BESTIEEE

BESTIEEE

I FINALLY PASSED MY HISTORY EXAM💃💃💃💃

I failed this exam A LOT OMG

BUT guess what...I PASSED IT WITH 100/100

Girl I can't believe it🥹🥹

SAUR how do you think xikers will react to you passing an exam/important test that you were working on for a long time/stressing over a lot?

You can write it whenever you can cuz I think your requests are closed, BUT I CAN WAIT. I want YOUR thoughts because you are the best writer on this app frfr. So take your time

Anyways take care bestie, don't skip your meals, love youu🤍

-🌵 anon<3

• PAIRING — bf!xikers x gn!reader

• GENRE — proud xikerss :DD, slight kissing, almost wrote a whole fic for hunter-

• WORD COUNT — 782

• AUTHOR'S NOTE — sorry this is so late!! And good job on your tests :O

• TAGLIST — @lil-elle , @hyunukitty , @cake1box , @mars101 , @nenede , @soul-is-a-strange-kid , @the-lemon-boy , @yuniniverse

MASTERLIST! – JOIN THE TAGLIST!

MINJAE ☆

Hes not even surprised atp, he knows how smart you are

But boy does he pretend to be shocked, his hand covering his mouth as he takes in another gasp

But his other hand is hiding behind his back

You seem to notice and the only thing he can do is giggle, revealing an neatly folded box

Turns out there was a very pretty necklace inside, minjae spinning you around to put it on you, whispering in your ear how pretty you look and how proud he is ♡

JUNMIN ☆

Makes sure you do nothing for the rest of the week

So what if its monday?? He'll do anything for his precious baby since you worked so hardd

Will make your meals and clean the kitchen, your room, your study area

Even gives you a bath

And he wont stop either, that is, if you want cuddles ♡

SUMIN ☆

Sumin knew how stressed out you'd get with your exams so he prepared you a little smth!!

(And also some tissues)

Finally uncovering your eyes, you find a self portrait of yourself studying

And lemme just say how beautiful you look

The lines sketched with such care and patients, now you know why sumin had been smiling so much lately ♡

JINSIK ☆

I think this calls for pizza!! 🗣🗣‼‼

Also makes sure you do nothing. All you gotta do is just there and look pretty and that was already took no effort

Also a movie night because why not, and you've been meaning to catch up on some movies, also why not??

His arm wrapped your shoulder at all times, and will whine if you try to move around

Plus random cheek kisses, yeah, thats about it ♡

HYUNWOO ☆

Decides to buy tickets last minute and takes you to the fair!!

Lots of hand holding and pda, wiping some off the cinnamon off of your lips caused by your churros

Will attempt to get you those huge teddy bears, but sulks when he cant so you just gotta give him some kisses

Also the ferris wheel!!

Makes sure youre at the tippy top then he processed to tell you how proud his is and how special you mean to him, sealing it with a kiss ♡

JUNGHOON ☆

Yall know junghoon isnt that big on physical affection

But when he hears the news hes a changed man

His eyes shot open and his hands moving faster than his brain, picking you up and spinning you around when he gives you the biggest kiss on your cheek

Wait whaat??

Wdym he did that no he didnt stop being so delusional he didnt kiss your cheek and secretly enjoyed it but not enjoying your teasings rn shut up 🙄 ♡

SEEUN ☆

"Really?! I thought you failed!!"

His response earned him a huge punch

But hes only joking, ruffling your hair before dialing his phone, calling everyone and their mom to tell the news

Man does more than just spill the tea, he makes it from scratch

Hes overally dramatic when he tells your adventure, saying how you had to cross 7 seas just to find the right answer.. but you love him anyways 🤷‍♀️ ♡

YUJUN ☆

Hes wants to hear all about it, so spill the tea 😠😠

Another one to think you taking a test was so dramatic, having to slay a dragon just to get the right answer to a question

And boy is he listening!! (He listens to you more than minjae)

He'd be so awestruck when youre done, his jaw lefted open and hes looking at you with sparkly eyes

Hes so proud of you too :(( ♡

HUNTER ☆

Also think hes like minjae with the gift giving, pulling out this beautiful bracelet he bought months ahead of time because he knew you'd do well

But unlike minjae, he takes you out to dinner!!

Yes, a big, fancy dinner. And hes paying for it all by himself <3

Hunters prince agenda omgomg

No bc he'd drop down on his knees to kiss the back of your hand, making sure to look up at you in the process, opens every. Since. Door in sight and also pushes you into your chair. Andd he also leans against the table to wipe something off the corner of your lips, giggling to himself bc youre just so adorable. i could write a whole fic honestly... ♡

YECHAN ☆

You passed your exam? Give him a hug

You got an A?? Give him a hug

You thought you were going to fail? Frowns at you, before hugging you tightly

Spends the rest of the day giving you so much love, youre only allowed to be in his arms

And is the boy so soft??? The most gentle hes ever been ♡

seungkwan thanking moonbin for always loving svt...scoups joining them for the daesang...woozi mentioning how he's been making music for svt for a decade and he finds joy in how carats repay them with achievements like this...wonwoo saying "thanks to carats i have one more thing to brag about to my mom"...these 13 gentlemen truly deserve so much love and happiness and im glad that they're getting not only that but above it all they always, always, have each other and their relationship just gets better with time and perhaps im emotional asf

It's literally jeno and jaemin

I saw this last night and thought it was so funny, so I had to share!

there are two wolves inside of me, one wants me to be productive so I won't end up thinking about things I shouldn't and the other just wants me to do nothing all day

how seventeen eat their s/o's cooking

cw: food mentions

requested by anon >_< i am a Softie so u can bet that all of these r ridiculously fluffy

masterlist

seungcheol, mingyu, chan

insists on setting the table like you're about to have a whole-ass michelin star dinner, with candles and fancy crystal glasses and a heavy tablecloth and everything, because in his eyes, your cooking is worthy of only the best presentation and delicate table setting. offers to help cook every time, and when you vehemently deny his help and tell him to just sit there and look pretty until you're done, he can't help but chuckle at your seriousness and the utter assuredness you command in the kitchen. gazes at you across the table with such fond eyes, the candlelight making you appear even more ethereal, because he's just so in awe that he has the privilege of being loved like this by someone as incredible as you

jeonghan, seungkwan, vernon

clasps his hands together over the tabletop and watches you cook the entire time, alternating between talking about the most random things and just sitting there and peering interestedly as you chop vegetables and sauté onions. he is wholeheartedly supporting you, and treats the entire dinner like some sort of couple bonding activity, where he asks you about your day and how you made everything. it's his way of showing his interest, and he Will finish his plate along with a second portion, insisting that your cooking is just that good. and it really, really is, partly because you always let him pick the menu, and partly because it's cooked by you

wonwoo, woozi, minghao

you wait on tenterhooks for his verdict bc he always has the most serious food critic face on when he's tasting your cooking. and when he delicately wipes his mouth and gives you an approving nod, you can't help the way you beam in happiness and relief every single time. despite the food critic face, however, deep down you know that he's going to inhale practically all of his plate in one go, because there's something so sweet about you cooking for him, where he gets to relax and swing his legs over on the island chairs and watch u prepare everything for him. won't let you cook all the time, though. because you're still his sweet darling and he should be the one to pamper you the most

joshua, junhui, dokyeom, hoshi

has barely taken half a bite before he's gasping and his eyes are going wide and he's declaring that it's the best thing he's ever had, hands down, gordon ramsay be damned, you're the best chef in the entire world. you slap him on the arm for his exaggeration, laughing, and eventually he relents and tells you incredibly genuinely what his thoughts are. he really does love your food, though, and he will Not stop praising it for the entire night until you're all shy and blushing and practically shoving food into his mouth to get him to stop. clears away the dishes afterwards, insisting that you've done enough work so why don’t you take out that cake from the fridge and relax and let him take care of the washing up for u baby, okay?

request guidelines

reactions tags: @weird-bookworm @minhui896 @bunnyiix @slytherinshua @haowrld @belladaises @newgirlygirl @moonlitskiiies @mirxzii @wonranghaeee @yonabutnotyuna @crackedpumpkin @wqnwoos @kthstrawberryshortcake-main @kawennote09 @a-wandering-stay @icyminghao @valenhui @sweet-like-caramel @evasaysstuff @odxrilove @kyeomyun @chansburgah @pepperonijem @jeonride @kellesvt @hanniehaee @astrozuya @eightlightstar @onlyyjeonghan @aaniag @amxlia-stars @all-american-fangirl @f1uffyjun

oh darling, take my heart! ( heart attack ), k.sw & jc.b

a retelling of yves & chuu, heart attack, loona ( chuu )

“ 𝐝𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐝 “

‘ To save Sunwoo from his own self destruction by his undying love for Y/n as he admires her but cannot get her attention. His guardian angel comes to his side in human form to prevent the inevitable fall from Eden. Though the desperation for his preservation might just come from the egoistic wounds of his heart and the awareness of the ugliest fall of them all, it being his own. ’

PAIRING ⏵ kim sunwoo x fem!reader, guardian angel!jacob not a love triangle

GENRE ⏵ fluff, slight angst, one sided pining, unrequited love ( not all the way through ), comedy/ crack ( hopefully ), sunwoo is down so bad, and he’s stubborn as heck, not a love triangle, slight fantasy, jacob is stressed bc of sunwoo, sweetheart!Jacob, winter!au, college!au but they’re just in the library and walk between lectures and have own apartments lol( F EXAMS ), epic bromance, epic eric feature, not as epic changmin feature, europe aesthetic ( this is a candlestick idk how widespread they are )

WARNINGS ⏵ y/n is just a little evil, loonaverse lore ( lol ), romanticised college!au bc I don’t want to write my reality 🫠, surface level world building ( don't ask me about the angel lore ), y/n & sw calls jacob angel & cupid either teasingly/mockingly/literally, y/n refers to sunwoo as loverboy once, sunwoo swears like three times, sunwoo calls people losers, heart attack by chuu is very gay mine is not😭, proofread twice

WORD COUNT ⏵ 18.8 k ( I’m so sorry )

AUTHOR'S NOTE ⏵ new banner style!( so proud! ). for some reason I was hellbent on getting this out before christmas, but it’s really not that christmassy😭. the heart attack mv tells a story about chuu's undying love for yves. the post below includes spoilers, but but will clarify this story in connection to the mv. it will be linked at the end too! please enjoy!

story ( symbolism & metaphor ) guide

like and reblog are highly encouraged!

THIS WORLD HAS CHANGED ITS COLORS, DRIFTING FURTHER FROM THE SUN IN PRESENT SEASON.

As Eden has turned its axis away from the warmth, the trees stand with a single color. Instead of fruits in shine and leaves that paint the part in between world and heaven, its colors have, from the crowns, spread and blossomed over its people. The fabric of one's jacket and scarf decorates the boulevard down to the open square at the very center of the city.

Though, someone in cobalt blue seems to not follow the fast paced world around him. Jacob walks gently over the frozen mirror layered on top of the summer stone. His new body concealed in a jacket in that cobalt blue. To look out over the two streets and the cars driving in between, he observes how each silhouette before and behind him walks past him without a single glance or wrong step. Jacob looks down again, sees the reflection of daylight on the frost as his right foot takes another step forward. 

Last month, Jacob sat in his new bed, in his new room, in a new city. Picked apart the sharp lines on the telephone screen to figure out exactly the right passage to the blue dot. How time has moved forward without him, since he last stepped onto the fixed ground and stood before the mortals as a real figure. Jacob used to stand perfectly visible in a full crowd all the more frequently in the past. The little boy he guarded back then refused to learn how to stand up for two seconds before starting to run. At seven, during the midst of the summer season on an afternoon picnic, Sunwoo had managed to climb a tree he was incapable of coming down. Jacob, who had been observing him like a second baby sitter, granted Sunwoo luck that day and saved him before falling off the bended branch. 

Though, as he entered his teens, Jacob realized Sunwoo was rather a problem solver. So, as he watched from above, the secret pathways and hideouts, how he fired off a firework in the high school hallways and ran from the teacher, Jacob learned to not intervene. 

Jacob feels the cold water melt on his skin as morning snow starts falling. And between the white feathers falling from above, he sees the entré from where the fabrication spreads outwards to the exterior of his vision. The glass windows stand in height with the opening, making the trees in winter sleep all smaller. The glass doors and buildings in altering heights don't seem to intimidate him as much as last month. Therefore he lets the transparent frame to the other side, open up for him and the flakes on his hair start to melt. 

He vividly recalls summers from before as he walks down the corridors in pastel colors. How the daylight pierce through the ceiling height windows and spread itself over the cream walls like paint. As the memory recalls itself, all the way to the present, he finds himself before lecture hall A, a single turn before the library. The door stands open before him, from his spot on the stream line wood, he sees a row of students already inside. As he hears another pair of footsteps behind him, fused with muted conversations from the entrance, Jacob gathers the strap of his backpack and walks in.

In the lecture hall, the board stands to the left and before it spreads a massive sort of staircase to the highest windows. Though, as he has visited this place in what can only be described as dreams, this vision doesn’t seem to bother his conception. Instead, Jacob stands at the end, two meters away from where the first row starts. Faces that have passed him by in dreams and strangers he can’t recall are all scattered throughout the staircase. And as he eyes them down from the lowest point to the highest before the window, he can’t piece the face in his mind with anyone in the room. 

Jacob let his hand fall from the backpack strap and walk up the right side. Sunwoo has never been known for his punctual habits, neither in Jacob’s memory from his youth or the recent observation of him as a uni student. 

In the perfect middle of the seven rows, Jacob takes a seat close to the stairs down. He lets his backpack fall to the floor as he takes a seat. The silver computer reveals itself from the canvas material and he lays it gently on the surface before him. 

Conversations fill the lecture hall and he eyes the rows, down to the end floor. How two girls sit side by side, enthusiastically nodding when the other talks, or the lone boy furthest against the wall in the right corner. Though, the surroundings fall irrelevant as he anticipates each silhouette entering the door. Each person creates an even stronger blur of conversations and the colors and materials paint a motif before him. Each row and the surface before it becomes foiled with texture and at last, when the professor stands before the white board, none of the faces entering was him from his memories. 

The empty corridor walls, enchanted in pastel shades and wooden floor. Each step he takes spreads to the furthest corners of where two walls meet, before they resile back towards him. All that while he turns further from the past lecture hall. Instead of right, the direction towards the library, he let the patterns on the floor take him whatever they wanted. Hoping it would lead him to the purpose of his visit. And as he thinks about that, he looks up from the wild patterns. As he stands still in the middle of the corridor, he sees a single silhouette at the end. At the end frame where the opening reveals a horizontal corridor, stands a silhouette reminiscent of his youth. His distinctive features are turned the other way, and Jacob stands on his toes as if to reach them. 

With gentle steps, as if to not disturb the rare life, Jacob walks towards him. The wings under his blue blazer attempt to spread in anticipation, but he forces them down under the thick fabric. Has the past finally runned up to him as he has searched the campus for the past month? he wonders. 

“Are you Kim Sunwoo?” Jacob finally asks when they stand about a meter away from each other. The boy turned his figure towards him and his features in day highlights and winter shadows graze itself before him. His face, though more mature, shows traces of the ones from his memories. How the certain parts of his eyes and full lips seem to be unaffected by time. 

“What I-” He before him stops himself from speaking as a door from the other corridor opens. 

Jacob watches how his eyes instantly grow wider and he moves all closer to the extended frame of the pastel wall. To trace the line up to the door, Jacob observes closely how an ocean wave of students crash through the single opening. And as the wave falls and spreads out from all directions, and five people walking alone, unaffected by another, he hears how the boy before him exhales gently. 

By the five last people, two take a left turn, one has a book bag hanging off her shoulder and she carries a computer in her left arm. The sight is rather ordinary, maybe that the winter sunlight hits her a certain way as she passes them  by from afar. But as he turns to look at Sunwoo again, he leans his head against the open frame, hands around the edges. His quiet expression melts the winter frost over the windows and a single point in his eyes that are crystal clear. Jacob was uncertain when still observing him from above, but Sunwoo’s painful adoration for the woman walking before them paints messages on the wall with red paint. 

She is the one he needs to save him from. 

The light hits her in another angle, when she turns her head, Jacob takes his arms closer to his chest as Sunwoo forces himself up from the wall and takes his hand up to his hair. The black lock tangles itself between his fingers as he pushes them back and a pen from his front pocket falls to the floor when his other hand comes down to correct the shirt. 

Jacob, quite amused, looking at the scene before him, recognizes how despite the loud noise from the pen, she at the opposite side doesn’t confirm his presence. Sunwoo’s eyes, covered in yearning, follows her serene figure until it disappears from his sight. Exchanges of words from the student mass further to the right echoes throughout the walls. And Sunwoo breathes out again, though, this time it’s heavy and low, leaving his lips in ache before falling to the floor. 

Jacob stands unchanged as Sunwoo starts to adjust the band of his bag. Suddenly he has become invincible in the pastel hallway. As he thinks of it, Jacob awkwardly takes his own backpack strap and falls back and forth on his heels. 

Finally, he coughs. 

Sunwoo looks up from his book bag. His features dull, tired eyes and his lips barely open to answer him. A rather familiar picture of him as he thinks of the past month’s visions while at home, to place his face in between all the hallways.  

“Are you Kim Sunwoo?” Jacob asks again. 

“Yeah…” He eyes him suspiciously, “Am I supposed to know you or something?” 

“No.” Jacob smiles. 

It falls silent again. 

The plan from the past months runs Jacob’s mind and disappears from sight. So as he stands and watches the boy before him, he starts counting his fingers from below, as if that will help him. 

“Okay.” Sunwoo puts his hands in his pocket.

“Oh right!” Jacob finally says, “Sorry, it’s been some time. I…”

Sunwoo tilts his head. 

“No, I-forget that.” Jacob motions with his hand, “We’re in the same course, I’m a bit after, I would need some help for the assignment…” He motions even more, “someone said you’re good.” 

“Who’s someone?” He asks with slightly squinted eyes. 

Jacob smiles, “Eric, I was with him last month.” 

“You shouldn’t trust Eric.” Sunwoo shakes his head and Jacob furrows his eyebrows, “He nearly burned down the lab last year.” 

That, I missed, Jacob thinks as he pursues his lips in. But if the heart has stayed the same all these years, a constant absolute when everything passes, a simple sentence should secure him. 

“Then, are you saying you aren’t smart?” Jacob eyes him. 

Sunwoo straightens his posture, scoffs and smiles at him on the opposite side, “No, I’m so smart.” He boasts. 

“Okay, then are you helping me?” 

“I usually don’t give out charity, but sure,” Sunwoo nods and reaches out his hand. Jacob sees the distance close as he takes his own hand out and bridges them together. They shake it slightly. 

“Thanks then, Sunwoo!” Jacob puts his hands in his pockets too, “Do three today at the library work?” 

“Sure.” He nods.

How the days move fast, Jacob realizes as he stands by one of the five windows out to the white covered landscape. On one hand, the few daylight hours must change one's perspective on the passing time, but there is something very human, he has understood about the constant disapproval of how time moves in contrast to space. 

His legs and lower back rests against a heater with missing spots where white paint should be. The rough edges of its pattern delve a shallow cut at the right side of his spine. Though, the discomfort doesn’t force him to move, as the chilling hour in the lecture hall has frozen every part of his body. 

As Jacob stands there, melts the ice and watches how the snow falls towards Eden, he thinks about Sunwoo, again. It has been some time he feels, since the boy has been occupying his mind this frequently. Despite only meeting twice or so per day, he has started to ask Sunwoo if he needs rest or is tired. At those times, he rather looks confusingly at Jacob and answers sarcastically, “I’m always tired” or “Rest never works”. Somehow Jacob wants to tell him he should sleep since he’s been running all day, but he realizes on the way out of the entrance that it is only in his mind he has been running. It is something else outside their shared daily routine. 

On the other hand, the name of the girl from that day has been given. Y/n, a student Sunwoo has had classes with, works at a cafe in the mall. The cafe has changed names about four times. Scored lovely on exams the past year, but as if a wind came with a new heart, her eyes seem to, and quoting Sunwoo, “longing for somewhere else”.  A wanderer rather, he thinks, to be seen in spaces without clear intention without a single word said. The red veil connecting the two seems rather obscured at the moment. 

As he thinks about the mysterious girl, his other half and the mission, he sees people coming from the right. At the end of a group, standing Sunwoo, he waves to the three people beside him before walking forward, leaving them behind. The library stands right before Jacob, at the other side of the wall. And as he takes a single step away from the warmth of the electric heater to reach him, Sunwoo smiles. 

“Oh, hello, Jacob.” He continues to walk. Sunwoo’s figure passes him by while the Angel’s have a fixed position in the center of two lines. Jacob’s eyes follow his silhouette down the hall towards the frame. 

“Where are you going?” The textbooks nearly slips out of his arms as Jacob hurriedly shifts directions and accidentally stops two students on their way out. His other half doesn’t seem to catch him the first time as the double doors out to the snow covered scenery opens and barely closes before Jacob’s shoes make a pattern in it. 

“Where are you going?” He thinks it is probably the loudest he has ever talked and stresses each syllable. 

“The cafeteria” He says without any sort of worries. 

“But aren’t we supposed to study?” Jacob runs desperately after him. 

“We were?” The boy stops suddenly and Jacob flies head first against Sunwoo’s back head. The Angel caresses his forehead and Sunwoo turns around to watch him fully. The fact that he got a full skull into his own doesn’t seem to bother him as he quietly waits for the pain to ease off Jacob. 

“Yeah, I asked you yesterday and you said yes.” Jacob holds his cold palm against his forehead. Sunwoo’s eyes adverts from Jacob’s, up to the clear sky. It shines on his features brightly when he tilts his chin. 

“Can’t remember, either way I need to see Y/n.” 

The shoe patterns in the snow continue from where it ended. Jacob sighs as he pulls the backpack further up his shoulder, so that it brushes against his neck. As if half running to connect and grip onto Sunwoo’s college shirt, Jacob comes up to Sunwoo, steps become slower and falls into a sort of comfortable rhythm. The Angel looks down the stone pathway in clear ice, beside it molten snow. Their steps follow in rhythm. 

“Isn’t it very…” 

Sunwoo looks to his left, where Jacob follows his steps down the ice. Eyes set on the road before them and his posture starts to fall into a sort of shrimp-like fashion. The sentence in his mouth never finishes as Jacob starts to fall behind. 

“Very?” Sunwoo quotes and slows down just a little. 

“You know…” Jacob looks up again, sees his other half about a meter before him. Wide eyes and nods his head. The Angel starts shifting his hands around to express the thoughts running in his mind, but it doesn’t seem to do much for him, as Sunwoo tilts his head. The next step down the pathway, his sneaker loses grip on the ground and slides freely. Jacob lets out a surprised sound as fear paints his previously frustrated expression. Jacob grabs onto Sunwoo’s forearm, nearly forgets that his wings might have just ripped through the fabric layers. 

“Looking like Bambi.” Sunwoo says and takes Jacob’s upper arm. 

“What’s Bambi?” Jacob’s filters and deliberate calculations seem to have flown out the window the moment his face came close to the ground. When the very center of his vision finally leaves the ice covered path, he lifts his chin up to see Sunwoo eye him with a frown. 

“That little deer that can’t walk or something.” Sunwoo says. 

Jacob’s quiet for a moment. A bicycle comes beside them, catches their jackets in the artificial wind and takes Sunwoo’s fringe with it, leaving a part of his forehead for the world to see. 

“You say I’m a deer?” 

“I’m going to eat.” He deadpans and turns to face the street once again. 

“Wait!” 

-

The reflection in the glass door looks back at them. Disappears as Sunwoo pushes the door open to reveal the lines of tables. Jacob stands still for a single second, watches the overbearing ceiling weight down on the red tables and the floor shining from the lamps. To stand in the very line between outside and the room, he feels a wind pass by the chairs and he realizes it looks rather depressing. Though Sunwoo's footsteps continue through the tables, sneakers scrape against the odd floor which turns the older woman behind the glass to his place. 

Jacob himself takes uncertain steps around the cafeteria. Follow the odd patterns and watch each ugly lamp light up another red table. He lets his eyes follow the trails of seats further from the main windows and sees students scattered about two tables away from each other before the windows out to a snow covered grass field. 

At the center of one of the windows, just enough to the left that there are still about three places left to sit at the back, sits a girl. The light from outside filters through the window familiarly and hits her features in the exact manner as from before. Jacob thinks Y/n must have a favorite sort of place to sit. In the passing hours between lectures he sees her in the same lightning and in the same position each time. 

As he has wondered for another passage of around the clock. Jacob, unaware of the presence he has been having around him coming back. A light push on his shoulder, just above the wings takes Jacob back to the present. To cover the spot over the blazer where he just touched, Jacob, with wide eyes, watches Sunwoo with a single tray in his hand. The Angel stares at length even when Sunwoo walks two tables away and takes a seat. His shoulder brushes up against the counter, and his eyes immediately falter. Lies heavily on Y/n as Sunwoo’s arms support his chin. 

The tense posture and fixed position of Jacob’s hands loosens. Gently takes himself closer to the table and sits at the opposite side of Sunwoo. The chair is hard plastic, causing a slight discomfort in his skin, as so, Jacob doesn’t bring his back to the rest. 

“You want some?” 

The Angel looks up from his lap. Sunwoo holds out a plastic cup filled with chocolate filling. The inside has a sharp surface and a clean line between transparency and chocolate. A depressing pudding for the depressing interior. And apparently the expression on his face as he thought of it, didn’t pass by Sunwoo, 

“I’m broke". It’s the only thing in this place that doesn’t cost me four thousand and a kidney.” “Plus, it’s actually good.” Sunwoo opens his eyes wide at the last sentence, nods his head as if to make Jacob agree by mimicking. 

Jacob moves his head, “Thank you, but I don’t like chocolate.” 

Sunwoo drops his hand with the pudding to the table surface, “Liar, everyone likes chocolate.” 

The Angel shakes his head gently, “Not me.” 

The one facing the window sighs, forces his hand back to his side of the table and instead, takes up the other container on the tray, “You’re weird, here’s your vanilla.” Sunwoo pushes the plastic cup over the distance and it slows down perfectly in front of Jacob. He looks at the cream white color before him and then up at Sunwoo who has opened his pudding. 

“Did you not want it?” Jacob tilts his head. 

Sunwoo shakes his head with the plastic spoon in his mouth, “Chocolate’s better. I thought that was a pre chosen feature before birth.” He takes the spoon and picks up another bite, “But apparently not.” Sunwoo smiles. 

Even when the conversation finds its final period in the end of a last sentence, Jacob finds himself staring and holding the thin cup between his fingers. And sometimes, when he tears his eyes off the plastic to look at Sunwoo, he sees the one on the opposite side gaze in deep adoration onto a point he can’t see from this side. Though, between the limited hours they’ve spent during this time, he figures it is not much in this scene of life that has his eyes so enchanted. 

Finally Jacob takes off the lid and takes the thin white spoon off the tray to tear the perfect surface of the pudding. As he takes his first bite, he tastes the sweet flavor from the vanilla melt in his mouth. Jacob, on his limited days on land, has never built any deeper interest for pudding he acknowledges. But every time he looks towards Sunwoo who takes a bite off his chocolate one, he gets a sudden desire to eat pudding tomorrow too. A sort of feeling he can’t quite figure out where it comes from or places in his heart. 

Jacob fascinatingly observes how, for each round sound of the clock, Sunwoo falls deeper into his palm. As if spellbound by the person, he looks as if to be in complete dissociation from the real world. Jacob wonders what he sees before his eyes as he watches Y/n, feels in his heart and senses between his veins. 

“Sunwoo?” Jacob says suddenly. It breaks the silence between them and the cafeteria for that part too. The one in deep infatuation looks away for a single second, though, still chin in palm, a position ready to turn back to at any time. 

“Why do you like Y/n?” Jacob tilts his head. 

Sunwoo frowns for a moment and then lifts his shoulder, “I don’t know, why wouldn’t I?” 

“You tell me.” Jacob leans in closer. 

Sunwoo scoffs, “She’s pretty. She’s smart, I don’t know…” His eyes shimmer from the daytime and his other hand comes up to his face. The end sleeves of his hoodie folds from the position and it covers some of his features. The words from his lips become muted in between all the fabric, “...She’s like from another world.” He sighs, “She’s beautiful like a dream and intriguing.” 

“Intriguing?” Jacob tilts his head again. 

“She talks really fast with a really flat tone. Then her body language, it’s as if she has none. That’s her body language.” 

Jacob nods. 

“Why do you wonder?” Sunwoo asks suddenly. 

Jacob’s quiet for a second, looks behind his shoulder towards Y/n before turning back to the table, “I don’t know, she seems a bit disinterested just.” He speaks gently. 

Sunwoo nods his head without making eye contact. 

“I think many would have gone for someone else.” He speaks slower than in previous conversations. Watch each motion of Sunwoo’s fingers and where his pupils are directed. Touch the surface just slightly and see how the waves starts to form. 

“I guess.” Sunwoo scratches his nails and looks towards the ceiling. 

“I-” 

“I have to meet up at five.” Sunwoo sits up, smiles with pressed lips towards Jacob and nods his head once again, “See you tomorrow, I guess.” He pushes his chair under the table and takes a first step out the odd patterned floor. 

“Wait, I should pay you back for the food.” Jacob stresses and starts searching in between his pockets. But the Angel stops once Sunwoo laughs just lightly and puts his hands in his pockets. 

“Don’t worry about it, it was like three thousand.” He turns his head fully and Jacob is left seeing his silhouette become all smaller and disappear out the glass door. 

Despite the definite numbers of daylight there is in a December afternoon, Jacob finds himself at the avenue down the meters between university and his home. The lights hang above his head in lines until the very end of the buildings. And as Jacob lifts his chin even further up, his nose touches the cold air and in every window shines a candlestick. The thousands of lights enchanting the avenue shines in golden yellow. A warm vision as Jacob pulls the scarf a bit tighter around his neck. 

As he watches a couple come out of the glass door before the mall, Jacob thinks back on his conversation with Sunwoo. The Angel turns on every angle possible of the words he spoke to him. To imagine the different dimensions where the timidly spoken sentence could have affected him. Sunwoo was very quick that time, to stand up and leave the conversation. Jacob gets a discomfort in his spine as the scene plays over, but then it continues playing, showing the open motions and tone before he turns. Jacob shakes his head again, to make the screen fade from his mind and look at the white floor. 

It’s confusing, he thinks. Humans are confusing. 

“Hello.” 

Jacob takes the wrong step with his right feet. Shoe, trapped under an elevated part of the pathway and his hands comes out of his pockets as his weight leans forward. Before Jacob’s face comes even closer to the ground, his other leg lands to support the parts of his body that come to lean over. With a few foolish motions as to regain his balance and another second to get his posture upright instead of horizontal, Jacob looks behind him to see the voice that continues to linger in his ears. 

How the Angel’s wings tenses underneath all the fabrics and the features on his face become rigid and pale. The substantial shift in his current state, from outside it may look like a sudden winter storm passed him by. To steal every little warmth left between the layers. But truly, there is only one reason. As Y/n stands before him, a certain distance but in eye contact for the first time. 

“What’s your name?” She abruptly asks when he has stared for too long. 

Jacob grabs his backpack, “What-Why?” 

“I’ve seen you a lot lately.” She’s quick. 

“I’ve seen you a lot too.” Jacob starts to take steps away from her, but as he turns back, her silhouette follows him. 

Shoes in deep snow during winter evenings come from behind and wrap around his ears. 90s Chirstams melodies play weakly from the stores and he finally breaks silence, “Do you need help or something?” 

“I do.” 

“Okay, but I’m not good at math, just so you know.” 

“Don’t worry, it’s not math.” Y/n smiles lightly, though it sends shivers much deeper than any weather has ever done. Jacob swallows and looks before him. The avenue splits into two and he sets his eyes on the pathway into the badly lit park. 

“I’m Y/n.” She stops walking suddenly but continues to look at him, “Will you help me if I ask you?” 

“Jacob.” He answers weakly and shifts his sight between two opposite points. Y/n opens her mouth to speak, but Jacob rushes, making no space for more than one sentence. 

“I’m late for the bus.” And crosses the red light as another car passes. Head to look in the two different directions and the blinding lights coming all closer. Though, he does make it to the other side. Where lamps stand in row between the tall trees and the Christmas lights from the avenue can’t reach. Jacob looks behind him for a last time, to see a painted figure against the avenue, but at the entrance of the park, there is no one. As so, the wings on his back falls to his skin once again. 

How the evening from before haunts him as he passes each corner and wall. There seems to be no logical reasoning, he thinks, as to why a girl he has never met or established any similarities to in the real world, to seek his company. Jacob stands, once again before the library in endless waiting for Sunwoo, but as all other days, he is nowhere to be seen. The Angel sighs, looks to the window and uncomfortably shifts his back. There has been a sort of constant ruler watching his every move, the one hidden among humans thinks. 

“Hello.” 

Jacob moves one step further down the pastel wall as another presence stands beside him. With his hands close to his chest, Jacob looks to see the person before him. With wide eyes and feet tightly set against each other, he forces himself to become smaller when she who he has wandered over stands in complete view. Her face is familiar by now, but the incredibly monotone voice that echoes throughout the halls felt as if picking on the past memories of her. 

“Hello?” Jacob stutters as silence passes them by. Her eyes, like the echo of her first words, lingers like the snow outside and with difficulty, won’t go away.  The blazer around his upper body sits as it always does, but somehow he feels like it has torn by its sides and reveals  his secret fully before her. As her eyes follow his silhouette, his hands cramp together even tighter. 

“Has someone ever told you you sound like an angel, Jacob?” Her voice, not as severe as before, reaches him through the awkward distance. The expression on her face is rather vague, not so drastic lines of emotions, instead nearly detached from the scene they find themselves in. Aside from her faintly north crescent lips and her eyes with the finest of pearl at the pupil. Sharp crystals like the ice hanging from outside the building. 

“No-Why?” Jacob coughs slightly and throws back the question. 

She changes the weight on her legs, “I don’t know, isn’t there a rumor that there’s angels walking among us.” 

“Well,” he takes the collar of his blazer and adjusts it, “It’s just a saying .”  

“You think so?” 

It becomes quiet once again, aside from the friend group that cross the wooden floor and follow the lines down the second corridor. As their conversation fades from these walls and lives on their own, Y/n takes a step closer towards him. In the everlasting coldness enchanting all corners of the building, he suddenly feels her warm shoulder closing in against his own. 

“You don’t believe in angels?” 

“No.” He answers hesitantly, only letting his eyes wander to the left for a single second before moving back to the window on the other side. He sees the eyes of students observing them as they stand in the center of two ways. 

“Just fate.” He pats his blazer again. Y/n eyes him in  silence to observe the invincible dust layered over the fabric, his hands brush it off. Falls down from the fabric to the hem line and adjusts it, despite no failed folds. 

“Nice blazer by the way.” She abruptly stops him. 

He looks at her without words. Now she’s leaning on the wall with crossed arms, eyes aimed at the two people who briefly cover sunlight on the pastel wall before passing it by. This time the two lock eyes completely, a shiver runs through his body as she observes him with an intensive sort of coat over the lobe. To pass through the very fiber that makes them two similar, she sees his soul wrapped in plastic. Burn it with her eyes until it starts to smoke. 

“You’re indiscreet Jacob, I know you’re not from here.” 

A single sentence seems to set off the second visor on the analog clock. Jacob breathes heavily and turns his head away from her. The reaction burns a part of her consciousness and the blood between her vessels moves all quicker as she opens her lips again. Another person passes them by precisely, and Jacob takes her wrist as the very opening of her sentence echo through the pastel passage. 

“Be quiet, please.” He whispers. Y/n is forced up against him, his eyes shining of heaven as he looks down at her. 

“Never.” The shift in dynamic doesn't seem to face her, he thinks. 

Jacob sighs loudly and lets go of her wrists. He throws it against her thigh before turning the other direction, each step, a dimension away from Y/n. But as he comes further down the corridor, where the pastel starts to become sun faded and spots of paint have withered away, a constant sound of steps in a rhythm just like his own. Jacob’s eyes follow the lines between the floors. Force each sound of his shoes against it to become all louder as they come to the very end of the corridor, where it splits in half. 

Her fingers grip onto the back collar, where the fabric folds into two. She forces it closer towards herself and Jacob feels the neckline move further up his skin and strangle the end of his throat. All at once, she pushes him to the right. Jacob lands with his back against the wall, the very fragment of the thin material seems to shrivel at this motion, and the wall, as it’s completely hollow, echoes throughout the empty hallway. 

Jacob lets out a cry as the fabrication and his own body press the wings under the blazer. Y/n comes up closer, with a distance enough for herself, but has her arms up against his head to constrain him to the small square beneath him. 

“Hurt your wings, Angel?” She tilts her head. 

Jacob’s right arm is wrapped around his upper body, to caress the aching spot on his back. The loose strands of his fringe have fallen before his eyes and the collar of his blazer is unfolded. He feels the dry bits of paint on the wall against his head as he leans away from her complexion, as much as this dimension allows him to. 

“You look like a mess.” Y/n tilts her head, “Like a sin.” 

“What do you want anyway?” Jacob says frustrated. 

“You’re not fallen, Angel. Tell me how to do it.” 

“Do what?” 

“Fall from this place.” She rolls her eyes, “Leave.” 

“You’re insane.” He takes a step to the left, but Y/n mirror it perfectly. So, her hands are beside him from both directions, still, to cage him in. 

“Why are you even here? With Sunwoo? Loverboy can’t do uni on his own?” 

For the first time, the features on her face shifts. From being forever still without any sort of indication of time or emotion, her eyes are coated with a thin layer of light, lucent from the moon and the corner of her lip twitches between the sentences. The fine pupil of her eye shifts focus on the different shadows of his face, when neither of them gives her any answers, she desperately starts asking him again. 

Jacob feels the human heart in his chest hurt severely. It pushes against his skin and the organs right besides it. Between each breath, the words lie on his tongue daring to be heard, but as she stares at him, just a little bit more frenetic than before, they fall back in his throat, tangle in each other and strangle him. The eyes sharp and vivid like yesterday’s nightmare, he closes his eyes and wishes for the sun to rise up. And at the exact moment, the two of them hear footsteps coming all closer to their spot behind the wall. 

As suddenly as Y/n appeared beside him before the library, she is now gone, with just a few steps and a temporary current from her disappearing arms. Jacob dares to open his eyes and see nothing but the yellow pale wall. To look behind the paper divider, he sees Y/n’s silhouette become all the smaller as the hallway continues forward and a student, much older, opens the door to the left. 

Once again, he falls against the dried off paint. But this time let his arms hang loosely by his sides, lend his head as far up as it goes, to stare at the high ceiling and breathe out loudly. 

The days seem to obscure each other. How the distinctive line between day & night blemishes at its edges, and creates a wavering pattern of his life. Jacob sits in the library. Though, this time, he looks out over the high shelves and people’s heads from the second floor. To follow the figures from above as they navigate the shelves of titles and to look out the top part of the windows to see the snow covered cityscape. How this place seems unaffected by time, he thinks as his chin lies in his palm. 

The door from below opens again, and his eyes diverge quickly from the window down to the first floor. He sees the hair color at the top of the stranger’s head, it shines in a different shade than the one he seeks for. Therefore, Jacob feels his shoulder fall into a comfortable position once again and his eyes aspire for the white landscape through transparent shine. 

After another passing of the clock, a sensation, in heavier violence than the night weather, has taken a place on both of his shoulders. It weighs heavy over his chest, for a single second he forgets how to breathe. Without any intentions, his hands grab the textbook at the center of the table. Slowly, in contrast to the thoughts racing through his head, Jacob takes just a momentarily stop to them, as to figure out what to say. Though, words never come out when the eyes behind him meet his own. Instead, a laugh chimes throughout their part of the library. Sweet and bright, boyish as from a memory from a past life. 

Sunwoo stands behind him, letting his hand hit Jacob’s back gently as the ends of his eyes curl to a crescent. 

“Is the devil behind me or something?” He continues to laugh before walking to the opposite side of the table. Jacob still won’t answer, his eyes instead follows Sunwoo’s silhouette around the edge of the wood. As he stands up, he suddenly covers the massive window, but the sunlight shines back on him when Sunwoo sits down before him. 

“I have something.” The one on the opposite side is quieter than before. Jacob curiously tilts his head as Sunwoo reaches down to the floor. His backpack lies beside the chair, and as his shoulders disappear behind the table, Jacob hears slight sounds of paper scratching against each other. 

“Are you eating again?” Jacob asks bewildered. 

Sunwoo takes his finger up and pushes it before his lips, “Do you want some or not?” 

Jacob’s face falls flat once again. Eyes on Sunwoo’s as his own expression lights up all of a sudden. 

“Exactly.” He whispers. 

The paper folds a few more times and Jacob looks behind him to see if anyone else sees them. Sunwoo’s hand comes up from the white paper bag, in his palm, gently cupped lies a golden brown pastry, the layers flakey and falls off in his hand. Jacob turns back towards Sunwoo and reaches his hands out for the layered pastry. He brings it up to his face, beneath his nose as to smell it. Sunwoo reaches down again and smiles when Jacob’s eyes are wide and searches for the specific flavor wrapped in golden dough. 

“It’s vanilla.” He whispers and Jacob looks at him, “I’ll take the chocolate one.” 

His words gently wrap around his heart and sets off a sensation he has never experienced before. It’s warm like the memory of coming inside and closing the door after being outside. And when he looks at Sunwoo who takes an outlandish bite of his own pastry, Jacob feels the urge to take out his wings and gently cover the kid’s shoulder like it's a blanket. To fend off the nightmares of the world, events that make one soul a bit smaller, all of it would not come to him if Jacob stood like in imagination, protecting him fully. 

They sit in silence for some time. Let each book page that lifts from one side to the other blow around their ears. Jacob savors the last bit of his pastry and looks out the window again. Snow falls outside and lies like a grainy filter over the city horizon. As he falls deeper in trance of the portal to the outside, and counts each flake falling from above, Sunwoo suddenly taps his finger on the side of the computer. 

Jacob looks at the kid with wide eyes. His head slightly forward and posture completely still, as  if he does stand outside in the pouring snow. 

“Our holidays are soon.” Sunwoo too leans forward, “Eric-” 

He points at Jacob, “You know Eric?” 

The other one nods attentively. 

“Okay, good." “He’s holding a party this weekend, let’s go.”

Jacob leans back again, letting his back fall to the rest of the chair and he looks at Sunwoo with a rather uncertain expression.  

“I don’t know.” 

“Why?” He sees Sunwoo’s eyes squint with a momentary head tilt. 

“I’m not good at parties.” His shoulders are stiff and features rigid and square. 

Sunwoo too falls back in his chair, to mimic Jacob’s expression before smiling again “Saying it like it’s hockey or something, you just have to be there.”

Jacob’s still looking at him without words or smiling. 

“Either way, Party Pooper, I’m going to get Y/n to the party.” He suddenly grabs the black ink pen from the right side of the desk. Brings it close to the Angel’s face and motions it in the same pause between his words. 

The silly little witch movements makes Jacob quite amused, but nonetheless, the words leaving his mouth and the determination behind his eyes. It all shines like the metal frame, outlining each square of the high ceiling window. 

The Angel lifts himself off the back rest once again, reaches his hand up to the metal tip at the end of the plastic pen. As so, he forces it down to the wooden surface and Sunwoo still looks at him. 

“What if she doesn’t want to go?” 

“I’ll have to deal with that later.” He lifts his shoulders. 

“But isn’t that a waste of time?” Jacob continues. 

“Not in my opinion.” 

“But what if-” 

“Do you have something against her or what?” Sunwoo cuts him off abruptly. The one from the opposite side notices how his eyes diverge from his own and flees everytime Jacob chases after them. Sunwoo’s own question is rather loud when he crosses his arms and eyes sharp directed towards the Angel. Jacob feels his own hands grasp each other in his lap and his eyes awkwardly look down the first floor as to see if anyone heard. 

“Not against her so.” Jacob shifts his arms around before his chest. 

“I just don’t think…” He struggles as their eyes lock once more and in the furthest corner of his vision, he sees Sunwoo’s fingers impatiently bend the plastic of the ink pen. 

“...That she’s good for you.” 

Sunwoo furrows his eyebrows, "Why?" Like you know her? She doesn’t talk to anyone.”

“I do know.” He looks at the other one sternly, “I do know, Sunwoo.” 

He rolls his eyes, “Who have you talked to? Danny from architecture that has seen her once like everyone else? Stop falling for peer pressure, Jacob.” 

“No.”  Jacob buries his face in his hands. The sigh echoes throughout the square area they are in. He stands up. The chair grinds against the wooden floor and spreads from their table. Students from the same floor behind the bookshelves eye the two. 

“Chill, dude.” Sunwoo puts his hands up. 

“No.” Jacob grabs Sunwoo’s right wrist and forces him up, his chair too leaves a mark on the parquet. 

Sunwoo sees the eyes of their peers as each step Jacob takes echoes throughout the shelves and climbs up to the floor ceiling. The right side of the double door flies open as they walk out. At the center of the horizontal hall, the one in disguise looks left and right as the one connected by the wrist stares at the other in bewilderment. At last, at the end of the hallway on its left plane, sits a door in the same color as the wall. A rather beaten up one with a slim frame and no rectangular plate to inform its name. 

Before Sunwoo realizes what he’s staring at, Jacob forces his hand closer to him and starts walking towards the door. And at just one meter away from it, as Jacob reaches out to the door handle. 

“You’re gonna take me hostage now or what?” Sunwoo asks. 

Jacob doesn’t answer, instead, the door behind the two of them shuts close. The corridor they stand in falls silent once again and neither of them can make out the lines of silhouettes or practical equipment in the still darkness. 

“This is a secret.” Jacob speaks to him as his eyes have started to adjust, “I’m here to protect you, Sunwoo.” He says clearly. 

“Okay?” Sunwoo says skeptically. 

Jacob sighs deeply before he angles his arms to get the blue fabric off his back. Now, Sunwoo’s eyes have also started to become familiar with the shadows. And before him, near the corner of the room where the shelves are, he sees Jacob struggling to get the blazer off and his arm meet the one shelf, creating a contained sound in the room. 

“Don’t take off your clothes, dude.” Sunwoo eyes him in disgust. 

“I’m not getting naked.” Jacob answers frustrated. He refuses to argue further with the one crammed into the far corner. Sunwoo stands beside a rigid old broom, his eyes following its silhouette down to the floor and takes it in his hands. 

As he looks at the one opposite towards him, his figure outlined by the faint light seeping through the cracks in the door. Jacob finally gets that piece of fabric off his arm and the blazer falls to the left off his leg. Suddenly, the light between the door and its frame fades out of view. The liminal space in the midst of the corridor becomes even darker and cramped as a white clean complexion rises above their heads. 

Sunwoo squints as he lets go of the broom. The wooden material hits the wall loudly before it plummets to the floor. 

“Take the wings off man, that’s embarrassing.” 

Jacob feels Sunwoo's shoulder brush against his own, and without hesitation, Jacob turns around before the other reaches the door handle. The fabric of his shirt tangled between Jacob’s own fingers as he drags the boy closer, away from the door. 

“It’s real! I’m your guardian angel!” He whispers-shouts and points at the feathers behind him, “Touch!” 

“No!” Sunwoo holds the same tone. 

“Why are you so stubborn!?” 

“Why do you have wings on!?”

“Because I’m your guardian angel!”

Jacob continues to whisper back at him, Sunwoo stops answering, instead silently stares at him in the dark. The Angel lets out a frustrated sigh and as he does, the wings behind him twitches slightly, opens and closes as much as they can in the liminal space. Sunwoo tilts his head, through with furrowed eyebrows and back against the door. He still bends his knees slightly to see the end feathers of his wings. 

“Here.” Jacob has stopped whispering, his voice, gentle and silken like the first time they met. He turns around, with his back towards Sunwoo, to let him see the practical details, he spreads them slightly. 

“They look pretty good. Where did you buy them?” Sunwoo asks with crossed arms. 

“You can’t buy them, I’m born with them.” 

There’s two holes in the back of his white shirt. Slit vertically down, and the right goes just a bit further down the left. And truly, as Sunwoo leans forward, he tells his eyes not to deceive him when the skin underneath the layers of white feathers connects seamlessly to the back. 

“You truly are a weirdo.” His posture falls straight again, back against the door surface. 

“What does your wings even have to do with Y/n?” 

Jacob reflects the change in the way Sunwoo holds his body, as he lifts his head up to face him. The Angel rolls his eyes, letting the distance between his lips grow wider as to whisper debate part two. But as his vision, faded in shadows from all sides,  comes up to the same level as Sunwoo’s, the eyes of his human, spellbound by genuine intrigue. Sunwoo’s head is tilted just slightly upwards, to watch his features in an angle never discovered before. Turn the motif he has built up of the man before him the past week. 

“Not my wings.” ”But that I'm your angel.” Jacob corrects him. Without any motions, instead let his arms fall vertically down its sides, like before they stepped into the room without brilliance. 

“Sorry, I don’t get it, dude.” He put his hands up again, “You don’t think it’s a good idea to shoot the arrow or are angels psychic all of a sudden?” 

His wings flutter just slightly as Jacob breathes in, “First off, I’m not Cupid. Second, I’m not psychic.” He breathes out, “My mission is to protect you, we’re-you’re in danger, she’s betraying this place, using others for her own need.” The Angel points with his finger towards Sunwoo’s face. Follow the breaths as he speaks. 

Jacob comes closer, laying his right arm over Sunwoo’s shoulder. The soft material of his sweater and the slight warmth that filter through the minimal knits. The Angel’s hand gently on his consciousness, Sunwoo abruptly becomes aware of the four walls, a border tight against them, cold because of lack of either sunlight or electric heat. A part of Jacob becomes rather confused as the one he protects, stubborn and appalled by inferiority, doesn’t move his hand away. Instead let it share its warmth. 

Jacob bites his lip, nearly letting his fingers push against the fabric on his shoulder a bit harder. Something at an unknown place in his mind, draws a deep line within that place. Impending on the new wound, a part of him wonders if the words on the tip of his tongue are worth saying. That he’s slowly, but firmly pulling a part of the fabrication of the very machine he rules and protects. Nonetheless, he looks up again and speaks;

“I need to protect myself too, Sunwoo.” He whispers, “I’m not here on my own will, I need you to know that.” 

How the world has refused to move even one step since they tread into the room. When they come back to the open floor and watch the identical students from before sit in the same position and flip through pages, the two of them wonder if it is the same pages they look at as before. Though, as the chairs from their table stand turned and diagonal, next to the vertical lines of the floor. Jacob watches how Sunwoo takes himself closer to the decorated edge. Like an image from a painting, the Angel sees his back clearly in view, follows each step and takes the place right beside Sunwoo as he leans on the wooden railing. Both of their shoulders fall in place without agitation as they look at the slow motions of the life before them. Sunwoo who fills his lungs fully with air, his body shifts like the transition of winter to spring as he breathes out. In another perspective, Sunwoo himself watches the white landscape grow all whiter as the snow continues to fall. Build on its height and dream of reaching back home. 

“I guess that makes sense.” Sunwoo’s voice is rather low when his chin is cupped between the skin of his palm. 

Jacob tilts his head and looks down at him, “What makes sense?” His voice is gentle. Pure like the true white color of snow. Sunwoo smiles slightly, which only makes the right tilt of Jacob’s head force the end strands to reach his shoulder. 

“That.” Sunwoo looks up at Jacob. To use his shoulders in effortless motions, let the sharpest part guide the Angel’s eyes to an abstract point behind his back. Jacob eyes him without words and takes his hand behind his back, opens it fully and stretches his fingers around the center of the two wings. 

Sunwoo laughs, “That explains why you’re so weird.” 

“Good or bad?” Jacob asks worriedly. 

“Good.” Sunwoo answers without hesitation and Jacob once again is left in a lone corner over the hidden paragraph between a single word. 

“I like weird people.”

The one clothing reveal didn’t become as scrutinizing as he once thought. He watches the top of people’s heads navigate through the thin lines and how their steps cut right through the sun reflection on the parquet flooring. Though, despite the positive outcome of the break of rules, there must be an underlying reason, in his unconsciousness as to why he refuses to look up from the stained floor. 

“Are you immortal or something?” Sunwoo asks abruptly. His voice, low and muted to the outside world, but the clearest thing in a single room as he speaks to him while conscious of the sentient world. His head finally gets to move with the minutes left of daytime. 

“No, I’m not.” He furrow his eyebrows. 

“How old are you then?” He looks back at Jacob. 

The Angel’s quiet for a second, “As old as you? Or what do you mean?” 

“So twenty three?” 

“Probably not twenty three in human twenty three ways, but close enough.” Jacob motions with his hands. 

“In dog years?” 

“No-” Jacob stops himself to look up at the chandelier in a high ceiling, leans closer to Sunwoo and tilts his head, “Dog years, isn’t that the concept of a dog's maturity in human scale?” 

“Yup.” Sunwoo answers in gray, dull tone. 

“Okay, then kind of.” 

“Do you have any memories then?” Sunwoo is now fully leaned on his arm with his entire body shifted towards Jacob’s own essence. 

“I do.” Jacob smiles. 

“What do you remember?” 

“You.” 

“Nothing else?” Sunwoo asks. Jacob looks away from him, the lids stay open as they refuse to close as he looks at the wall of spines. To run through all the pictures captured in time, see the grainy filter over his past and not a single one has without his face. He’s always there, either in perfect font or dream. 

“No.” Jacob shakes his head. 

“Really?” Sunwoo says skeptically, “You didn’t accidentally drop your ice cream before God or something?” 

Jacob shakes his head, “I remember you dropping your ice cream at four, you started crying but your mom and dad were somewhere else, so I just stared at you. That was awkward.”

Sunwoo smiles at how Jacob’s eyes are focused towards a distant point as he describes parts of the life sequence. There is something amidst them, that distance between their two shoulders that have seemed to become shorter for every day, that has started to grow. A single sprout that gently planted itself at the center without either knowledge, and now starts to spread its petals. Time has seemed to strengthen the fabrication of each leaf. 

It is rather funny, Sunwoo thinks, how the flower has bloomed between the frozen cracks of a winter. But only a sprout that has been through wither would be able to force itself up, between those layers. Therefore, Sunwoo finds himself quietly giving into the fabrication between the two of them. When looking at Jacob, he realizes he’s staring at his youth.

“I’ve been here as long as you” Jacob says suddenly, “, and stay here til you do.” 

Sunwoo doesn’t say anything. 

“All you do affects me too.” 

Sunwoo nods his head silently and leans on his palm, “So if I jump out the window you’ll die too?” It was rather satirical, a hypothetical scenario wrapped in unseriousness from Sunwoo’s side, but the human has come to realize angel’s don't always take sarcasm.  

“Yes.” Jacob says with a stern face. Sunwoo laughs silently and Jacob eyes him. Observing his serene motions and dares to walk closer. 

“So don’t do anything bad.” 

“Nice home.” Sunwoo looks around the room before he drops his bag onto a right angled carpet that hides whatever’s before the door. 

“Mine looks like shit.” 

“Yeah, I know.” Jacob nods his head and walks over to his bed. 

“You do?” Sunwoo stands before the closed door and looks at Jacob who lies between sheets and pillows of low saturation in peach shade essence.

“Not seen it now, but when you were little.” He looks at the ceiling, “I just guess you haven’t changed.” 

Sunwoo’s shoes stand in different directions of the black carpet beside Jacob’s that pointed towards the wall. He walks over to the one laying down, inspecting him silently before taking the pillow closest to the edge. 

“You’re dissing me or what?” 

“No-” Jacob doesn’t get to finish his sentence as Sunwoo throws the pillow down the calm state of the Angel’s face. 

“Yeah, Cupid.” 

“I’m not, Cupid.” Jacob sits up and takes the pillow from under his head and aims right at the center between Sunwoo’s eyes. 

And so it continues until the one with a full human heart lies on the floor. His locks scattered over Jacob’s peach muted carpet. He looks a little pathetic from above, Jacob thinks and smiles. As the reflection of the angel above him clears, the outlines become perfect, he sees how Jacob reaches his hand out towards him. 

“You’re so weird, why are you hitting your guardian angel?” Jacob forces him up and they stand in the center of the small square. 

The brief daylight hours has passed this age by too and now, it’s the warm light from Jacob’s ceiling that pierce through the window and spread out over the nearby snow. The room has warmed up from the center where they sit and spread slowly to the outer corners. Jacob sits on the bed, his back against the window frame. In contrast, Sunwoo sits at the very bottom, on the peach colored carpet, but both with posture bend forward over the textbooks and computers like grass over the windy field. 

Sunwoo has fallen in and out of the blank page before him about three times. To look at the window behind Jacob where, it every time, disappoints him, because there is nothing to look at in winter evening. Or go to the toilet.

At some point, when Jacob’s cursor hits the end of the A4 page, he stretches his back and yawns. Sunwoo looks over the horizontal line where the bedsheet gathers in folds, and sees how Jacob’s arms struggle in the blue fabric. The sounds of keys on the computer are now lost from this space and only the light noise of the ventilator lingers between the four walls. As Jacob stops stretching his arms, he takes off his blazer and lets it fall behind him on his orange sheets. The white wings stretch to the two opposite sides of his bed before they fall. 

Sunwoo looks at him while leaning his hands on the carpet behind him, “How do you shower?” 

Jacob answers hesitantly, “Like you normally shower?” 

“Do you wash them with shampoo or something?” 

“No..” 

“Gross.” Sunwoo makes a face. 

“Why? "Should I?” His eyes widen as he caresses the feathers of his left wing. 

“I don’t know.” He suddenly falls down onto the floor, smiles as he closes his eyes, “I’m no angel.” 

“Pretty obvious.” Jacob hums quietly and walks up. 

At some the curve of his posture had fallen so deep that Jacob swore he could hear cracks of bones. And instead to pull strings above his back, Jacob fell backwards on the pillows. The computer on the lower end of his stomach and his chin in an unflattering position to see the lit up screen. Though, he let the words between four frames judge his current state and the sounds of keys filled the four walls. After another passage of time, Jacob’s stomach growls and he registers the lack of sound as he himself stops writing.

“Are you hungry, Sunwoo?” Silence.

As no answers come from the one below him, Jacob reaches himself over the edge. Spread across his carpet lies Sunwoo with his arms tangled and body in a rather complex position. His eyes, closed off from this plane of existence as his mind reaches another. For just a moment, Jacob watches him quietly from the bed above. There is something nostalgic that evokes from this scene. 

Though, he does eventually stand up and take the pillow from the inner corner. It’s just a little cold as it was compressed between himself and the wall, isolating their frame from the winter lined streets. Jacob sits down beside Sunwoo’s chest, he gently lifts the boy’s head, without much sound lets the soft fabric catch his locks and the rest of his head. They sit for a second, completely unchanged, but Jacob sees the skin on Sunwoo’s upper arms create patterns of small dots. That he knows, his human form does that too when the cold itches to take the degrees from him. So, Jacob reaches over to his bed again, takes the blanket at the very end. He stretches it before it falls to the floor and replicates the silhouette of Sunwoo’s body. 

As time passes and the visor on the clock up on the high wall runs in bold progress, Jacob sits in a silence, one he only can experience in this form. Despite the constant noise of the clock, the undying reminder that he does exist, the world somehow moves slower. 

Jacob looks at Sunwoo’s face. Complexions without stress, in dreams he must be somewhere else, where life doesn’t tweak his eyebrows and strangle his skin. As they sit like this, Jacob wonders about his mission. The purpose of his arrival and existence. If he gets to reveal his thoughts, be true to the feelings inside his chest, Jacob can’t see a possible outcome where he forces Sunwoo’s heart in another direction. Despite their agreement, nothing but Y/n seem to cast over him as if  in dreams. 

Jacob reaches out his right hand over Sunwoo’s hair, gently feeling the strands brush past his skin. His mission to protect seems to have widened its edges and to save the boy before him has become more than to prevent blood scattered wounds. But to see him in delight knowing his fortune. As Jacob comforts his other half in the night, he thinks of young love and to, at least, not let the another presence color Sunwoo’s heart. 

Ever since that day, when Jacob, just another student in his class, revealed his life secret and told him there’s someone actively protecting him. He hasn’t been able to describe it perfectly, to set his finger on the singular mark and feel confident in the linear placing. Rather, he lets the skin of his point finger brush past the reflective paper, stop at a spot underneath a highlighted world, until he reverts back to the opposite side of the paper. 

As he walks away from campus, out on the broad streets, two lined at the edges and a center path where all the snow has collected towards the sides, painted brown from cars. Sunwoo feels a strange sort of responsibility for the new perspective of the world. Despite the enlightenment being a revelation  of a ruler watching him silently, he feels an even stronger obligation to become an active part of the otherworldly dynamic. 

A father with his child walks past him, and Sunwoo pushes his hands even deeper into his pockets. His breath paints a vague white cloud in the shade of the snow beneath him. And when a car drives past him, in the back of his mind, he considers walking closer towards the decorated glasses. 

As he looks at the same scenery, but in different seasons, he stops as he comes outside the mall. At the center, beneath the fabrication folding out over the street, he looks at the sign that will soon turn on, and then, the glass doors on row. How people push and pull the doors without a consistent pattern. Each window shop is scattered with snowflake stickers, red ornaments, green bushes and golden lightning. Sunwoo adjusts his hands in his pockets once again as he longingly watches into the world he knows too well. 

To stand there, he realizes how much of his time depends on a single ritual, a single person. What is he supposed to do if not going in, he thinks. Jacob was busy, apparently. Been running around all month trying to convince him to not reach out his hands towards Y/n, seems like life finally catches up to him. Sunwoo smiles as he thinks about Jacob ignoring papers, deadlines and assignments and how his wings twitch in anxiety as he runs to the shelf in the library. . 

“Hi.” 

Sunwoo jumps from one concrete square to the other. By reflexes alone, his hands tangle themselves out of the pockets, and he holds them before his face directed right towards the voice who called him. Though, the frown on his face fades from view as he sees the features between his fingers. On the opposite side of the concrete square, drowned in melted snow, stands the girl he watches everyday from this place, though, instead she stands beside him. 

She looks at him, doesn’t break eye contact for even a second when his hands fall down to its sides. As they stare through the looking glass to the heart of the other, Sunwoo wonders if Y/n has ever looked at him for this long. He figures the longest they’ve held some sort of visual connection outside his dreams, it is the barely second long stare when he drops a pen during lectures and she turns behind to look at what went on. 

Y/n herself forces the part of her face to stay in place. The boy before her stands with eyes large as the reflective ornaments behind them. He refuses to blink and she wonders if she’ll need to walk up to him and move the lids up and down for him. As to not laugh, Y/n reaches down to the ground, and Sunwoo’s eyes follow. A glove and candy wrapper lies on the spot between the two of them, it must have flown out when he shoved his hands out ( like a loser!!?!??!? ) he thinks, does a painful face when she faces the ground instead of him. 

“Here.” Before she reaches up fully, Sunwoo lets his shut eyes and creased skin fall into an unbothered expression.  The hand in front of his mouth, fingers that curled up slightly as if to rip a piece out of his own teeth, shifts behind his back. Now she stands before him fully, even closer than the first time she scared him. Her hand with his glove and wrapper are dreadfully close, in a way where he sees his past selves fall to the floor. He thinks he can sense her perfume from this distance (really it’s the beauty shop five meters away) and he hopes to brush past the skin of her hands when he takes the glove. 

“Thanks” Sunwoo scratches the back of his neck and reaches out carefully for her hand. Though, he doesn’t need to wish as he spreads his palm. A single star enchanted in a miracle must have fallen in daylight as Y/n takes her free hand around his wrist gently, turns it so his palm faces the sky and gives the glove and wrapper. A butterfly that has been slowly waking up in his stomach, for the first time sets itself free when she brushes past his fingers. 

“No worries.” She smiles and Sunwoo says something incoherent which makes Y/n lean in closer. The simple motion makes him nearly drop the glove again and Y/n smiles even harder than the moment before. 

To have never paid much attention to the boy before him, simply just acknowledged his present when the moment called for it, she feels strangely enthralled by having so much affect on him. Though, she decides to conceal that feeling, hiding it away in the cold shadows so as to not make judgment for her. 

“You’re not with Jacob?” She asks curiously. 

Sunwoo who has stood in absolute silence, barely on his knees as they seem to give up every time she takes a step closer towards him. The butterflies grow old in a single second at the mention of the Angel’s name. That conversation from a day before replays in his mind and apprehensive commotion take his heart from behind, like the sudden wind. He straightens his posture. 

“No, he had other things.” Sunwoo falls over his own words and the single pupil can’t seem to find a comfortable spot in the crowded entrance decorated in warm tones. Y/n’s own arm falls to her sides, out of her pockets and her chin forces upwards, to let her features hidden under the scarf out. Each part and motion of her essence seem to open up as Sunwoo forces his body closer against his heart. To rigidly press up his shoulders and force the scarf higher up, as to feel his warm breath on the fabric.

“Are you cold, Sunwoo?” Y/n takes another step towards him, takes her hand without a glove on his red cheek. The sigh at the back of his throat that suffocates behind the material of clothing, he sees the red ornaments in the background, become vivid as her eyes, clear as the lightning in the shop window, looks into his own. A part of him speaks to lean in against her touch, close his eyes and let her brush the past off his skin. While he hears how Jacob’s voice lingers between his two ears. To run away and stay close and protect his unstained heart. 

“You really are.” Sunwoo doesn’t get to react before Y/n takes his arm jacket. To navigate the thin space between padded layers and paper bags, Sunwoo nearly trips over as they come to the final glass door, dividing the two spaces. In the mall, at the black carpets where melted snow has spread over, they stand, Y/n still in grip with his jacket. 

“You should get something warm.” Y/n says and looks up at him as they walk further into the mall. 

“I have no money.” Sunwoo answers distressed as he can feel Jacob’s almighty pressure beat down on him from above. 

“I have, don’t worry.” 

How foolish he does feel as they sprint pass the endless store windows and openings. His sneakers that are not built for melted snow lose grip on the marble floor as they come closer to a cafe in the inner corner of the mall. Sunwoo curses himself silently as he every season refuses to change shoes, better not become a habit if he ever gets rich enough to get a car, he thinks. 

The cafe they walk into has a rather dark complexion, contrasting to the white marble floor of the outside. Y/n is still holding his arm, she leads him further into the warm light and velvet furnitures. Sunwoo simply looks up at her own features as she gently pushes him down the couch in the absolute furthest corner of the cafe. Y/n herself, takes a step back, in which Sunwoo starts incoherently talking and reaching out his arm again.

“I’m getting us something warm, I’ll be back, Sunwoo.” 

His arm, freezed in that space she left it in. He watches her silhouette disappear behind a wall to get to the counter, and when only the low sound of christmas music reaches him. He falls back into the velvet material, smiles so deeply that he has to hide his face in between the material of the scarf. 

His emotions as if being pushed by two opposite parts, he feels like. Sunwoo rests his head against the soft material and feels two identities on each shoulder. Jacob on one, Y/n on the other. Each one takes a stern grip on his shirt and creates tidal waves in his heart. And how hard it pulsates in the very center of his chest. He tries to figure out, as he watches the abstract pattern on the ceiling, is it of fear of complete infatuation? 

He doesn’t get to wonder about that for much too long as he hears footsteps come all closer. Sunwoo forces himself off the back rest, a red pillow lands on the floor, before his feet. But it flashes past him and he forgets it as soon as Y/n stands before him with a black tray. Her beanie and scarf is off and it rather rearranges her hair and shirt. So beautifully natural in a slightly tired stage, how he wants to grab his shirt and kiss her, he thinks. And if it weren’t for Jacob at the other line, he might have stood up and asked her. 

“You’re throwing pillows?” She asks while laughing. Y/n place the tray on the table and reach down. Sunwoo, too, reaches for it  after scratching his neck. They awkwardly meet at the very bottom of the floor, both of them with their own hand on the velvet material. Sunwoo looks in her eyes genuinely as she too has paused before him. As if it’s the only time in his life where stars collide, he observes each of her shadows and highlights in deep adoration, as if to paint that picture when he can’t reach out for her. 

Y/n who gifted her hand to fold him weak in his knees, feels her own heart suddenly chime off like the bells in the far winter distance. Those seconds feel like minutes and she tears her eyes off his own and takes the pillow. 

“You should eat, Sunwoo.” She coughs and motions at the tray. 

He slowly sits up too, looks at the tray. Latte, a pie of sorts and two apples. 

“Okay.” He stutters and tries to take off his scarf. The end tangles itself into his jacket which in turn, secures in a part of the couch. 

Y/n bites her lip as too force down a genuine smile over his fast paced and incautious motions. 

“Here, drink this.” She coughs again as she holds out the white porcelain cup towards him. How the tidal wave turns again and Sunwoo scratches his neck and leans just slightly away from the cup. 

“I don’t think I should-” 

“Why?” Her smile disappears in an instant and he grows even more anxious. 

“I’ve been sleeping badly.” He forces a laugh and takes the cup from her hands, “But I’ll take it either way.”

Time awkwardly passes them as they sit by the table. Sunwoo drinks from the coffee, but hasn’t touched either the pie or the apple. A part of her suspiciously watches the scene in third person perspective. The rigid posture of his shoulder and the constant change in focus point. As if someone else is on his mind. 

“What are you thinking of, Sunwoo?” She asks gently. He looks at him with big eyes and then the window. 

“The coffee." He says enthusiastically and lifts the cup, “I think it’s the best of my life!” He smiles, but he judges her as unconvinced by the look she gives him alone, so he supports his statement, just like in class, “Wow!” 

As no words come out or a change in expression, Sunwoo closes his eyes for a second and mentally throws his body out the window. And when he opens and sees her face once again, he falls back in his seat. 

Another moment of silence passes. 

“You can tell me, Sunwoo.” She smiles and scoots a bit closer towards him, “If you’re comfortable of course, I’m a good listener.” 

The pendulum in his heart swings to the opposite side as he looks at her eyes filled with warm light reflection from above. The worries in his mind, that’s been running all day and night, that tears at his skin and holds him away from dreams. He holds the cup in his hands, because if he even dares to open his mouth, he feels the words come out of him like waterfalls. 

“I’m just a bit confused, I guess.” He admits and looks at the dark wall. 

“Of what?” She asks with a low voice and watches his side profile. 

It is painfully quiet before he speaks, to filter the words he wants to say, “Life, I guess.” He says, “I don’t really know what I want.” 

Y/n, too, becomes rather like the snow falling outside as he sincerely, just lightly, loft the curtain cover over his heart. The music fades as her mind leans closer towards him, the thin line into an undiscovered part of the world. 

“Is it a lot of choices or…is it just blank?” She asks cautiously. 

“Or I do know.” he falls back in his seat, “It’s just, someone said it’s not a good choice for me. But I feel happy when I think about he-it.” 

The sentence leaving his lips comes like an arrow, aimed at the very center of her complex. The fatal end of the arrow forces itself in between her skin and before Y/n can even react, it sits, so dangerously in her heart, hanging by that very metal. How her own structured play melts in that same spot, run down her lips even when that inner part burns to keep it in. 

“I also want something that is bad, apparently.” She speaks and looks down her own lap. 

“Is it a person or…” Sunwoo dares to ask, “or something else?” 

“Something else.” Y/n fiddles with the hem of her sweater.

“Will it hurt you if you do it?” 

Y/n looks up from the tearing string of her shirt. As another snowflake falls to the floor, their eyes connect. She needs to look slightly down, as he lies on his back against the furniture. The lights illuminate him from above and a single shine from the left casts itself over his heart and eyes. The sight before her leaves her breathless somehow, the arrow twists itself a bit harder and somehow she leans in and answers him with a tone of clear night sky. 

“I don’t think so.” She pauses and looks at his brown eyes dipped in sunlight, “Will it hurt you?” 

Sunwoo shakes his head delicately against the fabric, “No, …but someone else might.” 

She frowns, “Might?” 

“I’m not sure, I haven’t ask-” He stops talking mid sentence, sees from the perspective behind the wall how the curtains lift a centimeter higher for every word spoken, “I don’t know.” He repeats. 

Sunwoo’s hand, softly spread out over the couch. The velvet material forces itself out between his fingers and plummets down against the frame when another, just like his, lies over it. Sunwoo looks down at the spot where two essences connect. How the impulses bridge over to the other when they lay skin to skin. He follows her arm, up to her shoulder and her eyes. He gets taken aback just a bit by her expression. She’s awfully quiet and won’t give him that gentle sweet smile she has been giving him since outside. Rather, it’s something earnest in her dull frame. Something that can’t be quite expressed in words, rather he stares at her and tries to figure the feeling in her eyes. There’s a window in her eyes to another world, and he feels an yearning to get to that place. 

“Sunwoo?” She asks him with her hand still on his, “Will you help me?” Y/n stops. 

“Help me get away-” 

Y/n’s hand falls behind her back, when Sunwoo abruptly takes his hand closer to his own presence. To stand up and reach for the high ceiling when everything else melts to the floor.

“Sorry, I have-'' He desperately reaches for his scarf in between the pillows.The oil lamp on a round table shakes as he accidentally hits it walking away from the table. Sunwoo tears his eyes off her figure and down to the floor the moment he sees her expression drenched in midnight rain. Though, the angel on his shoulder points at her wildly, turns on her sides and desperately shouts in his right ear until its voice rings of pain. 

“I’ll pay you back later.” He falls over words and trips over his other foot as he turns on his heel. Y/n opens her mouth, but before even the first syllable escapes her lips, Sunwoo is behind the wall, out of view. The last trace of him is the fading footsteps running out of the small corner, and the dark velvet spot where his hand was.  

  “You forgot your apple.” She nearly whispers as her voice is no longer to use. 

The sun has completely disappeared under the horizon. Not even a moon in a clear dark night, as it snows heavily. Beneath the streetlamps, where the light is at its strongest before spreading in all directions, you’ll see the feather-like fragments plummet down towards the white mass. Though it’s dark without a star course in the sky, the snow is astonishingly white that the warm tone from the lamps reflects from the ground. 

A single trail in the new snow leads up to an apartment complex. Horribly painted spots in rough edges, scattered without a clear pattern and probably pretty badly isolated. Jacob sits at the edge of a window frame. About three meters off the ground. To carefully watch the secret world behind the glass, Jacob turns himself slightly and leans in towards the room. It’s completely dark, not a single light source on. Rather the only thing looking back at him is his own eyes and the faint shape of his wings. 

The snow on the frame melts underneath his fingers, it turns red and itches. Jacob waves the water of his hand as his human body is a burden before starting to unlock the window. He remembers back in time, when Sunwoo had his own little room, one wall away from his parents. It was about two or three times Jacob had to force himself between the thin creak.

He gets the glass door open and widens the gap. The wind from outside prevails and spreads into the room. Brush past the curtains and extend itself onto each surface of the apartment. Jacob himself takes a step onto the carpet beneath the window. His bare foot makes no sound and a slight grind lingers between the four walls as he closes the window. 

Jacob let his eyes observe the home in a panorama like manner. And at the very right of his presence, is a bed in the farthest corner. He leans in, to discern the shadows in the fabric. Nearly completely covered by the sheets, he does catch the top of her head. Y/n sleeps in near silence and Jacob carefully takes a step backwards from the bed, instead closer towards the kitchen area. 

He saw the scenery from today, brushed past him and he shivered as he sat in the library. On the way home he tried to meet up with Sunwoo, but his voice was short and rigid on the other line. Events seem to fall in line for her, but stars can’t die right now, he thinks. So in a desperate attempt to save himself and Sunwoo, Jacob stands as an intruder in her home to find the red apple from the cafe. He knows she took it home, therefore he takes his hands on the wall to feel himself getting closer to something of a different texture.  

“Why are you in my room?” A voice tired and confused from the corner he just left takes a single knife and lets the blade wound the quiet night. His shoulders tense up and he refuses to either turn his heel or take a look behind his back. 

“I’m not.” Jacob answers in a painfully unconvincing manner. 

“You are.” By the two words alone and her tone, he can see the frown on her face. 

“No.” Jacob walks further away, accidentally hits the wall and moves left. 

“Why are you showing your wings?” 

He’s quiet for a second, “It’s a costume.” 

“Like Cupid or what?” She scoffs. 

He breathes in, “For the las-I’m not Cupid.” He moves his hands in an outward motion, “I’m an Angel, an Guardian Angel.” 

“Seems like I hit a nerve.” She says and sits up. Jacob’s quiet. At this point, the dark complexion of the room and their eyes has adjusted to one another and Y/n sees him in the other end, outlined without any blemishing. Awkwardly rigid in the very end, reminiscent of a lamp post and he caresses his left wing.

“You never answered my question, Angel.” She says. 

“What?”

“Why are you in my home?” 

“I don’t know.” He flees again. 

“You’re in here checking the architecture or what?” She sighs and looks at him with sharp eyes, “I know you’ve been talking with Sunwoo.” 

Jacob looks at her again, expression much colder than before, “And I know you’ve been too, don’t come close to him.” 

“Is that what this is about?” She asks. 

“I’m not telling you.” He takes a step forward and looks over the kitchen  sink, “Where do you have your food?” 

“In the fridge.” Y/n deadpans. 

“No.” Jacob hits his forehead.

“You’re not even human to begin with, don’t tell me where I should store my groceries.” She pushes up the sheet and stands up. Jacob looks around the counter again, to seek a rounded form with red shadows, but as the surface is seemingly empty. Jacob takes three steps towards the window and opens the glass door. 

“Jacob-” Y/n turns from her bead and grabs his arm as his wings fold out in her room. The wind from outside brushes harshly against her skin. 

“Don’t bring Sunwoo into your mess, Y/n.” He looks at her and his eyes of liquid moonlight, in the same shade as his wings but brighter. She’s left with her mouth just slightly agape as Jacob looks less human by a single change in perspective. The wings weighs over him heavily and another wind scatters the hair oóver his human complexion. 

“But I-” 

“Just don’t, please.” As the last words leave his lips and the grip on his wrists has started to loose. A wind much stronger than anything from outside forces her hair to alter from before her chest to behind her back and waters her eyes. She closes her eyes before desperately letting her upper body out the window, watch how his silhouette fades into snow in the night.. 

“Do you need to go, then?” Jacob stands before the sink in his room, drops of water following a constant pattern down the drain as he watches a puddle in the very bottom form. Though, he does shift his vision away, out to the open space before his bed, where on the carpet, Sunwoo lies spread out like a starfish. The sight has become too familiar that when Sunwoo isn’t here and Jacob goes to bed and looks down to see no one, it feels rather desolate. He walks through the front door nearly everyday in the afternoon or evening. Jacob asked him if he should get a mattress, full time on the hard floor spot, but Sunwoo insisted not to.

“Yes, Eric’s gonna kill me if I don't," he sighs. Jacob takes the glass up to his mouth once more and watches Sunwoo shift his head on the ash orange fabric. 

“He’s like “Sunwoo,we’re were you?! I prepared this little bowl-you didn’t even show up!”” His hands up in the air, vertical from the floor. It is rather amusing when he shifts one of his legs up and starts imitating his friend in a high voice. 

“Either way, Y/n’s not gonna be there.” Sunwoo sighs. 

“Why?” Jacob asks. 

“We sat at a cafe, short said, she probably thinks I’m a maniac or something?” 

“Did you tell her about our suspicions?” Jacob eyes him. 

His hands force the rest of his body off the floor. The strands in his hair are loosely tied together and his eyes roll up before coming back down, “No, I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that.” 

Only the awkward lingering noise of the microwave can be heard in the room until Sunwoo speaks up again. To watch the Angel before the counter behind the illuminating light beneath the shelf, “I’m going, you decide on your own, Cupid.” 

Jacob did go eventually, though half way towards Eric’s house Sunwoo needed to hold onto Jacob’s arm. The angel either fell knees first in the snow accumulated corners or landed on his back when the streetlights hit the ice at a certain angle. At the front of the house, behind the windows you’ll see pink purple shade light seeping out and faint music from the vertical wooden walls. Sunwoo takes Jacob’s lower arm tightly against himself as he nearly cartwheels down the steep to the right. 

“Aren’t you supposed to fly or something? Why can’t you even walk?” 

With Jacob being a closer impression of Sunwoo’s potential cross body bag when they stand before the door, the one with free hands knocks at the upper side of the rectangle piece. Before he even gets to fully let his hand fall back to his side, the door frees from the frame and before them stands Eric. Expression extremely bright at first, the most vivid detail of a single scene, but it fades when his eyes form into a frown.  

“Who is he?” The one inside tilts his head and looks at Jacob desperately hanging from Sunwoo’s arm. The angel realizes the rather massive plot hole opening up from underneath him and stays quiet. 

“Jacob, you’ve met before.” Sunwoo says, so clearly without any sort of doubt, that he may have convinced Eric alone with that. 

“Have I?” "Maybe I have?” He looks up at the upper door frame. Crosses his arms and falls into wonder.  

“Let us in Loser, feeling like a frozen fish finger out here.” Sunwoo deadpans and Eric immediately jumps to the right, extends his hand out and motions it slowly towards the warm litten inside. Jacob, though, he’s inside and feels the warmth of the electric heaters dissolve the frozen part of his skin, he becomes even more rigid. 

People with faces he can’t name stands in groups. Each conversation  blends together with the other and that in it by itself, overpowers the faint music playing from a corner on the left. fairy lights taken from the constellation itself hang on the edges of the second floor. It is darkly lit with a warm violet hint covered in every wood wall. A single christmas tree in the inner corner. 

 A strong feeling of embarrassment comes rushing over him in a single storm and Jacob awkwardly starts grabbing the color of his blazer and stands, once again, like a street lamp far from the corner. 

“What are we supposed to do?” Jacob says quietly and looks over at Sunwoo. The expression of the other one is as casual as if they were just walking down the uni lectures, though, he frowns his eyes and asks him to say it again. 

“What’s happening?” Jacob repeats. 

Sunwoo lifts his shoulders, “What usually happens when you’re with people.” 

“Am I supposed to know that?” Jacob higher his voice. 

“This is what middle school dance parties prepared you for.” 

“I never went to middle school.” He deadpans and Sunwoo stares at him with tired eyes. Despite the moon-like shine illuminating over the walls and reflected in the single ornaments, Sunwoo’s eyes are as dead as if staring at a piece of concrete.

“You Loser, I forgot you didn’t go to middle school.”

The Angel is about to take his arm up and defend himself, but Sunwoo shifts his vision from him towards the violent presence hitting his shoulder. The group of people standing before them, Sunwoo, returns the hit on a guy much taller than him. As if a scene out of his horrors, Jacob once again tense up as the group of guys smiles and takes Sunwoo’s shoulder, but becomes wide eyed or frowns when they see the street lamp in blue blazer. 

“Who’s this?” One further back asks and Sunwoo casually takes Jacob’s own shoulder. 

“Jacob, my big brother.” 

“You don’t have a brother.” One is quick to interrupt. 

“Now I have.” Sunwoo turns his head in a motion so quick that Jacob takes a step back. Two of them seem to have fallen into a conversation on their own, slowly walking away from the circle. Jacob makes eye contact with the one closest to him, he examines him in a sort of manner that makes him strained and legs nearly restless. As Jacob takes steps in his place that ultimately leads nowhere, he gives a painful smile to the guy closest. Lips pressed and eyes in full contrast to the smile. Is he even there? Jacob thinks as the guy, still expressionless, watches him.

Another guy, beside Mister Dazed, takes a step out and reaches his hand towards him. 

“Hi, I’m Changmin." Nice to meet y-”

“I need to go.” Jacob says abruptly and the group looks at him. The Angel points at a vague part of the horribly lit corner beside the closed door. It is rather a pile of outerwear, soaked in water from molten snow,  

“You smoke?” One steps closer to him and suddenly throws his arm over his shoulder. In which, Jacob tenses up even more, dramatically presses his wings closer to his skin as he feels the stranger’s arm brush against the back of his neck. 

“He can’t even-” Sunwoo starts. 

“Yeah!” Jacob forces a smile. 

“We’ll go together.” The guy says and Jacob laughs with wide eyes. 

“Actually.” He bends his back just slightly, escapes the stranger’s arms and shifts his direction. Back against the door as he moves all the further from the group, “...alone smoking is my favorite thing.” He smiles, “Been waiting all day!” Jacob takes a last step before turning fully away from them, each guy stares in silence as the door opens once again and his figure disappears out the cold landscape. 

“He won’t need an extra jacket or something?” Changmin points at the door and turns his head towards Sunwoo. In which the younger lifts his shoulder and takes a step further into the house. 

“He’ll figure it out sooner or later.” 

To stand up for another passage in time, Sunwoo stands with the group of guys, laughs in between their sentences and moves his legs to the standard christmas playlist in the background. His stomach may be just so empty that nothing’s enough to fulfill it, therefore he takes his hands up and gently forces the plastic cup in Eric’s hand back from him. And as the alcohol runs between the veins of every passing face, the center floor fills and spreads out in every direction. At some point the music rises in volume and his peers walk across the floor, up the stairs to the second. Someone hangs on the edge and pours the drink down the crowd. When Eric started to hysterically wave his hands to the person above and the broom became a proper part of his outfit, Sunwoo moved backwards from the crowd. Sit down on a sofa beside the christmas tree. 

Though, as he has been sitting in silence, watch the crowd. A voice from another direction than where the silhouettes of black slacks, mini dresses and glitter in hair stands reaches him. Though the hopeless love song playing in his right ear, a gentle voice in his left says his name. 

“Sunwoo?” 

To move from one square of the couch to the other, he holds his hands up as he leans against the arm rest. It is nearly more than a meter in between the two of them as he sits like that. Though, his arms fall down to his lap once he sees her figure, contrasting the christmas tree behind her. He thinks about her posture, much more rigid and sharp than when he sees her in the hallways. Both of her hands, gathered before her thighs and held a small white bag. 

“Hi, Y/n.” Sunwoo says in a monotone voice. His legs fold out in a comfortable position and his face shifts, away from her own presence and focuses on the floor, the high ceiling or the people on the second floor. Y/n bites her lip, just slightly before the lip tint fades because of his motions. The space between, as time passes it becomes a wall. It makes her tug on the red straps of the white paper bag. 

“Are you having fun?” She asks after a time of silence. Sunwoo looks up again at her before, once again, taking a look at the door out. 

“Not really.” He admits. 

“Why?” She dares to take a step closer, so her knees touch the armrest on the opposite side. Sunwoo lifts his shoulder, letting his head scan the room in a panorama like frame before it falls to his shoes. 

“I don’t know, I'm a bit lonely.” 

Y/n nods, though he can’t see it, “Isn’t Jacob here?” 

“He is.” He sighs, “Just pissing himself outside before coming back in.” Sunwoo deadpans as his head lies in his palm. The picture he drew with just one sentence makes the tense grip on the bag a bit looser. Y/n smiles as she imagines the Angel hesitantly running after Sunwoo in the dark. Run around the house ten times, do a breathing exercise he saw on youtube and come back in. She laughs slightly. The faint sound does reach Sunwoo’s ears and he looks towards her side.

“Sounds good.” She nods. 

A sequence of the rather insignificant details of her life. Lied out before him in a span of a few seconds. Sunwoo stares at her, breathing and feels his own essence collapse further down the fabric of the couch. To shift back his vision to the dull colors and silhouettes of his shoes, Sunwoo closes his eyes, smiles only for himself to know, letting the nail of his thumb scratch on the skin of his pointed finger. 

Y/n bites her lip again, feeling a sort of rush similar to eating sugar. It runs towards every corner of her body and cycles back to her heart. Slowly, Y/n takes a seat on the couch, still with a noticeable gap in between. 

“What would you say if you got a present?” She asks and tilts her head to inspect him closely. 

Sunwoo frowns, “I don’t know, I haven’t.” 

Y/n moves a bit closer, “You got one now, would you reject it?” 

Sunwoo silently watches her, feeling how the shirt tightens around his chest.

“I guess not.” He scoffs, this time can’t suppress the way his lips crease upwards. The vision of his eyes won’t seem to fall in place, as they land on the wooden floor again. 

With that, Y/n takes the white bag from her lap, how the distance becomes extremely insignificant when Sunwoo can smell her scent from the bag and her wrists. Though, he simply watches her, without words or major motions. His eyes glisten from the shining light in the ceiling, stars above the ceiling and in the top of trees, but  truly she thinks none of them compares to the single reflection in his dark brown eyes. 

“Here.” She shakes the bag one time.  

Sunwoo hesitantly reaches his hand out for the white paper. Takes the edge between his fingers as if not to stain the perfect white shade. Sunwoo looks between the bag and Y/n’s eyes, she nods her head and smiles again. Her hands grip the hem of her dress as he anxiously thinks about how he opens the package and waits for her confirmation as he undoes each bow. 

As the edges open and reveal the inside. The folds of his clothing fall over his still body and a single strand of his fringe loosens from the side and covers his eyes. With his eyes curved perfectly in chocolate shade, he looks up to her what feels like the thousandth. She nods and he takes up a red apple. He observes the shade and slight pattern in the skin. 

“I bought it for you then, I wanted you to have it.” She says. 

There is too, the pie slice wrapped in plastic and tied in a bow. As if a picture from before has come back to life, to the present to affect their lives. Sunwoo grips the apple a bit tighter in his palm. Let the fruit shimmer from the light in between his fingers.

“I think food as presents is best.” She says suddenly, “You use it.” In the very bottom of the paper bag, filled to all for corners lies a red packet of strawberries. 

He looks at the apple once again. He can’t quite describe the feeling in between the ribs and his lungs. How his heart beats profusely and the vision before him is as if from a dream. Sunwoo swears that this couch, behind this tree in this light, he has dreamt of before last night in his bed alone in his apartment. But unlike him in that bed in  his past, he can’t without hesitation or extra thought bring her gift to his mouth and let it fill his heart. How the red skin glistens astonishingly bright, to fill his heart with red until the end of life. But unconsciously, he turns the apple, as if looking for mold spots. Purple shades where it has been infested and already consumed. 

Though, as Y/n looks at him with an expression she has never given him or anyone else. One that wouldn’t be seen in the crowd, just between where the secret records can be hidden and never played. Sunwoo finally licks his lips, brings the fruit up to his mouth and takes a bite of the apple. 

How the fiber texture crushes and spreads sweetness all over his mouth as he bites down. He looks at the broken spot where the red turns white and visualizes the deep red becoming a part of his own self, his own essence. As he looks up from that spot, he sees Y/n close to him. Her upper body leaned over his legs and her features so detailed in view that everything else bleeds into the other. And he nearly starts coughing on the piece of apple in his mouth. 

Though, as she is leaned over, she holds one of the strawberries in her hand. Bring it close to his lips. Her left hand comes down to a spot on the couch between his thighs to come even closer when his face blossoms spring, red like the two fruits and forces his eyes away from her. Unintentionally lay his eyes on the crowd unaware and start laughing. 

“Please, Sunwoo.” She says in a strawberry sweet tone. 

Sunwoo rolls his eyes, in a single motion comes back up and takes a bite of the strawberry in her hand. Immediately after, taking her wrist and guiding the remaining part up towards her own, in which she too takes a bite. At that single moment, Sunwoo shifts abruptly closer to her chest as a cheer breaks out at the center of the floor. Red paper petals, like snow itself paints the space between floor and ceiling before decorating the floor.

-

How that world becomes silent as he steps out into the snow and lets the door behind him close. Jacob stands with his hands down his sides and watches how the moon and her stars let it shine graze the surface he stands on. The snow around his feet reflects it back, sparkles like it is earth's own constellation. 

After some time, Jacob presses the snow beneath his feet into a tight layer as he walks away from the door. He comes to a rather hidden side where street lights are dim and a single wall faces him. To the right of a lonely window stands a green bin covered in snow. Each step echoes in that corner as he brushes off the snow and opens the bin. The moon shines its vague light over the insides and reveals black bags of shining material. He looks down for a second, letting the cold from around him come between his hands and numb them. 

An angel’s mission has been broken. When Jacob opened the door once again, the crowd, as if all knowing, separated like curtains to reveal the one his purpose is to protect, on the sofa entangled like the galaxy itself with Y/n. How a scenery in a second sets off his breath and the constant fear that has been choking his neck. It chases him desperately as he walks a deep pattern in the snow. He feels his wings from behind. 

At last, Jacob takes his hand back to the front. Down to his right pocket on his blazer where he takes out a lighter. Red hard plastic against his cold skin, taken from the pile of jackets, as he brings it closer to the black bags in the bin. How the music comes to him through the cracks in the walls as he struggles to push down the extinguisher. That single spot on his right thumb hurts as he, over and over again, pushes down the metal. 

A hard knock against the wall before him makes Jacob fall behind the bin. He nearly lands on the snow as he embraces his knees in order to stay up. It falls silent the second after the rapture and Jacob slowly takes the lighter to his chest. Each of his breaths creates white clouds like the snow beneath him. Jacob lets his knees up gently and takes the tip of his fingers on the window frame. His figure in the corner furthest from sight while he peeks into the warm world before him. Three meters away stands Sunwoo with Y/n. Jacob swallows and lets his breath paint the cold window. They stand like him, in a far corner of the room where all the light has a hard time reaching and people pass them by. Though, the cold sensation on his fingers becomes all the more nonexistent as he watches how the two of them take each other's hands and fall back and forth to the muted rhythm. As they start turning around, Jacob sees the light nostalgic of the moon paint itself on his face. How every moment before this one has fallen obscene. 

The last bit of ice around his heart, melts and drains out in the snow, as he watches how the world now belongs to them. It pains his hearts and even more the wings, but how the fear has stopped chasing him, sits beneath the window right before the Angel, to watch their mouth speak words only they can hear. 

Jacob lets his hand fall off the window frame, all as his body too becomes even weaker. Finally, he sits fully in the snow with his back leaned against the wall, right under the window. The lighter against his chest, too, must now fall out of mind and plummet to the snow, like the rest of him. 

“I’m so sorry, I hope you can forgive me.” Jacob whispers, and lets his wings free from his blue blazer and embrace the rest of him tightly. 

A pastel filter lies over the world as Jacob opens his eyes. The angle gives the floor a steep perspective as the wooden lines lead him to the door. Red petals of paper are scattered before him. The spot on the floor has become warm, he feels his body get colder as he shifts his left leg. But rather than the cold, he feels a sensation much stronger as he gently spreads his finger over the floor. At the center of his back, pierce and rips burning wounds in his skin, and it becomes all sharper as the lines of the world become clearer. 

“Jacob?” 

He forces his head up from the floor, to again face the entrance. But as his eyes fall onto a figure, he angles his head upwards and sees Sunwoo looking down towards him. His silhouette is draped in haze and his blurred complexion shows concern over his impending body. Sunwoo comes all closer and falls onto his knees before Jacob’s weak figure. 

“Are you okay, Jacob?” His voice is even louder than the last time. 

Sunwoo’s hand touches Jacob’s arm and in the same instant, Jacob feels a sensation reminiscent of the end of a knife piercing right through the burning spot on his back. As the sensation affects him and forces him to fall back onto the floor, Sunwoo hesitantly takes his hands back, before leaning closer again. 

“Jacob?” 

“What’s with Jacob?” Another voice in the far corner of the room reaches the very mit. Hers is tired and exhausted, reflected in the way she looks around the room from the floor and weakly walks over to the two of them. 

“Jacob?” Sunwoo says again and takes his hands over his upper arm. At that moment, he sees the spot beneath his blazer move frequently, pushing desperately to tear the fabric. Slowly, Sunwoo takes the collar of Jacob’s blazer and forces it off him. As the fabric lies beside his aching figure, both Y/n and Sunwoo watch how the white wings on Jacob’s back spreads free and falls before it fades to black. At the single spot in the room, each feather falls like snow over the pastel complexion. 

Without another second of thinking or brushing his blazer, Sunwoo forces Jacob up by his arms. The fallen shut his eyes fully and his head hangs down and the strands of his hair cover whatever life left in him. 

“Help me, Y/n.” Sunwoo says frustrated. Y/n watches in complete silence and opens her mouth to say something but nothing comes out. 

“Please, Y/n, please.” He begs and Y/n shakes her head, leaves that spot and takes Jacob’s other arm. The Angel hangs by his arms on the two shoulders. He is heavy on their human bodies and Sunwoo starts walking towards the door. 

“Where are we taking him?” Y/n breathes out as her head hangs low because of his weight. 

"The hospital.” He stresses. 

“We can’t.”

“What else should we fucking do?” Y/n doesn’t speak as his eyes are desperately staring into her own. The sight alone aches her. To whatever words that could be voiced, she suppresses them. Take a steady grip on the Angel’s arm and take the first step towards the door once again. Sunwoo follows without hesitation. The trail of feathers, mixed with red paper bits from a past night. How it all seems to be from a different life when they fiddle with the door handle. At last, the apple, half bitten, hits the inner corner of a wall as Sunwoo gets the door open, looking at the new sun as if it is the first time. 

© littleroaes, written and all

symbolism & metaphor guide !

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