always knew that there might be something more than a cold and calculated demeanor. but why is he hiding it from you out of all people?

“it feels like we’re playing parents here and they’re our children.” soobin exclaimed as you walk behind your friends, facing your head to him.

“we cook for them. we pay for them. we take care of their drunken selves.” he continues then faces you, letting his words fade into the night.

“they’re not that childish. but when you think of it… yeah. why is it always us, though? i, i know they trust you and you seem to know how capable you are. but why me too?” you let out a small chuckle as you hear jaemin’s waves of laughter that you never caught before filling the air from suhyeon tickling him. the background slowly moves as you identify the tower that all six of you live in. the shining dots on the floor each has a tenant inside, living life the way they do.

“i mean you are the most responsible out of all of us. maybe that’s why many young adults go to college.” he trails off as he speeds forward. you turn your head to the front to see your friends already meters away as you stride as fast as you can to keep up with soobin.

“what is that supposed to mean, soobin?” his figure stops when both of you are closer to them and the tower.

“it’s…” you see him nibble his lips before continuing. “young adults attend college—which is technically a school that is not mandatory—because they want to stay young. making friends again and doing club activities. it’s what a child learns to do in school.” soobin turns to you, “they don’t want to realize they’ve grown up.”

eyebrows furrowed, you continued the step toward your other friends before looking behind you. “and how’s that relate to me being responsible?”

“you moving here on your own with no preparation other than your savings and the roof to live under. you knew you had the skill and level of responsibility to take care of yourself in a new environment if you are ready enough.” soobin’s eyes cast down, and he blinks rapidly, processing each word that he spoke to you.

“you knew you had to grow up.”

soobin pokes his tongue to his cheek as he follows you and you walk to your tower. your hands following his and put it in your coat pocket to not let the cold win.

you had no choice but to grow up when you graduate high school and especially after your grandma passed. with the limitation of your actions and wealth, grandma always helps you grow into the person you are. ready to face anything, even if it’s intimidating. she told you to be positive as people can reciprocate it back, but slowly in the city, arguments are thrown to hold it back. people are crafty in the city and lies are thrown everywhere, even near you.

yet you still seem optimistic. the story of pan and the lost boys were also the story of facing your coming-of-age and how people want to stop it. you can vividly remember the five boys in the book and the girl they brought from the real world to stay with them. yet she leaves because she realizes she has to grow up. what if she stays? what if you stay back at your town and do not move to the city?

the elevator’s ding signals the opening door as all of you step and disperse to get out. all of you move haggardly, knowing the painfulness of a tired body coming to you all and especially the ones who are very intoxicated.

“i’ll try to make a hangover soup for all of your breakfasts, okay?” you speak as they nod their heads. chaewon and her pouty face reach to you and hug you as the other follows, crushing you into a tight grip as soobin smiles until his dimples show.

“thank you so much, (y/n). you’re the best” jihoon says as he hiccups. raising your shoulders, it signals them to let you go as they say your good nights with jaemin being the last one as his unit is right near soobin and yours. as the door closes, the hallway’s silence enveloped you and soobin. your eyes moved to see him rubbing his head, pushing his beanie off before he holds it in his hand.

“you’re also gonna give me a bowl of the soup even if i’m not as drunk as them?” he asked as you let out a small smile, nodding. awkwardness flies between the two of you as you sway your body, hyping yourself to talk to him, but you don’t know what to talk with him.

“i’m sorry, by the way.” you hide your startled self as soobin pushed forward to speak, shifting to face you. “for worrying you back at the pub.”

“oh… yeah.” you lick your dried lips, nudging the fallen coat on your shoulders up. “sorry for worrying you too. from my daydreaming session precisely.”

“you had a lot of that since you arrived here. even holding onto your own head like you’re in pain. are you really okay?” soobin steps near you as you look away. it is always with soobin that it’s painful. but when it’s with your friends, you also had moments when you disassociate. seeing not your friends, but different boys wearing clothes that have tears on them. yet you recognize them too.

but it’s always with soobin that your “daydreaming session” becomes more prominent. though not as sore as the first one, you can still feel something press on your memory, telling you to process and remember something. but what?

“uh…” you shook your head, teeth biting your lower lip. “it’s like my brain is trying to tell me something, especially with you five. i have this weird memory recall suddenly where i am by a beach or in a forest whenever i’m with you five, especially with you, soobin.” you heard him inhale after you call his name.

eyes meeting his, his eyebrows creased as he steps closer, your feet almost touching his as you recognized how confidential this piece of information might be to just give away. but because he is the reason you feel this way, maybe he could have an answer.

“it’s like… i know you before, but from where exactly?” your hand animately moves as you try to express your thoughts. “i could label it as a déjà vu or maybe it is a coincidence. i, i don’t freaking know…”

“hey…” soobin reaches out and holds your shoulder. “thank you for trusting me. i don’t know how i can help you but you can definitely rely on me.” he nods with you following.

gulping down your saliva, you look towards soobin who is giving you a small side smile before you give one of your own. the light from the ceiling cast a shadow where you can only see his silhouette—like a sun does near the horizon. something pulls you in and as if soobin knows too, his head moving forward slowly towards yours. you can feel his breath meeting yours, eyes staring at his with brief glances make as you’re taken into a black hole that is him, pulling you in more and more.

“don’t you have class tomorrow morning?” you asked, finally able to pull away as you catch his mumble “fuck“ as he retreats to his front door. pushing his code in, he twists the door handle and pushes the door open with his back.

“i owe you one. good night, darling.” he nonchalantly spoke, didn’t think about anything he said, and stepped into his unit.

“good night, soobin,” you replied after the door closes as you return to your own.

the suffocation of the room is prominent as you feel every pump of your heart from what happened. you don’t care if it’s nighttime, but you need to calm down and process everything. the leaves from the plants—especially sprout with its daisy flower blooming—whirl when you arrived. you sat in your usual place against the back of the wall beside the railing: a favorite of yours where you can glance at your plants but also view the city. you curled your knees up to your chest as you peer towards the plants, seeing them reflecting your expression with their posture animately, even the nuances of the flusteredness you tried to push away. your heart beats not from fear, but because of the fluttering sense that you had.

you never asked why soobin called you darling. the first time you heard it, it overwhelmed you until it broke you down. but him calling you by your nickname even if he doesn’t know it is comforting. as even if you walk towards the future, the past is still there to remind you who you are. the little reminder of grandma and your storybooks help, but someone calling you darling is different.

one of your hands rested beside your curled-up body so you can hold it up. the tile floor is cold to your touch with a little softness coming from the plants growing in the cracks. your mind runs high on what happened. but what happens next? soobin now knows why you’re like that. but shivers still ran down your spine from his figure as if you met him before, that he is someone you cherished.

you don’t know how long time has gone but you feel something touching your hand on the floor. looking at it, you see a vine wrapped around your forefinger, not in an intimidating way but a soothing one as it caresses your skin. when your finger moves, it immediately retracts from your touch and follows your movement, left and right, and even growing and shrinking.

you’ve watched grandma do that before when she wants to decorate the house, even telling the trees that are planted in your garden to follow her guide. yet you don’t know if you also get that ability before now. your fingertips revert to your skin color from the green chlorophyll pigment, a smile form on your face as you feel grandma’s presence soothing you—even an unfamiliar yet identical one who you can only conclude is your other family member—as you pick yourself up and prepare to drift into slumber.

-

the grass gets greener beneath your touch, feel it being refreshed from the energy you gave to them. the sound of the waves crashing to the shore filled your ear as you turn towards your little cave opening where you reside. a little cave you call your home.

the boys left you alone as you wander near where you live, a dagger strapped onto your thigh for safekeeping or if you want to drink coconut water from the fallen fruits on the sand. you look down when you see the grass leaves wrap around your fingers. they do seem to love you here, the plants. it’s as if you’re the calling of mother nature visiting neverland for the first time. your ability seems to grow more as time goes on with you staying on the island, even forgetting what is going on in the faraway place you used to call home. will they remember you? will they question your existence? you don’t know unless you visit there. but the thought of leaving always leaves your mind as you are already too attached to the boys here, especially to pan.

you learned how to craft basic things through yeonjun’s lessons, finding the right herbs to eat with taehyun, hunting and fishing fish with beomgyu, and exploring the island with kai. soobin, well, he is always busy with things relating to his position as pan.

by the campfire, you heard all of their stories, excluding soobin’s who is somewhere on the island. when they came back at sunset a few hours ago, they brought a crate of things they stole from hook and his mates. all you do is talk and let each other talk as you can see the moon reaching the peak of the sky right at the open ceiling in your cave as you ate dinner from the fishing pile. you sensed beomgyu and kai leaning their heads against each of your shoulders as yeonjun and taehyun take turns drinking the rum that is inside that crate. their stories were your realization as to why they are called lost boys.

“soobin told you how all of us came from the same world as you, but we all have the same tune of problems. adolescence expectations and targets, pleasing the parents with studies and their results after it. some are more dangerous than the others but we know they ostracized us in a way.“ taehyun speaks the tell-all as yeonjun pushes his hand out with the bottle of rum that is near empty—not caring about what happened right after as you grab and drink the bottle until the last drop, licking the sweet residue off your lips before you wipe them with the back of your hand. all of them telling their stories one by one, opening up and showing you their most vulnerable side as you listen intently—understanding them more because most of the time you spend here is with soobin. all of that conversation spoken between all of you lasted until the pile left only soot and faint smoke flying up. the four boys rise up from the logs as they lay down on their respective spots with you helping to clean up the cave.

“thank you, mother.“ you heard beomgyu teasingly mumble, his voice slurs away as you let out a giggle. it is a jest for them that they see you as their mother figure—being the only female in the commune yet also helping clean and arrange things in it. but the more you think of it, you seem to like it. you’ve always cared for your younger siblings a lot back home. but the connection is a tad clearer, especially with your blooming relationship with their leader, who is a much more authoritative figure.

putting the utensils and other things in the right place, you look at the night sky illuminated by the surface of the sea. candles lit up in a few corners of the commune to help in navigating. your hand traces down your exposed skin by your neck and collarbone, pressing it down to feel the pain from where soobin marked you as his a few nights ago. both of you don’t know exactly what to do, but it felt right to explore more—and a little more explanation on the education side from what you learned at school. your legs are still sore but it’s slowly masked by how heavy your head is, both from the soft and relaxing atmosphere but also the substance flowing in your body. it tells you to rest up but you don’t want to, letting your steps take you outside the mouth of the cave.

you inhale the clear air you are now much more used to than steams coming out of the running machines outside of your previous house. the wind caressing your skin and rustles the plants. your thought returns to soobin and how mysterious he is slowly becoming. he promised to tell you everything, but he disappears into the day until the middle of the night, hasn’t returned and he didn’t tell you about it at all. you wanted to pry the boys, but your guilt showed up first before you take action.

sitting down on the sands near where the water crawls, you let your eyes droop. you couldn’t lie—you wanted to—but you seemed lonely. isolated. yes, you live with five other people, but when words have different meanings depending on the layer of connections you get yourself into, you are slowly getting ostracized in a group full of ostracized people. you’ve contemplated speaking about it to soobin but your guts tell you to not do that as he then went away more and more because of his pan duties. he told you what does his nickname come from as you both lay beside each other nights ago.

“pan is a title that this island’s deity gives me and makes me responsible to protect neverland, the species who live here, and the island’s nature from evil or any other dangerous parties. but i gave it another reason to help children from back in our old world to face their fears even for just one night, as an imaginary friend that brought them to neverland. there will be mythos written about me and my actions, which i don’t mind.” soobin rustles beside you as you felt his knuckles caressing your cheek, “you’re the first adolescent i had to help. the boys and i are stuck in this age as we grow up slowly, sneaking to see people our age outside the island knowing what to do with their lives. all but you.”

sure, he promised you adventures—which you had. but he never seems to bring you to his adventures. the other species on the island like fairies and sirens were told by soobin to respect you. but when you wanted to get closer, they back up and left you behind as the vines crawl to comfort you without you telling them to do so. yet, you don’t understand why they should fear you that much. you are the same as the humans here, including the pirates.

that’s when an epiphany struck you. a bolt of lightning in the bottle.

you remembered how soobin promised to bring you back to your family once in a while. but you never did—even with him flying away there for hours, gone until he came back.

you also realized that he never brought people to neverland again after you though he tells you it is one of his “jobs”. as if even with how young they are if they come here, they could recognize you from their world. it is as if he is done with his pan tasks outside of neverland, like he is satisfied to take care of other things. all after, you stayed. but he still went to your old world, doing whatever tasks he does without even considering your ultimate wish to visit your family.

hooded eyes are covering your vision when you tried to stand up by yourself. your balance is off in a way that you misplace your legs when you walk. but you can feel the underwhelming rage growing inside you as it slowly sheds away with every heavy step you took from the wet sand that sucks you down.

you needed to go home to your family, no matter what it takes. you don’t know what is beyond the horizon from the island but with a ship or boat, you could try. every step you take—no matter how sporadic—is heavy but agile with the growing fury that is flowing through your veins.

you could see the opening of the cave, planning to cut the rope and steal the boat that the boys have by the little sheltered cove you called home. but your body is pulled backwards, and something heavy covers your mouth and nose. with your intoxicated body, you were too late to get the dagger as darkness enveloped your vision.

-

“what do you mean you know nothing about her whereabouts?“

the boys cowered as they stare at their leader with a look so unnatural than his usual. his clothes were cleaner and tidier than his usual tattered ones as he left to visit the town where you used to live. papers were scattered beside his feet as the boys stare at him.

“we don’t know, soobin. we swear,“ kai mumbles as soobin strides towards him before lifting him by his collar. his teeth grinding against each other as he lifts himself off the ground with his power, dragging the other boy.

“when is the last time you see (y/n)?” kai struggles to swallow his saliva and answered as soobin’s grip rested near his throat, struggling more to breathe as soobin caught the sound of the boy’s clothes tearing little by little.

“when did you last see her?!“

“l- last night,” kai mumbles as soobin float closer, sniffing something weird on his friend before he realizes, dropping him onto the sand where taehyun is waiting to pull him up to his feet.

soobin scans the commune to find anything out of place, observing each and every part of the commune when he sees an unfamiliar wooden crate near the ones he knows. he drops to the sand before striding towards the crate and opening it to find a few empty bottles of rum.

“did all of you drink last night?“

“yes.“ yeonjun doesn’t hesitate to answer.

“did she drink any last night?“ soobin sends a follow-up answer, hoping they say “no” before turning to them and they meet him with silence. returning his gaze, he sees how emotionally down they are as they haven’t recovered from the substance, but it is much worse when you’re in recovery from how drunk you are especially when you’re not used to it. he caresses the wooden surface for any clue where they got the bottles of alcohol. that is when he felt a small indent near the bottom of the crate, which he recognizes in his waking mind. soobin shook his head in disbelief before bracing himself.

“hook. she’s with hook.“ he turns around and strides to shake his friends.

“this is all your fault. if you let my love get away like this, i-.” soobin didn’t finish as he shake his head in disbelief. he returns to his pile of loot, picks up a machete he hasn’t used in a while, and straps a sheath behind him to put it in. the other boys stare at their leader in various states of mind: guilt, tiredness, fear, and nauseous. soobin heard the rustle coming from the side, peeking to find taehyun taking a glimpse of the papers before the tall boy got up and returned to the others’ presence.

“prepare yourselves. we’re going to raid their ship,“ soobin said as he lets his pouch full of magic dust strap on his belt as the others scurried away to pack up what they need. you could’ve escaped with the dagger he gave you, but with your drunken state that he guess you had, the likely chance for you to escape is abysmal. his hands clench and unclench from the overwhelming emotions he is having, pouring out of the vase that is his mind. he has to punish the boys somehow. he will do that after he gets you back from those nasty hands of the pirates.

the boys stuck to his behind as they traverse through the forest instead of following the coastline—a much faster way to reach you. but even with the path cutting their time, the jungle’s topography is dangerous and unexpected. the usual clear path that he and the boys took now blends in with the rest of the forest grounds, obscuring his way. pulling out his machete from behind his back, he cuts the thick vines as best as he can. no spoken word is needed. his focus is only on getting you back in his arms.

but the jungle seems to fight back as he can only see the small glimmer of the light outside. with every hack of the machete, he sees the butterflies and moths going out of his way—a few fallen from not being fast enough. not minding the other four, he lets the machete whack the last few vines before meeting the beach where the pirate ship docks. the masks of the chirping birds cover the boys’ whisper as they trail the sand to the behemoth of the ship where you are. not wanting to wait anymore, he flies to the bow of the ship.

soobin’s eyes landed on your figure that is being tied at the bottom of the mast. your dress sticks to your skin, the ends of it flowing with the ocean’s wind even with your hand tied behind your back. head lulling down as you tried to rest, seemingly too tired to fight any longer. that’s when he sees the pirate captain, hair long until his nape, piercings adorning his face, tattoos littering his hand, and knuckles, with a hook on the other wrist.

“captain hook!“ soobin drops on the bow as hook turns his head towards his voice with you raising your head. the frown on the man getting deeper, pulling out his sword from his side.

“seize pan!“

the crewmates climb and crawl to the boy’s figure. all holding melee weapons of various shapes and sizes that it became too hectic for him. but using his machete, he blocks the incoming metal as the clanks touch every part of it. every lesson he learned with his friends on sword-fighting lies on this. the remnants of cuts from the training are a reminder of his loss. but he held on and continue to train until he can fight with it. but even with his magic as part of his arsenal, his skill plummets from the overwhelming amount of crewmates trying to stop him.

soobin clench his fists so tight that veins show up near the surface of his skin, sensing his power succumbing and creating a chamber inside him where it collects. he hasn’t seen the backup of his boys, adding it to the wrath that is filling him up. soobin fights and deflects as hard as he can until his magic is too hard to handle. the dust he held in his pouch falling out to his skin as they fuel his anger.

“AGHH!” soobin shouts, exploding the outrage as all things near him are pushed away and landing on places on the ships. blood splatters onto the wood and his tidy clothes as his body holds on, his nerves reacting to a sting with a liquid form a little running stream on his cheek. brushing it with his thumb, he finds the crimson liquid that is from his cut vessel.

bodies fall limp as they ran out of blood. the mast and other shrapnel of woods stick out of their fleshes as the blood pools the path between him and you. yet, pan smiled. he smiles as he steps towards your shaking body. you’ve probably never seen this much blood and all he wants is to come and comfort you from it. his footsteps covered in blood as the living crewmates cower from his moving body. you spoke nothing as the emotions overwhelmed you, eyes glistening from the tears threatening to fall. hook disappears with no trace, blown out by his magic burst.

his hands hasten to cut the rope that binds you in one slice. dropping his machete down as he holds you tight, staining your white dress with the blood on his hands—hugging you and resting his hands around your upper back. he felt you crumble under his arms as he closes his eyes, hearing your gasps before letting loose a small whine from the overwhelming emotions. your hands grasping his body in a tight squeeze.

“it’s me…“ he spoke lowly into your ears, letting the creaks of the moving wood on the ocean waves fill the space. pulling away to open his eyes, he sees your wide eye face and furrowed eyebrows as he smoothes down his thumb across your cheekbone, blood smearing on your face.

soobin’s body is pulled back when he felt a hook under his jaw and something sharp pierce the outer texture of his forearm. he heard the haggish breath of the captain hook in his ears, even felt the cold metal from his piercings touching the boy’s earlobe. yet, you didn’t seem to hurry and stop the pirate, standing there as your body is quivering.

“sweet dreams, pan,“ the pirate whispered as soobin’s eyes trail down your white dress and the blood stains he gave you before going down to your legs. that where he sees it: drops of blood landing in a small pool beside your right heel.

your body slumps down as your skin is losing its colors fast. soobin’s body thrashes against hook before he punches the pirate’s gut with his elbow, letting him go as he rushes to grab you as you fall. your mouth lets out whimpers as soobin sees behind you, seeing your dagger pierced into the lower black with blooming red on the white fabric.

“no… NO!“ soobin shouted as he turns to hook who don’t have any remorse to help you up, an unintelligible look on his face. holding your body as best as he can, your whimpers haunt him as he listens to footsteps finally arriving at the ship. turning to see the boys walking towards your laid body on soobin’s arms, pulled by gravity as your head hangs down. not strong enough to lift it yourself.

“why aren’t you doing anything?!“ the boy continued to scream. he tried to stop the bleeding, covering near the cut as best as he can, and not pulling the dagger out; knowing that more blood will flow out. but he felt a cold touch on his warm hands.

“i…“ your voice is so little only he could pick up. soobin’s tears fall on his cheek as your life fades away.

“don’t leave me.“ soobin cries, your body already limp as you don’t have control of your own agency anymore. his hands push your body up as he hugs your fading warmth. the last time he cried this hard was a long time, something he never wanted to talk about with anyone but allowing you to hear it. you were the only person he trust. you’re his world and here you are, being ripped away from it by the dagger he gave to you.

“you believe in another chance at life?” he remembers you asking, seeing the sunrise on the beach after he came back home from returning a child back to their home. “well, i do. i hope i get a chance,” you answered, drawing in the sand between where you both sit. small circles that are similar to the foams coming from the waves.

“i will like it and even with another chance at life, i want it to be with you.” soobin spokes as you stop drawing and let hold on to your hand with his.

“i promise. i’ll find you.“ he whispers into your ear when he sees your face empty of life. his jaw is locked tight as something dangerous is filling up inside him. everyone was stunned yet none was helping you as he lets himself let go.

the last thing he sees was red as he opens his eyes.

soobin’s body folds up on his bed, sweat forming on his face and his bare torso as he stares at the morning light filling up his bedroom. the digital clock on his bedside table showing the hour with its red lights. he rubs the creases form on his face, even the tears that have fallen from the corner of his eyes.

the past few nights were full of this specific dream he had over and over again, as if he is there in purgatory. yet, when he met the refreshing outside morning air on his way to his college class, his step springs into motion as if nothing happened—pushing it back with his usual memories. well, that and all the sacrifices he made to be here. the gallons of blood he had to step into at that ship deck doesn’t scare him, but he embraces it instead. getting to know each motive and detail that make him feel that enraged that day.

his open laptop obscures the way his hands move on his notebook. the flowing ink draws on the lined papers with the mention of words he heard in the dream and more he recognizes. but two are the most prominent: pan and darling with the lines between each other. the writing is unintelligible for others but him. and there is also a certain word that is flooding onto the sheet of paper, creating a reminder to not let him forget why he is here now.

(y/n).

(y/n).

my darling, (y/n).

when he found out another tenant move in into the apartment next to his, he didn’t expect to see his long-lost lover’s face; though different because your more timid side is shown. soobin had prepared for the day when he agreed to do it—to tell you who he is, who his friends are, and more—but he always thought he had to shield himself from you. he doesn’t know if the (y/n) he recognized is his love, the (y/n) that left him amid a maroon-colored deck all alone, bodies were thrown everywhere even with his lost boys and the captain not surviving. blood dripping down the side of the ship and drops into the salt-filled waters.

he realized the moment that he, jihoon, suhyeon, chaewon, and jaemin met, they are this life’s version of his boys—jihoon and his handiness skill like what yeonjun had; jaemin and his vast knowledge like taehyun’s; suhyeon’s friendliness like kai; and chaewon’s aloofness like what beomgyu has. all of them need a friend who can guide them and take care of them. they don’t hesitate to nominate him even with his humble excuses.

soobin also didn’t expect to be born in the same situation he had back in his earlier life. ignorant father and abusive mother that he had to cope with every time he can. he didn’t have a youthful life like what his neighbors have and that increases his childishness, which he learns to masquerade under his mother’s tantrums. the rum he used to steal from the pirates is being replaced with cigarettes and occasional recreational drugs that he doesn’t hesitate to do even in his teenage years—no one cared for him as a person anyway back before he met the lost children.

after reading a book about pan and the lost boys in a library back when he entered his pre-teen years, all the memories locked inside him are out of the boundaries and flood his memory. how at the mention of a dangerous siren, he remembered saving you from it. how pan first met darling is a more simple explanation when he met his darling and take her away to his home: neverland.

but when he read the ending, he had to pause as he read to find the decision of her leaving neverland and growing up to finally let pan see her as an older woman—a mother to her children—which he can’t bear to read more because it remembers it to his own mother. his darling wouldn’t leave him that way, right?

when soobin needed to get more money, he never expected to stand outside a pub called neverland near his campus. he braves himself and does observations when he met face to face with jungkook—remembering that the hook he fought was named captain jeon like the last name of his boss that conducts his interview with and make him rely on him for his income. everything was set in place—a group of friends, an abode, a neverland. all he could do is wait until the day he found darling, or when darling moved to find him and his friends.

you seem to still have your affinity to plants and he observed how plants follow your guidance with just a flick of your finger. it is something he admired you for, especially when you told him you had that gift before and it became stronger in neverland. he remembers seeing how the tips of your fingers turn green every time you influence the floras. he remembered you calling the group to help you move the pots of plants you bought for your balcony garden; just like how you teach the boys how to garden back on the island. but he can’t lie. he felt intimidated by them and how they can care for you where he can’t. how your attention stays on them but not to him.

he used to experience the same headache, but because of his resilient soul from all the pain he bears, he lets it embrace him. the length of it becomes so short that it is now so swift and disperses instantly as his old life’s memories come back again. and with the small reminder of your life with him back on that island, he notices the head-crushing headache you’ve experienced. but by the way you cower. it’s much more painful than what he experienced—just like what he was told. he wanted to pull that pain away from you because you’ve had too much, letting him feel it instead. after all, he is already numb to it. but when you start to only get a few swaying heads instead of the difficult headaches you’ve gotten days before, he can’t help but to smile to himself—and how happy he is you’re embracing your memories back.

it will not be long until you remember him again.

when you arrived here, he played a more passive part to integrate you into the lost children. even protecting you at a point because you might not be his love that he recognizes. but when the headaches arrived, he lets you in into their culture, ways, and style—how he remembered you embrace the lost boys’ way so fast back in neverland. your own clothes blending in with their new street style, like your white dress combined with a leather corset that he stole from the pirates. he stands back and gazes at how your behavior joins in with the rest of his friends, shopping sprees in thrift shops, walking in the night with them, and now, alcohol is your recent interest. he lets out a small smile when your caring side shows up and takes care of the rest of the friend groups, giving your homemade recipe to try, helping in discussing the homework he and his friends have with your knowledge, and taking care of them when they’re sick.

just like how a grown-up is.

as he heard your story on why you have to grow up fast, he is furious. when you said you had no choice but to be like that, letting your adolescence envelop you, he wished he could have his magic back and pray to the altar before the deity that gave him the second chance to also wished for you to have a regular childhood where you can let your childishness stick within you.

he remembered the phrase “the great pan is dead“ chanted by the beings he met on the island as they see him sacrifice himself to rest, letting him succumb to his wish to be returned to you whenever it could be. he will wait an eternity just to be with you again, and that time has come.

soobin stayed at the sidelines as one of the servers, looking at the large crowd full of familiar faces dining and enjoying his campus’ victory in today’s match—a step closer to the semi and final matches. the part-timers who work here are all being brought because of the many patrons that have come, letting him finally meet the few workers you had worked with. he listened to jihoon's grunt as he returns from his run around, giving the boy a small smile as soobin gave him pats on his back right after. the music playing from the speakers is loud and booming, rattling the whole bar area where the girls are serving, including you. he grimaced when sees your tank crop top as you served college guys drink, seeing their lusty eyes on you as kook told you to have fun.

his eyes stayed on you who is having a great time, even having your own gin and tonic at the side to drink. kook wanted to let the “big guns” out for tonight that he predicted, letting the boys and girls wearing similar revealing shoes and having the island and forest vibe from the main interior thematic to stand out more—castaways having fun eating, conversing, and dancing the night away; just like he and his mates did back in his neverland. that’s when he sees more people crowding the bar area. soobin walks towards it after taking care of a few orders to see the crowded front of the bar with chaewon dancing on the bar top. she pulls suhyeon up as they walk around the bar top, seeing your wide smile from the ground before they pull you up.

he walks closer to the counter between the kitchen and the front as his eyes can’t look away from you who is dancing on the bar top, letting the alcohol break your restraints just for the night as more of the bartenders are getting busy with the many orders. you sway and dance with the music as best as you could, the yellow lights illuminate the bar reminding him of how you and the boys dance the night away back on the shore of neverland—the campfire create a perfect lighting as you and the boys dance around it.

the night went crazier. even he was brought into the craziness when he step behind the bar to see if another order is done, seeing you turn around and face him at the area as you dropped and walks towards him, speaking no words when you get him into your embrace and dance around following the music blaring from the speakers.

the crowd fades out like the sound of the waves he used to hear, his hands embracing your waist like he used to remember. the lights creating stars in your eyes like the one he remembers seeing. your hands wrapped behind his nape, bringing him closer to you. he wishes he could save this moment even under his hesitation and your forwardness because of the alcohol. he lets you go as you have to continue your work and he does too until late in the night of today and early time of tomorrow.

his back hurts from cleaning the place up, swiping the trash away with his broom as he can see all the workers lookingmessy all around, yet he couldn’t find you. soobin turns his figure towards suhyeon at the bar, cleaning up the spilt-over drinks on the wooden top, eyes blank as the alcohol effect fades out.

“suhyeon…” her eyes glance at the tall boy as she lets out a sheepish smile. “you’ve seen (y/n)?”

“uh… yeah…” she slurs. “i think she is in the restroom. she mentioned that her stomach’s hurting. probably puking from drinking too much.”

“okay. thanks…” soobin answered, hearing her teasing “for sure, papa.” before he went away.

he remembered how his friends have called him “dad” while also calling (y/n) “mom”. something he remembered the boys also called you and he in your previous life.

stepping inside the kitchen for the first time in hours, he saw felix and lia focusing on cleaning the plates first as he found the room to be much cleaner than what he expected. the door to the employee lockers—where the restroom is also located—is ajar as he steps closer, hearing his footsteps clearer before he heard a thud on a metal.

“move back, please…” soobin caught a small familiar whimper. peeking through the door, he finds someone being covered by a large man with tattoos. seeing the man move, he finally sees the person he was searching for. you.

“kook!” soobin calls as kook turns his head towards his voice with you raising your head. the frown on the man getting deeper.

“let her go.” he steps closer. your eyes widen, seeing the boy’s disorganized hair and clothes with a frown on his face. even with nearing a meter in front of him, soobin can smell the stench of alcohol on his manager much stronger than on yours.

the man lets out a wicked smile where his facial piercings make him more menacing than ever; so similar to the captain he fought against. your body is cowering more than ever before he heard you grimace. he sees your eyes wandering between the two males as soobin steps forward more and more.

“not again. i won’t let you get away with this.” soobin picked up the murmurs of kook harassing his female employees once in a while. it is only suspected that the girls in his group might be his next victim. he didn’t think it could be you. the regrets he built for letting you in with his and his friend’s way are showing again. but he won’t let the man win twice.

the drunken kook slides forward, fist high up, and soobin shielded with his forearm. punches were thrown as soobin tried to defend himself from him, getting a few cuts from the rings on his hands. the boy’s eyes drift to the papers flying as kook is thrown near it, writings on the paper, and a table full of numbers and a few lines of ink on it as soobin continue to fight against your assaulter. the man’s fist hit soobin’s nose and his head is thrown back with his body stumbling. he could feel the blood coming out of his nose as the memories of combat he learned back in his previous life come back. that’s when he picked up your whimpers as you covered your head, getting heavier and heavier.

soobin tried to reach for you as kook grabs him from behind, letting him see you scream in excruciating pain as you drop to your knees. the image of you kneeling and falling on the ship’s deck flickering in his eyes as he punches the man’s gut with his elbow before giving one last punch to his face, knocking him down onto the empty cardboard boxes that their ingredients came from.

he rushes to hold your body as your body becomes limp and your breathing shortens. the tears falling from soobin’s eyes as he sees you becoming unconscious in your white tank top work outfit. the blood running on his face drops to stain the white as he brought you up, letting your head in the crook of his neck as he sobs.

“no…” soobin begs.

“not again please, darling.” he soothes your back as he recalls what the deity said upon his wishes.

“the memories she will get of you will be accompanied by the sense of stabs being pierced into her body. she will become strong enough, but don’t bombard her with too many things as she might die from too much pain.“

“(y/n) please.” soobin sobs, resting his face on the crook of your neck. your skin is cold against his warm touch.

that’s when he sensed something caressing the side of his body, rubbing the side of his abdomen before he leans away. your hand smoothes down on his red-splatted white tank as he brought his eyes to yours, hearing you mumble unintelligible words when you open your eyes, seeing the tears flowing down the corner of your eyes when he sees your eyes enlarged.

“it’s you,” he heard you mumble, raising the hand that startled him to his face, letting it caress his wounded cheekbone as you can’t close your mouth tight. your body shook as you mumbled.

“it’s you, pan.”

“you remember me? do you remember us, darling?” soobin whispered as he sees you nod.

-

it’s weird to learn again about someone you used to love, especially with your fragmented mind now being whole with the epiphany that you’ve experienced in soobin’s arms. in pan‘s arms. as you remembered everything, even with your current situation close to his warm figure, your knowledge of the world transforms from within you. you couldn’t rebut anything as the doors of your memories are unlocked one by one.

but you can’t bear to let it out to the boy holding you. could you trust him? is he the boy that you knew? the boy that brought you to the island? the boy who held you in his arms as your light dims along with your fading life?

your trembling body sat up against soobin’s thighs. you try your best to wipe the blood off his face before he hugs you so tight, it took your breath away. in the circumstances that you live in, memories of your moments with him show up more and more when you let soobin hold your face in both of his palms. you now recognized why you’ve felt a certain way with the forest in your grandma’s back garden, the boys you adore in your fairytale book. it’s because of him. it’s because of him and the boys you lived with on the island that your grandma read and you imagined in your mind.

his eyes glisten with tears as he leans in and give you a peck on your cheek. yet you don’t know how to react. should you wrap your arms around him? should you pepper his face with kisses? should you grimace away as you try to collect yourself, hurting him instead?

soobin leans back as you stare into his eyes before letting them fall away, turning to see kook’s body laying on the floor. he follows you, hands unclench from your body as he relieves you.

“did kook touch you? i swear if he did then-“

“he...” licking your lips, you compose yourself. pushing your thoughts to the ones created before memories of him come back. “he is drunk, soobin. it’s- he is trying to tell me something but in a jumbled way. then my head hurts once again. i tried to tell him to give me space. he then pressed forward yet he couldn’t articulate his words to me. that’s when you came.” you look towards soobin before back at your boss.

soobin lets out a sigh as he helps you stand up and lean against the surface. he goes to his locker to take out his phone and call someone as you stare at the scattered paper on the floor that is supposed to be your job to analyze—papers that kook pushes for you to hold. you see something in his eyes grow like a person just realizing something out of horror. it's as if he was forcing you to pick it up with his unintelligible voice. or that he could be in danger. with your weak body but subsiding pain, you scoot down and gathered the messy papers in your hands so that you could put them in your bag and analyze them back home.

footsteps are heard on the floor above you, approaching the stairs. mingyu steps down from his office area, seeing his friend hammered on the floor before gazing at soobin’s battered face and you behind your locker door. your boss shakes his head as he helped pick his friend up from the ground. soobin approaches to help as you look at kook’s hair covering his face, the rings that decorate his hand covered with a tiny bit of crimson coming from being in contact with the younger boy’s face.

“he will forget this the next day.” mingyu juts his chin to his friend. “close the pub for me tonight, okay?”

you and soobin nodded as mingyu lets his friend be held upright by the boy before going up the floor and packing their stuff. the room is too quiet that you can even hear your breathing, even kook’s who you know is alive but unconscious.

the rest of the workers stare as they watch both of the bosses walking out with soobin helping kook into a cab before it goes into the dead of the night. a few of them give a glance at you and how you also have blood on your white top as chaewon approaches you, not as sober as you are now who has conflicted thoughts.

“did- did he touch you in a way? cause if he did, i’ll punch him in the nuts for y-“

“he didn’t.” you’re piecing the long story into a short one to tell her in that short moment. “he’s drunk and soobin stopped him before he did anything that threatens me,” you replied, feeling another hand wrap around to find jaemin trying to hold you up as soobin returns inside, telling the others to continue cleaning up. you just want to think about anything else other than your newly discovered memory of your fairytale-like life.

when all six of you went home, soobin stayed beside you at all times as your brain sobered up, you see jihoon and jaemin helping chaewon and suhyeon each. your heart beats inside you as you don’t know what to say to the boy that “save” you late in the night—you’re not going to be surprised if dawn is approaching minutes away.

staying back from the crowd, you perceived soobin’s hand wrap around your shoulders, his defined muscles resting on them as he guide you home while the others stayed at the front.

you and the rest of the girls giggles as you stood in the moving elevator with the rest of the boys just letting out a small smile between the reflective interior of the walls. all of you helped each other settle one by one as you visit their apartments, you’ve visited chaewon and suhyeon’s before—when all of you tried the clothes you’ve bought—but you’ve also now seen the living areas of jihoon and jaemin for the first time. each of them having a distinct style that is so “them” respectively before you said goodbye and return to the hallway of your apartment along with your next-door neighbor.

when you see pan after a long while with your rowdy friends, you can’t help to feel a tug in your heart as soobin’s shoulders sag when he faces you. you stood in the middle of the hallway when you step towards your door.

your thoughts wrapped around each other. but you want to straighten up one by one and make your faint pain stop. and you knew who can.

“can i stay with you? today has been overwhelming and i just realized who you are and such. it’s…” your voice trails out as soobin steps and wraps your wrist with his hand.

“of course, you can.”

“okay,” you replied with a faint voice.

“i think you should put your stuff back at your place before you stay at mine,” he spoke out.

you look between him and your door as you nod and step away from him to go to your home. putting your shoes on the rack, you immediately go take a shower and scrub away the blood stain seeping into your top as best as you could. staring at yourself in the mirror, you wear a loose oversized t-shirt and pyjama pants that you always wear for the night. your footsteps take you towards your front door before you heard a rustling behind you. turning around, you find the plants’ leaves hitting the glass barrier of the inside and the balcony.

almost forgot. you said to yourself as you approached your watering can and poured water in it before you walked to your balcony. letting the water hydrate them, you let out a hum that grandma usually sings to make them happier and more energized. you recognize sprout’s moves as it takes the lead to dance like how you see grandma’s plants also do, making you giggle as the other plants try to follow it. not recognizing the notion, but at least attempting to.

“grow well for me, okay?” you mumble to them as you spot a moth landing on top of one plant, seeing its beautiful yet aggressive-looking patterned wings fluttering before resting on the leaf under the moonlight. looking as familiar as ever that you’re going to pin it to your mind to take a picture of it so you could identify its species. as you silently greet it, you then step inside and turn your lights off to let the moon shines inside and return to soobin’s front door. it is always a thing that grandma also teaches you as a moth travels with the moon lighting the night sky as its point of navigation. with all the unnecessary lights off at your grandma’s home, it won’t let the moths be attracted to other light sources—their biggest killer.

hearing the muffled ring from behind the door, your eyes switch between starting at the camera lens on the door and the wooden material of the door before you heard the familiar yet faint sound of the beep. the door opens into the small silver of a dark hallway.

“darling.” you heard the recognizable voice calling you as you could see soobin emerging from the darkness in a more loose white t-shirt and sweatpants. the short sleeves covered his shoulder, unlike the sleeveless tank he wore back at the pub. your eyes wander before staring at the wounds on his face which looks untreated and a dark-purplish area around his nose

“can i patch you up?” you murmured. it has always been second nature to you to heal something like healing plants from their sickness with the knowledge grandma taught you. yet, a certain push comes as your vision is cut off by a memory of you patching him and the lost boys up—pushing you to ask.

“yeah, you can.” he then pushes his hand forward for you to hold, which you put yours in carefully before he pulls you into the darkness.

when you enter, only small patches of light cover the living room, resembling fireflies you’ve regularly watched in your backyard garden since you were a child. and the fireflies you encounter back with pan as you both travel the forest under the raven sky. but it’s lit enough for you to see the sheer size of the main area. his apartment is bigger than yours as you scan the room filled with his paraphernalia that makes it pretty homey but youthful as well. your head turns towards him as he stayed quiet, letting you take a few minutes following empty walls to find the kitchen and a small dining table that is also larger in space than yours.

you knew about his childhood back in your “previous life”; the painful story that came to mind with a sense of concern. but you don’t know if he lives the same one in this life as well. if so, how did he get the money to buy all this stuff here?

footsteps follow him as he opens a door to his bedroom—all the units here only have one bedroom each—as you can find it is decorated in a more natural-looking style. a slab of wood sticks onto his wall, combining it with a few posters of musicians you recognized. his room looks a like a forest with the dark green accent wall behind his bed. the swirls of darker green created a shadow that looks like trees are planted and standing tall in his room. you view soobin, who is walking to his bathroom and opening its door.

“wait for me. i’ll search for the first aid kit.”

“i will,” you said back as you see the stream of light coming out of the bathroom.

your eyes travel onto the decorations littering his room. the way you recognized a few of the neverland-themed items is amazing: conch shells, glass bottles filled with colored sand, and a framed map of “neverland” like the one he had before with him, even to the way the map pictured the geography. you notice a pretty large piece made of glass shaped like a vase near the window of his room, hoses connecting to as it lets more than one people can use them in a single try. they continue to wander to his wardrobe and tables, clothes thrown on the floor but collected in a pile—reminding you of his pile back in the cave you called home.

you glimpse at his upright laptop of his on the desk with a notebook and an open book he marked on. stepping to approach it, you stepped onto something small as you look down at the night-lighted room to see something red. picking it up, you recognize it immediately. a swiss army pocket knife just like what you have; or what you had because you haven’t found yours in a while now.

as you placed the pocket knife on the desk, you heard the bed creaking, making you turn around to gaze at soobin sitting at the edge. his eyes go to you as he lets out a wide smile, the cuts and bruises on his face obscured by the small light source by his bedside table. your footsteps gliding you in front of the boy as you looked at the first aid kit beside him on the mattress.

“you didn’t patch it up on purpose, did you?” his eyebrows raised hearing your words, and his smile widen before he lets out a nod, earning a giggle from you: grinning like a child would when they’re caught doing something. you lean in to get the first aid kit and open it to pinpoint the basic medicines to help remedy his cuts. his bruise might need to be compressed with ice to let it heal later.

grabbing the antiseptic, you squeeze it out onto his cuts in tiny bits. his teeth gritting and breath hitches as you brush the medicine around with your fingers and let it spread to cover the wounds. you found three cuts on his face, one on his left cheek, one on his right jaw, and one on the bridge of his nose as you patch them up one by one. your heart palpitates inside of you when you caught soobin’s eyes staying on your moving ones—letting you catch him multiple times and he catches yours if you’re curious enough. soobin let his legs open to make it easier for you to stand closer to patch him up, his hands hanging near your waist.

“you know.” your eyes landed on his. “this reminds me of when you put those leaves on me to help with the sunburn on my face.” soobin spoke as you paused your action of smoothing down the strip on his nose. remembering clearly the moment he mentioned.

you were sitting underneath the coconut tree when you watch him and the boys playing kick the empty coconut. the sun was so bright that day, unnaturally bright as sweat even shows on your skin. yet, they played with no complaints. but when the boys return to the cave, you went to check on soobin to see him frowning. his cheeks have darkened a few shades.

“it’s stinging me,” you remembered his comment as you realized the sun had burnt him. your mind instantly thinks of one plant you remember that has a soothing component in its moisture that could help him.

soobin follows you as he puts on his signature white outer garment into the nearby edge of the forest you and taehyun forage in. the plants greet you as you asked them the specific plant you’re searching for, pointing the way to the specific plant you need as you stood in front of it. asking it permission, it lets go of two of its leaves as you help it grow back the leaves with your green fingertips.

pan was sitting on the small boulder as he stares at you doing your own thing before you step between his legs, letting his hand hold you by your lower waist. so intimate, you thought. you remembered as you can hear his sighs from the cooling sensation meeting his burning skin, letting both of your thumbs caress the leaves down on his cheekbones as he looks at you with love in his eyes.

just like what he is showing to you now.

you smooth the strip to let it stick before tilting back to see his face clearly. his eyes still hold that familiar loving gaze at you that is giving you a shiver, but you don’t know how you can reciprocate it with everything that is crossing your mind now.

nibbling your bottom lip, you move to sit beside soobin as you help pack the first aid kit back before putting it on your lap. a long sigh comes from you as something grasps onto your hand, looking down to see his on yours. with the way he touches and soothes you, you want to reciprocate so badly. but the doubt comes in once again as your mind is still in a mess from tonight’s incident and your unanswered questions are answered all at the same time, at the same moment.

“i…” you sucked your breath before turning your head towards the blond boy. “i miss you so much.” his fingers tangling with yours.

“i miss you too,” he replied before you shift your head towards him. the emotions you’re experiencing are overwhelming. the way each memory now comes to you is not with pain but with ease is perplexing when you now remember who he is.

“i should’ve remembered you when i heard the name soobin and your blond hair, realizing it was the same blond hair being represented in a book with the title pan,“ you whispered, letting giggles out from him. the sky is dark outside but it calms you both down when a yawn emerges from you. turning around, you listen to his chuckle as you let him pull you.

soobin opens his duvet to let you in as you lay down on his bed, which is bigger than yours. your body was stiff as you stare at the dim and now dark ceiling as soobin turns the lamp off. your eyes adjusted to the room as the light from outside the window helps you to see. movements on the bed making you more alert as you can feel your heart wanting to jump out of your chest. your hands are tugged above the duvet when you perceive his now familiar touch grasping yours once again, making you turn your head towards the boy who has his body turned sideways towards where you sleep.

following him, you let the light from the outside caress the side of his body. his face relaxes as you lean in closer towards him, letting your free hand reaches to him and caress his face—the different texture of his soft skin to the strip that covers his wound.

“you must be waiting so long for me to remember if you knew about us,” you speak your thoughts as he replied with a hum.

“i was. but it was worth it. i want to have you back in my arms again when i finally knew who moved next door. but when you don’t react the same, i knew i should take a long route.” soobin replied, leaning his cheek into your palm.

“i feared that you won’t remember me.” he lets out a sentiment before he lets go of your hand and let it trail up to place underneath your jaw, letting him caress your neck as he can feel how your pulse is so quick because of him.

“is it only us who knows this? i’ve been putting a peg on the lost children and how similar they are to the lost boys. even kook and mingyu too with hook and his first mate.” you questioned. soobin’s eyes cast downwards as you waited.

“only we know. their aura and demeanor resemble them, but i don’t think they remember anything. maybe it’s because their look is not the same as us who are, piece by piece, the same person,” he answered, hearing the rustling on his bed as you scoot closer. wanting no one to hear about this, as it is only both of you who know this deep secret in your life.

every memory of him comes back right this instance and how you spend many nights like this. talking instead of sleeping as your curious mind melts in with his curious mind; child-like curiosity that lets you figure out the world with open eyes.

“how do you know this could happen?” you let out a question you were dreading. with all the things you have faced in your life, you didn’t know you also have one before it. that’s why you’re so attracted to pan and the boys, because they are your friends. after all, they are your family, and because pan is yours to call.

“do you remember how you believe in another chance in life?”

your breath hitches and your eyes widen as you stare at soobin.

“this is it. isn’t it?” you mumbled as soobin lets out his signature dimpled smile.

“and i knew that i’ll find you again, right?” soobin replied as you nod, letting him move you closer as you rest your forehead against him. letting his warmth combine with yours and envelop both of you as your tired body can finally rest.

“how do i know i should trust you?” you mumbled as you felt soobin’s breath combining with yours. finger trace your jaw before cupping your cheek.

“may i kiss you?” he asked gently before you let out a small nod, letting your nose tip touch his before he tilts and slot his lips into yours.

the kiss was gentle, yet familiar. the memory of your first kiss in the middle of the forest comes back as he asked you to stay. the memories of neverland from the joy to the sorrow coming back, as it finally landed on the time you die in his arms. recognizing the distinct warmth that is his once again.

you close your eyes as you sleep near his face—letting your nose and lips near his, you listened to the sound of calm rolling waves once again for the first time in your life. the sound that always comforts you when you sleep in soobin’s arms.

“you can always trust me.”

-

“i knew something was going on between the two of you.” suhyeon pointed with her forefinger at you who was sprawling on the couch of chaewon’s apartment. your t-shirt sticking to your skin with your legs almost giving out on your way home. a tired smile shows on your face as you gaze at the boy sitting beside you, letting out his sheepish smile and resting his arm around your shoulders. the sound of ice cubes and lemon in the glass of gin and tonic on your hand shakes as you giggle with your other three tipsy friends.

you trusted soobin’s words as it was the last vibration you heard before you push into your next phase of sleep. you believe that he’s telling the truth as you woke up from a great slumber and greet him to see he made your breakfast that day. and since that day, you try to rekindle your love for him back.

it’s admiring, really. how patient soobin is with your relationship as he helps you remember things and reminds you of things he did with you back on the island, even exchanging mementoes you recall with each other. you really want to tell the others how they are back on the island, but soobin stops you as he doesn’t want them to hurt you if they say they don’t remember.

“i’ve tried hinting it to them but there’s no use. they won’t remember.“ soobin complained.

so you let go of that notion and let your relationship with soobin bloom once again.

he has taken you on three dates where only the two of you are present. one of them is at his campus. he lets you stay with him at the library while he is doing an assignment—letting you chime in with your opinions that could help as you give him a few kisses on his head for encouragement.

your second date was when he took you to watch a play hosted by his campus theater club. the handbook they gave you says it’s a rendition of a midsummer night’s dream and soobin rambles more because this play is the one he analyzed last semester. you let out a chuckle as you see how his eyes gleam in glee as he stares at the actors performing on stage, even mumbling out a few lines he remembered. you kiss him on his jaw as you try to stop his jaw from dropping from the performance, lighting, sound effect, and many more.

the last date was when he and you set up a picnic at the park after both of your shifts at the pub is finished for the day. you finally discover the food he was making as you weren’t allowed to enter the kitchen—your rotating job that day was as one of the servers.

back when he and the rest of your friends visited your unit for dinner, you told him how the foods you made are from your grandma’s recipe book she wrote for herself and for you to keep—showing them the book as they discover the various foods in them. you didn’t realize that soobin took pictures of a few of the recipes to be your menu for the picnic. you were in awe at how similar the taste it before soobin showed it to you, letting laugh in the middle of the night at the empty park.

then, he lets you try a few puffs of his cannabis vape too as you share a bud of his earphones. psychedelic music playing.

“it’s gonna be trippy but you should relax your mind and let it take you away,“ he chimed.

your mind flew to other places with your hyperawareness. the touch of the grass is much sharper but you sensed something more as it energized you, letting the sound of the music enters one ear and the other hear the rustling wind against the leaves. soobin’s giggles almost all the time as your mind calms down before you’re being brought into a giggle fit you don’t know how to stop. letting your head rest on soobin’s shoulder as you stare at the view of the empty lot and the sound of a running stream from the bridge near where you sat.

remembering the nights you had with him just like this, even with your friends.

your plants seem to recognize the blooming feelings you have been feeling, and it surprises you how your potted plants and even the vines have flowers on them. some of them even grew a fruit which they let you pick.

that was the first time you recognized just how strong your emotions influence your connection to the plants and how with them in their flowering phase along with you, more butterflies and moths have gathered at your balcony as they eat the pollen and help spread it. you can’t help but also connected to the critters too as more and more came, remembering what grandma said, “you are one of them too, darling.”

and the thought that maybe they’re your ancestors crossed your mind as you see three distinct monarch butterflies always resting in your sanctuary.

this morning, before you went out with your friends, you find the three monarch butterflies you give the plants their nutritional needs when one landed on your hand as the other two follow. one of them is sitting on your green fingertips as if it knows how it does too.

“hey, grandma,” you spoke to the critter as it flutter its wings, happy that you recognized her too. you speak around with the butterflies—your mom and grandpa—when you see another color on the sprout. taking your attention away, you stare at the sight. its body larger than butterflies, a moth. you’ve seen this moth before with its distinct colors. a moth that you now recognized after getting help from a forum. the same moth that shows up in your backyard garden when you and grandma are drinking tea together, seeing it perched on top of the kettle.

“grandma, what is this one?” you point your fingers to the creature as it flutters its wings, greeting you.

“oh, this one.” grandma’s eyes glance upwards as she thinks. “i believe this is the garden tiger moth. you can see how its wings have a pattern similarly shown on a tiger’s or panther’s fur, right?”

you nodded as it flies and landed on your thigh. “hey, little one.”

“hey, little one,” you muttered as you look at it moving around on sprout’s petals. you have never seen this one in a while since that day and you surely don’t understand how it goes to your balcony in the morning sun where it should sleep with its companions. maybe, it has visited your balcony more than you know as it’s comfortable with it.

“i’ll let all of you stay with the moth, okay?” you push your hand out as the butterflies follow your others and rest on the leaves, saying your farewell before going with your friends.

you had a great time going to a music festival together as soobin stayed by your side at all times, openly telling the others that you are together right. which you both silently confirmed as you rested in chaewon’s apartment for another round of drinks.

“is that why soobin pushed me to cook up the other orders a few days ago? you were preparing her a meal?” suhyeon jokingly groans as jihoon nudges her, winking to let them know he knows.

“i was the one beside him when he took a picture of (y/n)’s grandma’s recipe,” he said before jaemin cuts him.

“then why didn’t you tell us? we could help be your wingmates, you fuck,” the tattooed boy comments, making all of you laugh as you put a hand on his shoulder.

“it’s okay. we’re both happy together now. with and without a wingman helping us.” you reassure him as you heard suhyeon’s mumbling “but i want to be your wingwoman, soob.”

“okay, i owe the four of you something now.” soobin replied as the others giggle including those who sees soobin slapping his forehead.

as you finished the rest of your glass, you finished your time together as all of you retire to your abode. you wanted to walk to yours when you sensed soobin tugging your arm, letting the force bring you to him as he wrapped his hands around your clavicle for a tight hug.

that’s when you perceived something hard against your lower back.

his breath brushes your earlobe as he traces it with his lips. your eyes enlarged as your hands reached his arms and grasp them, feeling something bubbling inside you. soobin’s lips trace your exposed neck before going up once again to the side of your ear as he whispers.

“i need you.”

your eyebrows are raised as you tug his hands off your body, letting you turn around as you tilt your head. you and soobin didn’t drink as much as the others, you are mostly sober with a slight buzzing on your head. yet his hooded eyes stare at yours with something different igniting inside him. his hand trails down to rest behind your shoulder as he pulls you into his vicinity.

“you need me?” you questioned as you let yourself get influenced by him, putting your palms on his biceps as your body rubs against his. the way your black graphic t-shirt blend in with his—the lost children’s style influence yours as you put away your light green and beiges to use darker greens instead. if you let your old self sees you, you might have been a much different person. almost unrecognizable. a gin and tonic lover who went out almost every night and hangs out with a crowd who are not in your realm. but this is what you understand as “spreading your wings.”

and you are spreading yours to embrace soobin.

“i want you. i need you. i crave you. i-“

you slammed your lips to his. your hands climbing up to his shoulder before pulling his head closer, tugging his soft blond hair as he nibbles your bottom lip, earning a quaint whine from you. your hands trail to cup his face as his tongue infiltrates inside your mouth to greet yours, letting it dance with each other as you can’t help about your muffled moans.

both of you are heaving as you let go. soobin’s lips are smeared with your purple matte lipstick—courtesy of jihoon’s recommendation as chaewon and suhyeon are arguing between the two swatches they chose for you. his hair and t-shirt are dishevelled from your grip as he jutted his chin between your door and his door, gnawing on his bottom lip.

“yours,” you replied as soobin lets out a smirk and wrap his hand around your wrist before pulling you to him as he punches the numbers in.

both of you stumble in as you tried your best to take your shoes as fast as you can, hearing soobin’s giggles as you throw your bag on his couch before you turn around to his gigantic silhouette illuminated by the few lamps on in the living room. he strides toward you and encompasses you in his arms, letting his lips return to their rightful place on yours. you perceived how his touch is seeping through the fabric of your top as he holds you where your ribcage is. you patted your hands down his front before meeting the end of his shirt. pulling upwards, soobin stretches his arms up high as you finally see his bare chest and abdomen after a long while.

you remembered viewing the exact thing as in neverland—especially with his signature dirty long white outer garment draping on his shoulder. his muscles are there and it’s enough for anyone to realize how fit he is without added effort and making him bulky. his figure looks more ethereal under the faint moonlight and yellow light coming from the lamps, making him look much more inhuman, especially with his unnaturally blond hair. your hand trails down his pectorals as he is trying his best not to push away from shivers, instead he lets his forehead and nose rub against yours as you trace the ridges on his body, in between his muscles on his abdomen and side.

it took you too long to admire his body quietly as you sensed his hands holding onto your hip, tugging your oversized t-shirt out of your pants. he gives you a peck before lifting the material as you let him. his eyes trace how your chest is covered in a sports bra—your favorite type of bra because of the freedom movement you get. you knew how unsexy it is but he didn’t care as he leans in to kiss your lips before trailing down to your jaw, neck, collarbone, the expanse of skin right above where your breasts are. biting your lip, both of your hands tug lightly on his hair as he bits lightly on your skin, seeing faint darkness form because of him and the dark purple makeup leaving a trail because of your lipstick stain on his lips. you let out a breathy moan as he trails his nose back up to the junction between your neck and collarbone.

“remember how i mark you here?” he whispered before giving a small kiss.

“yeah…” your hands trail down to hold his hands in yours before you felt him suck on the exact spot he gave to you in your previous life. a moan left out from you as your head remembers the memory simultaneously as he did it to you now. the night’s darkness masked both of you as the bonfire burns the remaining firewood when your curiosity caught you. you never told your parents how you knew about this stuff but it seems it’s a natural phase if you love someone. soobin lets the boys sleep elsewhere—something he rarely allows as he wants all of them to be secure—just to get you both alone and make love.

“can’t wait any longer,” he groans, pulling away as he caught you by surprise. soobin lifts you from the floor and carry you in a bridal pose. you let out a quick shriek, almost falling off before looping your hand around his shoulder.

his foot pushes the open bedroom door wider as best as he could before the sound of it slamming against the frame shocked you from the force of his foot, making you frown as he puts you to the ground before he lets out small apologies, peppering more kisses on your face. soobin smiles when you reciprocate and attached your lips back to his as his warm palm caress your bare skin. his hand tugs the end of your sports bra as he pulls it up. the tight yet flexible material is gripping onto your skin as he pulls it away, throwing it somewhere on the floor.

“i miss these two,” he mumble before attacking your left boob and cupping the other one with his free hand. your giggles subside as the pleasure wins once again. soobin continues his attack on your breasts with your hands helping his own trail down your body before cupping your jean-covered cheeks. your breathy moans are getting more rampant as he pushed more, one of his hands moves forwards to cup your core at the front as you rub it against him.

“it feels good to know you want me too.” soobin muttered. his touch, even with the layers, makes shivers run down your spine.

“i miss you too, pan. so much,” you replied, his hands unbuttoned your pants before he pushes you to the edge of the bed. your hands pushing your upper body up so you could see him crouching down and pulling your jeans off of you. your legs automatically helped, straightening them as your skin meets the room’s temperature. you lean your head back as his lips trail kisses from your ankles to your knees before to your inner thighs, your body jitters from the tickles and shivers. your hands fell out and now holding your body up by your forearms, you gaze down to watch him getting closer and closer to your core, squirming in his hold when you sensed his breath touching your wet underwear. he leans in and gives a small kiss to your covered core when you felt yourself gushing more.

“so wet.” he lets his nose tip caress your covered slit and clitoris before he sniffs. “you smell like flowers.”

his thumb rubs onto your nub—“he remembered” the words came into your thoughts—before looking up to find your face casting down on him. your body turns putty in his hold as your jaw slackens from how good it is

“darling. my darling,” you whine as he called you by your nickname, a faint slap of your underwear band that he pulled meets your skin as you catch his smug and darkened eyes resembling a much stronger look you hope you are showing to him. soobin’s hand encases your body between the bed and his body as he pulls your panty down, expecting him to throw it before you see him tugging it into his back pocket. his nose scrunches as he looks at your stunned face before he leans down as gives you a short yet satisfying kiss.

“go up the bed,” he commands. you scoot yourself up to his bed, sitting cross-legged as you wait for him who is standing by it. his gaze lands on you as if you were a piece of sculpture in the middle of a museum. he unfasten his pants as fast as he could and you notice his dark gray boxer with an outline and a dark spot at the end of it. you swallow your drool as you remember the first and only time you ever had a man’s member inside you. it was his. and you can’t even wrap your palm around him fully.

you exhale as he pulls his boxers off and his cock sprang up; the blood rushing down to his member as he senses the arousal all around him. soobin leans in and crawls onto the bed with you. you thought he was going to push you down and trap you under him like the last time you had intercourse on the island. he chuckles at your bewildered face as he lays down with his head on his pillow, facing up along with his cock standing tall. your mouth opens as you wanted to ask before he cuts you.

“come sit on my face.”

“i- what?” your eyebrows crease as soobin leans up and grabs your waist, handling you as you sit scoot closer to his head.

“please? you smell so good and i want to devour you. i couldn’t forgive myself if i don’t.” soobin said as you bit your lip.

“i don’t want to suffocate you, soob-“

“you will not suffocate me. i’ll hold your hips up.” he nods his head, trying to convince him. your gaze continues downward as you see his length twitch, the blood pumping into it. you as you let out a nod before you sit on your knees.

“face my dick, darling.” he returns to command. you carefully hover above his face, placing your other knee on the other side of his head. soobin’s hands come to resting on top of your thighs as he drags you down. you let out a breathy moan as his nose tip grazes your lower lips, making you lean forward and rest your hand on his abdomen.

“just like that, yes.” soobin murmured as you lean your body more forward, almost meeting his curving long length. your body trembled when you felt something wet against your lower lips. you tried your best to turn around, yet your physique doesn’t allow it. your jaw slackens and moans come out in a quiet and timely manner. as his tongue moves around and he gives a suck on your clit.

you leaned forward and trail your hand up to his erect cock, a hum coming from him as the slurping sound continues. you wanted to focus on pleasuring him too. that’s when you catch the drops of pre-cum coming out of him. this turns him on. this is also a pleasure for him.

your thumb reaches for the tip of his dick as you rub the liquid down on the tip. your body wants to grind on his face because of how sensitive you are as he holds your thighs down, not helping you at all. you lean down and see how the liquid looks like a bead of pearl, letting the tip of your tongue touches his head as you picked up his muffled groan from between your thighs. one of your hands reaches to wrap around his member as best as you can—still as big as ever as you remember it with how there is a gap even in your hold. you lean forward more as soobin’s grip on you slacken to let you rest your tummy against his skin, trailing your tongue up from the base to the tip of his head.

“hmm… fuck…” you mumbled as something pierced through your lower lips before his tongue returned. his digit pushes in then pulls out in a small rhythm as you tried to follow it with the hand stroking his dick, resting your lips against his tip before you wrapped them around it, enveloping the very top of it as soobin continues.

the build-up gets higher and higher as time goes on. edging closer and closer.

your body quivers as he added another finger in, making you cum without even warning him. but soobin’s groan tells you otherwise as he devours your release. as he pushed deeper and scissors you to prepare for him, you swallow more of him as best as you can, the edge of your mouth hurting from stretching it so much. your tongue caressing the side of his cock as you felt it at the back of your mouth. when your gag reflex reacts, you pulled him out and focus on breathing as soobin enters one more finger.

“ahh, soob-“ you moan. your nails gripping his skin creating crescent-shaped marks on his thighs as you lean forward and help stimulated him. soobin’s muffled howl continues as you finally hear him clearly. his head leans back on the pillow as he finally let you focus on him.

“fuck. i need to feel you more,” he spoke, pulling you off of him as you place yourself beside him. your hand is still stroking his cock. his face tilts to you as you continue. the way the pre-cum falls and mixes with your saliva is perfect lubrication. your eyes gaze and meet soobin with the same lustful gaze looking back at you.

you move around and straddle his lap. your folds touching his exposed skin, caressing the side of his cock. sitting on it enough so it stays in between you and his abdomen.

“shit. you’re so beautiful,” he commented as you tilt your head and enjoyed yourself grinding on him. your face turns as you sensed the sensation of the caress before it lands on a mirror sticking to the door of his wardrobe. even with how small you are from how far it is, you can see how you look like. well, how unrecognizable you are with your melting eye makeup and smeared lipstick combined with saliva and drool, resembling soobin’s lips under you as he left a mark on yourself, staining your thighs with the color on your lips.

you gnaw your bottom lip as you hold yourself up with your knees, grabbing soobin’s length as he reaches his hands out to caress your thighs.

“i love you, soobin,” you murmured. fly high much more above the clouds.

“i love you too, (y/n),” he replied as his tip nudge your prepared core and you let it slip in you. soobin’s hands move to your waist as your body trembles. the familiar feeling you recognize will only subside if you continue. and how you want to continue because of him. only him.

you felt him deeper as you let your butt touches his thighs. the way his grip on you tightens as you hold yourself up, both of your hands on his chest now. his eyes looking at you with stars in them, the moon shining perfectly on the side of his face, with the lamp’s color combining into a beautiful hue. you let out a muffled whine from how full you are because of him. the desire scouring inside you makes you want to bounce on him. but as you prepare, soobin’s eyebrows furrowed.

“you’re okay with this? it’s been a long time since we did this.” his gaze is full of lust but also cautious, rubbing your butt as it trails to where he can trace your lower lips widening to let his cock in, making you squirm.

“i don’t want to hurt you.” his ever-changing demeanor makes you melt in his arm.

“i- i can,” you spoke, moving on him slowly as his hold moved to your waist. even with the slow drag of you lifting your hips up and down on his shaft, both of you enjoy it. his thumb reaches up and caresses your right nipple, making you move your hands to his shoulder as you lean forward, letting your hips move on his length.

soobin reaches for your fallen hair and pushes it away from your face, letting his palm cup your cheek as his thumb caresses your lips before he pushes it in. you moaned around his digit as you continue to move on him, feeling his tip right at the edge of your entrance before falling down onto him in quick succession.

“that’s right. you feel so fucking good,” he mumbled as you nod your head, sucking on his thumb as you felt the other one rubbing your clit.

“ah! fuck!” you squeal. soobin moves his free hand to your upper back to push you closer. his tongue pushes out and circles your areola before sucking one nipple. your head turns down to see him marking your breasts. his blond hair tickles your nose as you sniff it, smelling a faint wood scent as you are being stimulated by many things. his shaft filling you, his thumb rubbing your nub, and his tongue and teeth giving dark spots on your chest.

your hips faltered as you let out a louder moan than usual, facing the headboard as you breathe as best as you can.

“hold on to me,” soobin whispered as you lower yourself on him and looked at his face. your hands grip his muscled arms as he bucks himself into you. his heels on the mattress and knees touching your thigh as he thrust up into you. you let your body succumb to him.

“that,” you reach to hold his jaw. “fuck. that feels so good.” you moan as you stare at soobin’s smirk, a dimple on his cheek as he reaches his hand to pull your hair back.

“you’re clenching on me so good. make this pussy mine. made it just for me,” he mumbled before slackening his hold. your forehead touches his as you lean down and kiss him hard. your moans are muffled as he quickens his pace, breathing and groans mixing with each other. eyes only focusing on his face.

“you’re mine,” he spoke, changing his pace into a slower one, but he slams deep in one push. your spent body taking him in as it gets deeper and deeper. his hand rubs your lower stomach and pushes it, feeling his enormous cock inside of you.

“say it back,” he said with a lower register.

“i’m yours.”

soobin groans as he pushes himself up and sat up with you on him. he attacks your neck as he lifts your hips up, thrusting upwards as you felt your g-spot being hammered multiple times and becoming much more sensitive. your eyes gaze at the mirror, meeting soobin’s backside as his muscles contort to hold you and push into you. his lips take bites into your skin as your nails caress down the expanse of his back.”

“say it again.”

“i’m yours. i’m yours,” you mumbled those words like a mantra as soobin expertly moves your hips with just his strength. more marks bloom on your torso and your neck as your nails scratch his skin, claiming him as yours too.

you pull soobin’s head from your body as you face his determined and lusty face. his eyebrows furrowed as you trace it with your thumb.

“you’re,” a thrust makes you moan. “mine too, r-right?”

“darling. i’m always yours forever.” he gritted his teeth as he said that, more determined than ever as you push your lips to him. your mouth slotted open as he pushes his tongue with yours. drools fall out of the edge of your lips as you chase your high. his thrusts continue as you meet your hips with his with the energy you still have.

“fuck!” you shriek. “i’m gonna cum!” you warned him unlike last time as you pant along with him.

“cum with me. i’m following you,” he mumbles as his eyes glance straight to yours and nowhere else. your hand resting on his nape as you look at how purple soobin’s lips are from your lipstick, faint black streaks are there too from your melting eyeliner from swear and tears.

your mouth slacken as a loud pornographic moan came out of your voice, clenching onto his cock as your eyes roll back from the immense pleasure as you felt your cum gushing out. soobin’s thrusts faltered as he lets out a moan, your hands holding his face as he cums right after you. your inside is warm as he fills you up, pushing you down to fit him inside. but even with that, you feel both of your mixed cum leaking out of you.

both of your breathing match each other. the room is filled with your breathing sounds and sounds from you moving against him because of the moisture between your bodies. you can't hold yourself to let out a smile as you lean down and kiss him, seeing him by the beach with the sunset behind him as memories of him gushing into your brain. his hands caressing your back and trailing down your spine. foreheads sticking to each other as you let the atmosphere come down and seep into you.

you lean your body close as soobin hugs you tight on top of him. chest on chest. breath by breath as you let your eyes wander on his face. how both of you blend in with each other. how both of you are the same.

“stay with me.” his voice rings. a memory of yours rekindles, both of your feet on top of the leave-covered dirt of the forest.

“hmm?”

“stay with me. move in with me. we can live together. sleep in this bed together. cooking each other food. all of those domestic shit we can do together. we have the floor for us as our cave in neverland but i wanna be closer to you.” his tangent stops as you stare at him, your mind conflicting with the smaller voices in you. so small that it isn’t noticeable as the doubt gets bigger.

“i’ll keep you here by my side. safe. happy. until forever.” his eyes let out those same eyes you see back in neverland. soft yet determined. but something spoke to you in the back of your mind, indecipherable, but you note it.

“how about my plants? my other stuff? i can’t just let go of that after having it here for months.” you voice out the doubt as his lips pouted.

“you could always stay back to them. i’m not gonna stop you from taking care of your apartment. i want to see you wake up and go to sleep every day beside me,” he reassured, caressing your cheekbone.

“please, my darling?” he pleaded.

your furrowed eyebrows soften as you lean into his touch, and let out a hum as your mind finally made the choice.

“i’ll stay."

-

that sentence rings in your mind until it became subtle and vanishes into thin air.

you kept your word. you stay with him.

a month has passed since you agree. clothes moved to be put beside his in the wardrobe. apartment left unattended with only unneeded stuff inside and your plants you still take care of. the status of your apartment changes from a home and became more of a sanctuary, bleeding its influence of only the balcony to the inside of the clean and tidy four-walled rooms.

yet, even with you not living there, you promised yourself that you didn’t let it go. the evidence of your hard work ever since moving here will still be there. but the time you spent there isn’t as much as it used to be. you now live with soobin. and now, your apartment has become a secret garden just for you and sometimes for your friends too. if you remember it, you went. but a secret can also be forgotten.

another month has passed. moments upon moments between you, soobin and the others have become one-on-one similar to how all of you were in neverland. even you can see some similar physical traits between the others and the boys who you could now name from memory. yeonjun, beomgyu, taehyun, and kai.

and yet, you don’t have that many human connections anymore outside of them. your other co-workers seem to ignore you even though they used to be friendly towards you. you used to take a break with them during lunch break—especially with aeri and jongho—but it changed. they seem to stare at you with caution and you don’t know why.

all of that becomes more prominent when you can’t seem to go outside without the other five with you. at least one has to stay by your side as soobin allows it. you trust them as you listened to stories of thugs bothering chaewon and suhyeon, making all of you promise to stay with each other and not go out alone. soobin kept his promise to keep you safe even if he always has to be beside you.

kook only talks small words to you at work. he gives no more ledgers for you to read after the incident. mingyu also greets you with a few words before taking care of his work. it was depressing to experience that, but when you come back to your new humble abode, soobin is always there to take care of you, either by cuddling you or pleasuring you in every inch of the living room.

and now, another month later, here you are alone on the balcony of soobin’s apartment as you see the light blue swallowed by the horizon; drinking your favorite gin and tonic with only a few droplets of it left. your mind is still reeling when you heard the news that he has laid you off from neverland. kook doesn’t even bare to tell you why and you wanted to guess it is because he is ashamed for the things he treated you to but months have passed since that. there goes your safety net.

“i’ll help you pay for your living costs,” soobin replied after you confide in his safety from the layoff, wetting the work dress that he still uses from the pub a few hours ago. you didn’t understand any better—non-city native playing the game to live in the city—so you confide with the people you trust, especially soobin.

and with you having no job and being under soobin’s care. you stay around the tower most of the time, helping the other four to clean their apartment units, buying groceries for the fridge and your “family” dinner at jihoon’s place, and taking an interest in drawing from the scrapbook you remember suhyeon gave you along side taking notes—resembling the few pages you’ve filled in from months before. you’ve tried your best to draw your friends, but you knew you could do more and so you continue with that, taking it as a full-time hobby, and might become a job opportunity too. besides, what is your other hobby you love and are passionate about other than drawing and journaling?

yet even within the six of you, you can’t relate to any of their struggles anymore. college, work, getting their own money, clubs, and many more. cause of it, you felt as if you are straying away. you wanted to connect more with them, but you don’t know how to connect it, especially with the other four and all the things they have that you don’t. you tried your best to reach out to them other than hanging out. you tried, but everyone seems to ignore you. no one answers your text in the group chat and no one answers your call until your data ran out. unless you’re the one replying to them, they never replied to you. it’s like you’re in a vacuum where no one recognized you existed. yet, you don’t know how to escape the bubble.

you’ve tried to confide in soobin again but he is busy focusing on his exams coming and you don’t want to bother him for something so trivial. if soobin is nearing an exam, the other four must also be doing that. and it makes sense if they ignore you. it just makes you feel more ashamed being so clinging.

yet, even with that, it doesn’t answer why’re you feeling weird.

it feels like you've fallen out of the world, realizing it doesn’t call or care for you.

sitting by the balcony with the near-empty glass, you consider sucking the lemon to have the taste of gin and tonic in your hand again. but if the drink you were drinking represents the world you live in—no matter how uncaring it becomes to you, you will not consume it and you rather leave the slice alone; just a tiny glimpse of what the world that you used to feel again. your phone is always near you as you waited for any notifications to come and ask for you, but no one reaches out to you unless it is necessary. you are now all alone as you could only look out to the unfamiliar view.

you’re forgotten by the world. and you just realize it now.

everything was normal. but what is this?

your vision is clouded by the sense of unfamiliarity with the view behind the fence of the balcony. but that is all you could do while waiting for soobin to get home from the college’s library for a study session with the others. the food you made is laid on the dining table that is meant for the two of you. the sun sinking down from this view is not the same as the one from your sanctuary.

your sanctuary.

an epiphany crosses your mind as you stare back into the living area straight to the front door of the apartment. how could you just remember it now? you should’ve visited there if you can. but the thought of that didn’t even cross your mind for the last month you’ve been living.

thoughts also clouded your mind as doubt comes in. doing the others’ services and taking care of them didn’t make time for you to even visit your sanctuary. you don’t want to lie to yourself, but is there a reason they made you forget?

the urge for you to stay being fought with the way your heart pushes you to go back to your place. rain hasn’t come since forever as you were under soobin’s sweet words last month. words full of love and care, even with his soothing gesture to calm you down as you got your last paycheck. words that let you cling to him as a rock and the way your other four friends lift you up too.

but it doesn’t feel right.

you push yourself up as you walk and walk, ignoring his pieces of furniture as you put the glass on the coffee table and you walked out barefooted. everyone was outside, no one can stop you now.

every conversation for the last three months is running in your mind. and you found a thorough line to it: everyone on this floor seems to stop you from getting back to your own apartment. hypnotize by a force to make you stay with soobin. and they succeed. they comment in bad ways but all of them have said the same thing.

“soobin will be disappointed.”

and you didn’t want to disappoint soobin. you didn’t want to disappoint your love.

but why should you visit your sanctuary disappoint him?

yet here you are standing on the door right next to it. the alarming beep rings into your ear as you tried your best to find a hint in your mind of what the passcode is—it’s been so long since you’ve been here. your mind buzzing with worrisome before a memory knocks on its door.

“the group chat,” you mumbled to yourself, recalling a message for all of your friends’ passcode in it. opening the chat, you type the right keyword as a list of six appears. the list of passcode for all six units on the floor. you stare at yours as you make out six digits that are so familiar.

the birthdate of grandma.

“grandma…” you mumbled. it’s been a long time since you hear the word too.

the hesitation comes as fast as a shooting star as all the memories that were pushed back of yourself and your home are pulled into the limelight once again. you put the passcode in as fast as you can before barging the door open wide as you see the glimmer of the sun still enter the room from the outside. hoping to look at your clean living room and area that you left.

but what you find is different.

vines crawling inside your living room on top of your couch and all over the tiled floor as they all are reaching towards the front door. but when you inspect them closer, you didn’t feel any sense of liveness from them. all of them are dry, crumbling under your touch. your feet carefully step between the empty spaces of the growing vines as you step into your sanctuary. the sky is still lit enough to see the leaves' silhouettes, but dark enough that you didn’t instantly notice that they lost their signature green colors.

your beige pants blend in with them as you turn yourself around, seeing all the plants in the pot have wilted. strong stems and leaves crinkle with no nutrients and water. their dried leaves under you every time you took a step—inspecting how badly you’ve treated them that they’re lacking on things to live. you picked up a small shake piercing through the sunset’s wind sound, shifting to detect the source from a daisy flower with most of its petals fallen on the soil. a gasp emerges as soon as you see it and you approached the flower. you touch its stem lightly—none of the green shows up on your fingertips.

“sprout?” you mumbled to it, eyes stinging as your vision blurred from the tears after seeing what happened to your precious plant. it waves its leaf to you—a small force from anything and it will fall. you pushed your might to make your green thumb back, to at least redeem yourself helped it after having it under your care for a long time—your first plant. but after the reduced usage of it for the past three months, you didn’t know it will affect your skill this way.

these plants were supposed to be under your care and you failed. your palm opens under sprout’s leaf and a small blow pushes the leaf to fall to join the composting petals, landing on your hand. the tears break out and streak down your cheek as the magical feeling of the sanctuary dims along with the sun down the horizon. your eyes trail the vines that have entered from the balcony door when you realized what they wanted to do.

they all wanted to reach for you. to come back. but their anatomical limitations failed them.

you failed them.

your knees buckle as you sat among the plants you promised to care for, their lives dissipating from you as you didn’t care about the soil on your fingers staining your cheeks. you rub your face to wipe the tears as your guilt cascades out of you. just realizing what your carelessness has gotten to them, and what the others have stopped you from doing. breathing becomes unbearable as your head hurts. that is until you felt something caressing your hair-covered cheek.

turning towards the source, you find a moth gliding next to you. its wings flutter as you can trail the intricate motives on it.

the garden tiger moth.

it flies into your open door of the unit as your eyes watch. the urge to make you follow the critter is pushing for you to stand up and observe what is it doing in your apartment.

you pursued its silhouette as best as you can but you realize how agile it is as it enters the bedroom quickly. when you approach it slowly, you see its shadow on the wall across from you as it lands on pieces of paper on the desk. pieces of paper that used to be the ledgers you get from kook. the last one was from the day of the incident.

stepping closer, you approach it as you met its white-colored back of the paper. your hands pick the paper up as you search for what is interesting on the paper before you turn it around. your eyes catching the numbers printed with scribbled notes. all of them are crossed out multiple times as you find one that is clean. weirdly clean,

“i have to tell (y/n)…“ you read it loudly to yourself.

“go on.“

your head lifts as you searched for the voice that sounded familiar but then find no one around except for you. your eyes continue scanning the paper you find now before returning to the stack of paper. he gave you more than one sheet that night, you recalled. you pick up another one as you flipped the paper over, finding it full of marker scribbles as a few of them are readable enough for you.

i’m here to tell you, (y/n)

please believe me.

you pick up another paper to examine readable writing that you need to decipher longer before you pick up more and one last one as you turn it around. words written crashing down the ink from the printer, the numbers swallowed by the black marker’s ink as you were met with a phrase.

soobin is not what he seems to be

“soobin is not what he seems to be.” the voice sounded once again as you look back up, still finding no one as you gathered the paper in your grasp.

“who are you?” you mumbled, sniffing your runny nose from the leftover emotions you let out. you walk around your room as you near the mirror you bought along with the wardrobe. walking past it and giving a small glance, you didn’t find yourself in your beige pyjama pants and soobin’s oversized t-shirt. instead, you were met with a figure wearing a long flowy white dress. you see them barefooted as specks of red are on the ends of the dress. letting your eyes trail up, you finally discover the figure’s face.

it’s you.

you jumped before stepping closer, seeing the moth now resting on top of your head before you see yourself smile.

“i didn’t think this would work.“ you see yourself speaking from the mirror, but you didn’t even move your mouth in real life, only your reflection. the moth landed on your head as you return to the frame.

“i’ve been watching over you ever since you lived with your grandma, darling.“ you put two and two together

“who are you? and are you the moth?”

“i’m you. well, you from the past life. where we flew to neverland with pan and meet the other boys.” you let out a small smile as you lean down to peer at the bloodied dress.

“well, yes, i am the moth that you’ve found where you were a child. the moth that visit you in your first day here. the moth that stays here at night to take care of you. it’s been fun befriending your ancestors. especially your grandma and mom.”

“you mean the butterflies?” you nod.

“it’s your family, all of them even outside of the monarch species. there is a reason your grandma said to you to spread your wings. she always knew your lineage is connected to the butterflies just like i do with the moths. similar but not the same.” your eyes are trying to read your face as you search for the right words to continue.

“she is so proud of you and everything you face. adulthood is hard and even i could say that when i didn’t even live past 20 years of age. but after what you’ve become from the last three months and how you left the plants alone. she didn’t visit as much. i was mostly alone trying to help the plants but there is not much you can do in a body of a moth.” hearing it, you stare down at the floor as the guilt pushes you, your movement heavy because of it.

“why are you telling me this?” you said, nibbling the inside of your cheek as you glance back at your reflection.

“though you have your memories back, not all of them are there. i’m here to help you open them. there is a reason you see me like this. there is a reason that your last moments with soobin were with you in his arms.” you showed the bloody dress and dishevelled hair.

“because of kook stabbing my back, right?”

you recalled the memory of it in your mind as you and soobin had a pillow talk. just another night for him and you to open up about yourselves and your memories coming back. that night, he mention how you died in his arms. how hook stab your back as he kidnapped you. your memory of that time was chopped into parts you don’t know how to assemble them. and even with you pushing yourself to remember, it’s not there and now you’re hurting yourself too much.

“no. we’re the one that is asking him to do that.”

what?

eyebrows raised, you stare at yourself as you see your reflection’s sullen expression.

“why is that?” you continue.

“i will help you but brace yourself. this is going to be painful. please close your eyes, (y/n).“

the tear pooling from your eyes falls as your eyelids close. lasting words echoes in your voice.

“trust me, (y/n). i am you.”

you heard waves and your body swaying, standing on a not-so-stable foundation. you tried to move your body when you lean back and met a sturdy beam. wooden creaks masked the crashing waves as footsteps come closer.

something lifts from your head as you grimace from the sunlight hitting you directly even with your closed eyelids. they’re blurry as you opened them. your head is pounding as the sun hits you when you take the salty smell. a specter standing before you as it slowly taken its more recognizable shale—a triangle shape on the top of human figure.

“good morning,” an familiar voice calls out to you. your gaze focuses on their tattoos peeking out of the sleeves before they rise to see the piercings decorating their face.

“who are- ah gosh!” you exclaimed from your aching head, looking sideways as you recollect your thoughts back one by one. the captain in front of you lets out a chuckle as you hissed away, shaking your bounded hands as best as you can.

“hope you had a good sleep. you being drunk last night makes our job easier,” the pirate answers as he stood still, seeing you recover yourself before your eyes focus on the moving commotion behind him. the pirate crews all are moving items here and there on the deck: tying the ropes of the sail, preparing gunpowders and cannonballs—your eyes travel above your head when you see the ripped sail from the mast you are tied to. all the pieces culminating in your head as the cogs in your brain move to put them into place.

that’s when it hit you.

they’re leaving. and they will be leaving with you.

“why am i here, hook?” you said with your gritted teeth, rubbing the rope against the wooden beam as best as you can. you knew that it might work as yeonjun taught you to cut a rope with a rock, even showing you how to do it when you helped him cut a trapped animal from one of the traps he use to hunt.

“that’s captain jeon to you, miss. i suppose because you live with those lost boys you called me ‘hook’ too.” the captain spits out as your gaze continues moving to observe the hectic ship’s deck. the urgency growing inside of you as you don’t know if you can conceal your hands from moving faster than they should be. the faster it will be, the better the chances of you returning to your commune.

but did you want?

“answer my questions or i’ll scream my heart out so the boy-“

“you’re here because you’re in danger!“

the captain’s words cut yours off to a halt. eyes narrowing as you stare at the captain, noticing the paper on his only hand with the arch of his hook nudging against your forearm.

“right as we want to talk with you about something. i heard you grumble to yourself about not being able to go home.“ the captain continues as your gaze on him is full of caution. but you don’t want him to know that when he spoke the words about going back home, you remembered your thoughts from last nights before going unconscious, even in the middle of the rum’s influence.

“we saw pan flying back from the other world holding a stack of papers. fortunately, a few of them were caught by the wind and fall to our area.“ hook looks down at the paper he holds before pushing one towards your vision.

“you couldn’t believe what we read.“ his words fade as you stare at the writings and a drawing on the paper.

MISSING

(y/f/n)

Description: Last seen in a white dress...

your eyes gaze down at the words before you stare back at the illustration above the name. a sketch of your face that resembles as close as you look. looking down once again, past the big words of where to report and the informations of your appearance, you see words written in cursive. an afterthought that someone might have wrote as you read the words one by one. eyes widen when you understand what is implying.

please bring our darling back.

your heart tugs within you making you bite your lip. the leftover emotions from last night come again as you look elsewhere, shaking your head to not internalize the words.

“how, how should i trust you that soobin brought this back here? you could be lying and made, and-“ your running thoughts stopped you from talking. your gaze returns back to the captain, seeing a slight frown in his expression before he looks away.

“mingyu, bring the other ones.“ hook spoke loudly to his first mate, mingyu, when you heard the wooden sounded behind you—the area of the upper deck you could vividly identify from memory. footsteps rapidly approaching where you were tied as you notice around ten more sheets of paper identical to the one the captain showed you in his hands. some of the ink streaks makes the words larger and some of them crinkled under the sun—must’ve been picked up from the ocean’s surface as you might guess from a sheet of paper falling from the sky.

you scoured the papers one by one as your breathing becomes short. finding the exact same information even to the small cursive writing that is littered in different areas of each posters. not believing what you figured out may be true before you even see scratchier handwriting that a child must have written—one of your youngest siblings.

“they’re searching for me.“

your thoughts from last night came back to you as your drunken rage determines you to make the choice of going home because of how lonely you are feeling. even after staying here for longer than you remembered, you still miss your family back home. you can’t help but be to envious of your younger siblings as your mother and father spare you, but that doesn’t mean that you hated their guts because they live. if the posters said anything, they’ve missed their oldest sibling too.

the thoughts reminds you back to soobin’s plea to make you stay. doubts still are within you as you wanted to go home before he tells you how much they don’t worry about you. how he told you stories of his own parents and why he now lives here with the boys. pan’s arms are around you as you cry your heart out from how much you miss them. the unfulfilled promise he still owes you that made you that drunk last night.

how he convinces you so much that you believe him.

“is everything pan told me a lie?“ you said with a resolute voice, the rage making the vase inside your splinter into smithereens as you can’t help but let the tears that were prickling your eyes out and stain your cheeks. the muscles on your face contort as you felt folds forming from how you frown and blare your nostril until it became numb to your nerve how sore it is.

“we- we don’t know, (y/n)-“ his voice got caught off as a familiar moth flow to land on the paper. a moth you remember staying by your pot of flowers by your windowsill. its wings flutter as you stare at it, vision got blurry as you covered them.

instead, you were greeted with a white fog as you gazed at an intersection that you recognized to be where your home is located. you were idle as you stare down to see the end of the paper gushing from the night’s wind. you’re seeing the road as part of the poster itself, sticking onto a pole while being blown by the light gush of the night’s wind.

that’s when you notice a shadow rushing around the lamppost across from you that you see also have the same posters. the silhouette gets clearer and clearer until you take in colors on a person right under the streetlight. the familiar outer garment turned into a white coat as did with his tattered pants became clean, but their unnaturally blond hair stood out.

pan.

soobin.

his eyes gaze at the poster right across the street from where you at as you see him ripping it off and tucking it beside his other hand—where you can see how thick the stack is. he does that multiple times on the posters on poles and beams, picking away other people’s effort to search for your whereabouts. and as he pulls them off more and more, you realized just how much he doesn’t care about your status to the people back at your home.

his mumbling voice gets closer to where you at before he’s standing in front of you. you couldn’t say anything even if you want to. at this state, you were the paper that he will be ripping from where they stick you in a few minutes.

shivers run down your body as you met soobin’s dark gaze while he stares at the poster—you. when you look down on his image, the sleeves of his white coat are littered with maroon petal-like patterns. too unnatural to be done by a tailor. you can even smell the iron-like scent exuding from the patches.

“this world doesn’t deserve you, my darling. you’re mine to keep in neverland. and i’ll do anything to make you stay.“ soobin monologues to the drawing of you; his cold demeanor is something you recognized from the first months you lived as his neighbor.

“if it means i have to kill the people that spread these posters,“ he said with his clenched teeth before ripping the paper off.

the sound of it rings in your ear as you heard the rustling of trees from the shore beside the pirates’ ship. your gaze returns from the leaves as you see your bloody self between the captain and his first mate as you gave a nod.

“we need to get out of here.“ you find your resolution as you were met with a saddening gaze of yourself before you perceived something surging in your body. an alert of some sort playing in your head as your vision returns to the forest. the trees are moving from above, the branches getting tighter to form a barrier of some sort. that is until you feel something hurting you from the inside in a form familiar to a lightning strike, quick in succession. a few more painful slashes you felt within you as you can feel plants losing their links to you. all the plants that you have connected with throughout the island is telling you the same thing as more and more hits come to hurt you.

“he’s coming. pan is coming.“ you said with your might as strong as you could, holding the pain inside to not let the pirates panic. hook’s eyes widened along with mingyu before the captain commands his mates to hurry up. a slap on the skin is what you felt when the island’s plants are being cut off one by one, all of them are there to protect you and to let you leave with the pirates as fast as you can.

the captain is turning around when you call, “captain jeon.“

he turns towards you as your limp body leans forwards from exhaustion. but you held your head up high as you said to him, “if he comes closer to me, i want you to kill me with the dagger i brought.”

you knew about the dagger’s disappearance as you felt how light the sheath of it wrapped around your thigh. you remember it falling from your grasp when you wanted to attacked who kidnapped you. and so, you knew that they have it their possession. it will be a haunting memory for the boy to see if he is not careful enough.

“what do you mean, miss-“

“you know what he is capable of.“ you sniff your runny nose as the emotions are pouring out of you. “he won’t stop until he gets me back. and i rather die than be with his manipulative self.“

your vision reverts as you stare at yourself in the mirror. the weights on your words echoes in your thoughts as you finally recalled the whole truth that is also hurting yourself from within you. fists clenched as you try to bare it.

“then soobin came flying to the top of the ship’s deck with a machete. slashing every crewmate that fought for us before his powers explode around the human barrier.“

your eyebrows furrowed, listening to you talking as the exact memory is playing into your head. on how you tried your best to look away at the brutality and the truth of the boy you love so much. you soothe yourself from the pain in your head for learning the ultimate truth. a force within yourself is pushing back on something powerful to make you not remember. something that must have come from a being as strong as pan.

“blood and flesh splatter everywhere as soobin approaches us. he had a manic look in his eyes before untying us. i was numb in wretch and disgust for the boy i love to be as ignorant to other people. the blood of the crewmates stains our white dress as he hugs us. but you remember what i said to hook, and we felt something pierce through our skin from the lower back. the dagger he gave to us.“

you stare at yourself as you were given a bird's eye view of your memory. you remembered mentioning the dagger you talked about with soobin before he was being put off of it. but you called him out about his pocket knife as he immediately reply with “i don’t have a pocket knife.” something that makes you squint your eyes as you remember a certain swiss army knife in his possession.

your memories continue to play in your mind as you see yourself slump on the deck where you see soobin being held back by captain jeon. the pain surging through your body and your head getting heavy from the blood loss. that’s when soobin hits hook in the stomach before reaching for you, wrapping your weaken body near his own.

“i almost spoke our last words to him before death comes to pick us up in his arm as we lose so much blood, staining his already bloody hands to add more to his kill list.“ you continue to tell.

“i…“ your voice is so little only he could pick up. soobin’s tears fall on his cheek as your life fades away.

“you know what i wanted to say to him as i died in his arms?“ your old self asked as you stare at her in the mirror.

i love you?

i’m sorry?

those were what you thought before you hear the actual answer.

“i won’t forgive you.“

the words caught you off guard as you make sense of it. for sure, that is what you will say to him after everything that is done between you and him on that forsaken island. his restrictions to you to visit home even when he flew there to do his errands, his hold on you so tight that he won’t let you go until he needed too. the way he trusted the boys to take care of you, to be your guard in both positive and negative way. and also, the other beings on the island hating you might be one of the evidences of that—he doesn’t want you to be close to other beings.

“why didn’t these memories come to me when i remember?” you muttered as you stare at yourself, seeing the sagging of your shoulders as a tear dropped from your eyes.

“you don’t know. i know you don’t because soobin did something to stop you from remembering that.” you give a solemn smile.

“i was given a chance to see myself and neverland for the last time before death take me away to the afterlife. that’s when a sudden burst came from him. it killed those on the ship: hook, yeonjun, taehyun, kai, and beomgyu who arrived at the beach, and more people that i knew won’t have a chance to live because of his first outburst. but it is bigger in scale than i thought.” you inspect the blooming trauma in your eyes before continuing.

“every living being on the island was dead because of him and his selfishness. and it turns neverland into a lush island full of crimson.” you let out a frown, continuing to listen.

“so he take our dead body to the island’s deity’s altar and beg for it to give him a second chance to be with us, but he failed.”

your legs wobble, especially from the known information about him as you hold on to the mirror’s frame. how can he be so cruel to other beings? he is the sweetest boy you’ve ever met. but now, you don’t know if what he told you is the truth or not. what his actions is really from him or just something he want to portray to make you believe him.

“that’s when he purposed something. he’ll get us back and rip our memory of bad things involving him and our captivity by his side. in return, he gave up his powers, immortality, and the neverland island.”

“he’s immortal?” you then got a reply with a hum.

“all of the lost boys are immortal, especially with his responsibility to be the imaginary friend to children who is scared to grow up. he never wanted to do that in the first place, right?”

he never wanted to grow up. that’s true. all the lost boys never wanted to grow up beyond 18. beyond the cusp of adolescence and childhood. maybe he wanted you to be like that too, but you were mortal and you were knew to the place. the other boys got killed by his powers—maybe his power set transcends immortality.

“‘the great pan is dead’ was what everyone was chanting as he sacrifices himself. i watched from the nearby tree with clenched as the island lost its protector; all of them not knowing that he is sacrificing them too, just to get you back.”

and that’s why you’re back with your ability to connect with plants coming naturally—your gift of loving them back your home is embraced by the island’s magical rules. the lost boys are back but not in the same body. hook and his first mate is back and so are the pirate mates who are your other co-workers in the pub. maybe there were even more people like you back then who had elemental powers on the island. maybe they are there but soobin’s selfishness holds you back to discover and learn from them.

but what you are disappointed about yourself is how you can easily believe him after all of that. and now you’re here, getting back into the same cycle when he even made you forgot to take off the plants that you have promised to yourself, especially daisy sprout who you have been given since you were child living with your grandma. you didn’t have any choice to fight against the forces that pushes you to forget, before you helped by uncovering the truth.

“how about the rumors about kook at the pub?”

“it’s false. he might be the only other person to realize the reincarnation. the poor man was having paranoia as he tried his best to approach you and tell you about this as fast as you can. he forces himself into his subordinates’ vicinity so that they can remember about soobin. his hoarding of the money for the ingredients is his pirating tendency going on. but after that incident at the locker room, he might not even be sane with your layoff—wanting to get rid of you for his and his crews’ safety.” you sounded, rambling about the information as if you witness it yourself—maybe you did and that’s why you can articulate it so well.

“some foul play might also happen that even make you more dependent on pan. i would guess that he even convinced the two owners to let his rotational shifts be with you most of the time.” you continued as your mind runs in hyper-speed, connecting the dots one by one.

you breathe heavily, head in your hands as you try to soothe yourself as best as you can. but it’s not working. doubt always comes in like someone spying on you and you rid yourself of the mirror.

“what should i do?” you ramble on and on the same words, walking out of your room as your legs buckle and make you fall on the dead plants. your emotions are overwhelming you so much that it pains your body.

your body curling into a fetal position is natural for you. you let your tears wet the dead floras that you let down. breathing becomes hard as you hug yourself, regretting everything about the life you had now. the moth crawls on your figure as you heard yourself mutter sweet words to encourage you.

what should i do?

what should i do?

you sensed another thing on your skin as you open your eyes to stare at the hand in front of you, laying on the bed of leaves. you see a monarch butterfly moving about on top of your hand. one that exudes such a familiar aura as you can’t help but to greet it.

“grandma…” you muttered. it turns to face you.

“let us help, darling.” you heard the familiar timbre echoes to you.

more shadows of winged insects enters your balcony as they all land on you. yet, you don’t feel ticklish, you embrace them. they open their wings to protect you like a shield, covering your body from danger, temperature-wise or maybe physical danger.

as more of the lepidopterans rested on your body, more information came to mind. a highway of them built up as quickly as it can as you gather the information in your brain and process it as fast as you can. you couldn’t articulate each and every one of them but a few through lines were made: how everyone in this city is a reincarnation of every being on the island. sirens, fairies, and other beings you aren’t close with back on the island, even if you push yourself to before they pushed back. you find the fact more reliable as more moths gathered and introduce yourself to your network of information. most of them were the beings in the previous lives on the island. their apologies reverberate in your mind, them not being there with you.

“pan said awful things about you that we can’t help but believe. now we know we were wrong. he was trying to make us stay away to keep you all to himself.”

they all rested on your figure as you sense something wrapping around your forefinger. your eyes glance down as you see glowing green shining from beneath, repairing the dead plants as they move to wrap you around and even grow flowers for the insects to help, spreading life and information.

you are connected with both of them.

“how can we help?” you heard you ask, the garden tiger moth hover near your face as your antennae moves to capture what you were going to talk about.

“if what the moths said are true, that all of the people here are reincarnated from neverland too. we will deliver them a message. the truth. stealthily.” you sounded as resolute as ever, a tear falling from the corner of your eyes and landed on the plants that are healing themselves.

your antennae move as it receives your command. the critters and the plants now joining under your command as they surround you like a cocoon—finishing your metamorphosis.

-

for about two months, you dwell on your task to deliver the people of the city a message. the truth about their existence and the cause of the world they live in. butterflies and moths work in tandem to uncover the memories suppressed by the brain and the force that also holds you back. and every time you succeed, the plant life will overgrow and tackle the glass and/or concrete walls.

acting on intuition is becoming such a normality for you ever since everything changed, especially when it comes to your matured abilities. knowledge is coursing through your brain from the pieces of information you get, sending them to your plants to store and sort. getting even stronger with every overgrown plant that has grown because of people knowing the truth.

you play soobin well for someone that has been untruthful about your well-being in the past few months now, decorating his apartment unit better with a few trinkets that remind you of him and neverland. all of that is to not let him sniff the stronger flower scent exuding from you, the flower scent that might have been with you all this but elevated as your influence grew stronger.

waking up late at night is now a habit of yours. you crawl away from soobin’s arms and greeted the lamp-lit living area before you go to the balcony. you used to only gaze at the nightlife that is happening but now; you let your arm out across the barrier. the time to wait doesn’t take as long as when you started when an eclipse of moths gather and land on the length of your arm. the overflowing news makes you close your eyes. they dash behind the lids: gathering all the information that benefits you before you send them out once again. the prickling sense on your skin still lingers as you return to soobin’s sleepy figure in your shared bed.

“can’t sleep?” someone asked, startling you. you find the boy you were thinking of sitting up against the bed’s headboard, his blond hair in disarray. even from the entrance of the bedroom, you can see him squinting his eyes. goosebumps unconsciously form on your skin.

“ah, yeah… i went to get a drink.” you blatantly as you stepped closer, gnawing the inside of your cheek as you approach him. he didn’t greet you with his usual small smile before you practically kneel on the mattress as you crawl closer. he grabs your body into his, something so natural to him. a searing kiss follows as you reciprocate the best you can, feeling his tongue trying to push in between your lips as you reciprocate. soobin leans away as you breathe heavily before he sniffs the crook of your neck—the hickey he gave you just hours ago is still burning your skin.

“you smell like a bouquet of flowers more and more,” he mumbles. you can’t help but rub his blond hair, giving a hum as he continues to sniff your accented scent. yet your gaze tells otherwise. if one can see, they recognized that worrisome is growing in you.

even though you are trying your best to not question the changes in things that occurred and settle into your “new life” that is nagging you, you’re worried that soobin seems to figure something out. a day could pass and a new piece of information can change your standing. soobin might be glad you’re not as curious as you were back in your previous life, but you exchanged it with how meticulous you are now.

why does this bother you? that’s because soobin never wakes up while you’re awake to receive your messages and each time that has passed, he is getting more aware—exceptionally faster than the first month of operation. you can figure it out with how tight he holds you more and more, then how much he marks you as his on any occasion he can, even in visible areas so people could know you are his. the ring of messages is approaching the campus area you lived in and his awareness seems to get more explicit every minute.

but didn’t you like it that he holds you like his world? should you?

you rub his blond hair as he drops on the mattress along with you. his hands wrapping and pushing your torso to his so it stays close. you felt him nibble on the skin of your neck, which makes you let out a breathy moan before he murmured.

“wake me up if you’re gonna leave the bed. i don’t want to be left alone.”

your vision stares at the sunken pillow as you slip away from him before giving him a long kiss. his lips linger on yours as you give a small hum before resting your head on his chest. shifting your head to the side, you couldn’t hold back the guilt and disgust showing in your facial expression.

with your ability to know everything, you, the plants, and the lepidopterans work together to gather intel whilst you gave out the message. and as the edge of the city is successfully influenced in one try—letting the plants grow and fight the city itself. but as it comes closer to the campus area and your tower, the stronger the force to make them not remember is going, making you have to do more than one visit to each person. and you hated that it could let your critters get damaged, how you can even sense the minuscule pain from them just because they got slapped away for being too close.

after waking up from the cocoon, you felt more potent than ever when you see the chlorophyll green trails along the beds of your fingertips before arriving at your knuckles as you use more and more of your ability. the flower scent coming from you is getting more prominent in every iteration of new information, new messages successfully carried, and new buildings occupied under your supervision of spreading plants.

every time the whole five of them left the tower to do what they were doing—classes, their shift at the bar, et cetera; you returned to your sanctuary and only your sanctuary. you changed your passcode to something only you know. opening the door, you are greeted by the growing vine that is a few meters away from your door, a glow of green running about like ocean waves that illuminate your living area. your home became so lush that it inspired you to draw them in your notebook. the plants instead elevate your pieces of furniture so that it gives out a new aesthetic. and every time you return, you immediately rid yourself of the dirt-covered clothes so the others couldn’t suspect you of returning to your apartment, especially because of soobin’s biased opinion on what you can and can’t do that still makes your fist clenched.

you let your head rest on soobin’s chest as you can hear his heart thumping beneath you in a steady beat. calming you as you close your eyes, receiving many signals from the spreading insects and plants that help spread your message: to make them think intuitively and to make them remember the neverland island.

receiving so much news about people thanking you is overwhelming, to say the least. hearing their call of missing neverland and who they were made a bubble inflating inside you about how they could have just lived their lives without pan intermingling them into his wishes. how he took their lives away from them just so he has you back again. you thought the overgrown plants will receive complaints from around the city, but with your now-connected hive mind, you realize just how much they missed the greenery and the whole atmosphere of the island. because they aren’t weird, they are part of your lives.

you kiss soobin’s pouty lips goodbye as you see the others waving with their hands holding their various styles of bags before all of them step into the elevator to do their days full of classes and work around noon. as you heard the moving machinery carrying them down the tower, your smile falters as you paced to your apartment and press in your new passcode.

the glowing greenery decorates the entire apartment as you stepped inside, seeing the flowers and vines growing around with butterflies and moths resting on them as they turn to greet you in their own way. you pull off your slippers as you strode onto the bed of leaves that formed in your home, letting the plants welcome you as you let your refreshed energy transfer to them. your eyes transfixed on the large wall behind your couch full of vines bordering its side and smaller stems connecting in the middle of a large open patch. the plants illustrate an intricate map of the city, the vines growing slowly as your messages continue to be successfully sent from the edge to the center of the map: where you reside. where the resistance is the strongest.

the patch is slowly getting covered as you can identify the recognizable layout of the campus area. a small flower pinpoints the epicenter of the influence before it’s complete. you observed the vines approaching the block where the neverland pub stands, only in a few hours that their occupants will understand the truth.

kaleidoscopes of butterflies and eclipses of moths gather under your unspoken command before flying away to deliver your message, to make them remember who they are in the past and what their guardian did for the sake of himself. more of them left and come back to aid in your revenge as you isolate yourself for hours n a meditative state as the sun passes the threshold of the afternoon approaching sundown. very different from the isolation that soobin gave you. you’re more alive.

your bedroom is mostly left untouched by the growing vines as you walked inside it, replacing soobin’s clothes he told you to wear with your own overalls and a shirt that is grandma’s hand-me-down. you felt more like yourself with it, but you don’t know if you are yourself given the consequences of who you are. you aren’t the innocent (y/n) that first arrived at the city, but you are not the (y/n) that the lost children are trying to portray. the new isolated adventure you have indulged in has created a new you, resilient and intelligent.

however, when you spot the music box soobin gave you on your desk, your foundation makes new cracks. what will happen to him after all of this? you still care for him but you learned that by doing this, you might indulge his dangerous self more and more. his childish, possessive self that claims you like a toy in his possession. pan has good in him when he volunteers to be the island’s protector, but he should know that nothing lasts forever in reality.

maybe this detour adventure of yours will let him and you see who both of you truly are.

you picked up the music box and open it to see the recognizable siren song playing in an orgel-like style. the melody and harmony twinkle into your ears. you hold the music box and place it on the dining table as you look at the boulder with the siren spinning. your thoughts return to that incident by the beach where pan and the lost boys helped naïve you to fight the siren song. soobin’s eyes spoke so many things as the influence died down, but only now could you recognize an underlying rage in it. maybe he had that rage since he was a child, and that is why he can’t fully let go of his childhood.

your phone that is tucked in your pant pocket rumbles against your thigh. your eyes gaze at the open balcony door to watch another group of critters enters and exit from the sanctuary. pulling it out as you pushed the melody of the orgel away, you glance at the screen to find the name you didn’t expect. kook.

“hello?” you answer the call, eyes glancing sideways as one moth landed on your hand.

“(y/n), i’m sorry for laying you off. i-“ you heard the men sigh. “i’m sorry to worry you that much and for the papers.”

the moth confirmed what your suspicion is. “we have got through captain jeon.”

“thank you for making me remember.” he lingers on his last words a second too much before the line is cut. your eyebrows creased when you gently drop your phone onto the table beside the music box. you see the vines climbing up the table’s feet and intertwining with both of the items. your head turns towards the wall when you detect the greenery has reached where the campus is, already covering the location of the pub as it crawls faster towards where you are.

you should be glad, but his lingering worries you.

the end is near for your two-month journey of establishing the truth. the plants grow from your might as your worries making them glow in the early evening. your skin has an underlying tint of green that is climbing up to your elbows in the shining sun that is sinking. the strength to push is tiring. but you want to say that all of them deserve to rest knowing the unjustness they’ve faced, including yours.

you move to rest your hand against the fence that separates you from the outside, gazing at your doing that you can detect only a few meters away, approaching the tower you live in. greenery stands out from the grey concrete as the sky becomes darker, sun shining on them giving out a trim highlights to the dull buildings. some plants travel slowly but some are fast—some even make the already available grass patches more lush as you see from the campus yard from where you stand. yet nobody questioned it as you watch small specks of shadows flying about, landing on one person before flying away. you assure them through the critters that it is normal, they’ve seen it neverland. that they should be grateful for nature because, without it, a species might not survive.

but doubts come back once again—ethically. is what you’re doing too much?

you have let revenge and justice push you to act against what soobin has done to you and you let the world pay for it. the world he made so you could be together. so what if you destroy it? destroy him? just one shot and you can make it, but will finishing this take away your humanity too?

you didn’t pick up the frantic footsteps outside of your apartment before you heard the beeps from the incorrect passcodes entered. exhaling your breath as the green light radiates more of the room each second, you turn towards the small monitor that list up when you heard bangs on the door.

“darling!” you recognized the familiar tone muffled with the door. glancing at the monitor, the blond hair peeks from beneath the screen as he is getting more and more desperate, trying to break the door away if he could. beeps replacing the sound of air as you stare at the door with an empty face, approaching it with the hint of green still left on your forearms.

with a small click of the door and a small gap between you and him, soobin pushes and immediately captures you in his arms. the casual street-style black outfit he wears for class today is in shambles as he cups your face. you were met with a frantic, noisy face full of many emotions where you could identify two that stood out. rage and panic.

“(y/n), darling,” he calls as you remain in your blank expression, pushing your emotions elsewhere to your plants and influence so they could grow even under these circumstances. but even deep inside you, you’re trembling—one slight change and you can break down in his arms once again. your heart is beating under your skin as you push with your might. you felt one vine travel up your overalls and wrapped around your finger when your body suddenly moves from soobin’s hold as he pushes you behind him.

the sound of a rip cut through the vast air in the room as you caught a silver of his expression change from the boy before you were being pushed back. your expression instantly changes when you see him brandishing the swiss army knife he had to cut the growing vines that are closing to both of you when before he cuts them off in a swift motion, hurting you too. you hold on from groaning in pain as you listened to the ripping sounds and hurting voices within you, pushing yourself up to watch soobin cuts the sentient plants more and more. hands wrapped around his front, you hold him back with your strength as best as you can. yet, he didn’t stop even if you might claw his skin off.

“let me go! let me fucking go! they’re influencing you, darling!” soobin screams as you put all your weight to the floor to stop him from moving, wincing in pain as he gets a few slashes on them because of his long and unrestrained limbs.

“these plants deserve me more than you.” you spit out as he continues to try to move even under your grasp. looking away to focus on holding to him, you didn’t see soobin pulling something out of his pant pockets when you hear the sound of a click. a familiar click.

“i knew i should have burned these plants when i helped you move them here.” eyes widen from his doing, you watch the lit lighter dropped onto the bed of leaves in front of both of you as they ignite—combining the few dried materials along with your flammable apartment parts. you could feel them aching from within you. the moths and butterflies are flying to get to you, but they’re caught by the fire and its crackle that flew as it spreads.

your eyes glance at your fallen friends as you let go of soobin, pushing him away as you stare at your work all being demised. the walls started to burn as you can’t bear the pain, making your legs buckle under you as you rested on the patch that are unlit. you still sense the slashes from the pocket knife as an underlying pain, seeing soobin doing so—the cold demeanor returning to him with an expression of satisfaction.

“STOP IT! YOU’RE HURTING ME!” you yelled, curling your head into your hands. peeking between your fingers, you see soobin pausing his movement before turning around, approaching you with his hand tight around the handle of the knife.

“you should’ve never gone back here. i told you so.” his timbre is unrecognizable.

“and for what? punishing me? stopping me to know the truth about us? about you?” you shouted back as you lift your head and stare at him. the heat of the fire is surrounding both of you as you see the vines turning into ashes, reaching for you so that they could stay alive.

“you sacrifice everything back in neverland to have me back and yet you didn’t tell me the whole truth about what you’re doing on that ship. how could you?” you shake your head as you felt sorry for how he manipulates your thoughts about captain jeon from his recalling. how he also manipulates your perception of kook in this life.

“you could’ve just brought me back to let me meet my parents-“

“they won’t fucking believe you’re alive after you went missing for months, darling.” your breath hitches as he kneels to get closer to you. “you’re mine. no one deserves you more than me. and if i brought you back, they’re gonna claim you back.”

“because they are my family, soob-“

“and if they did so, you’re not going back to me. i know it,” he continued. his jaw is tight as he tilts his head. his eyes pierce into your trembling soul. “i rather ignore your wish instead so you’ll stay with me.”

“you’re fucking cruel. fucking selfish,” you spoke behind your gritted teeth. one stem seems to crawl out to you as you place your palm on them, trying your best to heal them. but it was too late as you felt the life dispersing from it, because of the fire that spreads too fast.

“i’ll do anything to get you to submit to me. that also means hurting you. those plant powers of yours shouldn’t work to fight against me. they are neverland‘s powers, to begin with.”

you almost wanted to believe him where your mind is scrambling to find the right words to say against that. that’s when you remember a memory of yourself in your past life, long before meeting pan and him taking you to neverland.

you miss seeing stains on your dress from playing at the park where fancy-looking people also enjoy themselves, trailing down a path full of beds of flowers as you grazed your fingertips against their petals, feeling them coil to the touch. how only on this island that you can touch them again and they reciprocate by wrapping their petals around your fingertips; missing you, as if they learn about you from the plants you sightsee back home.

no. the gift you have isn’t neverland-owned unlike pan’s. yours were there in the first place. even in another life, you still have it. your grandma has the same gift as well. you being in neverland only enhanced it. pushing it more than your capability. maybe there were people like you who has those gifts too, on the island or not.

at the realization of that, you sensed something bloom inside you. it tickles you as you see the familiar green glow exuding in your veins before collecting in your palm. you push it against the floor as it is lit with a dim green glow beneath the orange flame. your energy being transferred one last time to get the grasp of the plants that are hurting to help you. to sprout who you can feel is still alive somewhere in this room. to the butterflies and moths who are there to deliver your message. the souls inside them, your ancestors, the reincarnations, and your old self.

you let out an exasperated laugh, “yet you didn’t count for this, huh?”

pushing yourself up, you stumble on the patch as the fire steps closer to your skin. rising above the flame, balls of fire also float out of the surrounding fire. their flames dispersed and you finally saw the small bodies of the butterflies and moths that were with you in this room. the wings replace with flames as you command them to go away from your apartment and spread the message. more passionate than ever while you face the being that causes this world and city to appear.

“that is impossible,” he muttered under his breath before seeing you let out an unnatural smirk. dark green shade blends in with the skin on your arm.

you replied, “nothing is impossible in this world you made. pan.”

your clothes were burnt on the edges as the plants create a path for him to come close, reminiscent of the bubble wrapping that litters the floor on your first day here.. the charcoal-colored vines pull him in as you stand face to face. you would gladly beat him, but punching isn’t your best skill as you remembered back from training with him on the shore of the island.

“i should be like the darling in the fairytale book about us. leaving neverland to grow up, letting you stay as their guardian. now you brought me here to this fucking hell hole to be with you. you who-“ your voice is strained as you let out all the pent-up rambles that have travelled inside your mind for months.

“you who don’t even respect me for who i am.” you pursed your lips and shake your head.

“i was protecting you. your family aren’t as different as mine back in that life. i have to live with them again twice before i push myself to lash out and get my inheritance from them early. you know what they are like. and even if i brought you back to them, do you believe they care?” soobin argues back when you caught a small implication between him and his parents that made you angrier, shaking your head in disbelief.

“you didn’t even fucking see the small sentence written on that poster. they do in that life. in this life, they also do. grandma does and always will care for me even until her last breath. and if you say what you’re doing is caring for me. you’re fucking wrong!” you shouted, clenching your fist as you hold on. your head is swaying because of how much you are exerting, but you drive forward.

“nothing in this world is black and white, darling. look at what you’ve done. and you didn’t even stop it.” soobin opens his arms as you gaze around. the flame that was only burning the room now ignites the ceiling and your floor—hurting the tenants above and below you who aren’t supposed to be involved. your vision lands on the building across from you. the building that is full of plants make holes in the wall as you see leaning because of the lack of foundation. because of your influence to let them recognize that nature will beat concrete and it endangers the people in them.

“i’m doing this so i can have a chance with you once again. you know you want to when you asked me the exact thing on the island.” soobin approaches you as you turn around to face him. his countenance mirrors yours, who has tears running down your cheek.

“you promise me an adventure in our previous life.” you swallow your breath and stabilize yourself as best as you can. “yet you kept me like an animal in a zoo. you kept me in this beautiful paradise of a cage and limit me from anyone.” your glare spears through to his barrier. yet he throws his face away and scoffed.

“then stop spreading the plants to make it better. you’re hurting people.”

“you hurt ME.” you pointed your finger to your chest as you stepped forward. “and you hurt them too when you sacrifice them to get me back.” you rubbed your hands against your hair, wanting to rip them off your scalp.

“these plants and my ability to connect with them help me stay sane back on the island. the same thing is happening now.” you step back to fully look at him as you continue. “i know that every person in the city is related to neverland. every siren and mermaid i never met. every fairy and magical being on that island that loathed me under your manipulation so i could stay with you. with what i’m doing, i’m telling them the truth, soobin.”

tilting your head, you sniff away your runny nose and let the tears streak down your skin. the flame produces the burnt smell you recognize. pan stood in front of a fire that frames him and it could be interpreted in two ways: the bad guy trying to keep things wrong or the good guy trying to make things “right”. and you are conflicted because of that.

you understood, deep down, you might be a lost cause. even with all the effort that you do to do justice for the people in the city—even jaemin, chaewon, suhyeon, and jihoon who are under his command—, you don’t know if you could find justice for yourself. because soobin has a special place in your heart.

he was the boy that found you at your lowest and helps you build yourself up. he was the same boy that keeps you safe with the adventures you, him, and the lost boys had. he was the most explicit person to show you how much he cared for you. without him and his selfishness, he might not give you and him a second chance. you might not meet your grandma without that second chance. you might not have these grand adventures with the lost children without it. and like what grandma reminded you: life is an adventure, no matter how planned or unplanned it is.

and you knew you only had one choice to end this. the one way that you and pan, the catalysts of all of this, will be satisfied; even if he’ll like it or not. besides, if he could be selfish, you could too, right?

your face held a stern expression of resolute, a mixture of emotions sprinkle in them to help you more. putting your foot carefully one after the other, your body is now inches away from touching his, eyes gazing at his who is frantically looking all over your face. trying to read the complicated message you’re letting out.

“if you want me to stop this.” you nip your bottom lip, hesitating to continue as the stake of what you’re doing. yet you pushed forward.

“if you do love me, let me go. let yourself go.” you reach for his right wrist and wrapped it with your hand.

“without the powers. without the memories. just you and me. let’s start over.” his previous gaze at you becomes large, facing you who has a determined expression.

“grow up, soobin.”

you pull his right wrist and rise it up before plunging the pocket knife into your chest. the pain you’re feeling is familiar to your body, because of what you get from the previous life and the aching your heart felt with every revelation. yet, the pain helps you subside everything as you can see the blooming maroon color coming from your chest.

soobin frantically tries to hold your limping body with his free hand as comfortably as he can. your grasp on the knife’s handle didn’t let go as you pull it out of your chest before pushing it into soobin’s. both of you taking part in killing one another.

you expected to see a look of disgust when he grimaced at the pain, but a smile formed on his face. his eyes shine with the light of the flame reflecting it. you also followed with your own smile as you stare at the red handle of the knife that shines along with the flames mirroring light. soobin’s eyes stare at you with his signature eye smile. you glance at the darker patch on his black t-shirt and the tool that causes it.

“i always knew that it was my pocket knife. no wonder i never found it here,” you mumbled as you and soobin buckled and landed on the floor, hands holding onto each other. he’s still strong enough to let out a chuckle.

“i was trying to-“ he cleared his throat, “to not let this happen again. yet here we are.”

“here we are indeed,” you reply. under the crackling of the flame, you didn’t hear the banging door of your apartment as you recognize the sound of your friends behind it. it’s admirable for them to still come and try to get you out even in this burning building. but with a look exchange between you and soobin, you know both of you won’t survive this.

soobin moves his hand and pushes your body to his, embracing you for the last. your blood staining his shirt along with his blood on yours. your eyes stare one last time at the burning plants around you as you see a familiar silhouette of sprout, its petals burning as it lets you carry on.

“i’ll see you on the other side, pan,” you mumbled to his ear, letting the flame consume both of you as you almost didn’t catch his whisper.

“see you on the other side, darling.”

-

the stumbling of the floor comes to a slow and fading halt. the scenery behind the vertical glass stops. the people inside the small space stand up and grab their stuff from shelves hanging from the ceiling. any time they take a step, the floor sways. they’re heading the same way: to the exit.

you step out onto a smaller train station from where you left as you embrace the air of the town. the suitcase you drag has a duffel bag on top of it while you sling another carry-on in one arm and a backpack on your behind. all you need to do is contact the number you kept.

you did so as you walked around the abundance of people that also step out from the same train as yours. all of them forming a line that you follow to the exit. putting your phone by your ear, you heard the beeps as your call is going through the noisy invisible waves. eyes open wide as you try to see the person you’re calling.

when you step outside, you caught someone calling your name. you couldn’t help to let the smile out as you face them.

“mr. jung!” you exclaimed, trailing away to the man as he comes and wraps his arms around you as best as he could with the luggage you carry. letting you go, he helped you carry pieces of your luggage into the boot of his van.

it trails down the road as you glance at the town you left after grandma passed away. but you always knew you returned here. that’s how much you miss her.

“how’s your detour in the city?” mr. jung asked you as your eyes stare out of the window.

“it was eventful, to say the least. i spread my wings like what grandma asked me to.” you heard him chuckle as he drops something on your lap. it glimmer under the sunshine when you take a peek.

“you were lucky there is one more condo empty when you needed my help. i knew your grandma would want you to live in a smaller residence rather than her house. she wanted life to be easier for you.” mr. jung speaks as you picked up the item, examining the key to your new home. you were glad the inheritance was enough, and you learned that you have to search for a job soon. mr. jung said that there is a new flower shop in the downtown area, maybe you could try applying there.

stepping out of the van, you were met with a five-story building as the older man helps you put down your luggage beside you. your eyes admire the clean building as you stare at the window of one condo on the third floor. the condo you can call yours.

the rumbling of the van fades away as you remember mr. jung has to pick up one of his children from school. your eyes glance at the amount of luggage you have to carry up to the third floor. if only he could stay here longer to help-

“need any help?” you heard a voice calling for you. your eyes followed the source to find a tall boy with a black sweater and jeans, his bag’s strap slung across his chest. you see the black color of his hair root under the bleached ones. he must have bleached it so much that it looks dry and burnt. but you are glad to see him embracing his natural hair color back instead of bleaching it.

“you must be the new tenant,” he announced, pushing his palm towards you. an invitation for you to shake.

“i am. my name is (y/n). and that would be so helpful- uh...” you reply and shake his hand. feeling something electric cruising between the two of you as you tried to guess his name.

“soobin. it’s soobin. you’re my next-door neighbor.” he replied, his gaze landing on yours longer than you expected with you reciprocating. his face is so familiar, especially with the way he speaks with his eyes.

you let go of his hand as he gestures towards the two pieces he could carry. both of you enter the lobby of your condo as you step into the elevator. your grip on the handle of the suitcase is tight as you sensed the awkwardness exudes between the two of you. that’s when you accidentally take a peek at his open canvas bag to see a few books resting inside.

“you must like your books.” you give a small comment as you heard him chuckle.

“the perks of working in a bookstore, i guess,” he replied as you heard the ding of the elevator when its doors opened. your eyes landed on the boxes put outside of the door that you could recognize must be yours. soobin puts down the luggage near your feet before he straightens his body. that is when you notice that there is a tower of open empty boxes at the door across from yours.

“you also just moved in?”

“yeah. two weeks ago and i settle in pretty fast,” soobin replies, his body swaying as he gives a shy look at you.

“how- how about you? where did you come from?” he returned, curiosity evident in his voice.

“i’ve been this town citizen for most of my life. but i tried going to the city for a detour of some sort,” you replied whilst a chuckle left your lips.

“what city, to be exact?”

when you thought about the city, your memories get blurry as you can only remember a few striking images of the city.

“it’s a city that is so lush, full of overgrown. it doesn’t look like a city, to be honest, it looks like-“

“a forest.” soobin cuts you with the exact word you’re going to let out next. meeting his eyes, you see a look of recognition in him as he does as well to you before it fades away.

“i came from that city too. i guess i knew it was my time to leave and say farewell to it.” soobin replied, a smile showing on his face as you see the dimples forming from it.

“yeah, me too,” you answered as you exude the same smile.

even with both of your blurry memories of said city, it is real.

somewhere deep between tree covering, lies an abandoned city. the concrete towers have crumbled down to its foundation as it lets plants grow on it. creating a dichotomy of grays meeting greens that looks menacing, yet fascinating.

neverland.

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