Chapter Text
tomorrow x together – 9 and three quarters (run away)
They’re both six when Yunho meets Wooyoung for the first time. It happens back in 2005, while the TV keeps replaying Pororo the Penguin, kids in kindergarten trade Pokémon cards, and adults talk about politics in low, tense voices.
Before he meets Wooyoung, all Yunho really remembers about 2005 is his parents constantly fighting. He’s still too young to understand what’s going on, so he keeps playing with his superhero figures and humming theme songs from TV without really thinking about it. Everything changes when his parents start bringing up his nanny in their arguments, and then, one day, she simply stops coming over.
One night, Yunho wakes up to someone shaking his shoulder. He opens his eyes sleepily and sees his mother standing over him, her face streaked with tears. The golden light from the floor lamp blinds him and washes over her face, but he can still see the smudged mascara under her eyes and her tangled hair. As she opens her mouth to speak, Yunho notices a strange smell that resembles alcohol.
"Yunho-yah, my love…" she says unsteadily, smoothing his hair with a trembling hand. "If mom and dad start living separately, who do you want to stay with?"
Yunho's first thought is relief. If his parents live separately, then maybe the constant fighting will finally stop. And if he stays with dad, mom won't scold him anymore for not eating his vegetables or for not bowing properly to adults. Things were always more fun with dad, cause he gave him lots of presents and took him to the Lotte World. So, without a second thought, Yunho replies, "With dad," not understanding why mom’s face suddenly takes on this strange expression. This expression will come back to haunt him with a dull sense of guilt later, when he grows up and understands the significance of that night, those fights and that conversation with mom.
But for now, he doesn't understand any of it, so he cries loudly when his mother ignores his choice and does things her own way. A couple of days later, they leave their family penthouse and move into a small but modern two-story cottage, surrounded by rows of identical ones. His father leaves them at the gate, hugs Yunho tightly, and keeps whispering that everything will be okay. As he gets back into his car and drives away, Yunho breaks into tears, still not understanding what’s happening.
"Quiet!" his mother hisses, yanking him back. "Stop it right now! People are staring!"
But her words only make Yunho want to cry even harder, so he pulls his hand free from her grip and runs off not knowing where he's going.
When he finally runs out of breath and stops, he finds himself in front of a house just like the one he ran from, except this one clearly has someone living in it. There's a car parked by the gate, the smell of fried kimchi hangs in the air and a dog is barking somewhere behind the fence. Sniffling loudly and wiping his nose with his fist, Yunho steps forward, tilting his head in curiosity. Maybe if he gets closer, he’ll be able to see it.
As he approaches, the dog’s barking grows louder and more frantic, until suddenly a child’s voice cuts through it:
“Tokki, be quiet! What is it?”
Yunho hears a soft whimper, the sound of rubber slippers slapping against the stone path, and the rattling of the gate before it finally swings open and he gets his first look at the owner of the voice. The boy is short and skinny, probably around his own age. He has a round face, tan skin, and messy black hair. There’s a big dog with a golden fur looming impatiently behind him, almost taller than the boy himself. Yunho's gaze is immediately drawn to it.
"Who are you?" the boy asks. "And why are you crying?"
He tilts his head, curious, and waves one hand at the overexcited dog that is about to knock him over.
Yunho wipes his eyes irritably and mutters, "My name is Jeong Yunho. And I'm not crying."
"Then what are you doing?"
"I wanted to see the dog."
The boy looks him over with a wary expression, but still takes a step forward.
"Tokki, sit!"
The dog obediently sits down, never stopping its enthusiastic tail-wagging and excited panting.
"You can come over and pet her, just no sudden moves. She doesn't bite."
Forgetting about his parents' fights, the move, and his tears, Yunho steps forward eagerly, stretching his hand out in front of him. The dog's fur is soft and slightly tangled. When she nudges his palm with her wet nose, he can't help but burst out laughing.
The boy watches with a smile, clearly proud.
"I haven't seen you around here before," he says a little later, as they sit down on the edge of a stone flower bed, still playing with Tokki.
"We just moved here," Yunho says shortly, scratching the dog between the ears. Now that his tears have dried, he can finally take a better look at the boy. He has moles under his eye and on his lip, bruises on his knees and elbows, and a Batman t-shirt.
"So that’s why you were crying?"
Something in his tone makes Yunho answer honestly. Maybe it’s because there’s no teasing, just pure curiosity.
“Yeah. My dad won’t be living with us anymore. And all my friends stayed there. My room, too…”
“I’ve got friends here,” the boy says. “Yeosang from the fifth house, he has tapes with all the Power Ranger episodes! And Yeonjun from the eighth house, he lets us ride his scooter. They can play with you too. Just don’t mess with the girls. Girls are mean and throw sand at us, especially Ryujin.”
Yunho smiles. Besides the boy's words, he is also soothed by the sudden realization that now that they live in a cottage, his mom might let him have a pet. She used to forbid it, saying no one keeps animals in apartments.
"What's your name anyway?" Yunho asks the boy.
The boy straightens up at once and proudly replies, "Jung Wooyoung!”
"Okie-dokie, Jung Wooyoung, let's play together!"
The midday sun hits them right in the face, making them squint blindly. Tokki’s tail tickles Yunho’s ankles, and for a moment he completely forgets why he was crying at all, until he hears his mom’s anxious voice from somewhere down the street.
"Yunho-yah, there you are! You scared me so much! Never run off like that again, do you hear me?"
***
Wooyoung is so bright and loud and sparkling, like popping candy, and Yunho really loves playing with him. Every day they’re something new, pirates, superheroes, knights. The playground becomes their fortress, and the rest of the cottage neighborhood turns into an entire world waiting to be explored.
As promised, Wooyoung introduces Yunho to his friends, Yeonjun and Yeosang. Most of the time, the four of them play together, but sometimes a boy named Changbin joins them too. His grandmother lives in the seventh cottage, and he often stays with her.
Yunho also gets to meet the girls. On his very first day, he gets sand dumped down the back of his shirt for accidentally stepping onto their sabanchigi court. The worst of them, Ryujin, also lives in the house next door. Sometimes, while having dinner, Yunho can see her in the window across from theirs. Ryujin seems to have a big family and three older brothers. Whenever she sees Yunho, she starts making faces and sticking out her tongue until her parents tell her off. Yunho finds her really annoying.
After dinner, when there are still a couple of hours before bedtime, he runs back to Wooyoung. His mom doesn’t seem to mind, probably because she isn’t worried and knows their cottage neighborhood is well guarded and lit around the clock. In the evenings, it’s usually just the two of them playing together, since Yeosang’s parents don’t let him out, and Yeonjun is busy watching his favorite TV show. All the other kids, exhausted from the daytime heat and hours of running around, prefer to stay inside too. Only Wooyoung never seems able to sit still. Sometimes it feels like he only goes home to sleep and eat, spending the rest of his time outside. His hair always smells like the street, and sometimes like smoke when someone’s barbecuing, and his skin is marked with tan lines.
Yunho doesn't really think much about why Wooyoung is almost never at home. To be honest, he doesn't care, either. He's just happy that they get to play together. When the other kids aren't around, all of Wooyoung's attention goes to Yunho. He laughs only at Yunho’s jokes and tells interesting stories just to him. They come up with new rules and secrets that belong only to them, and then the next day they walk around looking important and sharing secret looks. Being around Wooyoung is so much fun that Yunho quickly forgets about his parents, about the friends he left behind somewhere else, and even about his favorite Spider-Man blanket that got lost during the move. It feels like they’ve known each other forever.
When they get bored with playing on the playground, Wooyoung comes up with a new game.
“Name any object," he says, pulling the sand into a pile and tamping it with his palms.
Yunho looks up from building a barricade of pebbles and looks at him, surprised.
"Just anything?"
“Well," Wooyoung drawls, "Something there’s a lot of. And something around here”.
Not quite understanding where this is going, Yunho looks around carefully and answers with the first thing that comes to mind:
“A streetlight!”
"Cool!" Wooyoung exclaims and jumps to his feet. Brushing the sand off himself, he holds out a hand to Yunho. "Come on."
Yunho obediently follows him without asking any questions. When they reach the sidewalk, Wooyoung stops.
"Do you hear that sound?"
Yunho can only hear the chirping of cicadas and has no idea if that’s what Wooyoung means, but he nods just in case.
"That’s the whispers of the tokkaebi. They hide in the bushes and work their magic."
“But why?”
“So they can get inside objects and mess everything up. If we don’t do anything, tomorrow this place will be one big mess.”
Yunho knows this is one of those fantastical stories that Wooyoung loves to make up, but he still feels uneasy. The empty streets, the darkness held back only by the streetlights, and the distant cries of birds all add to the atmosphere and make Wooyoung's words feel real.
"So what should we do?"
"We should drown out their whispers so they can't take over the objects. We need to count all the streetlights around us up to thirty-nine. If we make it to thirty-nine, we're safe. The key is not to mess it up, or we'll have to start over."
Yunho frowns, ruffling the hair at the back of his head.
“Why thirty-nine?”
Wooyoung hesitates for a moment, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot before answering quietly.
“I don’t know how to count past that. My hyung didn’t teach me the rest of the numbers because he left.”
“Oh, you have an older brother?” Yunho asks in surprise.
Now that he thinks about it, he’s never really met anyone from Wooyoung’s family. All he knows is that his dad drives a big white car, and his mom is always cooking something, judging by the smells coming from their house.
"Yeah, his name is Taeyoung!" Wooyoung says proudly. "He's in Seoul right now, attending the military academy, but he's supposed to return for the holidays soon. Then he'll teach me how to count further! But for now, let's go count to thirty-nine before the tokkaebi gets stronger!"
For some reason, Taeyoung never comes home for the holidays, and Yunho ends up helping Wooyoung learn how to count past forty himself. However, this doesn't change the rules of the game, which eventually becomes a tradition.
Even when they grow tired of the tokkaebi legend, Yunho and Wooyoung keep going outside in the evenings and counting things up to thirty-nine, whether it’s streetlights, crickets, stones, or windows with lights glowing inside.
One day, Yunho finds Ryujin crying.
It happens when he’s on his way home for dinner, covered in dirt and with a bruise on his knee slowly darkening after he fell off Yeonjun’s scooter. Yunho drags himself home, slowly and reluctantly. He doesn’t even feel like eating, but all the other kids have already been herded inside by their parents, even Wooyoung, so there isn’t much of a choice.
As he steps up to the porch and reaches for the front door, he hears a strange wailing sound. Yunho pauses, listening, and realizes it’s coming from the yard next door. Trying to make as little noise as possible, he sneaks up to the fence separating their yard from the Shins’. From this close, the wailing turns into sobbing. Yunho stands on his tiptoes and carefully peeks over the fence, as much as his height allows.
The first thing he sees is Ryujin's tear-streaked face. She's sitting on the ground in front of a small mound of freshly turned earth, smearing her face with dirt and tears. Behind her, her brothers shift impatiently from foot to foot, exchanging looks and carrying on a silent conversation between themselves.
"Ryujin-ah, c’mon, stop crying already," the oldest brother finally says. "Let's go home before mom gets mad."
"You go!" Ryujin sobs without even turning around. "I'm not going anywhere!"
"God, all these tears over some stupid hamster," another brother mutters just as a clod of dirt comes flying at him.
"You're the stupid one!" Ryujin shouts, jumping to her feet. Yunho ducks back behind the fence just in time so she doesn’t notice him. “Don’t talk about Fluffy like that!”
"Hey!" her brother yells back, raising his hand like he’s about to smack her. “Is that how you talk to your elders?”
“Fluffy died because of you! You never liked him, so you left his cage open on purpose!”
"What are you talking about, you crazy girl? Aish, wait until dad gets home, he’s going to hear about this!"
When it finally starts to feel awkward to keep watching, Yunho quietly steps away from the fence and drags himself back home. All through dinner, he keeps thinking about Ryujin’s tear-streaked face and the small mound of fresh earth, poking at the slightly hard rice without much interest. Sometimes, he sneaks glances at the window of Ryujin’s house, where he can see her family gathered around the table without her.
His mom doesn’t seem to notice how distracted he looks, slowly sipping some kind of red drink and looking out the window. For some reason, she barely talks at all lately. All she does is sleep a lot and stare out the window for hours. Sometimes, Yunho even thinks he can hear her crying behind her bedroom door. Maybe she’s just as sad about the move as he was.
After finishing his dinner, Yunho thanks his mom and tells her he's going out to play with Wooyoung. She nods silently, still looking out the window. Yunho is almost out the door when he suddenly remembers Ryujin. After a moment of hesitation, he goes back into the kitchen and grabs out a bottle of banana milk with a nut bar from the fridge before heading back outside.
This time, he runs straight to the fence without trying to hide. Climbing onto a small plastic box left behind by the previous owners, Yunho peers into the Shins’ yard and, just as he expected, sees Ryujin. She’s sitting in the same spot in front of the mound of earth, hugging her dusty knees to her chest and sniffling softly.
"Hey!" Yunho calls out to her.
Ryujin jumps in place and looks around in confusion until her eyes land on him. Her face immediately takes on the same nasty expression she had when she looked at them on the playground.
"What is it, Long Legs?" she mutters.
Yunho doesn't answer. Instead, he tosses the banana milk and the snack bar over the fence, letting them land at her feet. Ryujin looks at them as if they might explode.
"What’s this?" she asks.
"Nothing," Yunho shrugs. "So you won’t cry. I feel bad about your hamster. That’s all."
Ryujin’s expression turns strange, like she doesn’t know which face to make. Like she might cry, or get angry, or smile, all at once. Finally, she sniffs loudly and lifts her chin.
“Thanks. And don’t tell anyone about this. You hear me? Like, seriously. Anyone.”
Yunho grins smugly.
"Then stop throwing sand at us."
Ryujin pouts and hisses, "Fine, I'll think about it. Then you guys stop messing with us, too."
Yunho shrugs. He’s just about to hop down from the box when something suddenly occurs to him.
“Hey, Wooyoung and I are about to go to the pond to count fireflies. Come with us.”
He doesn't know why he asked her, but Ryujin looks so sad that he just feels bad for her.
"Wooyoung? Oh, Big Ears. Why are you even counting them?"
Yunho doesn't want to share the tokkaebi story, so he just says, "It's fun."
Ryujin falls quiet for a moment. She glances toward her house, then asks,
“What time is it?”
"I dunno," Yunho snorts. "But Music Bank’s probably already on."
"Aish, Dad’s gonna be home soon," Ryujin hisses again, making a face. "Fine, let's go."
She throws one last look at the little mound of dirt, quietly wipes her eyes, and follows Yunho.
When Wooyoung sees Ryujin, things almost blow up. They’re already about to start fighting when Yunho steps in.
"C’mon, let her come with us," he says to Wooyoung, pulling him aside.
"Are you serious? That’s Shin Ryujin!" Wooyoung protests. "What, are you two friends now?"
"No, she was just cr-" Yunho starts, then cuts himself off, remembering his promise. "Her hamster died, and she was sad, so I invited her."
"Died?" Wooyoung asks, startled, and Yunho sees his eyes suddenly fill with tears, his nose turning red almost instantly.
"Hey, why are you crying too?"
Wooyoung stays quiet for a moment, blinking fast and sniffing hard before he finally says,
"I feel bad for the hamster. Hyung told me that Tokki’s going to die someday too. I don't want that."
Now Yunho's eyes start to sting as well. But then he remembers his dad saying that boys don’t cry, so he swallows it down.
"Okay, don't cry. Let's just play with Ryujin so she won’t feel sad."
Wooyoung sniffs one last time and nods.
The three of them run to the pond in the middle of the cottage neighborhood. There is a small park with wooden benches, swings, and well-trodden paths. Ryujin still doesn't really get why they're counting fireflies, so she just looks for flat stones and skips them across the water, trying to make them bounce. The splashing keeps throwing Yunho and Wooyoung off their count, almost starting another fight.
From then on, Ryujin starts joining Yunho and Wooyoung on their evening outings from time to time, and a few times she even counts along with them. They settle into a truce on the playground, though she never quite stops making faces at him during dinner.