A Boy and the Sea
Title: A Boy and the Sea
Chaptered: Yes.
Rating: G
Summary: Junsu is four and doesn't know any better.
A/N: I know I just finished one fic, but I really couldn't help it. Haha/ This is Jae-centric and NO final word on pairings yet but everyone will be present. They'll be kids, though. ;)
---
One
The day Jaejoong’s father announces that they’re going to the beach and are spending the rest of the summer there is also the day one week after his older (and only) sister, Yoona, announces that she’s pregnant with her boyfriend Jamie’s baby. She’s seventeen and pretty (too pretty, Jaejoong sometimes thinks), with a loud smile and soft hands, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water when their father suddenly comes into the room and says, his mouth stretched wide in a fake smile, “Pack your bags. I’ve booked us all for a trip to Providence until the month is up.”
Their reactions differ. Junsu is the only one excited, and Jaejoong isn’t really surprised. “Clever Daddy!” Junsu claps, because he’s only four and doesn’t know any better. Jaejoong is twelve, however, and not as easily fooled. “Why?” he asks, even though he knows the answer is five years older than he is and is sitting across from him.
“Just because,” says their father, his teeth gritted and his smile dying. He gives him a look that tells him: Help me. I don’t know what to do, but he lowers his eyes, wants nothing more out of this than he does.
Yoona is angry. She’s wearing a sweater Jaejoong recognizes to be Jamie’s and the sleeves swallow her arms. She had been reading a book of baby names she had borrowed from the library and she abandons it to slam both her palms onto the dining-room table, startling Junsu and nearly upsetting the water in Junsu’s Thomas the Tank Engine cup.
“You’re doing this on purpose!”
“Don’t raise your voice at me-”
“You’re just doing this so Jamie and I won’t be able to see each other!”
“If I’d known what trouble you and him were about to get yourselv-”
“I’m having this baby!”
“GO UPSTAIRS AND PACK!” their father roars.
“I hate you!” Yoona cries, her tears shining silver under the lights, and she storms off. Jaejoong watches his father as he sighs and bites his bottom lip. He watches as his father covers his face with his hand, mumbles in a way he thinks Jaejoong doesn’t hear (even though he does), “What did I do wrong?”
He thinks of their mother as he packs his suitcase (and Junsu’s). She had been lithe and delicately beautiful, like a butterfly. She had liked walking barefoot in the grass and blowing raspberries into his tummy when he had been little. She had died giving birth to Junsu, and Jaejoong remembers no one had been the same since. He wonders if this would have happened if their mother had lived
“Joongie,” Junsu tells him sleepily from his bed, his eyes nearly shut like crescent moons. “Joongie, don’t forget my blanky. You might forget.” And when he gets the patchwork quilt to fold up and place on top of their clothes, Junsu says with a little yawn, “Daddy’s very mad at Yoona, isn’t he?”
He can still hear Yoona crying in her room, sobs muffled by the big down pillow she kept at the foot of her bed. Her crying pillow, she had told him once. Used for when she gets her heart broken.
“Go to sleep,” he tells Junsu, tries an old trick he remembers his mother used. “Everything will be better in the morning.”
Their father confiscates cellphones and portable video games at the airport.
“None of this junk,” he says, waving them in front of their faces before unceremoniously dumping it into the pockets of his large attaché case. “This is a proper family vacation and we are going to spend time with each other whether you like it or not.”
He directs the last phrase at Yoona whose eyes are swollen and is hiding them behind large sunglasses that Jaejoong thinks makes her look like a fly. She’s wearing another thing of Jamie’s, his varsity hoodie this time, and tight tight jeans. Too wrapped up for a trip to the beach. He’d noticed when his father’s mouth had given a little twitch upon seeing her that morning. “Family vacation my freaking ass,” he hears his sister mutter.
“Do I give you my binky too, Daddy?” Junsu says with wide eyes and offers him the ratty pacifier that’s the only thing that would comfort Junsu during these kinds of moments. Nobody has actually tried weaning him off of it, and for the first time Jaejoong considers that it might be their father might be too afraid to; Junsu is the only one left who looks up to him with believing eyes.
Their father blinks, looking as though he hadn’t understood what had been said. “Oh that,” he finally says, blinks several more times before pushing Junsu’s hand away. “No, you keep it son. You might need it.” Keys in his pocket jangle as he puts his hand in to retrieve the tickets. “Two weeks. Who knows what can happen in two weeks eh?”
He casts a weary glance at Yoona who’s avoiding his gaze as much as possible, one hand protectively around her stomach. Jaejoong still finds it hard to imagine that a little person is actually inside of her.
“Who knows,” their father sighs.
Their father has forgotten iPods, and Yoona plugs earphones into her ears and looks away from them the moment they get on the plane. Their father hasn’t counted himself in the fasting of electronics either and gets his laptop working once the stewardesses give him the go signal. Jaejoong finds himself in between the both of them, silenced and being squeezed tight by the lonely hum inside of the cabin, wanting to talk to either of them, but soon discovering that even though he wanted to, he can’t. Junsu, his last resort and who has always been faithful to him, is asleep in a nest of airplane blankets with his binky in his mouth.
Jaejoong sighs, leans back instead and closes his eyes, counting backward from 10,000. Maybe, he thinks, by the time he gets to zero, everything will be normal. There will be no unborn babies, no angry sisters and desperate fathers. No missing mothers.
…9,996…9,876…9,643…
The sky in Providence is blue and wide and open. Jaejoong has never seen anything like it before and he can’t stop staring. In the city, all he has are skyscrapers, countless of tall structures of metal and glass that surround him and everything he knows like an endless cage.
“Jaejoong!” he hears his father shout, and it’s because Junsu is too small to do anything helpful and Yoona ran off the moment the taxi dropped them off at the beach. He tears his eyes away from the cornflower blue that seems to wrap the entire area like a tent, and helps his father with the suitcases. “Good boy.” Their father says and reaches out to ruffle his head. Jaejoong ducks from his palm. The action seems to take them both by surprise because his father stares at him as though he’s a stranger, and Jaejoong hangs his head, suddenly feeling his cheeks almost burning.
“Don’t…” is the only thing he manages to say, unable to meet his father’s gaze.
“Joongie!” he hears Junsu shout from the front of the cabin. “Joongie, there’s so much sand! Look, look!”
Junsu’s high-pitched giggles sound almost bottled, as though he were on a different plain. Somewhere safe and far away and where everything could be easily understood.
“Your brother’s calling you.” His father says and Jaejoong sees his hands tighten around one suitcase handle. “I’ll handle it from here. You play with him.”
“Yes, sir,” Jaejoong says and turns around without any hesitation, runs to where Junsu is without looking back.
He’s careful with Junsu. He’s always been. Before Junsu can drag him out further in the sun, he pulls him back to the cabin, makes him stand on the porch while he goes up to fetch the suntan lotion from his suitcase.
“Eww, it’s sticky,” Junsu wrinkles his nose in distaste as Jaejoong squirts white lines down his arms and spreads it using his palms.
“You’ll burn if you don’t put it on, silly baby,” Jaejoong tells him. He’s sitting on one of the weathered Adirondack chairs that decorate the front of the porch. He had passed their father on his way down; he had been in the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, staring at a photo of their mother, the only thing he had unpacked. Jaejoong had taken it upon himself to shut the door.
“This little light of miiine, I’m gonna let it shiiine…” Junsu is singing as Jaejoong finishes him up. He places a blotch of cream onto his little brother’s nose. The air around them has started smelling of coconut.
“Wear this or you’ll fry,” he instructs Junsu as he places an oversized fisherman’s hat on his head. They cover his eyes and Jaejoong laughs as Junsu lets out a squeaky “Heeey!”
Junsu hasn’t any beach toys, considering they’ve had to leave so suddenly, but Jaejoong unpacks Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars from his little brother’s bag, and he watches as Junsu sets them up in the sand near the shoreline. Upon Junsu’s instruction, he gets down on his hands and knees to help him make a fort for them.
“Where’s Yoona gone, Joongie?” Junsu asks one time, because Junsu doesn’t like it whenever he doesn’t know where everyone is. Jaejoong remembers being exactly the same at his age, but had been cured quickly because of a song his mother had created: Daddy’s at the office, Yoona’s at the big school, and Mommy’s home with Jaejoong…
He doubts the song would be of any use now.
“She’ll be back,” Jaejoong says, scooping warm gritty sand with his hands and patting them down flat with water. He thinks of Yoona in Jamie’s hoodie and too-big sneakers, crying somewhere with her knuckles in her mouth while staring out at the sea. He remembers once upon a time there was a plaque on her door that said DADDY’S GIRL in pink swirly letters. He doesn’t know where it is now.
“Has she gone far?” Junsu asks, his dimpled knees already dusted with sand. He looks up and Jaejoong sees in him his mother, himself, Yoona, and his father all at once.
“She’ll be back,” he repeats, before quickly looking away.
Their father calls them for a late lunch of store-bought hotdogs in buns and coleslaw, cold sodas and French fries drowning in ketchup. He doesn’t ask where Yoona is, only pretends not to notice the empty space at the weathered dining table in between him and Junsu.
“Dad…” he tries.
“Junsu, use your fork.”
“Dad…” he tries again.
“There, now you’ve gone and spilled ketchup down your front!”
He gives up.
It’s when Junsu takes his afternoon nap in the cabin that he decides to do a little exploring. Maybe find Yoona. His father meets him at the landing of the stairs, looks at him in a way as though seeing him for the very first time.
“Going exploring?” his father asks finally, with a hint of a smile, and Jaejoong realizes that it’s the first time he’s actually seen his father in anything outside of a suit and tie. It suits him, he thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud.
“Uh-hmm.”
“The guy I rented this from told me there are usually other families who rent the next-door cabins at this time of the year. Maybe you can find someone to play with?”
He almost snorts at his father’s choice of words. Play, he wants to say, is something he quit doing a long time ago.
“Okay,” he says and starts to brush past him to make it down the stairs. The steps creak from under him like they’re millions of years old.
“When you come back maybe we can play something together. Chess or checkers. Your choice. I think there’s even a Game of the Generals there somewhere. Not sure.” His father cranes his neck up at the shelves that occupy the second floor. Somebody had been bored enough to fill it with board games.
“Okay,” he says, even though he knows a game against his father would never happen. By the time he’d get back Junsu would already be awake and clamoring for attention. Everyone would be hungry. They still had to unpack. He doesn’t even know if Yoona would be there by then. But he says ‘okay’ anyway.
“Okay.”
The sea is shining and glossed over from the sun, like the surface of a new dime. As with the sky that morning, the sea is something he can’t keep his eyes off from as he runs from the cabin with no particular direction in mind, his sneakers (he hasn’t even bothered changing yet) sinking in the sand, making him tired more quickly than he would be if he were on pavement. He collapses on his knees when he’s sure their cabin is out of sight, lets himself lie down in order to catch his breath. The pounding of his heart is as loud as the roar of the sea and he pretends for a moment that he’s a rock on the seabed, rough and glistening, waiting patiently as the rolling of the waves would slowly smooth his sides down until he becomes a pebble hiding in the sand.
“Hello,” a voice says, and he isn’t sure if it’s a dream or not. “What are you doing?”
Jaejoong opens his eyes. Moist, salty air is weighing him down and a wad of spit gets stuck in his throat as he finds himself staring up at a pair of unfamiliar brown eyes half-hidden by a fringe of sun-bleached chestnut hair. He sits up with a jolt, nearly colliding into the other boy in the process.
“What the-!” he sputters. “What the heck do you think you’re doing??”
The boy has fallen into a sitting position in front of him, gazes at him with wide curious eyes. Jaejoong brands him as a local, with his sun-kissed skin and the fact that the only thing he’s wearing is a pair of khaki shorts. Sand is sticking to him like glitter and water droplets are glistening on his skin like diamonds.
“What the heck are you doing?” the boy repeats, his mouth widening into a smile that shows rows and rows of glistening white teeth. “You shouldn’t lie like that on the sand you know. People would think you were dead.”
Jaejoong scoffs, does the boy another once-over. He seems to be slightly younger than he is. “What do you know?” he says, annoyed as he brushes off sand that’s gathered on his arms.
“I know a lot more than you think I do,” the boy tells him as he wags his eyebrows up and down. “But I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. New renter?”
Jaejoong throws him a look that meant for him to mind his own business, but the other boy doesn’t seem fazed; he’s cocked his head to one side, still studying him. “Creepy kid, what are you looking at me for?” he says. “Jeez. We just arrived this morning. My Dad’s renting some cabin thataways.” He waves an arm towards a nonspecific direction.
“My name’s Changmin.”
“I didn’t ask.”
The other boy pouts. “You’re supposed to tell me yours.”
He glares at the boy one more time before heaving a sigh. Clearly, this Changmin wasn’t going to leave him alone unless he played along.
“Jaejoong,” he tells him.
“How old are you?”
“A hundred,” he replies, glowering. Changmin laughs, a sound as bright as shells and sea glass tinkling against each other.
“You’re older than me then. I’m only around 93 years old.”
He opens his mouth once more, Get lost or perhaps So what already on the tip of his tongue, but someone calls out his name, and he whips his head around. Yoona is walking towards him, her hood up in the ocean breeze, her sunglasses no longer shielding her eyes.
“Jaejoong!” she says, looking and sounding almost angry. She breaks into a jog, the sand swallowing the bottoms of her sneakers. “God, I’ve been calling you and calling you. What are you, deaf or something now?”
She drops down on the sand beside him, and Jamie’s hoodie nearly swallows her whole.
“Who were you talking to, anyway?”
“This kid, Chang-”
But when Jaejoong looks back at where Changmin had been moments earlier, nothing is there but dry, wind-marked sand.
“Chang who? What kid?” he hears Yoona saying.
Changmin has disappeared.
TBC
A/N: No, Changmin isn't a ghost. Haha. I've had enough ghost stories.
Chaptered: Yes.
Rating: G
Summary: Junsu is four and doesn't know any better.
A/N: I know I just finished one fic, but I really couldn't help it. Haha/ This is Jae-centric and NO final word on pairings yet but everyone will be present. They'll be kids, though. ;)
---
One
The day Jaejoong’s father announces that they’re going to the beach and are spending the rest of the summer there is also the day one week after his older (and only) sister, Yoona, announces that she’s pregnant with her boyfriend Jamie’s baby. She’s seventeen and pretty (too pretty, Jaejoong sometimes thinks), with a loud smile and soft hands, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water when their father suddenly comes into the room and says, his mouth stretched wide in a fake smile, “Pack your bags. I’ve booked us all for a trip to Providence until the month is up.”
Their reactions differ. Junsu is the only one excited, and Jaejoong isn’t really surprised. “Clever Daddy!” Junsu claps, because he’s only four and doesn’t know any better. Jaejoong is twelve, however, and not as easily fooled. “Why?” he asks, even though he knows the answer is five years older than he is and is sitting across from him.
“Just because,” says their father, his teeth gritted and his smile dying. He gives him a look that tells him: Help me. I don’t know what to do, but he lowers his eyes, wants nothing more out of this than he does.
Yoona is angry. She’s wearing a sweater Jaejoong recognizes to be Jamie’s and the sleeves swallow her arms. She had been reading a book of baby names she had borrowed from the library and she abandons it to slam both her palms onto the dining-room table, startling Junsu and nearly upsetting the water in Junsu’s Thomas the Tank Engine cup.
“You’re doing this on purpose!”
“Don’t raise your voice at me-”
“You’re just doing this so Jamie and I won’t be able to see each other!”
“If I’d known what trouble you and him were about to get yourselv-”
“I’m having this baby!”
“GO UPSTAIRS AND PACK!” their father roars.
“I hate you!” Yoona cries, her tears shining silver under the lights, and she storms off. Jaejoong watches his father as he sighs and bites his bottom lip. He watches as his father covers his face with his hand, mumbles in a way he thinks Jaejoong doesn’t hear (even though he does), “What did I do wrong?”
He thinks of their mother as he packs his suitcase (and Junsu’s). She had been lithe and delicately beautiful, like a butterfly. She had liked walking barefoot in the grass and blowing raspberries into his tummy when he had been little. She had died giving birth to Junsu, and Jaejoong remembers no one had been the same since. He wonders if this would have happened if their mother had lived
“Joongie,” Junsu tells him sleepily from his bed, his eyes nearly shut like crescent moons. “Joongie, don’t forget my blanky. You might forget.” And when he gets the patchwork quilt to fold up and place on top of their clothes, Junsu says with a little yawn, “Daddy’s very mad at Yoona, isn’t he?”
He can still hear Yoona crying in her room, sobs muffled by the big down pillow she kept at the foot of her bed. Her crying pillow, she had told him once. Used for when she gets her heart broken.
“Go to sleep,” he tells Junsu, tries an old trick he remembers his mother used. “Everything will be better in the morning.”
Their father confiscates cellphones and portable video games at the airport.
“None of this junk,” he says, waving them in front of their faces before unceremoniously dumping it into the pockets of his large attaché case. “This is a proper family vacation and we are going to spend time with each other whether you like it or not.”
He directs the last phrase at Yoona whose eyes are swollen and is hiding them behind large sunglasses that Jaejoong thinks makes her look like a fly. She’s wearing another thing of Jamie’s, his varsity hoodie this time, and tight tight jeans. Too wrapped up for a trip to the beach. He’d noticed when his father’s mouth had given a little twitch upon seeing her that morning. “Family vacation my freaking ass,” he hears his sister mutter.
“Do I give you my binky too, Daddy?” Junsu says with wide eyes and offers him the ratty pacifier that’s the only thing that would comfort Junsu during these kinds of moments. Nobody has actually tried weaning him off of it, and for the first time Jaejoong considers that it might be their father might be too afraid to; Junsu is the only one left who looks up to him with believing eyes.
Their father blinks, looking as though he hadn’t understood what had been said. “Oh that,” he finally says, blinks several more times before pushing Junsu’s hand away. “No, you keep it son. You might need it.” Keys in his pocket jangle as he puts his hand in to retrieve the tickets. “Two weeks. Who knows what can happen in two weeks eh?”
He casts a weary glance at Yoona who’s avoiding his gaze as much as possible, one hand protectively around her stomach. Jaejoong still finds it hard to imagine that a little person is actually inside of her.
“Who knows,” their father sighs.
Their father has forgotten iPods, and Yoona plugs earphones into her ears and looks away from them the moment they get on the plane. Their father hasn’t counted himself in the fasting of electronics either and gets his laptop working once the stewardesses give him the go signal. Jaejoong finds himself in between the both of them, silenced and being squeezed tight by the lonely hum inside of the cabin, wanting to talk to either of them, but soon discovering that even though he wanted to, he can’t. Junsu, his last resort and who has always been faithful to him, is asleep in a nest of airplane blankets with his binky in his mouth.
Jaejoong sighs, leans back instead and closes his eyes, counting backward from 10,000. Maybe, he thinks, by the time he gets to zero, everything will be normal. There will be no unborn babies, no angry sisters and desperate fathers. No missing mothers.
…9,996…9,876…9,643…
The sky in Providence is blue and wide and open. Jaejoong has never seen anything like it before and he can’t stop staring. In the city, all he has are skyscrapers, countless of tall structures of metal and glass that surround him and everything he knows like an endless cage.
“Jaejoong!” he hears his father shout, and it’s because Junsu is too small to do anything helpful and Yoona ran off the moment the taxi dropped them off at the beach. He tears his eyes away from the cornflower blue that seems to wrap the entire area like a tent, and helps his father with the suitcases. “Good boy.” Their father says and reaches out to ruffle his head. Jaejoong ducks from his palm. The action seems to take them both by surprise because his father stares at him as though he’s a stranger, and Jaejoong hangs his head, suddenly feeling his cheeks almost burning.
“Don’t…” is the only thing he manages to say, unable to meet his father’s gaze.
“Joongie!” he hears Junsu shout from the front of the cabin. “Joongie, there’s so much sand! Look, look!”
Junsu’s high-pitched giggles sound almost bottled, as though he were on a different plain. Somewhere safe and far away and where everything could be easily understood.
“Your brother’s calling you.” His father says and Jaejoong sees his hands tighten around one suitcase handle. “I’ll handle it from here. You play with him.”
“Yes, sir,” Jaejoong says and turns around without any hesitation, runs to where Junsu is without looking back.
He’s careful with Junsu. He’s always been. Before Junsu can drag him out further in the sun, he pulls him back to the cabin, makes him stand on the porch while he goes up to fetch the suntan lotion from his suitcase.
“Eww, it’s sticky,” Junsu wrinkles his nose in distaste as Jaejoong squirts white lines down his arms and spreads it using his palms.
“You’ll burn if you don’t put it on, silly baby,” Jaejoong tells him. He’s sitting on one of the weathered Adirondack chairs that decorate the front of the porch. He had passed their father on his way down; he had been in the first bedroom at the top of the stairs, staring at a photo of their mother, the only thing he had unpacked. Jaejoong had taken it upon himself to shut the door.
“This little light of miiine, I’m gonna let it shiiine…” Junsu is singing as Jaejoong finishes him up. He places a blotch of cream onto his little brother’s nose. The air around them has started smelling of coconut.
“Wear this or you’ll fry,” he instructs Junsu as he places an oversized fisherman’s hat on his head. They cover his eyes and Jaejoong laughs as Junsu lets out a squeaky “Heeey!”
Junsu hasn’t any beach toys, considering they’ve had to leave so suddenly, but Jaejoong unpacks Tonka trucks and Matchbox cars from his little brother’s bag, and he watches as Junsu sets them up in the sand near the shoreline. Upon Junsu’s instruction, he gets down on his hands and knees to help him make a fort for them.
“Where’s Yoona gone, Joongie?” Junsu asks one time, because Junsu doesn’t like it whenever he doesn’t know where everyone is. Jaejoong remembers being exactly the same at his age, but had been cured quickly because of a song his mother had created: Daddy’s at the office, Yoona’s at the big school, and Mommy’s home with Jaejoong…
He doubts the song would be of any use now.
“She’ll be back,” Jaejoong says, scooping warm gritty sand with his hands and patting them down flat with water. He thinks of Yoona in Jamie’s hoodie and too-big sneakers, crying somewhere with her knuckles in her mouth while staring out at the sea. He remembers once upon a time there was a plaque on her door that said DADDY’S GIRL in pink swirly letters. He doesn’t know where it is now.
“Has she gone far?” Junsu asks, his dimpled knees already dusted with sand. He looks up and Jaejoong sees in him his mother, himself, Yoona, and his father all at once.
“She’ll be back,” he repeats, before quickly looking away.
Their father calls them for a late lunch of store-bought hotdogs in buns and coleslaw, cold sodas and French fries drowning in ketchup. He doesn’t ask where Yoona is, only pretends not to notice the empty space at the weathered dining table in between him and Junsu.
“Dad…” he tries.
“Junsu, use your fork.”
“Dad…” he tries again.
“There, now you’ve gone and spilled ketchup down your front!”
He gives up.
It’s when Junsu takes his afternoon nap in the cabin that he decides to do a little exploring. Maybe find Yoona. His father meets him at the landing of the stairs, looks at him in a way as though seeing him for the very first time.
“Going exploring?” his father asks finally, with a hint of a smile, and Jaejoong realizes that it’s the first time he’s actually seen his father in anything outside of a suit and tie. It suits him, he thinks, but doesn’t say it out loud.
“Uh-hmm.”
“The guy I rented this from told me there are usually other families who rent the next-door cabins at this time of the year. Maybe you can find someone to play with?”
He almost snorts at his father’s choice of words. Play, he wants to say, is something he quit doing a long time ago.
“Okay,” he says and starts to brush past him to make it down the stairs. The steps creak from under him like they’re millions of years old.
“When you come back maybe we can play something together. Chess or checkers. Your choice. I think there’s even a Game of the Generals there somewhere. Not sure.” His father cranes his neck up at the shelves that occupy the second floor. Somebody had been bored enough to fill it with board games.
“Okay,” he says, even though he knows a game against his father would never happen. By the time he’d get back Junsu would already be awake and clamoring for attention. Everyone would be hungry. They still had to unpack. He doesn’t even know if Yoona would be there by then. But he says ‘okay’ anyway.
“Okay.”
The sea is shining and glossed over from the sun, like the surface of a new dime. As with the sky that morning, the sea is something he can’t keep his eyes off from as he runs from the cabin with no particular direction in mind, his sneakers (he hasn’t even bothered changing yet) sinking in the sand, making him tired more quickly than he would be if he were on pavement. He collapses on his knees when he’s sure their cabin is out of sight, lets himself lie down in order to catch his breath. The pounding of his heart is as loud as the roar of the sea and he pretends for a moment that he’s a rock on the seabed, rough and glistening, waiting patiently as the rolling of the waves would slowly smooth his sides down until he becomes a pebble hiding in the sand.
“Hello,” a voice says, and he isn’t sure if it’s a dream or not. “What are you doing?”
Jaejoong opens his eyes. Moist, salty air is weighing him down and a wad of spit gets stuck in his throat as he finds himself staring up at a pair of unfamiliar brown eyes half-hidden by a fringe of sun-bleached chestnut hair. He sits up with a jolt, nearly colliding into the other boy in the process.
“What the-!” he sputters. “What the heck do you think you’re doing??”
The boy has fallen into a sitting position in front of him, gazes at him with wide curious eyes. Jaejoong brands him as a local, with his sun-kissed skin and the fact that the only thing he’s wearing is a pair of khaki shorts. Sand is sticking to him like glitter and water droplets are glistening on his skin like diamonds.
“What the heck are you doing?” the boy repeats, his mouth widening into a smile that shows rows and rows of glistening white teeth. “You shouldn’t lie like that on the sand you know. People would think you were dead.”
Jaejoong scoffs, does the boy another once-over. He seems to be slightly younger than he is. “What do you know?” he says, annoyed as he brushes off sand that’s gathered on his arms.
“I know a lot more than you think I do,” the boy tells him as he wags his eyebrows up and down. “But I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. New renter?”
Jaejoong throws him a look that meant for him to mind his own business, but the other boy doesn’t seem fazed; he’s cocked his head to one side, still studying him. “Creepy kid, what are you looking at me for?” he says. “Jeez. We just arrived this morning. My Dad’s renting some cabin thataways.” He waves an arm towards a nonspecific direction.
“My name’s Changmin.”
“I didn’t ask.”
The other boy pouts. “You’re supposed to tell me yours.”
He glares at the boy one more time before heaving a sigh. Clearly, this Changmin wasn’t going to leave him alone unless he played along.
“Jaejoong,” he tells him.
“How old are you?”
“A hundred,” he replies, glowering. Changmin laughs, a sound as bright as shells and sea glass tinkling against each other.
“You’re older than me then. I’m only around 93 years old.”
He opens his mouth once more, Get lost or perhaps So what already on the tip of his tongue, but someone calls out his name, and he whips his head around. Yoona is walking towards him, her hood up in the ocean breeze, her sunglasses no longer shielding her eyes.
“Jaejoong!” she says, looking and sounding almost angry. She breaks into a jog, the sand swallowing the bottoms of her sneakers. “God, I’ve been calling you and calling you. What are you, deaf or something now?”
She drops down on the sand beside him, and Jamie’s hoodie nearly swallows her whole.
“Who were you talking to, anyway?”
“This kid, Chang-”
But when Jaejoong looks back at where Changmin had been moments earlier, nothing is there but dry, wind-marked sand.
“Chang who? What kid?” he hears Yoona saying.
Changmin has disappeared.
TBC
A/N: No, Changmin isn't a ghost. Haha. I've had enough ghost stories.