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Chapter Text

For decades, and centuries, and maybe even millennia, the Witch High Council of Seoul had sent flocks of magpies around the country to summon unmatched Witches to the High Council Chambers. The stories went that, once every three years, the skies above would be dark with magpies delivering invitations to Witches over the age of nineteen and that, over the course of the next three years, Witches would descend on Seoul to meet with their Soulmates, trusting that fate would nudge their paths together to meet in the Chambers on the same day.

But with an increase in Witches came an increase in matches to be made, and the High Council has been running behind on matches for decades; they’ve been trying to catch up, modernising their invitations to text messages rather than magpies, inviting more people at a time, but it hasn’t been enough. Jeongguk counts himself lucky, in fact, that when he gets his invitation, he’s still only twenty-six.

His text message (which has come from a sender labelled ‘MAGPIE’ – cute, but it’s not quite the same effect as having an actual magpie tapping its beak against the window) not only invites him to the High Council Chambers, but lets him know that his summoning is an “auspicious” one, because it will mark the beginning of yearly invitations.

“That just means you’ve got one year to go down to the High Council Chambers, rather than three,” his brother says when Jeongguk shows him the text. “But that won’t really effect you, considering you’re not going to put it off, right?”

“Why would I?” Jeongguk asks, rolling his eyes. “The sooner I go, the sooner I can meet my Soulmates.”

It’s no secret amongst his family that Jeongguk’s been eager to be matched for a while, for a number of reasons. A Soulmate is just a person whose magic resonates with yours, makes yours easier to cast, better, stronger, and, frankly, Jeongguk needs all the help he can get. But he’s also a romantic at heart, and he’s heard all of the stories of Soulmates falling in love because they’re so well matched, and he wants that. Badly.

So, he gets his text message on Sunday and, on Monday, he gets the train from Busan to Seoul. Most Witches would probably just use a broom, but Jeongguk’s never flown that far before, so his plan is to get the train to Seoul Station, get on his broom, and then fly the ten minutes from the station to the High Council Chambers. He likes to think his Soulmates wouldn’t be so mean as to judge him for his nervousness around flying long-distance, but he’d still like to make a good first impression as a competent Witch who isn’t afraid of thunderstorms, aeroplanes, or accidentally flying too close to geese.

It's never really been a doubt in his mind that he’ll have more than one Soulmate. Not only are Soulmateships of three or more much, much more common than a pair, there’s just something in his gut, like a spiderweb or a ball of light, branching out in different directions. When he was younger, and his magic teachers hadn’t given up on him as a student, they had tried to encourage him to latch onto that feeling, in the hopes of nudging fate to lead him to his Soulmates earlier than nineteen – Jeongguk had just thought they were being nice, that they knew how much he loved movies about young people being so cosmically destined that they found one another earlier than most, but with the benefit of hindsight, Jeongguk can now see that they were just hoping to kickstart any of his latent magical ability. He can cast magic, sure, but he comes from a long, long line of prodigy Witches – he should be better than he is.

He kills some time on the train by tidying up his broom. It’s a hand-me-down, but not in the cool, mystical, ‘this broom has been passed down in my families for centuries’ sort of way – it’s a cheap plastic broomstick from a regular store, enchanted by his uncle with stabilising charms to teach Jeongguk’s kid cousin how to ride a broom. Is it embarrassing, to still be using a broom meant for children? Sure, but he’d rather be a little embarrassed than risk being bucked off by one of these new-fangled enchantment orbs. Simply speak your destination into it, smash it on the ground, and then get propelled into the air? He’d rather walk forever, thank you.

But it does mean he needs to spend a fair bit of time maintaining his broom. He’s used textured paint to mimic a wooden handle, which he needs to top up regularly with a brown wooden furniture restorer pen, and he’s also replaced the blue plastic bristles with forsythia branches, which, while looking a lot nicer than plastic, do have a tendency to sprout little yellow flowers when he’s not looking, almost as a reminder that he must’ve done something wrong with his sticking spell when he replaced the bristles.

There’s a guy sitting across the aisle from him who’s watching him work. Although Witches are common enough in society to make up a significant proportion of the population, there are people who, when curious, can get a little too insistent in their questioning. But Jeongguk doesn’t think this guy is magicless – if the giant embossed potion almanac on his lap didn’t give it away, then the fact that Jeongguk had watched him uncork a bottle, tip the contents over his head, and change his hair from black to blonde as easy as blinking certainly would have.

He offers the guy a tentative smile, but he’s not looking at Jeongguk’s face, so he turns away again to focus on his task. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see somebody else sit down next to the guy.

“Suits you,” he says, his voice deep and divulgatory, as though confiding a great secret to his conversation partner.

“Good,” comes the reply; lighter, airier, but also terser. “Might as well make a good first impression.”

“Thought you didn’t care?” The first speaker says.

Jeongguk tries to tune them out, even though it’s not his fault they’re choosing to have a conversation on a train, but they just keep talking. “I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to like me.”

They continue with this conversation for the rest of the trip. On the plus side, Jeongguk’s attempts to hyper-focus on his broom to drown out their talking means that his broom is the nicest it’s ever looked when he steps off the train, broom in one hand, suitcase in the other, and heads towards the take-off platform.

Most Witches Jeongguk has met can take off from standing, but Jeongguk’s never been able to, always tipping forward into a nose dive before he’s risen six feet. Instead, he has to take a run up and kick off from the ground, so he lashes his suitcase to the back of his broom, waits until enough space clears up on the platform, and takes off, kicking off from the ground hard enough that he has to physically wrest his broom up into the correct angle to prevent himself from careening head first into the station wall.

Once he’s up out of the station, he doesn’t rise any higher than the skyscraper line, content to use the city’s natural wind tunnels to coast along. He doesn’t fly into any other Witches – most prefer flying above the skyscraper line, where travel times are shorter and there’s no upper speed limit – but he does see, high above him, a Witch flying unaided. Or, not flying – Jeongguk slows his broom to watch as the Witch above uses a spell he’s only ever seen used to walk on water, freezing the water molecules in the air to create discs of ice for them to stand on. As soon as they hop away, the ice melts, the water dissipating back into the air. It’s an impressive display of skill – a Weather Witch, then.

Jeongguk’s never been able to specialise. You need to pass Mastery exams in order to become a Witch of anything, standardised tests that Jeongguk knows the theory for, if they were just theory tests he could be a Witch of at least twenty different disciplines, but when it comes to the practical tests… He can do the magic, is the thing. But he needs his wand to do it, and you can’t take Mastery exams with one. Then again, he doesn’t think he could do what the Witch above him is doing, even with a wand.

The High Council Chambers have been on the same site for thousands of years, but it’s not always been the same building. Witches, as a general rule, like to have their architecture harmonise with magicless architecture, just with a slight air of superiority – a building that the magicless could build if they tried harder, but that a team of Witches could construct with ease in an afternoon.

The Chambers are no different – a perfectly circular disc in Central Seoul, with a perpetually autumnal maple tree growing up through the centre of it, its red leaves poking out of the top of the white building (Okay, Jeongguk thinks. Maybe the magicless couldn’t do that.) There’s a landing strip outside, a sheet of increasingly rough glass designed to slowly bring a Witch’s feet to a stop, but Jeongguk is too focused on looking at the top of the building, where there seems to be an entire Greenhouse underneath the building’s glass roof, and he misses the point where descent would be a gentle angle. He tries to course correct, descending at an angle much more suited for a trick broom than his broom with stabilising charms – his broom works against him, refusing to point at the angle he needs it to in order to reach the start of the landing strip, and so he hits it right at the point where the traction kicks in, almost sending him sprawling onto his face.

Almost, because the air seems to thicken around him, slowing his fall enough for him to stumble out of it.

“Lethal, that thing.” Jeongguk whips around, still astride his broom, and almost smacks his rescuer across the thighs with it. The man steps back easily – a little too easily, his feet floating in the air a moment too long to not be magic. “I’ve told the High Council to replace the landing strip with something a little less 17^th century, but they’ve been ignoring my emails.” He shrugs. “Honestly, I’m not entirely sure they even read their emails, the High Council doesn’t seem like the kind of institution to hire a PA, but what do I know?” His easy expression shifts into a politer smile, a little more closed off. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Jeongguk says, finally dismounting his broom. “Thank you.” He takes a look at the guy, at his pink and white aerosuit, quilted to combat the cold, his cloak fluttering in a breeze Jeongguk can’t feel. “Sorry, were you the Weather Witch flying earlier?”

“I thought I recognised you!” The guy smiles widely. “Yeah, that was me. I’m Kim Seokjin.”

“You saw me?” Jeongguk asks. “Oh, and, uh, Jeongguk. Jeon Jeongguk.”

The man nods. “You don’t see a lot of brooms like yours, you know? Especially ones with flowering branches.” Jeongguk holds up his broom and sighs when he sees just how many yellow flowers have bloomed in the short time between the train station and his landing here. “So, what’re you here for, Jeongguk-ssi?”

“I got a magpie text,” Jeongguk explains. “What about you, Seokjin-ssi?”

“Me too.” Seokjin grins. “Honestly, I wasn’t even going to bother coming, but my hyung never got his text, and I think our parents would be devastated if both of us went unmatched, they’re pretty old fashioned.”

“Ha, yeah,” Jeongguk says, trying to sound nonchalant about a day he’s been looking forward to for years. “So, you don’t really like the idea of having a Soulmate?”

“I don’t really care,” Seokjin says. A wind whips up behind them and blows the door to the High Council Chambers wide open; Seokjin gestures for Jeongguk to step inside first. “I mean, it’ll be nice to meet the people who’ll make my magic sing, or whatever it is that poetry says will happen, but I could’ve gone my whole life without meeting them and probably not really noticed the difference, you know?”

Jeongguk hums faintly, making a point of taking in the High Council Chambers’ entrance hall to prevent himself from needing to answer. The trunk of the giant tree sprouting through the top of the building sits behind a wooden reception desk and, occasionally, a red leaf flutters down from above, but it disappears before it gets close to hitting the floor. The sound of windchimes are coming from somewhere, which is all the more apparent because the entrance hall is completely empty – no receptionist, no Councillors, and, most importantly to Jeongguk, nobody else waiting to be matched.

Seokjin seems nice, but what Jeongguk had wanted, more than anything, was to be matched with somebody who wanted to find their Soulmate just as much as he did. What if Seokjin is his Soulmate? He’s already said that the only part of the whole thing he has any interest in is the potential benefit to his magical prowess – would Jeongguk have to explain that he’s not likely to get that from him? Would he have to tell this incredibly competent Witch that he’s just not very good at magic?

“You’d think they’d make this easier,” Seokjin says, looking around the empty space. The light is spilling in from the space in the roof, which only serves to emphasise just how little else there is in the room – no furniture aside from the unmanned desk, no windows other than the skylight above, no doors other than the one they’d just walked in through.

“Kim Seokjin,” a disembodied voice, inhuman in its lack of inflections, calls out, making them both jump. “Please walk through the white door.” As it speaks, a white metal door melts into place in the wall like a drop of paint in water.

“Well, see you around, Jeongguk-ssi,” Seokjin says cheerfully as he heads towards the door, which, just like the previous door, opens with a strong gust of wind before Seokjin steps through it.

It slams shut with a clang, and then dissolves back into the white wall as though it had never been there in the first place. Now alone, Jeongguk starts to pace, his steps getting faster and faster the longer he’s left alone in the room. He could understand if there was a long queue of people before him, but he’s literally the only other person here – does he have to wait until Seokjin is done? He wishes he’d asked the few of his friends who’d been matched more about the process, at least so he knew what to expect. He’d wanted the whole thing to be a surprise, but he’s starting to regret that now – what if he inadvertently does something wrong?

At any rate, if he’d known how long he’d be waiting around for, he’d have brought a book.

He’s starting to get a little dizzy, pacing around the room, when two things happen almost simultaneously. The first – the two men from the train come in through the main entrance. The second – Jeongguk’s name gets called out, and the white door rematerializes. Not wanting the door to disappear before he can go through it, Jeongguk quickly heads over to it.

It’s much more difficult to open than Seokjin, with his heavy gust of wind, had made it look, with Jeongguk having to not only use two hands, but also needing to firmly place his feet on the ground before the door will so much as budge. Once it starts moving, though, it opens incrementally and, once it’s cracked open enough, Jeongguk slips inside.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but an empty, circular tower is not it. If he spreads his arms out, he can touch the walls, and there’s light coming from both everywhere and nowhere at once. There are no windows, no other doors – no door at all, once the metal door melts away – but before Jeongguk can start feeling trapped, the floor starts rising silently up the tower. He stands in the middle of the tower, worried about scraping himself, or his broom, or his luggage, on the tower walls, and when the floor stops moving without any incident, he breathes an audible sigh of relief.

Instead of a door, a wrought iron gate coalesces out of the stone walls, like molten metal suddenly flash frozen in place. Its bars are delicately thin, and wide-spaced enough that Jeongguk can see two things; the glass wall of the rooftop Greenhouse, and a man, squatting down on the ground in slides absolutely not weather appropriate, tapping furiously at his phone.

Sensing Jeongguk’s stare, he looks up, squinting at him. “Runch?”

“Pardon?” Jeongguk asks.

“Never mind.” He jerks his thumb at something to his right that Jeongguk, still standing in the small, circular tower, can’t see. “Door’s that way, if you’re looking to be matched.”

“Oh, thanks.” Jeongguk pushes the iron gate open – in light of how difficult the door had been to open, he uses too much force, shoving the gate open so violently that it clangs against the outside wall and almost bounces shut in Jeongguk’s face. “Shit, shit, shit…” He can’t see any damage, but the guy’s looking at him with eyebrows so high up his face that Jeongguk doesn’t stop to assess the gate for too long; he nods politely and dashes down the hall, almost missing the door entirely in his haste to get away.

The entrance to the Greenhouse is the first totally ordinary door he’s come across during his time in the High Council Chambers, which, admittedly, leaves him more wary than he’s ever been of a door in his life. It pulls open with an expected amount of force required, it doesn’t transmorph into anything else, and it shuts behind him with a neat click of the latch.

He squints at it suspiciously over his shoulder. It remains a regular door.

The Greenhouse has its climate spells localised over the plants that need it, so Jeongguk’s at least not hit with a wave of heat as he walks deeper into the room. It’s a big room, too, seemingly the size of the whole building, although the rows of plants stretch high enough in places that he can’t see too far into the distance. He can, however, see the red leaves of the Chamber’s tree, so he heads towards it, hoping to get a better look.

Sure enough, the Greenhouse is high enough up the building that he can get a great view of the branches of the tree outside the glass wall, but he’s quickly distracted by a huge stack of baskets that’ve been left balancing precariously against the wall beneath the words ‘Pick whatever fruit you like!’ and a smiley face daubed in what looks like paint on the glass.

He manages to dislodge a basket, and then frowns at the increasingly unsturdy looking pile. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s left it looking like that, so he attempts to restack them a little more neatly. They’re pretty shallow and smooth, though, so they don’t stack well – once he’s finished, his towers are still quite lopsided, but at least people who come by after him won’t send the whole thing toppling down.

Standing back up, one of the baskets under his arm, Jeongguk turns and almost walks right into a man standing behind him.

Statistically, Jeongguk has seen more than his fair share of hot men today. The two men on the train, Seokjin downstairs, even the man outside the Greenhouse that he’d almost thrown the gate at like a frisbee, all of them had been almost unfairly attractive. Perhaps it’s because he’s standing so close to this man, or perhaps because he’s already feeling a little overwhelmed, a little overstimulated, but Jeongguk literally feels breathless looking at him.

“Oh,” he manages to articulate. “Wow.”

“Hi,” the man says. “Sorry, I was standing a little close, did I scare you?”

“No!” Jeongguk is taller than average, but he has to look up to look this man in the eye. The thought that he could be Jeongguk’s Soulmate is honestly leaving him feeling a little dizzy – how is he supposed to be in a magical partnership with somebody he can only answer monosyllabically when he’s looking directly at them?

“Good.” He peers over Jeongguk’s shoulder at the baskets. “Do we just take one?”

“I think so?” Jeongguk says, pleased that he’s managed to graduate from one-word answers to three-word responses. Perhaps he can even progress to multi-clause sentences before the conversation is over.

“Interesting.” Jeongguk watches as he picks up two, then waves one over his head. “Hyung!” Jeongguk looks past him – it’s the man from outside the Greenhouse, who nods at Jeongguk when he catches his eye. “Got you a basket.”

“They want us to pick fruit?” He asks. “Interesting.”

“That’s what I said!” The other man grins at his friend, then looks at Jeongguk. “Sorry, where are my manners? Kim Namjoon, this is Min Yoongi.”

“Jeon Jeongguk. Do you two know each other already?”

“We met online,” Namjoon explains. “We’ve known each other for over a decade at this point-”

“Thirteen years,” Yoongi clarifies.

“I originally wasn’t going to come,” Namjoon confides with a wink at Yoongi, who just rolls his eyes and looks away. “But hyung was pretty insistent.”

“Hardly,” Yoongi says, looking very intently into his basket. Jeongguk can’t imagine what’s so interesting about it, but he stares at the wicker as though he’s trying to decipher a pattern. “Just seems stupid to miss out on an opportunity like this.”

“I think he’s just hoping to meet somebody romantically,” Namjoon says teasingly, before he turns back to Jeongguk and gives him his full, undivided attention. “So, what about you, Jeongguk-ssi? What’re you hoping to get out of this?”

“Finding a romantic partner would be cool,” Jeongguk admits. “Mostly I’m just hoping my Soulmates aren’t weird.”

Namjoon laughs; Yoongi looks up from his basket and looks at Jeongguk, a look that he can’t decipher at all. It’s neither negative or positive – Jeongguk doesn’t feel uncomfortable or intimidated by his stare, more so like parts of him that have never been in the sun are suddenly visible for the first time. He feels seen.

He’s not sure what he’s said or done to get Yoongi to look at him that way, but finally, Yoongi nods. “We should get started on whatever it is the High Council is looking for with this fruit picking. It was nice to meet you, Jeongguk-ssi.”

“Yeah, same,” Jeongguk replies.

“Once we’re done, stick around at the end?” Namjoon asks. “It’ll be cool to catch up with you!” They both walk off, and they’re only just out of ear shot when Jeongguk sees Yoongi lean up onto tiptoe to whisper in Namjoon’s ear. Whatever he says makes Namjoon’s ears turn bright red, and he pushes Yoongi’s shoulder so vigorously that Yoongi goes stumbling off out of sight down one of the many aisles.

Jeongguk hadn’t really considered that he could easily get assigned Soulmates who already knew each other. It makes sense, of course – the Witch world is pretty small, relatively insular, and magicless Soulmates are uncommon enough to be the subject of gossip when they do happen – but Jeongguk had always imagined coming together with his Soulmates as strangers and developing a bond stronger than steel together.

If Namjoon and Yoongi were his Soulmates, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to help feeling the odd one out, especially in the face of a thirteen-year long friendship.

He starts ambling off down the aisles. He’s not sure what the High Council is looking for from this fruit picking, but he at least wants to find something he’d like to eat, if nothing else, so he wanders up and down the aisles, stopping to look at bunches of bananas, green and fat as they trail up a tree trunk; dark green pineapples peeking out from long, thin leaves; pretty clusters of plums, mauve and cobalt and pink.

Eventually, he stops at a whole aisle of a huge variety of strawberries – dainty little wild strawberries; plump, heart shaped red strawberries; pale pink strawberries no bigger than his thumbnail; strawberries bigger than the peaches the next aisle over – and starts loading them up into his basket. He doesn’t eat them yet, though, because for all he knows he’ll need to do some sort of spell with them later, and he doesn’t want to have to tell the High Council of Seoul that he ate his ingredients.

He doesn’t fill up his basket all the way, not least because, although his basket is shallow, it’s wide, and he’s not sure he could ever need an entire basket of strawberries. Not to mention that they’re a surprisingly dense little fruit; it’d be embarrassing to have to put his basket down because it’s too heavy.

When he places the last strawberry, one of the pretty pink ones, on top of his little pile, he notices that he’s being watched over the top of the strawberry bush. On the other side, the two men from the train are looking at him; the newly blonde one still looks a little tense, even as he examines Jeongguk, while his friend looks just as at ease as he had the last time Jeongguk had seen him.

“Come here often?” The deep voiced man says; his blonde friend closes his eyes and tilts his head back slowly.

“Uh… No,” Jeongguk says. “This is my first time here?”

“Sorry, that was a joke.” If Jeongguk had made a joke that didn’t land, he thinks the mortification would render him speechless, but this man looks unbothered. He holds out his hand over the tops of the strawberry plants, swatting an errant leaf aside. “Kim Taehyung, this is my first time being matched too.”

“Jeon Jeongguk. Sorry, I’m usually quicker at getting jokes, I guess I’m just nervous.”

Taehyung shakes his hand. “Me too, don’t worry.” He doesn’t look as though he’s been nervous a day in his life, but Jeongguk doesn’t know the man – for all he knows, this could be how he looks on the most stressful day of his life. “I want this to go well, you know? I’ve wanted to meet my Soulmates ever since my parents told me the story of the day they got matched.”

“Your parents are Soulmates?” Jeongguk says, feeling his eyes widen. It’s not necessarily uncommon for Soulmates to get together romantically and have kids, but Jeongguk’s never met anyone who that’s happened to.

“One of the rare pairs,” Taehyung says. “Jimin’s much more of a cynic than I am, but he’s here, so that’s got to count for something.”

“I’m only here because you are.” He smiles at Jeongguk politely. “Park Jimin.”

“You both know each other already, too?” Jeongguk asks; he doesn’t mean for the inflection to come out as obviously as it does.

“Since we were kids,” Taehyung says cheerfully.

“Too?” Jimin asks. The open curiosity on his face makes him look infinitely more relaxed and at ease, his shoulders softening, his eyes alight. “Who else already knows each other? You’re the first person we’ve seen.”

“Their names are Kim Namjoon and Min Yoongi.” Jeongguk waves his hand vaguely. “They’re somewhere in here. Somebody named Kim Seokjin’s in here too, I think – he came up before me, but I haven’t seen him again yet.”

“Practically a full house,” Taehyung says. He starts plucking strawberries off of the plant and, apparently not feeling any of the worry Jeongguk had, pops one in his mouth. He twists his mouth to the side. “Ours are better.”

“Yeah?” Jimin asks; Taehyung nods, picks another one, and holds it up to Jimin’s mouth. It’s so breathtakingly intimate that Jeongguk almost feels as though he shouldn’t be witnessing it. At least if he ended up as Kim Namjoon and Min Yoongi’s Soulmate, he’d just be a third wheel in a friendship – he’s not sure he could handle being a third wheel in whatever this is. “Oh yeah, you’re right.”

“I’m gonna…” Jeongguk holds his basket aloft. “Find out where I need to go with this. Good luck?” He hurries off before they can reply.

He walks far enough that, before long, he’s entirely circumnavigated the Greenhouse, ending up right back where he’d started at the iron gate; only now there’s a table with a solitary basket lid and a pink and white gingham tablecloth. When he picks up the lid, it’s to find his own name on the underside, and a note on the table;

Transportation spell in progress – ensure lid is securely attached to First Fruit Basket, then place First Fruit Basket in the centre of the table.

It goes on to outline a whole list of cautions about keeping body parts away from the table when the spell is underway, but Jeongguk’s pretty good with magic theory, so it’s nothing he doesn’t know. Even if he didn’t have a decent understanding of how a Transportation spell worked, it didn’t take a genius to work out that putting your hand in the middle of a spell while it was happening was generally not a great thing to do.

He affixes his lid to the top of his basket, glad that he has a reasonable pile of fruit to offer, even if he doesn’t actually know what First Fruit is, then sets the basket down on the table. It takes a few seconds, but then it pops out of existence with a pleasant chime, which Jeongguk mimics with a hum under his breath. He likes listening to the sounds of other peoples’ magic, likes hearing the music people are able to create with it, even if his own sometimes sounds like the lowest note on a keyboard.

“We meet again!” Seokjin calls out to him, waving with both hands, his basket floating along politely at his side. He’s clearly using his magic to hold his teetering pile of fruit in place – that or he’s just weirdly apt at working out the balancing points of strawberries atop a haphazard pile of citrus fruits. By the time Jeongguk looks back at the table, a new basket lid has appeared. “Have fun?”

“I… Think so?” Jeongguk says. “It was interesting.”

Seokjin looks at him, then snorts. “You met those guys too then, huh? I saw them by the tangerines, they kept going Hmm, interesting, like they were trying to figure this whole thing out.”

“You’re not interested in knowing how we’re going to be matched?” Jeongguk asks.

“Not really,” Seokjin says with a shrug, picking up the basket lid, glancing at the note, and then looking at his overflowing basket with a slight wince. “I’m sure whatever…” He looks at the note again. “…First Fruit is is probably convoluted and ancient, I don’t need to understand it.” His basket gently lowers to the ground, and he kneels down to start squashing his lid down on top of the fruit, juice trickling out of the sides of the wicker. Jeongguk takes a step back to avoid getting juice on his shoes – at the movement, Seokjin looks up. “Sorry.”

“Aren’t you worried that the fruit needs to be, you know…” Jeongguk waves his hand vaguely at the sticky residue being left on the cobblestone floor.

“Not juiced?” Seokjin gives a grunt, another shove, then finally manages to secure the lid. “If they wanted solid fruits, they should’ve specified.” He drops the sticky basket down on the table; it, and the flecks of juice that got splattered on the tablecloth, promptly disappear. “Oh, a Transportation spell for tidying up, that’s interesting – Jeongguk-ssi, are you any good at Transportation spells? That’d be handy to have on dishes, that way I won’t have to bother with using rain spells to wash up.”

“Not that good,” Jeongguk says vaguely. “You’d have to work out how to delay the spell so that it didn’t accidentally transport your dinner away while you were eating, and you’d have to think of somewhere for the dirt to go.”

Surprisingly, Seokjin looks happy with that answer. “You really know your stuff, huh? We’ll workshop it.” Before Jeongguk can reiterate that he’s not that good at the spell, the perfectly ordinary Greenhouse door slides over to them, perfectly unordinarily.

“I knew that door was weird,” Jeongguk mutters as the door opens with a slow, perfectly steady tilt. Instead of the hallway from earlier, it’s showing them an inky black space. “Stasis?”

“What’s that?” Seokjin asks.

“Some doctors’ offices and waiting rooms and stuff use them,” Jeongguk explains. “It’s a spell that basically freezes time for you in there, so the wait doesn’t feel as long.”

He expects Seokjin to ask him why he’s so knowledgeable about medical waiting rooms (office after practice after hospital after sanatorium of doctors and healers and experts trying to explain why his magic was so mediocre, so weak, so nothing-), but instead he says, “That’s pretty handy – so they’ll do their complex matchmakey magic, and we won’t have to wait around for an answer?”

“I guess so?” Jeongguk says.

Seemingly on the sole basis of Jeongguk’s glowing confidence in that explanation, Seokjin steps into the stasis spell without so much as a stutter in his step.

It takes Jeongguk a few moments to follow. Despite what the medical receptionists had always claimed, he’d always been able to tell that he was in stasis; like a band constricting his chest, he’d always come out of the spell gasping for breath.

But he does end up following, not least because Seokjin had trusted him so immediately – he doesn’t want the spell to end, only for Seokjin to realise that Jeongguk hadn’t followed him inside, so he steps into the black.

He comes to with his eyes closed and, with all of his concentration, he focuses on inhaling, deep, slow, and measured through his nose. From the scents he can smell, he can tell there are a few people in the room with him, but he can’t tell how many from the overlaying scents.

Jeongguk opens his eyes gradually – sometimes doctors’ offices would be so brightly lit that it would leave spots in his eyes – but the room he’s in is softly lit by candelabras on the walls, warm flames flickering light against the stone. There are six other people in the room with him. Seokjin, of course, but Jimin, Taehyung, Namjoon, and Yoongi are there too, along with a man Jeongguk hadn’t seen in the Greenhouse. He’d honestly been hoping that he’d just be dropped into a room with his Soulmates, rather than having to watch everyone get matched off into groups, but at least making it this far implies he has a Soulmate. The High Council wouldn’t let him get this far only to tell him, in front of all these people, that there’s been a mistake and he doesn’t have a Soulmate, surely?

“Kim Seokjin,” the disembodied voice intones; Seokjin jumps. “Min Yoongi. Jung Hoseok. Kim Namjoon. Park Jimin. Kim Taehyung. Jeon Jeongguk. You have been matched. Please report to the front desk for your High Council assigned housing arrangements.”

“…That’s it?” Taehyung says, his mouth turning down in a pout. “No flower petals? No fanfare? Not even the tiniest congratulatory firework?” He blows a raspberry, but then grins. “Cool that there’s seven of us, though.”

“That’s not common, is it?” Namjoon asks the room at large.

Yoongi shrugs. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone with six Soulmates, I think the most I’ve seen is four?”

“Honestly, I think higher numbers are probably less common because the High Council’s behind on their admin.” Hoseok says. “There’s got to be a reason why they’re shifting from every three years to every year for these things.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Namjoon says, frowning thoughtfully. Nobody seems to be in any hurry to leave the room, despite how non-descript it is – four walls, an uneven, cobblestone floor, the candelabras, and the door. “I wonder what the upper limit would be?”

“Shouldn’t we see whether seven is doable before we start thinking about adding more people?” Jimin says.

“Oh, no, I meant hypothetically,” Namjoon says. He looks around at them all – Jeongguk thinks it looks like he’s counting them all in his head. “Where will we even live? My place isn’t big enough for seven. It’s barely big enough for me.”

“I think the High Council’s giving us a place?” Jeongguk says, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s what the voice said, anyway – we have to go back to the front desk?”

“Glad Jeongguk was paying attention,” Seokjin says cheerfully, opening the door and waving them through like a footman. “I honestly just tune those voices out most of the time. We used to have one at an old job I had that spoke all the time, so you either had to tune it out or it’d drive you round the bend.”

“What was your job?” Hoseok asks curiously. “Wait, should we call each other hyung? When the voice called out our names, was it in age order?”

After a quick discussion reveals that they had been called in age order, and that, if they’re going to be living together for a while, they might as well call each other hyung, Seokjin continues with, “I used to work in weather atmospherics for a film studio, and film directors love to use disembodied voices to direct for them when they want to take a break.”

“You’re a Weather Witch?” Taehyung says excitedly as they all file out of the room. The door lets them out in the entrance area, but this time there’s a receptionist manning the front desk. Or, an approximation of a receptionist, anyway – a human-shaped shadow, the edges smudged and flickering like the spell had been cast in a hurry. “That’s so cool, I’m a Light Witch, we could work together so easily!”

Jeongguk’s glad they make it to the reception desk before they all start having a conversation about what type of Witch they are. He will tell them soon, but he can’t imagine telling everyone, right now, that he’s not any type of Witch.

“Hyung,” Namjoon mutters out of the corner of his mouth as Yoongi leans across the reception desk, hand outstretched. “Don’t just stick your hand into spells you’ve never seen before.”

“Wasn’t going to,” Yoongi grumbles back, but Jeongguk notices him move his hand nonchalantly back to his side, and lean back onto the balls of his feet. “Just haven’t seen a spell this old before in a while.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Hoseok asks.

“Most casters of administrative spells will give their shades faces these days,” Yoongi says, a little derisively. The shade turns the approximation of its face towards Yoongi and tilts its head, inhumanly slow. Then, just as slow, it reaches under the desk, pulls out a key the size of its hand, and lays it down on the desk. Personally, Jeongguk finds the whole thing exceptionally creepy, but Yoongi just scoffs. “You can write spells that don’t make every movement take the exact same amount of time. Who casts these spells? I want to speak to them, I have some notes-”

“We can come back another day,” Namjoon interrupts, taking the key with a nod at the shade, which promptly putters out of existence. He shows them all the key; there’s a label with an address scrawled on it, threaded with string through the hole in the key.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a house key in years,” Seokjin laughs, squinting at it.

“Maybe it’s a converted magicless house?” Taehyung says, takin the key from Namjoon and inspecting the label. Jimin, standing close to Taehyung’s side, doesn’t say anything as he looks at the key, just raises an eyebrow as Taehyung hands it back to Namjoon, who promptly passes it to Yoongi. “Uh, so, is that it? Can we just… Move in?”

“Yeah, I guess!” Hoseok says. “We signed all the paperwork and stuff that we needed to when we got our Magpie texts, so it should all be sorted!”

As they all file out of the High Council, luggage in tow, Jeongguk starts to feel that wriggling worry in the pit of his stomach that he always feels before he has to fly, except this is worse because he’ll be flying with six strangers, one of whom has already proved himself so competent at magic that he doesn’t even need anything to help him fly.

However, unexpectedly, nobody heads towards the building’s take-off strip, walking instead along the main street outside of the building. Jeongguk doesn’t want to say anything, doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that they’re not flying, so he follows quietly, keeping his head down.

Hoseok, who’s ended up at the front of their little group, turns suddenly and looks at Yoongi. “Hyung, can I see the address again?” Yoongi nods and hands him the key – the key looks big in Yoongi’s hand, but almost comically oversized in Hoseok’s, like it’s been designed for a giant’s door. Hoseok gives the key’s label a look, then hands it back. “Yeah, it’s not that far from here, it seems ridiculous to take-off when we’ll almost immediately need to land again.” Seokjin raises an eyebrow and, seemingly with no effort at all, hovers up a few inches into the air, the wind whipping around Jeongguk’s ankles. Hoseok just laughs. “Okay, ridiculous for the rest of us.”

“I don’t mind walking,” Jeongguk says, trying to temper how immediately he’d replied with as nonchalant a shrug as he can manage. “It’ll be nice to see the neighbourhood. Are you local, Hoseok-hyung?” He doesn’t sound local, but he must know Seoul pretty well if he can just look at an address and know that they’re within walking distance of it.

Hoseok shakes his head. “Born and raised in Gwangju, but I’ve been living here for work for a few years. I know roughly where our place is, but I’ve never actually been to the neighbourhood it’s in.”

Jeongguk can tell, immediately, that something’s just off about this neighbourhood. It’s got that strange, stale, distinct smell brought on by the piles of discarded furniture that have just been swept to the side of the steep path and left there, made worse by the fact that not only have other bits of random rubbish been added to the piles, there’re no other signs of human life, so the garbage has just been rotting there for who even knew how long.

(Jeongguk could probably learn how long if he knelt closer and looked at the dates on the food wrappers, if he looked up when that old-fashioned suitcase had been sold, or when horsehair-stuffed mattresses stopped being a common thing, but he doesn’t want to get too close, afraid that the smell will linger in his nostrils.)

He holds onto his optimism for as long as he can. Maybe this is just an abandoned street, and they’ll round the corner onto their street, and it’ll be nicer? Maybe, as they turn into their street and find more of the same, their house will be neat and tidy? Maybe, as they all stand outside of their house on a pathway that had maybe been quaint two-hundred years ago, but was now just severely in need of weeding and cleaning and having the paving slabs straightened into something less like individual trip hazards, maybe the house will look better inside? Surely the High Council will have ensured this place was at least habitable?

It takes Hoseok a full, uncomfortably long feeling minute, muttering to himself the whole time, to finally unjam the gate. It gets to the point where Jeongguk wants to ask him why he doesn’t just blast the gate open, but then it feels like he’s been trying too long to open it the magicless way, and he doesn’t want to embarrass Hoseok on their very first day living together, so he stays quiet.

The gate creaks loudly on its hinges, which Yoongi actually laughs at. “What next?” He says, going to step inside the house. “Sinister dripping sounds? A shadowy figure at the end of the hall?”

None of these things happen, but Yoongi’s foot does hit the wooden floor that leads into the yard, and it makes the foulest, bizarrest squelching noise Jeongguk’s ever heard in his life. Yoongi yells and hops backwards, using one of the lethally angled paving stones to take off his shoe. He then takes out a mini-Compendium, opens it to the spell he needs, and transforms the shoe into an identical, but not filthy, black trainer, which he slips back on.

Jeongguk tries not to sigh jealously at the easy display of prowess.

“Why not just clean the shoe?” Jimin asks, plucking one of the vials out of his bag and waving it.

“Why would I spend ten hours brewing a Cleaning Potion, when a spell I can read in five seconds gives me the same outcome?” Yoongi replies, raising an eyebrow.

“It’d only take ten hours if you were a shit Potion Witch…”

Jeongguk tunes them out, and instead looks through the open door into their new home.

There’s a whole hashtag online of Soul Home inspiration. Beautiful, flower-filled cottages in magical Seoul; river boats with glass bottoms drifting lazily over the Han; converted industrial warehouses with plants trailing over the support beams, golden sunlight streaming in through the iron framed windows.

“This place is a shithole,” Jimin says bluntly, apparently done arguing with Yoongi.

“Oh, it’s not… That bad…” Taehyung trails off as Jimin pokes at the wood with a stick he’s found and, with just a little bit of prying, pulls back a plank to reveal a stain of dubious origin. It could have been any colour when it had first been made, but the stain has since necrosed into a nasty greyish brown.

“That stain is going to singlehandedly bring back smallpox,” Jimin snipes, dropping the stick, uncorking the bottle in his hand with his thumb, and dousing his hands in the bottle’s contents, rubbing furiously. Once he’s done, he pours the rest of the bottle over as much of the wood as he can, which hisses when the potion touches the stain. “Don’t step on that if you’re wearing rubber-soled shoes, it’ll eat through it.” Jeongguk doesn’t know what his soles are made out of, so he steps over the puddle, just to be safe.

“Seven Soulmates is pretty rare, right?” Hoseok says, hopping over the puddle too. “Maybe the High Council didn’t have a seven-person Soul Home ready to go?”

“Yeah maybe,” Seokjin says, looking around. There’s really only a few directions they can go – the yard in front of them is a mess of rubbish and dead plants, creating an impenetrable mass, but there are two doors, one to their right, the other to their left. Seokjin tries the door on the left first, having to leap a good five foot over the puddle to reach it; he attempts to open it, but it seems to be completely sealed shut. “I mean, look on the bright side!” He says, trying to jimmy it open with enough force to match his strained looking grin. “At least we only have to live here for a season, right?”

“I mean… We might decide to stay together?” Jeongguk says quietly.

“Exactly!” Taehyung says, wrapping his arm around Jeongguk’s shoulder. “So we should try to clean this place up.” Jimin opens his mouth to say something. “Even if you are going to leave at the end of the season, we still need to clean our house, or I think it absolutely will make us sick. Maybe not smallpox, but definitely something.”

“This door opens!” Hoseok says, managing to get the door on the right to open with just a shove of his shoulder.

“Oh, thank god,” Seokjin blurts out when they see a relatively clean, tidy space. “At least the High Council made sure we could cook.” Jeongguk opens the fridge and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that it’s well stocked – he’s never been in a household of seven people before, so he doesn’t know how often they’ll need to go grocery shopping, but at least they’ll be okay for a few days.

They split off into groups – Yoongi and Namjoon go off to make a rough floorplan of all the rooms in the house, with Jimin and Taehyung following after them to tackle any of the nastier looking stains with Jimin’s potion. Jeongguk, meanwhile, stays behind with Seokjin and Hoseok to inspect the kitchen more fully.

“The yard isn’t that big,” he can hear Namjoon saying as he and Yoongi walk away down the hall.

“I’m not doing a scale drawing, I’m just trying to remember what’s where so we can start…” Yoongi’s voice trails off as they walk away; once they’re out of earshot, Hoseok laughs.

“Can you imagine being the third person in that Soulmate sandwich?”

Jeongguk giggles as he rummages through the cupboards. He thinks they’ve been recently installed, because, unlike what he’s seen of the house so far, the wood doesn’t smell permeated with damp and age. They’re also filled with the most random assortment of novelty cooking appliances that he’s ever seen, as though whoever went shopping for this kitchen had never cooked a day in their life.

It doesn’t take the others long to tour the rest of the house, but by the time they’ve made it back Seokjin’s already started plating up his quickly made dinner.

“Okay,” Yoongi says, laying the piece of paper out on the kitchen table as the others come in behind him. While Seokjin hands out bowls of food, Jeongguk leans over to look at the floorplan; it just looks like a bunch of haphazardly drawn squares, rectangles, and one trapezium that, judging by the fact that it has one jiggly line, he thinks is supposed to be a rectangle. “We’re here, in the kitchen,” Yoongi points with his pen. “These are the seven bedrooms-”

“They’re all the same size, this drawing isn’t to scale,” Namjoon chips in. Yoongi inhales, slow, deep, and measured, through his nose. “Just saying,” Namjoon mutters.

“The yard is surrounded by this hall,” Yoongi continues, circling the central square in the middle of the hanok. “We think the other door we couldn’t get into is the other end of the hall, which means we need to work out a way to open it, or we’ll have to keep walking the entire length of the hall.”

“What about cutting through the yard?” Jeongguk asks.

Yoongi pulls a disgruntled face. “We can’t get to it, because every entrance that leads out there is sealed shut, except for the one that’s blocked by garbage. I think if we can get one of them open, the rest will open too, it looks the hallway is supposed to be open to the yard? And then there’s an empty room upstairs, but the stairs up there are a death trap.” He examines his floor plan. “Oh, and there’re two bathrooms, here,” he draws a little star, followed by another. “And here.”

“Any major differences between the bedrooms?” Hoseok asks. “I know you said they were the same size, but anything else we should know?”

Namjoon nods. “These three bedrooms on the side of the house have windows that look out over the river, which sounds nice but the river is a mess, so you might want to put on a scenery charm of some sort if that type of thing bothers you. These two,” he points to the two bedrooms at the front of the house. “Are sandwiched between the bathrooms, and there’s a really weird smell in both of them. And the two bedrooms at the back of the house seem fine, just really, really sooty.”

“Sooty?” Seokjin grimaces. Then he brightens. “Wait, I’m happy to take a sooty room, actually, I can just whip up the soot with a little breeze.” He takes the pen from Yoongi and writes his name next to one of the squares.

The rest of the bedrooms get divvied up just as quickly as they finish up their dinner, with Jeongguk taking one of the three overlooking the river. He’s got Jimin on one side and Seokjin around the corner, although judging by the floor plan there’s a weird, empty space between his room and Seokjin’s that’s preventing them from being truly adjacent.

“This place needs a lot of cleaning,” Jimin says. “And maybe some redecorating? Depending on how long it takes us to clean, I guess. We should probably start by trying to break into the yard, I’m kind of worried about what’s going on out there-”

“Tomorrow?” Hoseok says. “No sense in starting any big jobs now when it’s so late.”

Jimin looks like he’s going to argue, but at the precise moment that he’s about to, Taehyung yawns, contorting his face to keep his mouth shut around it, and Jimin sags in defeat. “Yeah, all right.”

There’s not really any reason to stick around in the kitchen, so they all start drifting away to their rooms with their suitcases.

The weird space outside of Jeongguk’s room had, he thinks, once held a staircase, judging by the hole in the ceiling that just opens onto a murky darkness. If he stares up into it too hard, he can almost imagine that he can hear something scurrying around up there; choosing not to think about it too hard, he lugs his suitcase into his new room.

There’s not a lot of anything in his room – the window is huge, much bigger than he’d been anticipating, stretching from floor to ceiling, but Jimin had been right, the view it provides is pretty poor, just showing him a wall of the house next door and the river that runs sluggishly between the two buildings. There’s a mattress on the floor, and the planks of the floor are a little spongier than he’s used to wood feeling like, but at least they’re not oozing like the entrance had been. Aside from that, his room is empty.

He thinks the understanding on the High Council’s part had probably been that a Witch, and especially a Soulmated Witch, would be able to conjure up furniture and décor to their liking very easily. As it is, Jeongguk just shoves his suitcase into the corner and curls up on his mattress, not bothering to get himself ready for bed.

“We could just fly in and out?” Seokjin suggests.

They’re all lined up (like, Jeongguk thinks, but firmly doesn’t say out loud, little ducks in a row) along one of the doors leading out into the yard. There are, they’ve counted, twenty-nine of these doors supposedly leading out there, but none of them will budge an inch, and they’d tried entering the yard from the entrance, but the rubbish and plants had been piled so high there that they’d made very little headway in clearing any space.

“That’s not a long term solution,” Namjoon says, jiggling the door again, as though the fifth time trying would yield better results than the first four times.

“No, not forever, just so we can try and work out whether the doors are being jammed from the other side.” Seokjin presses his ear up against the door, as though he’ll be able to hear what, if anything, is blocking it. “Don’t suppose any of you have secretly useful magic you’ve been hiding for dramatic effect?” Nobody jumps in to offer any suggestions. “Okay, I’ll go fly in and have a look.”

As he walks back around the hallway to the entrance, the six of them stand in a silence so thick that Jeongguk can hear it when Seokjin whips up the wind around himself outside. Jeongguk is so curious about his Soulmates, but they’re all intimidating, too – even Taehyung, who’s so open and warm and friendly, has an air of someone he doesn’t want to disappoint by asking a ridiculous question. They’d all sequestered themselves in their rooms for the night, with the apparently mutual understanding that, with the doors shut, they didn’t want to be disturbed.

It doesn’t help that it’s early, either, before any of them have had breakfast. Jeongguk’s still in the clothes he fell asleep in, but he’s not the only one – both Yoongi and Namjoon are wearing their clothes from the day before, and Seokjin had shown up in the kitchen in a pair of bright blue pyjamas. By contrast, Jimin had been in the middle of setting up his room, judging by the heavy scraping noises Jeongguk had heard coming from inside his room as he’d walked past to the bathroom, and Hoseok’s already been for a morning run. It means that all seven of them are in very different stages of being ready for a conversation, and Jeongguk doesn’t want to be the one to accidentally set off an argument.

Apparently, not a view held by everyone.

“I’m sorry, are we keeping you up?” Jimin asks as Yoongi yawns for the third time in as many minutes.

“I mean, yes, actually,” Yoongi says. “I was about to go to bed.”

“You were about to – it’s morning,” Jimin says incredulously.

“Astutely noticed.” Next to him, Jeongguk can feel Namjoon go very still, almost like he’s holding his breath. “But I’m a grown man, and if I need to stay up working, it means I can fall asleep whenever, even if it is morning.” Yoongi curls his fingers into air quotes. The thing about them is that his fingers are long, and he curls them slow, so the level of sarcasm is so withering that Jeongguk thinks he’ll be feeling the psychic shockwaves of them for the next five years – and they’re not even being aimed at him.

Jimin, for his part, raises a perfect eyebrow, equally slow. “Air quotes, hyung? What, did your communication intelligence get stuck at age 12?”

“Did your communication intelligence get stuck at age 12?” Yoongi repeats, enclosing the sentence with even more exaggerated air quotes.

Jimin’s cheeks flush blotchily. “You’re so annoying.” He adds his own mocking air quotes around annoying, which just makes Yoongi laugh.

“Don’t you know how to use them? If you put air quotes around something like that, it sounds like you’re being sarcastic. Unless you don’t find me annoying? I’m flattered, really.”

Hoseok whistles suddenly, so loud that Jeongguk instinctively brings his hands up to his ears. “We need to establish some ground rules. Rule one, no arguing before breakfast.”

“That’s not such a bad idea,” Taehyung says thoughtfully.

“Thank you,” Hoseok says. “I think we should be aiming to make this as easy as we-”

“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Taehyung says, which makes Hoseok frown. “It’s a good idea to have a designated arguing time and space – that way everyone else can avoid arguments if they want to.”

“That’s not really what I-”

“What about out in the courtyard?” Namjoon suggests, looking out of the window at the yard. “Lots of space, if we can get it cleared out.”

“What do you need space… You know what, never mind, I don’t want to know,” Hoseok says, shaking his head. “What if we just agree not to argue?”

Jimin wrinkles his nose. “I can’t commit to that, hyung.”

“Me neither,” Yoongi says; Namjoon offers an apologetic shrug.

“Arguing isn’t always a bad thing,” Taehyung says. “Sometimes it’s better to air everything out than to let it fester.”

“We’re not going to be able to clear out the yard to argue in if we can’t figure out how to get in there,” Jeongguk says. “Seokjin-hyung is taking a really long time-”

Almost as though he’s been summoned, they hear someone knock on the other side of the door. “Sorry!” He calls out. “I found out why this house is so empty of furniture, it’s all been dumped out here. It’s gross, too. I don’t think any of it’s salvageable, it looks like it’s all riddled with creatures.” Hoseok covers his face with his hands. “Anyway, there’s nothing physically blocking the doors, so it’s obviously some sort of spell.”

“Hyung, any ideas?” Namjoon asks Yoongi, who shakes his head.

“I could do some research on what spells they used to use to secure hanoks at the time this place was built, but I’m not sure where I’d even-”

“They used a shutter spell,” Jeongguk says, remembering the graduate student who’d tried to teach him Carpentry magic for a term. She hadn’t been able to teach him anything of worth, but she’d had a deep, contagious enthusiasm for niche historical spells, and Jeongguk still remembers one or two of them. “Whoever last used this place obviously locked everything from the outside as they left.”

“What am I looking for?” Seokjin calls out. “Because I’m warning you now, I’m terrible with anything to do with incantations.”

“You’re looking for the end of the spell – it’ll probably be at the door closest to the entrance gate,” Jeongguk says. “It might look like part of the wood has been folded back on itself?”

“Got it!” Seokjin replies, his voice further away – the six of them traipse in the direction of it. “Now what?”

“Grab it and pull it towards you.” Jeongguk can tell the second he does it, because he can see the wooden doors in front of him start to accordion back on themselves, wood shuttering away rapidly until all that’s left is the archways they had been standing in, revealing their awful looking yard and Seokjin, still holding the end of the spell. “You can let go now.” Jeongguk says.

“That’s a handy spell to know!” Hoseok says, leaning out of one of the archways – Jeongguk notices he doesn’t actually step foot into the yard. “Well done, Jeongguk, now we can get out into the yard!”

“Oh, Seokjin-hyung did all of the work, I just guessed what it could be,” Jeongguk says with a shrug.

“It was a pretty knowledgeable guess,” Namjoon says, looking pleased. His smile falls as he looks out into the yard. “I don’t suppose you have any good guesses about spells to clear up some of this mess?”

“…A skip?” Jeongguk suggests. He doesn’t mean it as a joke, but Taehyung and Namjoon laugh anyway.

“I’d be reluctant to use incantations anyway,” Yoongi says. “It’d probably take more time to write a spell that’ll clean everything in the yard than it would to just clean it by hand.”

“I hate to say it, but I think Yoongi-hyung is right,” Jimin says. “Just the amount of ingredients I’d need alone would be ridiculously expensive. I think Jeongguk is right, we might need to use the good old fashioned magic of hiring a skip to clean this up.”

“I’ll start looking into some companies, then,” Hoseok suggests. “In the meantime, we can work on making our rooms nicer!”

“In the meantime, we can have breakfast,” Seokjin says immediately. “None of us have eaten since dinner early last night. And no, Yoongi, you can’t skip breakfast to go to bed, eat first.” Yoongi grumbles, but Jeongguk watches, amazed, as he falls into step alongside Seokjin.

“He’s the maknae at home,” Namjoon mutters to Jeongguk quietly, as though he can see the turn his thoughts have taken. “I don’t think he was expecting to be older than nearly all of his Soulmates.”

Jeongguk’s not sure he believes that, because Namjoon had told him, outright, that Yoongi had been the one to insist that they go get matched together – he thinks Yoongi had been hoping to be older than at least one of his Soulmates.

“I think we need to sort out the entrance, as a priority,” Jimin says. They’ve all hurried through eating breakfast, with their to-do list just seeming to be get longer and longer the more time they’re sitting together.

“We’re not going to spend much time in the entrance, though,” Seokjin points out. “We can just jump over the weird soggy bit.”

“You might be able to, hyung, but I’m not sure all of us can!” Hoseok laughs; Jeongguk bristles, then holds himself as still as he can, in the hopes of not drawing any attention to himself. “I think Jimin’s right, we don’t want whatever’s wrong with the entrance floor to spread.”

“If it’s not spread yet, I don’t think waiting a few more weeks while we sort out our rooms is going to make it any worse,” Namjoon says. “Not to mention your rooms,” he points between Seokjin and Hoseok, “are filled with soot. Shouldn’t that be a priority for you?”

Seokjin waves a dismissive hand. “I can take care of that in two minutes, tops.”

“Then if you don’t think our rooms or the entrance is priority, what is?” Taehyung asks.

“The weird hole in the ceiling between my room and Jeongguk’s?” Seokjin says, as though this should have been obvious. He looks to Jeongguk for backup, who just shrugs – honestly, he’d forgotten about it. “Who knows what’s up there?”

“Isn’t that hole in the corner?” Jimin asks. “Can’t we just cover it up until we’re ready to tackle upstairs?”

“If something’s wrong upstairs that’s made part of the ceiling collapse, I don’t think we should wait…” Namjoon says – he looks at Yoongi, then at Jeongguk. “What do you two think?”

“Hm?” Yoongi says distractedly, his eyes taking a second to focus. “Sorry, I haven’t been listening.” Jimin sighs, very pointedly. “You’re still trying to decide where we should clean first, right? I don’t have an opinion.”

“Everyone has an opinion if they bother to think about something for longer than a second,” Jimin says. “It’s not even like there’s hundreds of options, just pick one.”

“I really, truly don’t care what we clean first, because we’ll need to clean all of it eventually,” Yoongi says. “What do you want to do first? I’ll agree with whatever you, specifically, decide.”

Despite the fact that Yoongi’s just said he’ll agree with him, Jimin rolls his eyes violently. “Hyung, don’t just agree with Jimin to get out of thinking about it,” Namjoon says, sounding exasperated.

“Can’t we just flip a coin?” Yoongi, and there’s no other word for it, whines, lips pouted. “Or a die, if there’s more than two options?”

“Sure, let me just get out my 14-sided juryeonggu that I carry with me at all times,” Jimin snaps.

“I have one! It’s not a juryeonggu, but it’ll do.” Hoseok interrupts, because Yoongi’s starting to look less sleepy and more irritated by the moment. Hoseok rummages in his pocket and eventually pulls out a wooden die, the six numbers burned into each face neatly. Jeongguk had a teacher once who used to conjure things within the confines of an ancient, musty-smelling carpet bag, and while he doesn’t think Hoseok is the sort of person who’s been musty-smelling in his life, perhaps he conjures things in his pockets?

“Yeah, that works,” Taehyung says. “Uh, one for our rooms, two for the entrance, three for the spooky hole in the ceiling…”

“Four for the bathrooms?” Jeongguk suggests. When everyone, almost as one, turns to look at him, he tries not to shrink back. “Uh, they’re… Kind of gross?”

“That’s a good idea,” Seokjin says.

Hoseok blows on his closed fist, shakes the die inside a few times, and then rolls.

“Five,” Namjoon says flatly. He looks up from the die at Hoseok. “Did you do that as a joke?”

Hoseok laughs. “No, I don’t have secret dice magic, don’t worry.” He rolls again.

“Hell of a coincidence,” Yoongi says as they all look at the die showing the number five. “That it’d not only land on one of the two numbers we didn’t pick, but that it’d do it twice.”

“Okay, roll again, if it lands on five a third time, we just do whatever we want for the day,” Jimin says. Hoseok picks up the dice and rolls it again; it lands on a six. “Okay, fine, you know what? I’m going to work on the entrance, anyone who wants to join me can.” Jimin pushes up from his chair and leaves.

“Jeongguk, want to work on one of the bathrooms?” Taehyung offers. Jeongguk nods, pleased to have been picked by someone, even if it’s just for a menial job like cleaning one of the communal bathrooms.

They both leave together, and make the silent, but mutual, decision to tackle the biggest bathroom, the one next to Taehyung’s room, first. It had been the one Jeongguk had been referring to when he’d said they needed cleaning – when he’d been getting ready that morning, he’d needed to wilfully ignore the mess. The wood shows more signs of that strange damage that Jimin’s currently dealing with at the entrance, with the step into the deep bath visibly bowed, almost snapped in the middle. The utilities look new enough, under the grime and dust, but Jeongguk would wager that the sink and toilet had once been white, rather than the grim beige colour they currently look. There are tiles missing from the floor and walls, almost like the room had been half finished before it had been abandoned.

“Oh, you weren’t kidding!” Taehyung says as he pushes the door open. “I didn’t really notice this morning, but that’s because I don’t notice much of anything when I first wake up, my eyes are barely open.” He glances over his shoulder at Jeongguk. “Don’t suppose you have any useful bathroom cleaning magic?” Jeongguk shakes his head guiltily. “Yeah, me neither.” He turns back to look inside. “Well, let me just go ask Jimin if we can use one of his Disinfectant Potions, we can pour it into a spray bottle, that should work. At least then we can use the toilet and sink.” He grimaces at the bath and floor. “No clue how we fix everything else, but it’s a start, right?” He heads off towards the entrance, leaving Jeongguk alone in the hallway.

Although not for long – Yoongi comes around the corner from the kitchen, pausing when he spots Jeongguk lurking.

“I – I will help clean,” Yoongi insists. “I just need a few hours of sleep first-”

“I’m not the chore police, hyung, don’t worry,” Jeongguk says. “Get some rest, it’s not like we need to all work on the same schedule.”

Yoongi looks at him for a moment and then nods, averting his gaze. “If you’re going to use potions to clean, make sure you put up some sort of sign when you’re done reminding people not to spit toothpaste into the sink for five hours after you’re done.” He looks back at Jeongguk, raises an eyebrow, and says, “Namjoon once told me he did that at his parents’ house and they had to get a plumbing specialist out from the High Council to fix the damage it did to the pipes.”

“Noted,” Jeongguk says faintly – that’s all he needs, to accidentally corrode their plumbing.

“You’ll be fine,” Yoongi says. He pats Jeongguk’s shoulder as he walks past, then he lets himself into his room and closes the door behind himself.

A moment later, Taehyung returns with two small spray bottles, two cloths, and two pairs of Potion Witch’s gloves, which he waves like a wind sock. “These might be a little tight on us, but these were the biggest pairs Jimin has to hand,” Taehyung explains, handing Jeongguk a pair. “And apparently this potion can turn skin a minty colour?” Jeongguk pulls on one of the gloves – sure enough, it’s very snug, but he can just about move his fingers inside of them without worrying he’s going to split the gloves along the seams. They’re quite itchy, too, but it was nice of Jimin to lend them his stuff, so he doesn’t say anything.

Jeongguk crouches down next to the toilet to assess the damage. Thankfully, it doesn’t smell overly disgusting, just a sort of musty, damp smell, and when he squirts some of the potion onto the cistern and wipes at it, it cuts through the layers of dirt build-up very easily.

“I think it’s just dust build up here,” Jeongguk says, wiping the top of the cistern in one swipe and looking at his cloth.

“Maybe it’s that weird soot stuff in Seokjin-hyung and Hoseok-hyung’s rooms?” Taehyung suggests, scrubbing at the sink. He seems to be having a harder time of it than Jeongguk, having to really work his arms in order to clean whatever is coating the sink. Sighing explosively, he steps back to stretch his arms over his head. “What’re you doing differently? This is taking me ages.”

“Uh, I don’t know?” Jeongguk looks down at his cloth, which has a lot of dirt building up on it. “Want to swap? I need to rinse this off anyway.”

They swap over, Taehyung squatting next to the toilet, Jeongguk standing at the sink. Once he’s rinsed his cloth off, he tackles the grooves where the taps meet the sink, and finds the dirt comes off with relative ease. “I guess you must’ve done most of the work already?” He says to Taehyung, showing him the thick line of grime that’s come off on the cloth.

“Or you’ve got a knack for this,” Taehyung says with a puff of breath as he tries, and fails, to remove the last smudge Jeongguk hadn’t gotten around to on the cistern. In fact, in the time it takes him to clean that last little bit, Jeongguk’s already finished the basin of the sink, and has moved onto the taps, which are coming up a brilliant silver.

“Maybe the potion in this bottle is stronger?” Jeongguk suggests, wiggling the bottle and watching the luminous green liquid slosh around. “I don’t mind finishing off the rest, though.”

“That’s not fair on you,” Taehyung says, frowning.

“But there’s no point in you spending fifteen minutes cleaning one thing that I can get through in one,” Jeongguk points out.

“If you’re sure…” Taehyung trails off, then he brightens. “Tell you what, I’ll go and take a look at that weird hole by your room!” Before Jeongguk can tell him that it’s not a priority, Taehyung’s off, leaving his cloth and potion spray behind, but still wearing his gloves.

As Jeongguk carries on cleaning, moving onto the remaining tiles, he has to keep taking breaks to scratch his hands. He’s glad none of his teachers had given him gloves to wear when they’d been training him to brew potions, because the constant itchy stimulation of the gloves is distracting enough while he does a menial task like cleaning, he can’t imagine how much damage he’d do to a potion if he was trying to ignore the constant niggling scritch. It’s like the gloves have been lined with fiberglass insulation – which makes sense, if they’re supposed to protect his skin from potions, but it’d be nice if he wasn’t aware of his hands constantly.

Eventually, the rumbling in his stomach becomes more noticeable than the itching of his hands, and when he checks his phone, it’s to find that he’s been cleaning for a few hours – while the toilet and sink hadn’t taken him long, cleaning each individual tile has taken him more time than he’d realised. He stands up, stretches, and makes his way back to the kitchen.

Jimin and Hoseok are already in there – Jimin eating a steaming bowl of japchae, Hoseok holding his phone to his ear with a bored expression on his face, although he perks up when he sees Jeongguk.

Jimin jerks his head towards the oven. “I made lunch, if you’re hungry.”

“Thank you, hyung,” Jeongguk says politely, going to help himself. “How’ve your mornings been so far?”

“I’ve been trying to hire a skip,” Hoseok says, holding up a notepad filled with company names and phone numbers – most of the list has been scrawled out. “Apparently most of the non-magical places can’t get to us, something about the hill up to this place being too steep for their lorries? And the magical places I’ve spoken to are all booked until the summer.”

“Unhelpful,” Jeongguk commiserates. He turns to Jimin, who’s looking at him already. There’s something about his expression that feels considering – not judgemental, necessarily, more so like he’s trying to work him out, like Jeongguk is a particularly wordy textbook in front of him. “What about you, hyung?”

Jimin’s face smooths out and he laughs, although it’s a little strained. “Ah, I’ve not really made any progress. Whatever’s made the wood squishy like that is some sort of magic – I mean, obviously.” He rolls his eyes. “But I don’t want to just start pouring potions on magic I don’t recognise.”

“Get Jeongguk to have a look at it,” Taehyung says, coming into the kitchen, sooty smudges all over his face, arms, and hands. “You should see the work he’s done in the bathroom, it looks amazing in there now.”

“I thought you were working on the bathroom together?” Jimin asks, tilting his head as he looks Taehyung up and down.

“Oh, we were,” Taehyung explains, sitting down at the table. “But Jeongguk’s like, weirdly good at cleaning? Jeongguk, are you sure you’re not a Cleaning Witch?”

“Positive,” Jeongguk says nervously, but nobody asks him to clarify what kind of Witch he is – Jimin starts pulling bottles off his belt, wiggling the contents of each before setting them on the table; Taehyung is focused on trying to rub away the dark grey smudges on his skin; Hoseok sighs and scratches another number off of his list.

“Here,” Jimin says suddenly, tossing Taehyung a short, stout bottle, stoppered with a cork and filled with a pink gel, which Taehyung catches out of the air as easily as breathing. “Dollop of that-”

“Rub it in along the way my arm hair grows so I don’t accidentally tangle it up, I remember, don’t worry,” Taehyung says, unstoppering the cork with his thumb.

“So what have you been doing?” Jimin asks, watching as Taehyung wipes away the grime from his skin.

“I went upstairs to see if I could find out why there’s a hole in the ceiling. Floor?” Taehyung shrugs.

“That was pretty dangerous, going up there on your own!” Hoseok says with a frown, setting his phone down on the table. “It’s so dark up there!”

Taehyung waves a dismissive hand. “I was all right. There were some old planks of wood up there, so I dragged them over the hole just in case there is anything living up there-” Hoseok shakes his head vigorously, eyes scrunched closed. “No, no, I don’t think there is! I didn’t see anything, anyway.”

Jeongguk scratches at his hands. “Is that where the soot’s coming in, through upstairs?”

“I’m not sure,” Taehyung admits. “There’s definitely soot up there, but I don’t know how it could’ve fallen down from upstairs. Hoseok-hyung, is there a hole in your ceiling, too?”

Hoseok shudders. “There’d better not be, otherwise I don’t care what contract I’ve signed, I’m moving out! I’ll be your Soulmate from a nearby hotel or something.”

“We could go up together and have a look?” Jeongguk suggests.

Taehyung immediately nods; Jeongguk doesn’t even need Hoseok to answer to know that his response is a no. Jimin, however, is squinting at Jeongguk’s hands, which only serves to make him impossibly more aware of how much they’re itching under the gloves.

“Did you get potion on your hands, Jeongguk?” Jimin asks. “You keep scratching.”

“Oh, no, it’s the gloves?” Jeongguk wriggles his fingers, which gives him a short, blessed relief from the constant itching, but as soon as his hands still it comes right on back. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can concentrate on anything with them on, hyung, they’re so itchy!”

Jeongguk means it as a compliment, but Jimin immediately looks agitated, irritable. “They’re not supposed to be itchy, take them off!”

When he does, the relief of the cool air on his skin is so sudden that he sighs gratefully. The skin of his hands is hot and red, even more so in the places where the gloves had clung tightly, on his knuckles, between his fingers, on his wrists where the cuffs of the gloves had sat.

Taehyung hisses through his teeth, and holds his hand out; when Jeongguk passes him the gloves, Taehyung shakes his head, gestures for Jeongguk’s hand, and gently takes it in both of his. “Has it been like this the whole time? You didn’t say anything!”

“I just thought that’s what wearing Potion Witch’s gloves was like,” Jeongguk says. “Like how a warming spell can feel a little itchy after a few hours.”

“That’s why I just use a coat,” Hoseok says. “Just as warm, you know?”

“Maybe go try washing your hands,” Taehyung says worriedly, finally releasing Jeongguk’s hands. “And maybe don’t wear Jimin’s terrible, itchy gloves?”

“How was I meant to know he’d be allergic to Potion Witch’s gloves?” Jimin says indignantly. “He didn’t say!”

“I didn’t know!” Jeongguk says, clutching his hands to his chest in the hopes that Jimin will stop looking at them. “My Potion teacher never told me to wear gloves.”

“Never?” Hoseok says.

Jeongguk shakes his head, trying not to doubt himself when he sees Taehyung and Jimin share an incredulous look. “He didn’t wear them either, he said it was important to learn that if a Potion Witch was splashing dangerous stuff on themselves, they shouldn’t be working with dangerous stuff.”

“What a load of shit,” Jimin says hotly. “You should always wear potion gloves, even – especially! – when you’re a Potions Witch!”

“Sorry, hyung,” Jeongguk says, bowing his head. “I’ll know for next time.” He flees the room, because he doesn’t want to be in the room as everyone starts to put it together why he’s so unknowledgeable about everything. He will tell them soon that he’s not a certified Witch, he’d just rather not do it to so many of them at once, or right after he’s just revealed some huge gap in his knowledge.

“Jeongguk, are you alright?” Seokjin asks, looking up from his dinner. “You’ve barely touched your food.” The others look up from where they’d been quietly eating.

“Not really hungry,” Jeongguk says, moving a mouthful of his dinner from one side of the plate to the other. In all honesty, his hands are still hot and itchy, and his chopsticks rest right against one of the hottest, itchiest parts of his hand, so he’s waiting until everyone leaves the table so that he can attempt to undignifiedly shovel his food into his mouth.

He’s spent the rest of his day trying to distract himself from his hands without having too much to do – he can’t clean, because he thinks Jimin will kick him to the kerb if he asks to borrow his gloves again; he can’t do anything to make his room a little bit nicer, because he’s not confident enough in his conjuration spells to attempt to magic up anything more complex than a bookcase with no shelves; there’s no point unpacking anything, because he doesn’t have any furniture to tidy everything away.

He'd spent a few hours studying his Compendium, partly because he’d been hoping to come across a spell for itchiness (he’d gotten excited when he’d found one for cuts and scrapes, but the Compendium isn’t remotely in any sort of order that he’s been able to understand, so there’d been no get-rid-of-itchiness spells nearby), partly because he’s still hoping that one day these spells will just click, that they’ll make sense to him, that he won’t trip over the ridiculous words as he reads them out loud, that he’ll understand.

He hasn’t been able to understand yet, in much better environments for studying, but he’d been giving it a go, anyway.

Jimin coughs, slides a small glass pot across the table towards him, and says, “Found that when I was unpacking my ingredients – apply a thin layer now to ease the itchiness, then a thick layer before you go to sleep tonight, it should all be cleared up by morning.”

“Thank you,” Jeongguk says, unscrewing the lid and taking a look. There’s a translucent gel inside, pink like strawberry milk, but it smells medicinal, a metallic, sharp scent at the back of his nose that makes him want to sneeze. When he starts spread it thinly on his hand, rubbing in slow circles, the medicinal smell vanishes, leaving behind both a faint berry smell and a feeling like he’s slowly dipped his hands into cool water. The effect lasts long enough that he’s able to finish his dinner with relative ease, which makes Seokjin smile.

“Good that you happened to have that to hand,” Yoongi says to Jimin.

“What can I say?” Jimin replies with a shrug. “I guess I’m just well prepared.”

“It’s funny,” Yoongi says, leaning back in his chair with a raised eyebrow. “It’s been a while since I’ve felt the need to dabble in potions, but I thought that one had a pretty short cauldron life? Don’t you usually need to brew it the day that you need it?”

“Let me introduce you to this amazing spell we use nowadays to prolong potions,” Jimin says. “It’s called a refrigerator, you plug it into the wall, it’s great.”

“You’ve got a fridge full of hand cream in your room?” Yoongi says incredulously.

“It’s not full of hand cream, there’s other things in there!”

“And even with a fridge full of hand cream, it still won’t keep forever-”

“I’m going to have a look at the hole in the ceiling!” Seokjin announces. “Jeongguk, want to come with?”

Jeongguk thinks the gratitude at being given an excuse to leave the argument is obviously on his face, because as soon as they’re walking down the hole, Seokjin nudges their shoulders together. “I think they’re enjoying themselves, if it’s any consolation.”

“It’s just… Not what I expected from having Soulmates,” Jeongguk admits. “I kind of imagined we’d all be… Friends.” He hopes the pause as he’d changed words isn’t as long and obvious as it had sounded in his head.

“Ah,” Seokjin says, nodding. “You’re a romantic.”

“No!” Seokjin shoots him a disbelieving look out of the corner of his eye. “Maybe. A little? I did hope we’d all be friends, though.”

“I think that’s normal – wanting to be friends and thinking about a romantic relationship,” Seokjin says, stopping under the hole and looking up. The boards Taehyung had placed over it earlier look like they’re covering it up pretty nicely. “You’re spending at least three months with the same people, it’s only natural to want some sort of positive relationship to come of it.”

“Did you…” Jeongguk trails off, not sure how to ask did you want to be friends with your Soulmates? without sounding like he’s pleading for friends.

The expression on Seokjin’s face isn’t one he was expecting to see – he looks genuinely startled for a moment, then thoughtful. “Oh. Huh, no, I hadn’t really thought about it. I didn’t really consider having Soulmates.” He laughs. “Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t one of those people convinced I was going to go solo through life, I just hadn’t really thought about the future like that.” He soars up gently towards the ceiling; Jeongguk thinks he can feel the breeze along his shins, but he could just be imagining it. Seokjin gently pushes at the planks until one shifts aside, then pokes his head through the gap. “Oh, this room’s pretty big, I think it spans most of this side of the house? It’d make a nice communal space if we can sort the stairs out to get up here.” He slots the plank back into place, then floats back down. “Or I could fly you all up here like some sort of taxi.”

“I’m not sure you could lift me,” Jeongguk replies.

Seokjin laughs, hard enough that he lets out a few squeaks. “I mean, no, probably not? My plan was to let my magic do the lifting, just fly you up there with some wind.”

“I’m not sure the others would like being shot into the air like champagne corks,” Jeongguk says, hoping to deflect from the fact that his immediate thought had been that Seokjin had been offering, jokingly or not, to bridal carry them all up and downstairs.

“And you would?” Seokjin asks, still grinning.

Jeongguk shrugs. “I’m willing to try anything at least once.”

Seokjin nods thoughtfully. “I’ll bear that in mind, then.”

“Come in, come in!” Taehyung calls out as Jeongguk lurks in his open doorway. “Does this look straight to you?” Jeongguk tilts his head to examine the canvas he’s hanging, a watercolour of three sunflowers.

“Yeah, I think so,” Jeongguk says. Taehyung takes a step back, nods in agreement, and then turns to Jeongguk with a grin.

“Good morning, by the way!” He says, like he really, genuinely means it. “Did you sleep alright? How’re your hands?”

Jeongguk grimaces a little, wrinkling his nose as he says, “The river kept me up for a bit. I didn’t notice it on the first night because I was so exhausted, but… Yeah.” He holds up his hands. “My hands are great, though, no itchiness at all.” They’re actually much softer than he can remember than being in a while, like every dry skin cell had been sloughed off overnight to reveal the peachy-softest new skin underneath.

Nodding sympathetically, Taehyung jerks his head towards his bed. “I was thinking of moving my bed away from the window for the same reason, but I kind of like my room layout as it is? Hopefully I get used to the noise.” Unlike Jeongguk, who still has his mattress on the floor, Taehyung already has his mattress on a frame, with the headboard nestled perfectly underneath the window, like it was custom made to fit.

The light streaming in through the window in the room Taehyung’s chosen is much nicer than in Jeongguk’s; it’s streaming in through the window in beautiful golden sunbeams, the kind that highlight dust particles in the air and make them look like little stars, or the tiniest fireflies. At some point between them arriving two days ago and now, he’s already hung up mirrors on the wall opposite the window, so the sunbeams are bouncing back, and the crystal shards in the light fixture he’s put up are throwing prisms of light out whenever the sun hits them just right.

Jeongguk frowns, and looks at the window again. The light shouldn’t be that much prettier, because their rooms are literally on the same side of the building, separated only by Jimin’s room. Not to mention the fact that, if he actually looks at the sky outside, he can clearly see how cloudy it is, a holdover from the bad winter weather that’s still holding Seoul in its clutches.

“Like it?” Taehyung grins, takes Jeongguk gently by the wrist, and tugs him over to the window. He’s the most tactile person Jeongguk’s ever met – they’ve touched more times in the last few days than Jeongguk’s touched some people in his entire life. “It’s a modified natural daylight spell – you know, the kind you use for photography, or seasonal affective disorder?” Jeongguk nods, even though he’s never heard of that spell in his life. Taehyung smiles at him. “It’s okay if you haven’t heard about it, you don’t have to pretend to make me feel better.”

“Oh, I’m not!” Jeongguk says quickly; Taehyung looks very sceptical. “Well, yeah, I haven’t heard of that spell, but I’m not pretending to make you feel better, I’m, uh…” How do you say ‘I’m trying to make myself look less magically inept?’ to a guy who you’re supposed to be bolstering the magic of in a Soulmate partnership?

“If you haven’t heard of stuff, that’s okay, we can learn from each other!” Taehyung replies. “I’m sure there’re plenty of things you know that I won’t have a clue about.” Jeongguk begs to differ, but he smiles tightly anyway. “But I’m a Light Witch, so this is sort of my thing – I forget, sometimes, what’s common knowledge and what’s a hyper-specific thing that literally no one else will know because I came up with it-”

“You created this spell?” Jeongguk asks. He is, admittedly, easy to impress when it comes to magical prowess, but spell creation in a discipline as advanced as Light magic is incredibly complex.

“I modelled it off the natural daylight spell,” Taehyung reiterates, taking his hand off Jeongguk’s wrist and bringing it to the window. Jeongguk watches as he uses his fingernail to peel at the space just in front of the window; the light comes away like a gossamer membrane, fluttering between Taehyung’s fingertips and sending light shimmering through his room. “It’s great for evening photography, or for making barren rooms look a little nicer.” He gestures for Jeongguk to hold out his hands.

“Oh.” Jeongguk keeps his hands at his sides. “I’ve never done Light magic before. Not with my hands, anyway.”

He expects one of the usual responses; What, never? What sort of school did you go to, where you never learnt a Light spell? Are you still using a wand?

Instead, Taehyung cups the Light spell in his hands. “Do you trust me?”

Despite himself, he does. He holds out his hands, cupped, and Taehyung gently tips the spell into them.

He’s never felt somebody else’s magic like this; it’s like the difference between eating a meal he’s cooked for himself his whole life, and eating the same meal someone else has cooked for him. The spell flickers in his hands for a moment, then settles, like a small animal getting comfortable.

Then it starts throwing out multicoloured smudges of light, bright greens and electric blues and neon purples bouncing off the walls. Taehyung stares up at the ceiling, mouth a little open, before he says, “Cool.”

“That’s not you?” Jeongguk asks.

Taehyung shakes his head. “I’ve never seen a spell like this. It’s like a laser pointer, except if you tried to paint each laser point with brush strokes?” Jeongguk watches the lights some more; sure enough, it’s like something is very quickly brushing each daub of light into place before it fades away. “Do you know how you did it?”

“I… Don’t think I am?” Jeongguk says slowly, watching the lights dim as he tries to determine how he’s doing this, if he’s doing this. “I can’t do magic without a wand.”

“Well,” Taehyung pinches the spell and plucks it out of Jeongguk’s hands; as soon as he does, the light show stops. “That looks like a wandless spell to me, Jeongguk.” He tosses the spell back at the window with carefree ease, where it plasters itself to the glass and throws out the beautiful golden light again.

“Maybe it’s because I’m with my Soulmates?” Jeongguk muses. “My teachers did always hope that I’d get better at magic if I had Soulmates.”

Taehyung’s mouth twists. “Is that what they said to you? That’s mean.”

Jeongguk shrugs. “Everyone always thought I was going to be better at magic than I actually am.” He can feel his cheeks burn. “Um, don’t tell the others?”

Taehyung blinks. “Don’t tell them what?”

“That I’m bad at magic?” Jeongguk rubs his thumb against the opposite palm. “I’m not sure how good of a Soulmate I’ll be for you all if I’m not good at magic. Maybe I’ll act as a battery or something, I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t want everyone to think I’m only here to sponge off of everyone else’s magical ability.”

Taehyung’s eyes go wide. “I don’t think they’ll think that – they’re our Soulmates, right? Stands to reason they won’t be shitty.”

Jeongguk’s glad at least one of his Soulmates views the whole concept through as much of a rosy-tinted lens as he does, but… “Please don’t tell them, hyung. I’ll tell them myself, I promise.”

“You don’t owe us anything, you know that, right?” Taehyung says softly. Eventually, he pats Jeongguk on the shoulder. “But of course, I promise I won’t say anything.”

They settle into a routine surprisingly quickly – it’s just a shame that their routines seem to bring them all into contact very rarely.

They all take meals at different times, they get up and go to bed at different times, their work schedules are different – Jeongguk, and he thinks Hoseok too, aren’t working at all, but Seokjin works a weekday eight till six job out of the house, while Taehyung’s contract job takes him out of the house at all hours. Yoongi, Namjoon, and Jimin are all self-employed, but it means they can spend hours shut up in their rooms, which ends up leaving Jeongguk feeling a little like a ghost haunting the hallways of this big house.

He’s tried to run into Hoseok a few times this morning, if only to confirm that there’s someone else in the house with him, but he can’t work out where he could be – he can’t hear any sounds coming from within his bedroom, he’s not in the kitchen, and he’s not in any of the bathrooms – when he hears footsteps coming around the corner behind him.

“Jeongguk!” Jeongguk turns to look at Jimin as he walks, then breaks into a little jog, down the hall towards him. “Here.” He slaps a pair of Potion Witch’s gloves against Jeongguk’s chest. “Put these on.”

“Uh, okay?” Jeongguk takes the gloves from him and slips them onto his hands. They’re much bigger than the pair Jimin had lent him the day before, and the inside feels like a normal, soft pair of winter gloves.

“You didn’t even ask if these might fuck up your hands too,” Jimin says, frowning.

“I mean, I didn’t think you’d give me a pair of gloves that you knew were going to make my hands itchy?” Jeongguk says. He flexes his fingers, pleased at the range of movement these gloves offer him. “What’s different about these?”

“They’re hypoallergenic,” Jimin explains, still looking a little frowny. “I wouldn’t recommend using them to handle anything super corrosive, but they should be alright for handling Cleaning Potions.”

“You didn’t have to get me special gloves, but thank you,” Jeongguk says.

Jimin rolls his eyes. “I wasn’t about to let you go around handling potions with your naked hands, I’m not a criminal.” He looks Jeongguk in the eye, and Jeongguk’s surprised to suddenly realise that he has to look up to do so – he’s got such a commanding presence, like he takes up more space than he actually does. “Not like some of your teachers, anyway. No offense.”

“None taken?” Jeongguk shrugs. “I wasn’t super close to any of them, you can say whatever you like.”

“How many magic teachers have you had?” Jimin asks. “Were you home schooled?”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I went to regular school with all the other magic kids in my town, I just also had a bunch of tutors.” There’s an opening there for Jeongguk to elaborate, to explain that he’s still not good enough at magic to have passed his Mastery Certification, but he doesn’t take it, leaving a stodgy silence in its place.

“Interesting,” Jimin says eventually. He takes a step back. “Well, I’ve got to-”

“Wait, let me repay you for the gloves,” Jeongguk says, which makes Jimin shake his head ‘no’ so vigorously that Jeongguk expects his hair to flop around with the movement, but not a hair moves out of place. “No, really, you got me special gloves-”

“I got you special gloves so you’d be safe cleaning the house, that’s not something you need to repay me for,” Jimin insists. He tilts his head in the face of Jeongguk’s pleading expression, then sighs. “Fine, you look pretty strong, why don’t you help me with the entrance today? It’d be handy to have someone hold the planks in place while I look underneath them.”

Jeongguk nods eagerly, following after Jimin as he leads them to the hanok’s entrance. He’s already ripped up one of the wooden planks, which is resting against the wall; it’s revealed a perfectly normal looking floor underneath. Jeongguk had thought the stain was underneath the wood, but it looks as though something in the wood has been staining the floor underneath it.

“Weird, right?” Jimin asks when he notices where Jeongguk’s looking. “I’d assumed that some sort of, I don’t know, primordial magic ooze was coming up from the ground, but it looks fine.”

“Did the plank itself feel fine when you ripped it up?” Jeongguk asks, moving closer to have a look at it.

“I poured a Solidifying Potion over the floor before I started working, I had to chisel that plank out to remove it,” Jimin says, crouching down to the supplies that he already has set up – a tool box filled with potions ingredients, and a tool belt of tiny knives, spoons, and chisels. “The potion should’ve melted away by now.”

“That makes sense,” Jeongguk says, going to touch the plank with the toe of his boot before stopping when he hears Jimin’s exasperated sigh behind him. “Because it looks squishy.”

“Squishy?” Jimin repeats.

“Like it’s made of wet paper,” Jeongguk tries to explain; Jimin, still in his crouch, squat-walks over to have a closer look. “Mulchy.” The wooden plank has sagged against the wall as its Solidifying Potion has melted away overnight, looking rather like a hand puppet without a hand to puppet it.

“Then that makes our job easier,” Jimin says, waddling back over to his toolbox. “We just encase the whole thing in another Solidifying Potion and pull up each of the boards.”

“But what’s wrong with it?”

Jimin shrugs, pulling out a skein of spider’s silk, a pot of bright, white sand, a bottle of something clear and viscous, and a mortar and pestle. He pours the sand in, starts unwinding the spider’s silk, frowns over at the wood, then unwinds a few lengths more before dumping it into the mortar and pestle.

“You don’t measure your ingredients?” Jeongguk asks, trying to watch without being obtrusive; Jimin looks over his shoulder, then scoots around so that Jeongguk can see the way he’s flicking his wrist as he grinds his dry ingredients.

“I probably should,” Jimin admits, going through his toolbox until he finds a shallow tray, which he sets on the floor. Next, he pulls out a funnel, the spout of which he sticks into the bottle with the clear liquid, before he dumps his ground up ingredients inside. As he corks up the bottle, he continues, “But a potion like this, it doesn’t really matter if you get the quantities wrong, I can go back and add more spider’s silk or sand if I need to.” He shakes the bottle vigorously, talking all the while. “It’s the base Binding Potion, the stuff with the actual magic in it, that takes more work, which is why I batch brew a load at the start of the month – once you’ve got that, you can just add dry ingredients as and when you need. Spider’s silk and sand for a Hardening Potion, for example.”

“Isn’t that… Cheating?” Jeongguk asks, not wanting to offend Jimin when they’ve been getting on so well for the last while.

Jimin doesn’t look cross – he just laughs. “I’m not in an exam room right now, so who cares? I don’t need to show my workings out when I’m just trying to make a potion to clean a toilet, you know? I say take all the shortcuts you need, that way you can focus more time and energy on projects that matter to you.”

“What’ve you been working on?”

“Me?” Jimin looks pleased to have been asked. “I’m thinking about working on my Philosopher’s Certification in potions, and one of the requirements is to develop an entirely new potion. It’ll take a few years, I think, but I’d rather focus on that than spend hours every day making the same five basic potions.” He uncorks the bottle and pours the now white potion into the tray before handing Jeongguk a wide paintbrush. “Thin coat over the wood, make sure you don’t get any on your pants, unless you want hard trousers for the next 24 hours.”

They work in companiable silence for the next ten minutes, broken only when Jimin looks over and hums approvingly at the work Jeongguk’s been doing.

“Great work,” Jimin says, resting back on his haunches for a moment as he pushes aside the tray and their paintbrushes, grabs two chisels, and hands one to Jeongguk. “Now this is the difficult bit – we need to pull the wood up.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier with a prybar?” Jeongguk asks; Jimin blinks at him. “A prybar? So we can…” He tries to gesture the movement, then waves his chisel. “I’d be worried I’d snap this, it’s pretty small.”

“I don’t have a prybar.”

“I might be able to conjure one up, one second…” Jeongguk pulls out his wand before remembering that he’s not supposed to be advertising the fact that he’s still using a wand. He looks at Jimin, panicked explanations buzzing against his lips, but Jimin just looks expectant, so Jeongguk gives it a go.

The prybars he conjures aren’t the right material – something shiny and purple, rather than the typical steel – and the handgrips he’d tried to conjure with them to make the bars easier to hold have somewhat melted into the bar unsettlingly, but they look like they’ll do the job, so he hands one to Jimin.

“Nice,” Jimin says, testing the weight of it in his hands. “This should make our job a lot easier.”

And it does. It’s still tiring work, pulling up a dozen or so wooden planks that have been magically hardened, but they manage to get all of the planks pulled up within an hour.

“Thanks for your help, that would’ve taken me days,” Jimin says, tossing the last wooden plank onto the haphazard pile they’ve made outside. “Let me make you lunch?”

“You don’t need to do that, this was about me repaying you for the gloves,” Jeongguk reminds him.

“A pair of gloves is not equal to you cutting my work down to a fraction of what it was,” Jimin says, pouting his lips out.

“…Fine, but can you do me a favour, too?” Jeongguk asks; Jimin raises an eyebrow. “Don’t tell the others about the fact that I still need to use a wand? Taehyung-hyung knows, but I want to tell the others myself.”

Whatever Jimin had been expecting, it wasn’t that – he blinks wordlessly a few times, mouth slightly open. “I… Alright?” He says, bewildered. “I’ll be honest, Jeongguk, I hadn’t really considered it worth mentioning?”

“What do you mean?”

“Lots of Witches use their wands for added spell stability,” Jimin says, confused. “Mine’s on my desk. Witches can’t be expected to be able to do every type of spell wandlessly.”

“But most Witches have a Mastery where they don’t need to use a wand,” Jeongguk says quietly.

Jimin outright laughs at that, which stings for a moment until he explains, “Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at the fact that you don’t have a Mastery?” He ends that with a question, waiting until Jeongguk nods in confirmation before he continues. “I was laughing at the idea that Witches don’t use wands for their Mastery. If you think I’m giving up setting up my wand as a stirrer for my potions just because I can technically do it wandless, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“I’ve never met a Master Witch who still uses their wand,” Jeongguk says.

“Trust me, you have. You’ve met me, for a start. Sure, some Witches might have had weird hang ups about using it in public, but nearly every Witch still uses their wand in the comfort of their own homes.” They’ve arrived in the kitchen, and Jimin’s already started pulling ingredients out of the cupboard; when Jeongguk moves to help, Jimin shoos him away to sit down at the table. “But all right, I won’t mention-”

“Namjoon-hyung, good morning!” Jeongguk blurts out as Namjoon enters the kitchen, yawning, hoping to get Jimin to stop talking; Jimin, for his part, just snorts before returning to making their lunch. “Or, uh, afternoon?”

“Is it that late?” Namjoon mumbles, shuffling over to the coffee machine. “Where’s everyone?”

“Hoseok-hyung’s calling in a favour with some of his work colleagues to get us a skip,” Jimin says, which explains why Jeongguk hadn’t been able to find him that morning. “Taehyung got called in for a work emergency, Seokjin-hyung’s at work, and Yoongi-hyung…” He trails off, looks around, then shrugs. “Beats me. I heard him mumbling to himself when I woke up this morning, but I’m gonna guess he’s fallen back asleep.”

“I doubt it,” Namjoon replies. “He’s got a big work project due on Friday, he’ll probably just take weird little naps between now and then.”

Jimin looks over his shoulder again at Namjoon, sighs, and dumps another two portions of rice in the rice cooker. “Well, I guess one of us needs to make sure everyone’s eaten at least one good meal today.”

Perhaps it’s luck, or perhaps he’s drawn in by the smell of food, but Yoongi appears as Jimin’s frying vegetables; wordlessly, Yoongi starts washing the dishes by hand.

Jeongguk watches curiously – it’s the first time in the last few days he’s seen Yoongi do a task like this by hand, rather than reciting a spell from his mini-Compendium. He’s seen Yoongi use magic to do the dishes, seen him gently nudge Seokjin away from the sink to prevent him from magicking up a little raincloud in their kitchen.

He’s still watching Yoongi’s back as he hears somebody yelp in surprise at the entrance, a muffled thump that sounds like somebody might’ve just jumped over the bare stone of the entrance floor, and then footsteps approaching the kitchen.

“Good news!” Hoseok says as he walks in. “We’re getting a skip delivered some time this evening.”

“That’s fast,” Namjoon says, pouring his coffee and staring, pretty glumly, into its surface. He rubs the point between his eyes with his finger, like he’s trying to massage the frown building there away.

“Called in a favour,” Hoseok says, pulling a packed lunch out of his bag and setting it onto the table next to Namjoon with a clatter. “A few favours, actually,” Hoseok continues as he sits down.

“Where do you work, an emergency skip delivery place?” Jimin asks, starting to make a sauce.

Hoseok laughs. “No, no, there’s an environment safety department at work, and I helped them write some policies a few years back, so they owed me. It’ll be a non-magical skip, but a skip’s a skip, you know? It’s not like we’ll be throwing out magical furniture.”

Jeongguk’s a little worried about how they’ll be able to get a non-magical skip into their enclosed yard, or even over the fence that surrounds their house, but he’s sure Hoseok’s thought of something, so he doesn’t say anything. He goes back to watching Yoongi, who’s still quietly washing dishes. He’s only known Yoongi for a few days, true, but he wouldn’t have described him as quiet – he’s been chatty at meals, has stopped to talk on the few times Jeongguk has caught him out in the halls, regardless of how much, or how little, sleep he’s had.

“Hyung,” Namjoon says, voice low as he stares at his coffee. When Yoongi turns to look at him, eyebrow raised, Namjoon jerks his head in Jeongguk’s direction; Yoongi waits before Namjoon looks back at him to shrug before turning back to the dishes. “He’s fine, he just needs to take a break from talking for a bit.” It takes Jeongguk a second to realise that Namjoon’s speaking to him now. “He’ll thank you for worrying.”

The tense is very peculiar, but that’s not what Jeongguk decides to ask about first. “Did he tell you that in his mind? Are you a Mind Reader Witch?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “No, I’ve just known him long enough that I can guess what he’s thinking. Also I saw him having that conversation with you when I was scrying yesterday, although I don’t know when you’ll actually have that conversation, before you ask.”

“Well, as long as you’re alright, Yoongi-hyung,” Jeongguk says – Yoongi gives him a thumbs up, not looking away from the sink to do so.

“You’re a Scryer Witch, Namjoon-hyung?” Jimin asks curiously. “That’s pretty rare, what made you want to specialise in that?”

“I like how it’s like putting a puzzle together,” Namjoon says. “I don’t usually see the whole picture when I scry for anything, so it’s like trying to work out an image that I’m looking at from behind my hands.” He shrugs, then shimmies his coffee mug so that the liquid inside ripples. A little bit of coffee spills over the edge and drips down the outside of the mug. “It’s interesting, usually.”

Jeongguk looks into his own cup. He’s scried a few times before, but always in a specially issued, perfectly circular mirror, in a candle lit room, with the curtains drawn, never like this. Amazingly, he sees something almost immediately, before realising that it’s his own face reflected back at him.

Or… Not. It’s his face gazing at him, definitely – same nose, same big eyes – but the eyes looking back at him aren’t blinking at the same time he is, and when he frowns down at the face in the coffee cup, its own expression clears into one of realisation. There are other little differences too, now that he’s looking more closely – his hair in the reflection is long enough that he’s pinned it back, and he’s wearing a different, smarter outfit, before the image wobbles and fades away, revealing Jeongguk’s wide, surprised eyes.

 “You look like you’re going to fall in!” Hoseok says with a laugh, pushing at Jeongguk’s shoulder gently as he sits up, shaking his head to clear it.

“I’ve accidentally dipped my nose into my morning coffee because I’ve gotten so close before,” Namjoon admits.

“I’ve never been able to see anything like that,” Jeongguk says, glancing back at his coffee cup. “Not that quickly, anyway. It usually takes me hours of concentration before I can even see anything, let alone anything I can try to interpret.”

“What school did you go to where they had you concentrating on scrying for hours?” Namjoon asks with a frown. “Most Scrying Witches agree these days that if you don’t see anything at all in the first ten minutes or so, you should go do something else to rest your mind.”

“I had a private tutor for scrying,” Jeongguk says, thinking about the woman who’d taught him how to scry, how her long fingernails had tapped against the glass of the silver mirror in front of her as she waited for Jeongguk to tell her what, if anything, he was seeing.

“They really should think about issuing teaching licenses,” Jimin says, setting down a bowl of food in front of Jeongguk. He’s cooked way too much food for just two, however – Jeongguk would wager he’s cooked for seven, just in case. “Not everybody should be teaching young Witches, you know? Even if they did write a research paper one time on some obscure form of magic.” Yoongi nods firmly, which seems to throw Jimin for a loop, because he half-stumbles in surprise on his way back over to the bowls.

It’s a little bit too dark to be starting to clean anything outside now, but Jeongguk’s standing outside of the entrance anyway, looking over the overgrown weeds, the shattered paving slabs of the path, how somebody has painted the inside of the old stone fence that surrounds their property a sage green colour that’s nearly all either peeling off or flaked away entirely, revealing a filthy stone.

“Jeongguk, is that you?” Taehyung calls out through the kitchen window. “You know you could just call me, rather than stumbling about in the dark on your own?”

“You’ve been at work for most of the day,” Jeongguk calls back – he knew it had gotten darker outside, but it takes his eyes a second to adjust to the bright, golden light spilling out from behind Taehyung. “I didn’t want to bother you!”

“I’ll be right there!” Taehyung shuts the window behind him and, sure enough, appears in the entrance moments later, a ball of light cradled in his palm. “What do you need? Floodlights, torches? I can do strobe lights, but they start to hurt my eyes after a bit.” Jeongguk shrugs helplessly. “Tell you what, I’ll just follow behind you with this.” He tosses the ball of light like a tennis player preparing to serve. “We’ll change it if we need to.”

Jeongguk crouches down next to the paving stones first. They’re all at bizarre angles, corners jutting up into the air like weird pieces of art, and all of them look like they’ve been deliberately driven into the ground to look like that, rather than anything accidental.

“Looks like one hell of an argument,” Taehyung says.

Jeongguk turns his head to look up at him, having to squint when he gets an eyeful of light; Taehyung courteously shifts the direction of the beam of light away from his face. “What do you mean?”

“Have you ever seen two or more Witches fight magically?” Jeongguk shakes his head – if his parents had ever fought like that, they’d never done so in front of him, and he and his friends had never fought magically growing up. “You can leave a lasting impression on the world around you if you get too out of control. My guess is this was at least one Garden Witch?” Taehyung looks around. “And one of them cast a spell, and sent the paving slabs flying…” He sends his light ball scattering off in different directions, each point of light coming to rest on top of each paving slab. Seeing them lit up like this makes it obvious that they’ve been blasted away from their original position into an almost perfect circle.

“Why leave it like this, though?” Jeongguk asks, standing up. “It might hurt someone.”

Taehyung shrugs. “Takes more time to fix something than it does to break it, I guess? Maybe the people who last lived here couldn’t be bothered.”

“Oh.” Jeongguk frowns at the slabs. “That’s pretty sad.”

“Sometimes Soulmates really don’t get on,” Taehyung says. “All things considered, we’ve been pretty lucky.”

If you’d asked Jeongguk a few days ago – even a few hours ago – he’d have said his Soulmates weren’t getting on. However, seeing evidence of what could happen when Soulmates really weren’t gelling, and thinking of the quiet, peaceful lunch Jimin had made them, a portion still waiting for when Seokjin comes home from work any minute now, makes him reconsider his original thoughts.

“Hello?” A man in a blue high-visibility hat looks over the top of the fence, then pushes the gate open. “I’ve got a delivery of a skip for Jung Hoseok-ssi?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s us,” Jeongguk says.

The man looks at him sceptically. “It’s… Both of you?”

“No, neither,” Jeongguk says. “We’re his Soulmates.”

“Right,” the delivery man says, still looking suspicious. “Well, he’ll need to be the one to sign for it, if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll go get him,” Jeongguk says, letting himself into the house.

He checks the kitchen first, partly because it’s on his way to Hoseok’s room, but it’s empty, so he continues on to his room. The door’s shut, and normally he’d take that as a sign to not disturb, but he thinks Hoseok would be more annoyed to lose the skip he’d spent days arranging for them than he would be for Jeongguk to knock on the door.

When Hoseok opens his door, he doesn’t open it very wide, so Jeongguk can’t see how he’s decorated his room, but he can see a very neatly made bed.

“Jeongguk!” Hoseok grins widely. “This is a nice surprise, what can I do for you?”

“The skip guy’s just arrived,” Jeongguk says. “He says you need to sign for it?”

“Ah, yes, you could be an imposter, trying to steal my skip!” Hoseok jokes, stepping out into the hall, shutting his bedroom door behind him, and setting off towards the entrance. Jeongguk follows, just in case Hoseok needs his help with anything.

When they get there, Taehyung has moved over to talk to the delivery man, who has a somewhat shellshocked look to him. Jeongguk can empathise – he’d probably looked the same way when he’d first seen Taehyung. The man visibly shakes his head when Hoseok approaches to sign for his delivery.

Hoseok looks around. “Where is it?”

The delivery guy jerks his thumb. “On the other side of the fence?”

“Oh.” Hoseok stands on his tiptoes, as though he’ll be able to see the skip over the fence. “Don’t you deliver it to the property?”

“Yeah, when there isn’t a fence surrounding the whole thing,” the delivery man says. “But you’re Witches, right? Just…” He waves his hands vaguely. “You know?”

Before any of them can say anything, Seokjin hops over the fence. “Is that our skip?”

“It’s supposed to be, yeah,” Hoseok says. Seokjin jumps back up onto the fence, whips his hands around a few times, then lifts the skip up and over the fence. “Oh, can you put it into the yard, hyung? Saves us having to traipse everything out here!” Seokjin rolls his eyes good naturedly, but does as he’s asked, soaring up over the roof of their hanok, skip in tow, before disappearing into the yard.

“Good thing hyung arrived when he did!” Hoseok says after they’ve thanked the delivery man and sent him on his way. “Do you know any useful skip-lifting spells?”

“No, but I could probably make it glow,” Taehyung says. “That’d be fun.”

“None,” Jeongguk says. “I’ve not actually passed my Mastery exams in anything.” He tries to say it casually, but he still feels a low, sickening lurch of dread.

“I don’t know any either!” Hoseok says cheerfully, shattering Jeongguk’s dread into tiny pieces. “So we’re really lucky that he came when he did. It’d be handy if he could help me clean out the yard, but I don’t want to ask him when he’s just come back from work…”

“I’m pretty strong?” Jeongguk says. “I can’t, you know, lift skips over buildings, but I should be able to throw rubbish into a skip.”

“That’d be great, if you wouldn’t mind!” Hoseok says as they enter the yard. “Hyung, how was work?”

Seokjin looks over from where he’d been attempting to clear space around the skip, which is sitting at a weird angle on top of the piles of broken furniture. “I’m really thinking about changing my mind about not taking a Soulmate sabbatical.”

“That bad?” Hoseok asks sympathetically.

“Everyone just keeps making comments like, Oh, shouldn’t you be at home with your Soulmates? And then it got out how many there were of us, and now everyone keeps asking about that, like if I’ve forgotten any of your names, or accidentally brought a few too many guys back with me whenever I go out…” He rolls his eyes, tosses what looks like a rotten table leg into the skip a little vehemently, then asks, “What made you two choose to take the time off?”

“I was working for a non-magical company selling stationery supplies,” Jeongguk says. “So I just quit. I had some savings, and…” He trails off, but telling Taehyung and Hoseok about his lack of magic had gone well, so he continues, “…I’m hoping to start studying for a Mastery exam over the next few months?”

“That’s a cool use of your time,” Seokjin says. “Better than what I did, I crammed in my Mastery exam in the first subject I was vaguely good at when I was fourteen.” He turns to Hoseok, raises a questioning eyebrow.

“I didn’t have a choice!” Hoseok says. “My bosses were basically like, You’ve got to take a sabbatical, and that was that.”

“There’re still places that make you take time off?” Jeongguk asks incredulously.

“A lot of places,” Seokjin says. “Obviously it’s in their best interests to have employees that are Soulmated, that way they get more powerful employees.” He shrugs. “I’d argue that letting your employees choose is a better way to treat them, and sometimes having strangers all stuck at home together is a bad idea, but what do I know? I’m the one getting annoyed at my co-workers because they won’t leave me alone to do my job.”

“Have you got options to work from home a few days a week?” Taehyung asks, tossing a ball of light into the air to hover over the yard like a disco ball.

“I don’t think so,” Seokjin says. “I need to physically go to work to make sure the city’s aerial roads aren’t too windy, after all.”

“I thought you worked in set design for films?” Hoseok asks.

“That was in college,” Seokjin says, finally managing to clear enough space for the skip to lay flat on the ground. “Now I work in broomstick traffic control.” He tosses a wooden plank into the skip. “It pays well.”

“What are you all doing out here?” Jimin calls out from outside his room. “Is now really the time?”

“Sorry, Jimin, it’s my fault!” Hoseok replies, jumping a little when the cauldron Seokjin throws in clangs loudly against the metal of the skip. “I wanted to get a head start, and the others have stayed to help!”

“Well, it’ll go quicker if all of us work together,” Jimin says. “I’ll go grab Namjoon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung, then we can finish and Seokjin can eat the meal we saved for him.”

“You made me dinner?” Seokjin asks, stopping mid-spell cast. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“I made lunch,” Jimin says with a nonchalant shrug. “We saved you and Taehyung some, and Taehyung’s already eaten his.”

“They’re good leftovers,” Taehyung says, picking up a dense looking metal sphere and throwing it like a shotput into the skip. Jimin grins at him and heads off, returning with Yoongi and Namjoon in tow.

“Hyung’s not gonna be able to clear anything magically,” Namjoon reminds them. “But he can still physically lift things into the skip.”

“Maybe that’s for the best,” Hoseok says, looking around. “I’m don’t think we should be using too much magic to clear this out, we don’t know if anything in this mess will react badly to any magic.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Jimin says. He’s got another spray bottle in his hands, but this one has cloudy blue liquid inside; when he squirts some onto a dilapidated-looking couch, it shrinks with a crunching noise until it’s palm-sized – he picks it up and throws it into the skip.

“I don’t know…” Hoseok says.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Seokjin says. “It’s not like I’m calling down lightning to obliterate the mess, I’m just gently coaxing it into the skip with a little light breeze.” The little light breeze picks up a cabinet and sends it clattering into the skip with such force that the resulting clang against the metal makes Hoseok jump. “I’m sure it’s fine,” Seokjin repeats Jimin’s earlier comment cheerfully.

Hoseok still doesn’t look convinced, but they all settle into something of a rhythm – Seokjin and Jimin throwing away the surprisingly high number of couches, dining tables, bookcases, and wardrobes with a flick of their wrists, Namjoon and Jeongguk teaming up to lift the smaller but still heavy pieces of furniture, and Hoseok, Yoongi, and Taehyung sorting through the lightest items.

“I wonder what happened here?” Jeongguk muses out loud. They’d been clearing out the yard well into the night, and Jeongguk feels too keyed up from the physical activity to sleep just yet, so he’s sitting in the kitchen hanging out with Hoseok, the only other person who’s still awake.

“What do you mean?” Hoseok asks, glancing over from where he’s washing his hands in the sink.

“The rubbish in the yard, the weird magical damage everywhere… I just wonder what could push a group of Soulmates to argue with each other so much that they somehow manage to break a Soul Home, you know? I mean, some of the furniture we just threw away had magical scorch marks.”

Hoseok hums.

“I can’t imagine arguing with anybody enough to want to toss fire at them,” Jeongguk says, watching Hoseok. He’s not really scrubbing his hands, more so rinsing one of them under a slow, steady stream of water. “Taehyung-hyung thinks they were having magical fights in the entryway, too, which is why the path looks like that. Maybe the weird squidgy floor is because of them, too?”

Hoseok hums again.

Jeongguk squints at the water, which looks a little pink. “Hyung, are you all right?” Hoseok turns to look at him, eyes wide, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar. “Your hand…”

“Oh.” Hoseok holds it out of the water for a moment. “It’s so stupid, I cut my hand on the pointer of that old, rusty astrolabe I picked up?” Jeongguk nods – Hoseok had held it up to show them, pointing out how old it looked, and Jeongguk had replied that his astral divinity teacher had used one just like it.

Now that his hand is out of the flow of water, he can see the cut – from the outside of his thumb to the middle of his palm, a thin line that is already starting to bead with blood.

“Hyung, why didn’t you say?” Jeongguk says, jumping out of his seat to have a closer look. “I’m sure Jimin-hyung has some sort of potion-”

“I didn’t want to be a bother, it’s only a cut,” Hoseok says, nevertheless letting Jeongguk gently take his hand in his own. “I just didn’t want to get into bed with it still bleeding, you know? And we don’t actually have a first aid kit in this house.”

The cut isn’t all that bad – not especially deep, and Hoseok doesn’t wince in pain when Jeongguk, very gently, runs his thumb along the skin next to the cut. His skin doesn’t feel hot, and Jeongguk can’t see any splinters of astrolabe pointer in his hand.

He opens his mouth, then closes it, thinking. One of his school friends, upon learning about the gaps in his magical knowledge, had taught him a very simple healing spell that only needed water and a cloth to perform, and he thinks he could probably perform it correctly now, but he doesn’t want to offer only to get it wrong…

“What’s wrong?” Hoseok asks, wiggling his fingers so that they tap against Jeongguk’s palm.

“I think I could heal it?” Jeongguk offers. “It’s only a basic Water Soothe spell, so it’ll probably leave a scab, but it should stop the bleeding?”

Rather than looking dismissive or sceptical, Hoseok beams at him. “Could you? That’d be amazing, my hand’s starting to get cold and shrivelly under the tap.”

Jeongguk nods hesitantly, and looks around for a clean cloth. The only one he can see is one of the kitchen towels – hoping that nobody needs to use the towel urgently in the morning, he fills up the sink with cool water, then soaks the towel.

The aim of a Water Soothe spell, at least as how his friend had explained it, was to use water to encourage the body’s own water composition to speed up the healing process, binding the skin back together. Great Witches could, Jeongguk imagined, manage to perform this without having to drench a towel first, just by pouring water over the cut, and they could heal something without so much as leaving a scar. When Jeongguk performs it, he has to concentrate hard on the towel, trying to feel the edges of the thin cut on Hoseok’s hand. It’s like trying to fasten a zip in the dark; when he finally finds the two edges, they close with a jerk that Jeongguk can tell Hoseok feels, because his eyebrows shoot up his face.

“Ah, sorry,” Jeongguk says, pulling back. The towel’s left a small puddle at their feet. “You shouldn’t have been able to feel anything, ideally.”

“No, don’t apologise, are you kidding?” Hoseok says, holding up his hand and looking at it closely. “That’s incredible, thanks, Jeongguk!”

Jeongguk smiles, pleased to receive praise, even if it’s not necessarily warranted – it’s just a simple Water Soothe spell, after all.

“Question,” Taehyung says. It’s cold out, but they’re all back out in the yard to finish clearing out the last of the rubbish. Everyone’s even taken the afternoon off from work, including Yoongi, who’d left for work early in the morning to deliver the spell he’s been writing. He still looks exhausted, but there’s more of an ease to the way he’s standing now, even if Jeongguk’s still not heard him speak yet. They’re in the home stretch with the yard now, and clearing out most of the larger items of rubbish has revealed a young looking tree, which they’re trying to clear out the space around as quickly as possible.

“Answer,” Seokjin says, laughing when Taehyung shoots him a look.

“What do we do with the skip?” Taehyung continues, Seokjin still giggling. “Will they just come and collect it? How will they reach it?”

“Surely they’ve got some sort of machine to lift it over the fence?” Jimin asks. He’s clearly found out that Hoseok had injured himself and not asked for help, because Jimin’s now watching them all like a hawk for signs of injury, hand flexing towards a weirdly gelatinous looking cube in a clear pouch on his ever present potions belt whenever any of them so much as wince.

“Good, because I’m not sure there’s a breeze strong enough that I could summon that wouldn’t also tear the house from its foundations,” Seokjin says. Considering he’s been using his magic almost constantly since they’ve started clearing out the yard, he doesn’t look any more tired than usual, although in the last few hours he has started to use his physical strength more than his magic.

“Push comes to shove,” Yoongi manages to croak out. “I can write something that’ll lift it over.”

“Ah, he speaks!” Jimin says. “I kind of figured that you were going to be silent forever, honestly, that those first few days of you speaking were just some weird anomaly.”

“Worried about me?” Yoongi says, the smug smirk on his face completely at odds with his voice, which he can barely raise over a mumble.

They can all hear him, though, including Jimin, who rolls his eyes. “Hardly, I thought it was much more peaceful.”

Jeongguk sighs, and goes back to raking the sand they’d brought to pour into the yard – it had been a nice few days, honestly, not having to hear two of his six Soulmates bickering constantly, even if they’re not quite at the stage where they’re tossing magic at one another.

“Hey.” Yoongi approaches him so quietly, padding, cat-like, across the sand, that Jeongguk jumps when he speaks. “Thanks for worrying about me the other day,” Yoongi says, his voice sounding like it’s the first time he’s used it in a thousand years. “I’m alright.”

“You don’t sound it,” Jeongguk says, almost lifting his hand to check the temperature of Yoongi’s forehead. “Are you coming down with something?”

“Honestly, I’m fine.” Yoongi coughs, sounding demonstrably not fine. “Namjoon mentioned he’d told you that I had a big project due this morning?” Jeongguk nods. “When I get magically burnt out, it hurts to talk for a few days.”

“That sounds like it sucks,” Jeongguk says. He’s never been through magical burnout himself, because he’s never come close to casting enough magic in a short enough span of time to be at risk of burnout, but that’s one of the nastier symptoms he’s heard of. Maybe the symptoms get worse, the stronger you are?

“I’m used to it, honestly,” Yoongi says. “Although it makes it a nightmare for me to cast any magic, I’m no good with physical spells. Hand movements? Potions? Out of my wheelhouse.” He coughs. “Don’t tell Jimin I’m shit at potions, he’ll never shut up about it.” He coughs again; Jeongguk reaches out and pats him a few times on the back, because the cough sounds deep, nasty. “Thanks. I’d forgotten that it might be weird to you if I suddenly just stop speaking, it’s been years since I’ve needed to explain it to anyone.” He snorts. “Oh, and it didn’t help that Namjoon had a vision about this conversation, which neither of us could understand at all.”

“What was the vision?” Jeongguk asks. He feels kind of bad, prolonging the conversation when it’s so clearly causing Yoongi discomfort to talk, but he doesn’t seem to mind it. On the contrary, he seems to be talking more than usual, as though he’s making up for lost time.

“So he told me that he’d seen us speaking on a beach, and all he said was, By the way, hyung, you’re going to have a conversation with Jeongguk where you tell him thanks for worrying, hope that helps.” He rolls his eyes. “Namjoon gave up on trying to interpret visions about me long ago, but he’s usually a little bit more helpful than that.”

“It sounds like he tried to interpret it a little, right?” Jeongguk says. “I mean, he thought we were talking on a beach.”

Yoongi laughs, a quiet, huffed chuckle that makes his shoulders bounce. “I’ve spent the past week thinking you were going to take me back to Busan, it’s been very confusing.” He waves his hand at the sand. “This makes much more sense.”

There’s still so much to do inside the house – they still can’t access the upstairs room safely, their rooms are in varying states of finished, the entrance is still a mess – but having full access to the yard has done wonders to make the house feel more traversable. Now, Jeongguk can leave his room in the morning and, weather permitting, easily walk across the yard to any point in the house he wants, rather than having to walk right the way round through the hallway.

The weather on Saturday morning, however, is miserable, thick sheets of rain bucketing down from dense clots of clouds. It makes the hallway surrounding the yard dingy, and rainwater is splashing onto the wooden floor.

“That’ll teach us to leave the screens open when we go to bed,” Taehyung says as he leaves his room, squinting out at the rain. “Should we wake up Seokjin-hyung?”

“We can’t wake hyung up just because it’s raining,” Jeongguk says, trying to shift some of the water off the floor and into the yard with the side of his foot. It’s a losing battle – every wave of water he shifts is replaced by fresh rainwater almost instantaneously. “Can you use your Light magic?”

Taehyung shakes his head. “It’s not like hyung’s, mine doesn’t affect the actual weather or temperature or anything. The most I can do is…” He makes a rectangle with his fingers, looks through it with one eye, then expands the rectangle, light spilling out into the yard. It looks beautiful, turns the rain drops white and sparkling, but it does absolutely nothing to stop the ever encroaching flow of water.

Thankfully, Seokjin himself comes out of his room as Jeongguk’s weighing up whether or not to knock on Seokjin’s door. He blinks at the lashings of rain, looks down at his bare feet, sighs, then stretches his hands. “Okay, give me a second to get my broom and get changed.”

“Broom?” Jeongguk mumbles to himself. “I didn’t know hyung needed a broom,” he continues to Taehyung, who scoops up the Light magic in the yard like he’s gathering someone in for a hug.

Once he’s gathered it all up, he pretends to eat it to make Jeongguk laugh, then shrugs. “No shame in making something easier for yourself.”

Seokjin reemerges from his room in the pink and white flight suit Jeongguk had first seen him in, broom clutched in his hand. Unlike Jeongguk’s plastic hand-me-down, Seokjin’s is made from wood, and the soft bristles fan out in a wide angle. Most brooms Jeongguk’s seen have a narrow, almost tube-shaped set of bristles, pruned into shape, and his own rectangular broom has errant bristles, but that’s because it grows faster than Jeongguk can really keep up with. Seokjin’s broom looks much more suited for actual cleaning than flying, but he’s taking off into the sky before Jeongguk can ask him about it.

Jeongguk steps out into the rain to watch him, almost immediately getting soaked through in the downpour. He can hear Taehyung spluttering, asking him what he’s doing, but Jeongguk watches, fascinated, as Seokjin, rocketing up into the air, dismounts suddenly and starts sweeping mid-air. From his position on the ground, Jeongguk can see the way the clouds start to dissipate in rapid time, swirling into themselves as Seokjin and his broom whip them away.

The early morning sun Seokjin reveals is watery and pale, just bright enough that, when he’s done, it renders him in silhouette as he floats back down, sitting side-saddle on his broom as he lowers gently to the ground.

“I’ll clear up the water later,” he says, his floating looking a little woozy as he finally touches down. When Jeongguk, worried, steps forward to steady him, his feet sink down into the wet sand. “Oh, and the storm will be nastier tomorrow, so we definitely need to remember to shut the screens tonight.”

“Can you tell what the weather will be like when you’re up there?” Jeongguk asks, hovering nervously as Seokjin takes what seems to be a moment too long to stand up straight. It makes sense that Seokjin’s magic, being so physical, would take its toll as physical exhaustion, but it’s still alarming to see him like this. What if he fell out of the sky?

Seokjin shakes his head, closing his eyes while he does so. “I can’t get rid of a weather pattern forever – it’ll come around tomorrow, and it’ll be worse than if I’d let it play out naturally. Rain? Expect a storm tomorrow. Sun? Hope you’ve got somewhere cool to hang out!” He snorts, eyes still closed. “Basically, I’m your man if you want a breeze, or someone to act as a watering can for your plants, but that’s really about it.” Finally, he opens his eyes, and it takes him a moment to focus on Jeongguk properly. “Plus my magical burnout leaves me very dizzy.”

“What you do is cool, hyung,” Jeongguk says with a frown. Taehyung’s already started to sweep water out of the hallway – Seokjin looks like he’s moments from offering to help, so Jeongguk steers him off towards the kitchen, where Hoseok is staring at an empty piece of teal paper in front of him with an irritated expression. When he sees them approach, his expression clears, and he rolls up the paper into a little scroll.

“Hyung, you don’t look so good,” he says when he sees Seokjin, who’s still unsteady on his feet.

“Too much magic so early in the morning makes Seokjin a dizzy boy,” Seokjin mumbles, heading over to the fridge to look for leftovers. They’ve all gotten into a pretty good habit of cooking food in bulk, so there’s nearly always leftovers for breakfast and lunch.

“Oh, was that you?” Hoseok asks, glancing through the kitchen window. “I thought the rain cleared up weirdly quick.” He brightens. “That means the ground outside will be pretty soft, right? So I should be able to straighten out the paving slabs of the path out by the entrance.”

“I’ll help, hyung,” Jeongguk offers.

“That’s sweet of you!” Hoseok replies. “I’d love the company.”

It’s harder going than both of them had originally thought. The ground by the entrance has turned into a thick, sticky mud that seems to be clinging even more desperately to the paving slabs, which, in turn, are buried a lot deeper than Jeongguk had realised. Both of them are filthy, caked in mud up to their elbows and calves, and Jeongguk can feel that the stripes of dirt on his cheeks that he’d swiped there to make Hoseok laugh have dried like unpleasantly cakey face paint. Hoseok, meanwhile, has a smudge of mud right on the tip of his nose, which he seems to keep forgetting is there, going cross-eyed every so often to look at it.

They’ve righted six out of the thirteen paving stones so far, and they’ve apparently been half-buried in the ground for so long that the sun has bleached the exposed part of the stone egg-shell white. It’s a pretty cool effect, in Jeongguk’s opinion, their two-toned path, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to be enthusiastic about it when he kind of wants to buckle down and study Explosion magic, just to blow this whole path to smithereens.

It didn’t help that the Witch who’d come to collect the skip had given them a fleeting, disparaging look when he’d seen them struggling to unearth the stones. It had so immediately reminded Jeongguk of the looks that his teachers had given him that he almost felt winded with it, but Hoseok had just rolled his eyes.

“Sure, it’s probably easy if you’re a Levitation Witch,” he says outright; the Witch flushes, embarrassed to have been caught, and leaves quickly, the skip hovering above his head. “Bet he couldn’t do as much as you can, Jeongguk.”

“He can lift a full skip into the air,” Jeongguk points out – the Witch has gone, but Jeongguk can still see their skip floating away up the hill outside of their house. “Anything I’ve been able to levitate, I’d be able to actually lift higher with my hands.”

“That’s still cool!” Hoseok insists, wiping his brow and leaving a smear of dirt there.

Jeongguk wrinkles his nose, but before he can reply, Namjoon appears in the door. “Did you want help? Yoongi-hyung won’t let me help him in the kitchen after the onion incident.”

“The onion incident?” Hoseok asks, standing up and dusting his hands off. It doesn’t really work, he just ends up slapping mud between his palms, but Jeongguk understands the thought behind it – he’s looking forward to having a long, deep shower.

“He asked me to dice an onion for him while he was cooking a few days ago,” Namjoon says. “I thought that meant, you know,” he mimes a cube with his hands. “Dice-shaped. He’s not said anything, but he hasn’t agreed to let me help cook with him since, so.”

“Well,” Hoseok says, looking over the paving slabs they’ve painstakingly dug up out of the ground. “I was honestly thinking about calling it quits for the day. It’s taken us all day to just do these six stones, and while it’d definitely be quicker with three of us, I think it’d just be better to wait for the ground to dry again.”

Namjoon looks visibly disappointed, so Jeongguk says, “Once I’ve showered, I was gonna ask if anyone wanted to help me try and make a safe way upstairs? I think we could make some makeshift stairs out of wood, at least until Yoongi-hyung and Jimin-hyung come up with something sturdier.”

“Yeah, all right,” Namjoon agrees with a pleased smile, and Jeongguk kind of feels ready to conquer the world.

When Jeongguk goes to meet Namjoon at the foot of the stairs, he’s not alone – everyone else has gathered, too. Taehyung and Jimin are sitting together on the bottom stair, the only one in the flight that hasn’t crumbled in some way, Seokjin’s leaning against the wall, talking to Hoseok, and Namjoon and Yoongi are trying to balance a huge stack of planks of wood relatively neatly against the wall.

“I mentioned to hyung that you were thinking about making some makeshift stairs,” Namjoon explains to Jeongguk, nodding at Yoongi as he speaks. “Turns out he’s made stairs before? By hand.”

“Only a few,” Yoongi says modestly, as though stair-building is, in any way, a common hobby to have. He pats the pile of wood, which wobbles alarmingly; both he and Namjoon move to steady it again before Yoongi continues with, “I was going to build some shelving with this, but it’s a better idea to use it to make some stairs.”

Seokjin offers to float up to the ceiling to measure how tall the flight of stairs will need to be, but Jeongguk’s still a little wary about him performing magic after his dizziness that morning, so he says, “I could probably lift somebody up there?”

They all look between one another; Jimin sighs. “Yeah, all right, lift me up.” He stands up from the stair he’s sitting on, then looks up at the hole where the stairs lead up to. “How’re we doing this, then?”

Jeongguk looks from the ceiling to the floor, then over at Jimin. “It’d probably be easiest if you sit on my shoulders? We just need to watch your head.” He squats down, and waits for Jimin to position himself on his shoulders before he stands up slowly. Somebody says “Wow” behind him, but he doesn’t want to check who it is, afraid of dislodging Jimin if he turns around too quickly.

Jimin, for his part, pats Jeongguk on the head lightly. “Is it all right if I put my hand here to balance?” His hand feels surprisingly small on Jeongguk’s head; when Jeongguk nods, Jimin presses a little more firmly, his fingers curling around Jeongguk’s scalp. “Okay, someone pass me the tape measure!” Judging by the way his weight shifts slightly, Jeongguk thinks Jimin’s leaning over to take the tape measure from someone, then leaning back to line it up with where the top of the stairs needs to go.

“Okay,” Yoongi says from somewhere near Jeongguk’s feet. “The ceiling’s a weird height, so we’re looking at fourteen stairs if you want a steeper stair, fifteen if you want shallower stairs.”

They agree on fifteen, and once Jeongguk’s lowered Jimin back to the ground (this time, he stands up in time to catch the moment that Namjoon apparently remembers to breathe), Yoongi talks them through the pieces they’ll need to cut out from the wood.

Jeongguk’s working with Namjoon and Yoongi to work on the stringers, the jigsaw-like pieces of wood underneath the steps that will, Yoongi explains, do the actual work of supporting their weight. Initially Jeongguk’s a little sceptical that it’s a three-man job, until he hears the math involved.

“Why do we need to find the hypotenuse of anything?” Jeongguk says, staring down at the figures Yoongi’s writing on a piece of paper. “We’re not making a triangle.”

“We kind of are,” Namjoon says. He leans forward, plucks the pen from Yoongi’s hand, mid-number, and writes his own figure. “That’s your answer, by the way.”

“I haven’t even finished writing the sum out yet,” Yoongi says, frowning.

Namjoon shrugs, then turns to Jeongguk, and holds his hand up to represent a vertical line. “Take the height of the stairs-”

“The rise,” Yoongi says, taking his pen back to write out the rest of the sum, as though he can’t help but show his working’s out.

Namjoon move his hand into a horizontal line. “… then take the length of the stairs-”

“The run,” Yoongi mumbles.

Namjoon shoots him a look before he shows his last line, a diagonal one. “Which makes your stairs, the bit you walk on, kind of like the long edge of a triangle.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Jeongguk says faintly, watching Yoongi finish off his sum, revealing the same answer as Namjoon had given. Namjoon doesn’t seem smug about having already gotten the math right, though, and Yoongi doesn’t look frustrated to have been out-mathed.

His part in the three-man job is revealed when Yoongi hands him a knife. It looks like a butter knife, but with a pearlescent blade. “That’ll cut through wood, so watch your fingers – Namjoon, if you could hold the planks in place, I’ll draw where Jeongguk needs to cut, and then the rest of you can put them in place with Jimin’s Hold-All Potion.”

The weight of the knife in Jeongguk’s hand feels off, too heavy in the blade; when he places it on the first plank of wood and presses, gently enough that a normal knife wouldn’t so much as cut through bread, this knife cuts through like the wood is nothing, sinking in so smoothly that, if it weren’t for the evidence right in front of him, he’d think somebody had moved the wood out of the way.

“Good, right?” Yoongi says with a grin once Jeongguk has finished cutting the first plank of wood down to size. “It took me months to write that spell, but it’s worth it, I think.”

It is, but Jeongguk’s a little frightened by the power the knife holds, in all honesty, and he’s grateful to hand it back to Yoongi once he’s cut all of the pieces of wood to size.

With the stairs fully assembled, covering the disintegrating remains of the stone steps, Namjoon offers to test the stairs first. He goes slowly at first, testing each step in the middle while the rest of them watch for any signs of bowing or bending.

“I haven’t actually been up here yet,” Namjoon says once he reaches the top of the stairs. “And I mean, aside from the boarded up hole in the floor, it’s pretty nice.”

Jeongguk follows, trying to climb the stairs in a way to put them under as much stress as he can, bounding up each step like he’s trying to use them as a springboard. They hold up incredibly well – he doesn’t go clattering through the wood, at any rate – and he makes it upstairs safely. He’s also not been upstairs before, and the most he’d seen of their second floor had been through the hole in the ceiling by his and Seokjin’s rooms. The stairs open up onto a long, rectangular space, and it’s honestly pretty dark up there, but Jeongguk can see where Namjoon might be coming from. The boards covering up the windows are huge, implying that there might be some equally big windows hiding underneath them, and the ceilings are high, so with a few well-placed Light spells from Taehyung, they could make a bright, airy space up here.

“It’d be nice to make a communal space,” Namjoon says as the others follow them upstairs. “I know we’ve got the kitchen and yard as communal spaces, but it’d be nice to have somewhere to go if we want to practice magic with some company.” Jeongguk hums in agreement – he’s never studied magic with other people around, except for teachers, so it could make a nice change of pace.

The nasty storm Seokjin had promised arrives in full force, and after three days of torrential downpour, Jeongguk’s starting to feel antsy. The heavy rain leaves the house feeling claustrophobic, the shutters drawn and the clouds pressing close to the windows. He doesn’t know the neighbourhood well yet, just a few trips to the shops whenever they need food, but he really wants to go for a run, go out and explore, do something. He’d even take going outside to finish the path, but they’d run the risk of the paving slabs sinking deeper into the mud if they attempted to adjust them now.

Instead, Jeongguk paces around the house, hoping to find something to do. He’s started to look into the requirements to take a Mastery exam, so he could do some more work for that, but what’s he’s really looking for is one or more of his hyungs to hang out with. He’s not sure about the others, but he’s really starting to settle into his life living here with them, and although he doesn’t want to count his chickens before they hatch, he could really see himself living here with them as his Soulmates, learning from them and learning about them, for the rest of their lives.

So, although he’s feeling cooped up in this house by the rain, he’s still feeling, overall, happy as he paces around the halls, and he can’t help the smile that blooms on his face when Seokjin leaves his room and almost walks right into him. Seokjin, for his part, looks at him with wide, surprised eyes, and then smiles too, raising his eyebrows as he says, “Some storm, huh?”

“You weren’t kidding,” Jeongguk agrees.

There’s a moment too long of pause, then;

“Want to come see the work I’ve been doing during the storm?” Seokjin asks – almost blurts out, really.

“Yeah, okay,” Jeongguk says, grinning back when Seokjin smiles at him again.

His room is still in varying degrees of unpacked – a pretty cool looking gaming set-up on a desk in the corner by his window that has Jeongguk immediately wanting to tap into his maknae privilege and ask him if he’s got any games he can play, but most of the games are still in opened cardboard boxes on the floor. In the adjacent corner is something that looks like a child’s sand and water tray, except instead of toys there’s a sweep of tiny clouds floating over the top of the water, tumbling over themselves like puppies taking their first, stumbling steps. His bed sits close to the door, as far away from the water tray as is fundamentally possible.

Seokjin leads him to his desk, and Jeongguk, for a brief moment, thinks Seokjin is going to show him a game. Instead, he opens a drawer in his desk, pulls out a crystal ball, and holds it out to Jeongguk. His ears are burning, and he doesn’t quite meet Jeongguk’s eye when he takes it from him.

“It’s so cold,” Jeongguk says, surprised. It’s not painful to touch, and the glass itself isn’t frozen; the cold seems to be emanating from inside the crystal ball. He’s not really given much thought to the inside of a crystal ball, honestly, but he’s pretty sure they’re not supposed to feel like a cool drink on a summer’s day.

“Wait there,” Seokjin says. He closes his door, turns off his light, then shuts his blinds. “Okay, and then…” He circles Jeongguk, settles into a crouching position on Jeongguk’s right, and rubs his thumb and forefinger together.

Jeongguk’s not seen him perform any sunny magic yet; Seokjin seems to prefer the breeziness of the wind on the whole, and he’s occasionally seen him use his command of the rain, but that’s it. The warm glow emanating from the pad of his thumb feels so different from the Light magic Jeongguk’s seen Taehyung perform – for starters, there’s a surprising amount of heat in Seokjin’s light. For another, Taehyung’s light feels like the aesthetic ideal, like his magic is an Impressionist painting come to life. Seokjin’s, meanwhile, feels like Jeongguk’s just stepped outside into the first sunny day of the year.

Seokjin moves his thumb in slow increments, and Jeongguk can tell the exact moment he gets the angle he wants, because he can suddenly see that the crystal ball he’s holding is surrounded by clouds and, in this light, they’re glowing a bright, incredible blue. Now that he can see them, he’s amazed he hadn’t noticed them before; they swirl around his fingers, curling around the contours of his knuckles, settling for a moment on the backs of his hands before drifting off again.

“There’s a lot of science involved in Weather magic,” Seokjin explains. “And I stopped learning anything new once I passed my Mastery exam.” He shifts his thumb just a hair more, and the clouds gleam impossibly white. “I was inspired to start learning more again, you know?”

“It’s amazing,” Jeongguk says. Because he’s staring, eyes wide, down at the clouds, he sees the exact moment they putter out of sight – when he turns to look at Seokjin, he’s already staring back at him, hand hanging limply in the air. “Did you exhaust yourself again, hyung?”

“Oh! No, sorry, I’m just getting cramp in my hand,” Seokjin says. “It is pretty cool, huh?” He stands up. “I should ask Taehyung for help, he could probably come up with a light source where I won’t have to hold my thumb in place like I’m giving the world’s longest thumbs up.” Jeongguk opens his mouth to reply, when there’s a sudden, almighty crash from outside. “What the fuck was that?” Jeongguk, rather than answering, races over to Seokjin’s door to open it.

Outside Seokjin’s door is a pile of glass shards, inches long and viciously sharp – before Jeongguk can look at them for too long, they fly off, through the open shutters into the yard, and reform themselves into a mirror at Yoongi’s side. Yoongi has his back to Jeongguk and Seokjin, who has come to stand at Jeongguk’s side, but Jeongguk can see that he’s visibly shaking, fists clenched.

“Why the fuck would you throw glass at me?” He shouts, loud enough that Jeongguk can hear him over the wind and rain.

“Sorry, I figured that since you know so much about magic, you’d know how to catch a mirror someone throws to you!” Namjoon yells back.

“All I said was if you’re seeing a vision of me doing something I clearly would not want you to see, the polite thing to do would be to close your eyes!” Yoongi shouts, waving his arms.

“I’m sorry that I don’t control what I see!” Namjoon shouts. “And I’m sorry that I thought you’d want to know that something’s going to make you so sad that it makes you sob sometime in the future, but you know as well as I do that closing my eyes will do jack shit!”

“What am I supposed to do with that information?” Yoongi’s arm movements are starting to wave the mirror around, little jerky movements like bait on a fishing line. “Now I’m just going to be waiting for whatever’s going to make me miserable, how’s that any better?”

“Should we… Do something?” Seokjin says to Jeongguk.

“You’re so annoying, I’m trying to help you-”

“How?” Yoongi flings his arms, and the mirror jerks, flies at one of the little rocks bordering the sand in their yard, and shatters all over again. “I’ve told you before, I don’t find it helpful!”

“Yeah, well, maybe I find it helpful to talk about it with my best friend, have you ever thought about that? Or are you only thinking about how my sometimes constant visions make you feel?”

“Enough!” Hoseok opens his door so furiously that it bangs open against the wall, the noise of which brings Jimin and Taehyung out of their own rooms. Hoseok surveys the scene – the shattered glass, the flooded hallway, Yoongi, pink-faced and shaking, Namjoon, jaw clenched and inhaling sharply through his nose. “Look, I don’t know what this is about, but we spent hours cleaning this yard, why are you throwing glass?” Instantly, Yoongi and Namjoon look abashed, shoulders sinking and heads bowing. “Clean it up, then take your argument back to your rooms if you’re gonna throw shit at one another.” And with that, he returns to his room.

Jeongguk looks over at Jimin and Taehyung; Jimin just rolls his eyes and goes back into his room, but Taehyung lurks for a moment, looking between Namjoon and Yoongi, before he too goes back inside.

“Do you think they’ll be okay?” Jeongguk asks worriedly as Namjoon storms off into his room, while Yoongi, with a murmured word and a sweep of his hand, reassembles the mirror.

“Oh, yeah,” Seokjin says assuredly. “They’re best friends, right? They probably argue like this a lot.”

That’s not as comforting to hear as Seokjin’s probably hoping – it seems unfair that his Soulmates spend a not insignificant amount of time arguing with one another, and Jeongguk finds himself wishing that he could’ve been assigned some more peaceful Soulmates.

Somebody knocks on Jeongguk’s door, and he stares at it for a moment, surprised.

It’s not happened before. He doesn’t really spend a lot of time in here, preferring to spend his time elsewhere in the house, but he’d been in the middle of some long put-off unpacking of his textbooks. The mood in the house since Namjoon and Yoongi’s argument has been subdued, with people spending more time sequestered alone in their rooms again. Not even the clearing of the storm has been enough to shift the mood, at least for Jeongguk.

They knock again – understandable, because he’s just been sitting here, staring at it, and not actually answering them.

“Come in?” Jeongguk asks.

Hoseok pokes his head around the door. “Oh, wow, your room looks like mine, I’m not fully unpacked either! I was going to ask if you wanted to carry on working on the front path, now that the weather’s nicer, but if you’re busy-”

“No, no, I’ll help!” Jeongguk says quickly, shoving the box up against the wall again.

“Great! Namjoon’s already said he’ll help – he said he was going for a run first, but he should be done by now.”

Namjoon doesn’t answer his door when Jeongguk knocks, though – Yoongi does.

Jeongguk tries to visualise the house in his head, make sure he’s got the right room, but he’s pretty certain that Yoongi’s is the one next door, not this one.

“You both here for Namjoon?” Yoongi asks, voice still a little croaky. It’s been nearly a week, now – he’s back to casting magic for work again, and he doesn’t seem to be worried, but Jeongguk regularly finds himself wishing that Yoongi would let himself rest fully.

“Sorry, did we wake you?” Jeongguk asks. “We were supposed to be trying to clear up the path into the house today-”

“Don’t worry, I was already awake,” Yoongi says, coughing a few times before opening the door wider. “Come in, Namjoon should just be finishing in the shower.”

“You two doing all right?” Hoseok says. Yoongi nods, but doesn’t offer any further information, so Hoseok looks around Namjoon’s room. “What’s this been like for you? It must be strange, being best friends and then becoming Soulmates along with five strangers.”

Yoongi shrugs. “Not really any different, except for the fact that we see each other in person now, and there’s also five more people living with us. Also, I don’t think it’s that strange, considering Jimin and Taehyung have known each other since they were kids.”

Jeongguk’s looking around Namjoon’s room too, but for him there just seems to be something off about it. It’s not the layout – he’s got a big screen dividing his room almost in half, and Jeongguk assumes that he’s done that to keep his bedroom and work area separate, which is pretty smart, honestly. His bedroom is the zone they’ve walked into – a dusky brown bed sits in the middle, and there are thin curtains drawn over the window. There’s a raw wood wardrobe, and one wall has four paintings hung up above the bed, canvases with thick layers of paint. Jeongguk doesn’t know what they mean, if they mean anything at all, but they suit the room.

It's not even like the room doesn’t fit Jeongguk’s idea of what Namjoon could like – the wood, the neutral colour palette, the paintings, it’s all very Namjoon – but Jeongguk keeps looking around, increasingly bewildered, until Namjoon himself walks in.

“Sorry, my run went longer than I thought it would,” Namjoon says. “I hope you weren’t waiting too… Jeongguk, you okay there?”

“I-” He almost says he’s fine, that he’s just thinking, but he doesn’t want this to eat at him every time he steps foot in Namjoon’s room, so he says, “There’s something about your room that feels… Odd.”

Namjoon frowns thoughtfully, then his face clears. “Oh! Perhaps this explains it.” He pulls aside the screen dividing his room in half. Sure enough, the screen had been hiding a work space – a desk, a few mirrors, notepads stacked on a shelf – but seeing the area in comparison to his bedroom really throws into sharp relief how matte everything is on that side of the room. “I told you I’m a Scryer Witch, yeah?” Jeongguk nods. “Well, I can see visions in any flat surface, but it’s easier for me to see them in reflective surfaces – mirrors, liquids, that sort of thing – so it’s nice to have a little space for myself where I’m not constantly seeing the future, you know?”

In light of this new information, Jeongguk can easily spot the changes he’s made to his room – chalky paint he’s used on his walls, he’s scraped away the varnish on the wood floor, the raw wood of his furniture, the densely layered paint on his artworks, all of it designed to create a space as unreflective as possible.

“He’s walked into things before, because he’s so focused on the future that he can’t see what’s literally in front of him,” Yoongi puts in. Jeongguk half thinks another argument’s about to start, and he looks between them both nervously, but Namjoon just shrugs.

“Come back to me when you start seeing multiple times overlaid on top of one another like membranes because your magic’s decided that each lens of your glasses is a different surface, so you’re seeing two different visions at once, hyung.”

“That can happen?” Jeongguk asks, aghast.

“When I’m especially powerful, yeah,” Namjoon says. He’s not boasting; he just sounds irritated. He shakes his head. “It’s not happening at the moment, though, so what’s say we go out and finish this path, yeah?”

With the weather cleared up, Jeongguk’s pleased to see how nice the part of the path they’ve already worked on looks in the sunshine. The rest of the front garden looks a mess, churned up dirt and empty flowerbeds, but in the sun, with half of the path laying neatly on the ground rather than jutting up at angles, he can really imagine just how lovely this part of the house could look with a little more time and work.

The drier dirt brings its own problems, of course – the mud has almost bound itself to the paving slabs as its dried, making digging them out more like he’s trying to gouge it out of the ground than heave it out of the mud – but having blue skies above them, and being significantly less filthy, means that the job feels like it’s taking less work than it had last time.

It helps, too, that there’s three of them, and Namjoon’s strong enough that he’s already starting to unearth his third slab before Jeongguk and Hoseok have moved onto their second.

“You’re so strong!” Hoseok says as, with a final tug, Namjoon hauls the slab fully out of the ground. It’s bigger than any of the others, and looks like it’ll fit nicely by the gate.

“I work out a lot,” Namjoon says, lifting the slab up from a squat and carrying it over to the gate. “I’ve just been running since we moved here, but before that I used to do a lot of weight training. Helps clear my mind, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jeongguk says, watching the way Namjoon’s arm and leg muscles flex as he lowers the slab into position. He’s wearing a tank top and shorts, an unseasonable outfit for so early in spring, but he doesn’t seem to be feeling the cool air. On the contrary, now that Jeongguk’s looking, there’s a faint sheen of sweat on the backs of his shoulders.

Jeongguk shakes his head.

Jeongguk’s standing, alone, in the still-empty upstairs. They’ve not really been able to come up with any ideas for what should go here beyond ‘study space’ and ‘somewhere where we can all go and not get in the way when people are cooking’, and Jeongguk doesn’t want to start making huge changes without talking to everyone else first, but he does want to try and pull off the boards that are covering the windows.

Just in case, he tries to move them aside with his bare hands, but no such luck; they’re secured tightly to the window pane. He doesn’t think he can feel any magic, and he’s pretty sure they’re just secured with the nails he can see dotted in a neat line along the planks, but it does mean he’ll need to get a claw hammer from somewhere.

Or someone – Yoongi seems like the type of person who might own a claw hammer, even if he could absolutely build things with just his magic, so Jeongguk heads off to go and ask.

His door is open, a sign that they’ve all agreed means they can come and go as they please without needing to knock. Jeongguk still feels bizarrely guilty, just marching into somebody’s room without asking, so he hovers by the door to see if Yoongi’s busy first.

Yoongi’s standing on his tiptoes on a chair in the corner of the room. He’s finishing off painting the wall opposite the door a deep, bright blue, and he’s carefully painting the edge of it with a small paintbrush. He’s used masking tape on the ceiling, but he’s still going so slowly, like he’s savouring the chance to take his time with the job. There are white shelves in a pile on the floor; when Jeongguk looks closer, they’re cycling through shades of white; yellowish, greyish, pinkish, blueish, greenish. He can only really notice the differences when he stares at them in relation to one another, and when he looks away and back, they just look white again.

“You can choose, if you want,” Yoongi says, making him jump. “I haven’t been able to pick, that’s why they’re still cycling.”

Jeongguk walks into his room and crouches down to look at the shelves up close. “The bluish one?” He says eventually, reaching out to pick it up. When he touches it, the colours stop cycling through, settling on the colour of the edge of a cloud on a sunny day.

“Good choice.” Yoongi hops down off his chair, frowns at the room, then starts shunting planks aside until he unearths a Compendium. It’s bigger than the mini-Compendium he’s seen him with so far, newer than Jeongguk’s, and in much better condition, too – it’s got a spine, for a start. Incredibly, he opens the Compendium right to the page he needs, first try, and then reads the spell. As he speaks, the shelves start to assemble themselves against the wall – Yoongi will occasionally stop, mid-spell, to say something like, “No, no, further up, you know the whirlwind binding won’t fit in a shelf that small,” and the shelf will dutifully move up a few inches until Yoongi continues reciting.

Jeongguk’s never seen a Compendium Witch use their book this way, like it’s a two-way conversation. Jeongguk’s tutors, even the expensive ones his parents had desperately provided as he’d gotten older, had always required him to read monotonously from texts so old that he didn’t understand the Korean in them. The language in Yoongi’s spells is much more modern, to the point that it just sounds like he’s chatting aloud.

Once he’s done, Jeongguk leans a little closer to get a better look at it; Yoongi responds by depositing the book directly in his lap. Jeongguk freezes, staring down at the book – he’s never touched somebody else’s Compendium before, but, to be fair, most of the other Compendiums he’s seen have been so ancient, just touching them would probably result in them disintegrating under his fingertips.

“I’ve got one, too,” Jeongguk explains.

“You’re a Compendium Witch?” Yoongi asks.

He looks so genuinely enthusiastic, that Jeongguk feels like the worst person alive when he has to say, “No, I never passed my exams.”

Surprisingly, Yoongi just sucks his teeth dismissively. “Those exams are overrated.”

“Hyung!” Jeongguk laughs delightedly, which results in Yoongi offering him a small, pleased grin.

“Seriously though, as long as you’re not using multiple titles to commit tax fraud or identity theft? Call yourself whatever you want. If you feel like a Compendium Witch, go for it.” He shifts a little, back and forth. “Can I see your Compendium, though?”

“Sure, let me just go and get it.”

Compared to the others’ rooms (he’s not seen Jimin’s yet, but judging by the noises he hears from inside there late into the night, he must have his potions lab up and running), Jeongguk’s is still bare bones. Hoseok’s told him that his own room is in a similar state of unpacked, but Jeongguk’s caught glimpses of it, and it looks neat and furnished in there, if non-descript – bed neatly made, wardrobe tidily organised, desk tucked underneath his window. It’s funny, Jeongguk thinks he’s the most enthusiastic about making this work long-term, but his room doesn’t reflect that at all – he’s got his mattress shoved in the corner, he’s still getting his clothes out of his suitcase, and his Compendium’s just dumped on the floor. When he picks it up, he can see that a thin layer of dust has gathered around it. Resolving to clean his room sometime soon, maybe paint a wall or two, Jeongguk takes the book to Yoongi.

He lights up when he sees it. “Is this an original?” He makes grabby hands towards it, but when Jeongguk goes to pass it to him, he pulls his hands back. “Wait, I should wear gloves, it looks pretty fragile.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Jeongguk says, holding it out. “It’s just been gathering dust in my room for the last few weeks.” Yoongi looks a little sceptical, but he takes the book from him regardless. “And uh, yeah, I think it’s original?”

Yoongi nods. “You can tell.” He opens to a page. “Most Compendiums that are reprinted from this era include translation notes.”

“Translation notes?”

“Yeah. Have you been struggling to work with this at all?” Jeongguk winces; Yoongi smiles at him sympathetically and pats him on the shoulder. “You’ve had shit teachers, Jeongguk. This Compendium is basically a scholarly curiosity, practically a Tome, it’s so old. It’s not a day-to-day Compendium, especially if you’re not using translation notes.” He hands Jeongguk his own Compendium, stands up, and says, “Try one of the spells in there, and I’ll try and find a modern reprint of your Compendium.”

Jeongguk opens to a random page, and immediately he can see the difference. It’s handwritten, for a start, but not only that, random words are highlighted, with suggestions of different words to interchange them with. It’s fascinating to look through, and Jeongguk flips a few pages, marvelling at the spells that have been written. There’s a little of everything, just like Jeongguk’s Compendium is apparently supposed to offer – transmorphology, conjuration, even a few enchantments. Each spell is a dense web of words, rhymes. and themes layering back on one another rhythmically; when Jeongguk reads a few of the spells within the safe confines of his head, he can tell how easily they’d trip off the tongue, as though designed to be read and cast.

Yoongi looks over his shoulder. “Don’t read any of the ones marked ‘theory only’, I’m still workshopping most of those.” Jeongguk looks up at him. “And there’s an enchantment in there that’s more or less mind control, don’t cast that one either, I wrote that one as part of a study for different ways to cure phobias-”

“You wrote these?” Jeongguk asks. He doesn’t mean to interrupt, but he’s never come across someone that writes their own Compendium. Spell creation is common enough in some disciplines, but every Compendium Witch he’s met has used a family heirloom, dutifully reciting spells written centuries before.

“Hm? Oh, yeah,” Yoongi says. “It’s easier for me to cast something if I understand the intent behind every word, you know?” He finally plucks a thick wedge of pages out from a cardboard box; he brings them over to Jeongguk, leans over his shoulder to flick through a few of the pages of his own Compendium, and then, and there’s really no other verb for it, raps a spell that wraps the sheaf of papers with a cover. It looks like leather, but not like any leather cover Jeongguk’s seen before – when Yoongi hands the new book to him, the brown shimmers almost purple when the light hits it just right.

“It’s beautiful,” Jeongguk says.

Yoongi huffs out a laugh. “You’ve not even opened it yet. The good stuff is inside.”

Jeongguk begs to differ, but he opens it dutifully nonetheless.

Each page corresponds to one in Jeongguk’s Compendium, translating and explaining the archaic words Jeongguk has struggled to intone all of his life. It’s enlightening, but he casts another look at Yoongi’s Compendium.

“You’re still welcome to try one of my spells,” Yoongi says. “I’m not precious about that sort of thing.”

Jeongguk flips through, trying not to look overly eager, until he lands on a short spell for colour changing. It seems simple enough, so he reads it.

He can, immediately, feel his magic do something. Like a joint clicking into place, or like sinking into a hot bath, it’s like something releases in him, and the simple colour changing spell he’s trying to direct at one of the cardboard boxes swells out from him like a wave of water, changing not just that box, but every box, the wooden floor, the walls, the shelves, Yoongi’s bed, even his fancy corner desk, all of it a bright, sunny yellow.

“Shit, hyung, I’m – I’m so sorry!” Jeongguk drops Yoongi’s Compendium – as soon as it leaves his hands it, too, turns golden yellow. “Shit, shit, shit, I – hyung, please stop laughing, this isn’t funny!”

Yoongi stops immediately, looking contrite. “I’m not laughing at you, I promise.” He reads the spell back; everything in the room shifts back to its original colour, except for one of the shelves. “See? Easily fixed.”

“What about that one?” Jeongguk points to the offending shelf.

“I like it.” Yoongi looks at him for a moment. Jeongguk can’t tell what the look means – but, for the first time, he finds that, instead of finding him intimidating, he’s excited to learn just what each of his expressions mean. “I can change it back if you want me to, though.”

Jeongguk chews his lip thoughtfully, tries to think beyond the initial embarrassment of having gotten the spell so disastrously wrong. Thinks about what it might mean, for Yoongi to choose to display that shelf so obviously. “I don’t mind,” Jeongguk says eventually. That makes Yoongi frown; that expression, Jeongguk can understand, so he elaborates with, “It makes me happy that you like it.”

Yoongi gives him another one of those looks. After enough time passes that Jeongguk genuinely starts to wonder if Yoongi’s reading his mind somehow, he looks away and starts unpacking one of the boxes. “All right.” He starts unwrapping a carefully packaged glass ornament, almost a perfect sphere but for one flattened side. It looks, from where Jeongguk’s sitting, like it’s been dropped and glued back together countless times, chipped and cracked and fractured.

Once he’s finished unwrapping the brown paper protecting the ornament (although, honestly, it doesn’t look as though any more damage will ruin it), Yoongi looks up at Jeongguk. “You can have a look, if you want.” He makes to pass it to Jeongguk.

“I don’t want to break it!” Jeongguk says quickly.

“I’m sure you won’t.” He waits until Jeongguk moves his hands, ready to take the ornament, before he hands it over.

Contrary to what he’d thought, the ornament is perfectly smooth, the surface showing no sign of the chips and cracks that seem to run through the inside of the glass. He even runs his fingernail over the surface – not so much as a hairline crack. Inside, though, fissures shiver through the glass like a spiderweb, and it almost looks like…

Jeongguk holds the ornament up for a better look. The angles of the lines look like Hangul – in fact, from this angle, with one eye closed and the light streaming through… “Does this say ‘sandcastle’?” Jeongguk asks curiously.

“Does it?” Yoongi replies.

“I mean, it could just be my imagination…” It’s not. Now that he’s noticed it, it’s very apparent – he can’t see anything else.

“Interesting, I didn’t know it knew that word,” Yoongi says, holding his hand out for it; Jeongguk walks over and places it in his palm. “It’s a depictionary.” Jeongguk nods politely; Yoongi coughs. “Sorry, that’s – that’s a joke.”

“Oh!” Jeongguk winces. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, I’m obviously spending too much time around hyung.” That surprises Jeongguk, although he supposes it makes sense – why wouldn’t his Soulmates be hanging out with each other? “It doesn’t have a name, but I suppose a depictionary is a pretty good name for it, even if it is a pun. It’s based on how this works.” Yoongi sets the ornament on the bright yellow shelf with a gentle thunk. “Depending on who looks at it, and when, the cracks inside will show you a different word. Have you ever done any divining?”

“Just when I was in school.” Jeongguk doesn’t list all of the forms of divination he was made to dabble in – astrology, dowsing, tea leaves, cards, scrying, palmistry; you name it, he’s done it. He once had a private tutor who specialised in alectryomancy, which would lead him to spend hours out in their yard, staring at a specially bought white rooster pecking at grain in the hopes of something being revealed to him.

“It’s that sort of interpretation of symbols – or words, in this case,” Yoongi explains. “Sandcastle will mean something slightly different to you than it does to me, so it’s up to you to interpret what it means.” He turns the ornament a little so that the light hits it, sending a reflection bouncing up onto the ceiling. “It’s good for spellwriting, sometimes I get a little too in my head.” He turns back to Jeongguk, blinks, and then laughs. “Speaking of which, you probably came in here for a reason, right? I’ve just been talking at you.”

“Oh, right!” Jeongguk looks around. “Do you have a claw hammer I can borrow?”

“What for?” Yoongi asks. “I mean, the answer’s yes, I’m just curious.”

“The boards in front of the windows upstairs,” Jeongguk explains as Yoongi looks around for his hammer. He thanks Yoongi for the hammer and leaves.

He doesn’t expect Yoongi to come with him, though, and it leaves him a little lost for words when he does. Yoongi’s not one to fill silences for the sake of it, either, so the two of them walk from Yoongi’s room to the upstairs room without exchanging a word.

Yoongi doesn’t say anything until Jeongguk’s pulled up the first plank from the window. It hasn’t let in as much light as Jeongguk had expected, honestly, because this window looks out into an avenue of trees. It’s nice, though, and Jeongguk stands up on his tiptoes to get a better look.

“You look like you’ve got something to say,” Yoongi says.

“Me?” Jeongguk says, confused, turning to look over his shoulder. The movement means he catches sight of Jimin, hovering near the stairs.

“I’m just wondering how many times I need to tell you all to wear protective gloves when you work,” Jimin says.

“Yoongi-hyung’s not working, he doesn’t need to wear gloves,” Jeongguk says.

“As if hyung’s bedroom doesn’t stink of magic overuse right now,” Jimin says. “Also, what’s your excuse? I know you have gloves, because I gave them to you.”

“I thought they were just potions gloves?” Jeongguk replies. “Besides, if I get a splinter or two, it’s not a big deal.” He turns back to the window.

“Unbelievable,” Jimin mutters, coming over to stand on his tiptoes next to Jeongguk. “What’s out there, anyway?”

“You’d best describe it to him, Jeongguk, I’m not sure he’ll be able to see at the moment,” Yoongi says.

Jimin huffs, but because Jeongguk’s standing right next to him, he can see the precise moment that Jimin quickly tamps down an amused grin. “Like you’re any taller, hyung.”

That little expression shifts Jeongguk’s entire understanding of Yoongi and Jimin’s relationship, and he can physically feel his mouth drop open – they’re not arguing because they don’t get on, they’re arguing because they enjoy it.

“Uh, yeah,” Taehyung says when Jeongguk tells him this later. “Jimin’s always been like that.”

“I thought they hated each other!” The two of them are lying on Taehyung’s floor; Taehyung is absentmindedly working on his magic, shifting the colour of light emanating from one of his walls to create a dazzling light show. Normally, Jeongguk would be a lot more interested, but right now he just feels relief that two of his Soulmates don’t hate one another.

“Jimin likes hyung a lot.” Taehyung says. “I mean, I can’t say how Yoongi feels, because I don’t know him as well as I know Jimin, but I’d imagine he feels the same, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who dislikes Jimin once they’ve spent time with him.” He holds his hand up to face the ceiling and makes a movement like he’s wiping a steamed-up mirror – the wall shifts into a burning, dizzyingly yellow light, which bleeds out into oranges, reds, even purples as it tracks further out around the room. It’s so bright that Jeongguk feels like he shouldn’t look at it for too long, and it feels like it should be hot, like Taehyung’s brought the surface of the sun into his room. “I mean, sometimes he can be a nightmare to get on with when he’s being deliberately obtuse, because obviously he’s not just here because he wanted to come with me to be matched, obviously he has something to bring to this Soulmateship beyond the fact that he’s my friend, even disregarding the fact that everyone here likes him-”

“Are you… Okay, hyung?” Jeongguk asks warily.

“Me? Great. Fantastic, even.”

It feels like it should be hot in the room, and in a way, it is, the colours tricking his mind into thinking that, because it’s too bright to look at directly for too long, it must be hot, too – but when he reaches out his hand to touch the wall, it’s just room temperature.

Jeongguk turns his head to look at Taehyung, then raises an eyebrow.

“Never been better,” Taehyung says firmly. He turns to Jeongguk and offers him a smile, a shadow of his normal, boxy grin. “I had an idea to stop the hallway getting flooded every time we accidentally leave the screen open, but I’ll need Seokjin-hyung’s help. Want to come with me to ask him?”

Jeongguk doesn’t think Taehyung’s going to tell him what’s wrong if he doesn’t want to, so he nods and rocks up into a seated position, stands up, then holds out his hand to help Taehyung up.

They find Seokjin upstairs. Namjoon had dragged an old bookshelf he’d thrifted up there, and it’s still, at the moment, the only piece of furniture they have upstairs; Seokjin is filling one of the shelves with some books.

“Ah, Taehyung, Jeongguk, what’s up? I was just putting my books up here – because I do a lot of rain magic in my room, they’re probably safer up here.” Seokjin wiggles the book he’s holding, a university-level meteorology textbook.

“Looks interesting,” Taehyung says. “Can I borrow it?”

“Knock yourself out,” Seokjin says. “Did you come up here to…” He looks around, then shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t know why you’d come up here, except to use the bookcase, but there’s not many books on here at the moment, so…”

“We came looking for you, actually,” Taehyung says. Seokjin raises his eyebrows. “If I cast one of my atmospheric light screens, could you cast a spell that would prevent rain getting in, but let people and, uh, air get through?”

“I… Honestly don’t know,” Seokjin says. “For the hallway, right?”

Taehyung nods. “It’d be nice not to have the hallway flood a third time, you know?”

“I’ve never tried anything like that before.” Seokjin looks over the spines of his books. “I mean, I’ve created weather, and I’ve prevented it for like, a day, but I’ve never tried setting up a rain barrier?” He says the term ‘rain barrier’ like he’s unsure it’s even the correct term; Taehyung nods encouragingly.

“Could you do something like a waterproof coat… Spell? To bounce the rain away?” Jeongguk says, trailing off when both of them turn to look at him.

“I’m not sure I could cast that and have us still walk through it,” Seokjin says thoughtfully. “However, something to bounce the rain away…” He waves his hand in front of him, and a tiny, black raincloud appears, pooling water into his cupped hand. Suddenly, a little gust of wind bursts from his palm, sending droplets scattering out in a dome. “That’ll work.”

“Let’s go set it up!” Taehyung says enthusiastically, grabbing Seokjin by the arm and pulling him downstairs. Jeongguk follows, because he’s curious to see how their magic will work in combination, and catches the moment that Jimin, walking out of the kitchen, frowns at them as they hurry by. Jeongguk smiles at him – he looks surprised, but he does smile back, even if it’s delayed.

“You all right?” Jeongguk asks, pausing to see if Jimin will be any more forthcoming than Taehyung had been. He doubts it, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

Jimin hums. “What’re you three up to?”

“Taehyung-hyung had the idea of creating a barrier to stop the hallway flooding again, and they’re just about to go set it up. Want to watch?”

“I’ll pass,” Jimin says. “I’m just grabbing a snack, and then I want to get back to work.”

“On your next day off-”

“Jeongguk!” Seokjin shouts from across the yard. “Come walk over here, see if you can get through the barrier!”

“See you later,” Jimin says with a half-smile, heading off towards his room. It’s kind of awkward, because they’re more or less heading in the same direction, but Jimin power walks fast enough that, by the time Jeongguk’s halfway through crossing the yard, Jimin has already walked the length of the hallway to his room.

Jeongguk stops in front of the barrier. He can see it, but he thinks that’s because he knows to look for it – a very faint, ambient light seems to be emanating from the space. He can definitely feel it, because a weird, misplaced breeze is blowing in his face.

He steps forward without incident.

“Really heavy rain might still be able to get through,” Seokjin says, a pleased smile on his face. “But this should buy us enough time to notice it’s raining and shut the screens.”

“No more floods!” Taehyung cheers, slapping Seokjin on the back, then pulling Jeongguk into a sidelong hug. “Good work, team.”

“Well done, hyungs,” Jeongguk says, trying to pull away to get a closer look at the spell in action; Taehyung keeps him close.

“Well done, Jeongguk,” he says firmly. “It was your idea.”

“Not really,” Jeongguk deflects. “I just suggested something to bounce the rain away.”

“Which is what we did,” Seokjin says. “So it’s your idea! You’re really smart, Jeongguk.”

Jeongguk can feel his cheeks flushing hot, but Taehyung, mercifully, lets him pull away to look at the spell until his blush can die down.

Jeongguk’s eyes are starting to hurt from filling out this Mastery exam form; he blinks a few times, and realises that that’s because he’s been squinting at it in the dark. The lamp he’d turned on earlier had been enough when he’d started working on this paperwork at dusk, but now it’s late (he checks his phone – really late), and he needs to put on a more powerful light if he wants to keep working.

The shift in his attention, though, makes him aware of how numb his legs are – he’s sitting on the floor of his room, because he’d thought this form would take five minutes, tops, to fill out – so he creakily pulls himself up to go walk around the house, stretch his legs, maybe do some light exercise in the yard.

When he steps out of his room, he immediately notices that there’s light spilling out from the gap under Jimin’s door. Jeongguk stops guiltily, as though he’s been caught sneaking out of bed late by his parents, but nobody comes out of their rooms. It’s so late, late enough that he can see just how brightly lit the courtyard is by the moon, shining prettily through the blossom of the plum tree that seems to be thriving, now that it isn’t surrounded by thrown-out furniture. The sounds coming from Jimin’s room, however – something being sifted, the gentle chink of glass on glass, the beeps of his weighing scale – suggest that he’s still working.

“Come in or don’t,” Jimin calls quietly, making Jeongguk jump. “Just stop hovering.”

Jeongguk lets himself into Jimin’s room. He’s still not been inside yet, but he’d been imagining something like a modern potion’s lab – sterile, all-white and metal, with Jimin himself in Potion Witch’s whites. It’s not like that at all, though. The room is neatly sectioned, with Jimin’s living space – bed, chest of drawers, empty suitcase – pressed up to the giant window, which has been cracked open to let in the cool night air. The rest of his room is devoted to potion brewing, with a giant wooden table taking up the majority of the space. The table is more like a solid block of wood, with tiny slivers of drawers built into the sides and an array of vials, flasks, and glass stirring rods cluttering up the surface. There are deep bookshelves against the walls packed with jars and boxes and squeezy tubes of ingredients, and lines of dried bouquets hanging from the ceiling.

Jimin stands in the middle of it all, hands on his hips as he stares down at a tray he’s working in. He looks up at Jeongguk, frowns at him a little, and then startles.

“Jeongguk?” He blinks a few times – his eyes have an odd, matte quality to them. “I thought you were Taehyung.”

“Sorry. I can leave?” Jeongguk offers.

Jimin shakes his head. “You’re here now, aren’t you?” The only thing stopping him from sounding short and abrupt is the yawn he has to muffle at the end of his sentence. Jeongguk still winces; Jimin’s shoulders droop. “Ah, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t take all of this out on you. You’re stuck in this situation until the end of the season too, huh?”

As apologies go, this is one of the first he’s ever received that somehow makes him feel even worse. Every Soulmate movie and tv show and book had made this sound like an experience to be treasured, not a “situation” to be “stuck in”. He doesn’t feel stuck! He’s been looking forward to this for years!

He smiles back at Jimin, and hopes it doesn’t look as queasy as he feels. “Don’t mention it.” He takes a tentative step closer. “What’re you working on?”

Jimin sticks a glass spatula into the tray, and pulls out something that looks like purple slime. He has to lift the spatula high, almost as high as he can reach, before the slime snaps away from the tray; once it does, it conforms to the spatula, creating something like a translucent skin. The lighting in Jimin’s room is a little yellower than it is in Jeongguk’s room, and it makes the slime glow mulberry. Jeongguk hears a deep corner of his brain ask to eat it.

“If it works, it should prevent splinters,” Jimin explains. He vigorously shakes the spatula – the slime stays put.

“Prevent splinters?”

Jimin nods. “And moisturise your hands while you’re using it, but it’s leaving an overpoweringly lemon smell that I don’t think you’ll…” He looks at Jeongguk suddenly, eyes wide, and then shakes his head. “Never mind. It’ll be nice if we don’t have to worry about getting splinters all the time though, don’t you think?”

Jeongguk smiles again, but this time it’s a lot more genuine – it’s really only himself and Yoongi that are doing any DIY that could give them splinters at the moment, after all. “Yeah, it will, hyung.” He watches Jimin work quietly for a moment, then says, “Why did you think I was Taehyung?”

Jimin tilts his head. “Because he comes to visit me the most? Hoseok-hyung comes by occasionally, but…” He shrugs, but it’s a brittle, aborted jerk.

“Do you… Want us to come visit you?” Jeongguk asks. “Because we would! But your door’s always shut, I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working. I’m sure that’s what the others are thinking, too.”

“I – I’ll leave my door open more often, then,” Jimin says.

“But you still thought I was Taehyung? I thought you both were…” Jeongguk trails off, not wanting to overstep.

However, it’s enough to get Jimin to set down his tools and turn fully towards Jeongguk. “He told you?”

“No,” Jeongguk says. “But no offense, hyung, you’re both making it kind of obvious that you’ve had an argument.”

“It’s barely even an argument!” Jimin says exasperatedly. “All I said was that I’m only here because of Taehyung, so whatever the matchmaking process is, it’s just a coincidence that I’m even here with you all! He said that wasn’t true, that I was everyone else’s Soulmate just as much as he was, and I said I bet the others won’t even notice I’m not here, Taehyung’s the only one that talks to me regularly, and he said he’ll prove it, he’ll stop talking to me and prove…” Jimin shakes his head. “He’s right, of course, you’ve been checking in with me all day, Namjoon-hyung invited me out for a bike ride to cheer me up, Seokjin-hyung and Hoseok-hyung made me dinner, even Yoongi-hyung gave me this.” He opens his desk drawer, takes out a sheet of paper, and hands it to Jeongguk.

It's a torn-out sheet of notepad paper, and it’s got a scrawled spell on it. “A cauldron-cleaning spell?” Jeongguk asks, skimming over it.

“He said he’d noticed that I spend “too fucking long” cleaning my cauldrons every evening, handed me this without looking me in the eye, and then he walked off,” Jimin says. “It was very thoughtful.” He sighs, then sits on one of the high stools dotted around his workbench. “I think I knew you weren’t all, I don’t know, ambivalent to me being here, but I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t really like this whole Soulmate thing?”

“No, hyung, you’ve been really subtle,” Jeongguk says sarcastically, which makes Jimin laugh, loud.

“No one will believe me when I tell them you’re secretly the brattiest dongsaeng out of all of us,” he says gleefully.

Jeongguk waits until Jimin’s stopped giggling, then goes to sit next to him. “What don’t you like about it?”

“I hate how the High Council mysteriously assigns you people to live with, and that somehow, being around these people will make me a more powerful Witch? No one can explain it? And I hate how if you don’t like living with your Soulmates, tough shit, you’re stuck with them for three full months. And most of all, I hate how much I don’t hate any of you.” He sighs. “You’re all making this so easy for me, I forget that I’ve got, you know, genuine complaints about the secrecy of our governing High Council?”

“Who’s to say we can’t all help you investigate how this bond works?” Jeongguk asks. “I think one of the things we’ve all got in common is that we’re all curious and hardworking, I bet if you asked anyone to help you, they would.” He grins. “Because we like having you here, even when you’re arguing with Yoongi-hyung, or telling me off for not wearing gloves.”

“You really should be wearing gloves more,” Jimin pouts. Jeongguk stands up to leave, and it’s only when he gets to the door that Jimin says, “Jeongguk?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, hyung.”

“Leave the door open?”

Chapter Text

The adverts start arriving precisely one month after they move into the house.

Jeongguk’s upstairs, helping Hoseok to put up some more shelves. They’ve all agreed that putting the majority of their books up here is a good idea, and Namjoon’s one thrifted bookshelf just isn’t enough, especially with Yoongi’s collection of Compendiums from around the world. Suddenly, Jeongguk hears a yelp from the kitchen.

He’s gotten more or less used to his housemates making strange noises at seemingly all hours of the day – Seokjin’s little exclamations, Yoongi’s teeth-sucking he does whenever he thinks, Hoseok’s delighted sound effects whenever he successfully manages to cross off another task on their to-do list, Namjoon muttering to himself under his breath, the weird clattering noises that come from Jimin’s room when he’s working, louder now that he works more often with his door open, Taehyung singing to himself at every opportunity – but this noise sounds startled, so he gets up to go investigate.

Seokjin’s holding a broom – not Jeongguk’s, thankfully, because he’s swatting it through the air quite violently at the wispy yellow ends of a spell.

“Advertising spell,” he says shortly when he sees Jeongguk in the doorframe. “It popped up in front of my face while I was cooking.” He points his thumb over his shoulder at the countertop, where uncooked rice has been spilled everywhere.

From that first advert, it’s like the floodgates have been opened, and Jeongguk’s seeing these adverts all the time in their house – mirages that swim in front of his eyes and make him dizzy, jingles that play out of the faucets before the water starts to run, one that even plays out on his ceiling as soon as he opens his eyes in the morning. He doesn’t think they’re targeted adverts, necessarily, more so a deluge of adverts about everything possible – use this one simple trick to find your Soulmate Day! The High Coven of Seoul hates this one woman who used this trick to find 10 Soulmates in less than a month! – but mostly it’s job adverts, in seemingly every field any Witch could ever hope to work in.

“I did always wonder how the High Council could afford to give people houses for free,” Yoongi says shortly, turning off the tap as it loudly starts telling him about an exciting job opportunity available in their local area. “They do it by subjecting the tenants to adverts in their home forever.”

“I didn’t think businesses could advertise in people’s homes?” Namjoon asks.

“There’s probably something in the agreement we signed that said we’re happy to be advertised to,” Hoseok says.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if the adverts were actually useful,” Seokjin says. “But I just keep seeing adverts for new jobs. I have a job.”

“But think about how much money the High Council can charge businesses to advertise to Soulmated Witches,” Yoongi says cynically.

“Is it… Forever?” Jeongguk asks warily. He’s not asking any of them in particular, but he does turn to Taehyung, because he knows that his parents are Soulmates.

Taehyung shrugs. “I never noticed any adverts in our house growing up, but my parents don’t live in a High Council Soul Home. I can ask them?”

“No need,” Jimin says, marching suddenly into the kitchen, tossing something in his hand a few times, and then chucking it up at the ceiling – Jeongguk gets a brief glimpse of an ampoule of deep red liquid before it smashes. He covers his head instinctively, but nothing drops down, both the potion and the glass ampoule immediately disintegrating. What he can sense is a sudden quieting of a constant buzzing noise he hadn’t been conscious of until it had stopped. “Ad blocker,” Jimin says, sitting down at the kitchen table with them.

“Is that… Allowed?” Hoseok asks delicately, staring up at the spot where Jimin’s potion had impacted the ceiling.

“Well, if it’s not and I get sent to jail, at least I won’t be constantly advertised to,” Jimin says, closing his eyes peacefully. Yoongi huffs a laugh out through his nose, which makes Jimin crack an eye open and shoot him a cheeky grin.

“While we’re all in here,” Namjoon says. “Have any of you noticed that this house doesn’t seem to be getting cleaner?”

“We’re working as hard as we can,” Yoongi says with a frown.

Namjoon shakes his head. “No, that’s not what I mean. I keep finding that weird soot everywhere, you know, the stuff we saw in the rooms Seokjin-hyung and Hoseok took?”

“We never did figure out what that was,” Hoseok says. “I just keep sweeping mine up.”

“I’ve been sweeping it up wherever I find it, too,” Namjoon agrees with a nod. “Originally I thought it was just sand from the yard, but then I realised it was too dark for sand.”

“Not to mention that sand wouldn’t be able to get past the rain barrier,” Seokjin points out.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the house?” Jeongguk asks worriedly, looking around. He’s starting to grow to like this place, now that it’s less filthy, but now that he’s thinking about it, Namjoon’s right, their to-do list does seem to be never-ending. He’d just assumed it was because it’s an old house, and with every one job done, two more would reveal themselves, but maybe there’s more to it than that?

Now that Namjoon’s pointed it out, he can’t help but notice that their house seems to be falling apart almost as fast as they’re renovating it.

It’s not every day that he notices something new has gone wrong, but he can tell that it’s happening often enough that something else is going on other than they’re all just somehow missing these jobs that they need to complete.

The tipping point, for Jeongguk, is when he opens the kitchen door and it, quite literally, falls off its hinges in his hand. Now he’s just left holding a door.

He stands there for a moment, staring at the empty place where the door that’s now in his hand should be. He doesn’t know the first thing about fixing a door.

So, he goes to the person he thinks probably does.

Yoongi’s door is open, but he’s working, so Jeongguk knocks on the door in his own hand to announce his presence, then waits until Yoongi’s ready. Yoongi’s fully unpacked his room, and there are books everywhere, which is incredible, considering a vast majority of the books upstairs are Yoongi’s. The white shelves (and one yellow shelf) are full almost to bursting, and there are teetering piles of them on his desk. He’s also, at some point, built a huge computer, with a screen more like a television than any computer Jeongguk’s ever seen.

“Like my new setup? I like to watch movies while I work,” Yoongi explains, not tearing his eyes away from the screen as he types at an almost ear-shattering speed. “I used to have dual monitors, but I kept turning my head between them too much, so this works better.” Jeongguk doesn’t recognise the film he’s got playing on the right half of his split screen, but it doesn’t look like the kind of film that would make it easy to concentrate on working. “Jimin suggested it, actually, I should tell him how much of a good…” Yoongi seems to notice the peculiar shadow that Jeongguk and his door are throwing onto Yoongi’s wall, because he turns round and stares, mouth agape, at the tableau they’re making. “Uh, that’s a new one?”

“Help,” Jeongguk says. “It fell off in my hand.”

“Where… Where did it come from?” Yoongi asks, bewildered.

“It’s the kitchen door,” Jeongguk says. “It definitely wasn’t broken before, hyung, I think Namjoon-hyung is right, something’s wrong with the house-”

“Okay, deep breaths,” Yoongi says. “We’ll deal with the easy problem first – let’s go fix that door.”

Sure enough, Yoongi does know how to replace a door. He claims it’s easy, then goes off on a long tangent about how hinges need to be unevenly placed on a doorframe to trick the human brain, from a typical adult vantage point, into thinking that they are evenly placed.

“Bit shit if you’re not an average adult height,” Yoongi continues as he replaces the rotten hinges with new ones. Jeongguk didn’t even know hinges could rot. “I’d be tempted to get custom hinges, honestly, I couldn’t be doing with being constantly aware of the hinges looking off on every door in my house.”

“Has anyone seen the bathroom tiles?” Taehyung calls, popping his head out of the bathroom down the hall. “They’ve just literally disappeared!”

“I’ve got it!” Namjoon calls from upstairs, before running down the stairs a few at a time.

“The tiles?” Taehyung shouts back.

“No, I know what’s making the house break. It’s our arguing.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Yoongi says immediately.

“Yes, perfect, hyung, we can prove my hypothesis-”

“No, I’m not arguing with you, I’m just telling you that-” Yoongi says, but Namjoon’s already running off to get the others. Seokjin follows him downstairs, but he doesn’t stop to chat, disappearing into his room. Yoongi turns to Jeongguk. “It sounds more plausible than anything I’ve come up with, I’m just saying that’s ridiculous because arguing shouldn’t make a house fall apart at the seams.”

Jeongguk just shrugs. There’ve been less public arguments since Namjoon and Yoongi had had their big spat in the yard, but he doesn’t doubt that there are still quieter arguments simmering. He knows that Jimin and Taehyung still haven’t fully reconciled from the other day, and Namjoon and Yoongi have both admitted that they bicker often. If Taehyung had been right that previous tenants had had explosive magical fights, maybe the High Council had put in preventative measures to dissuade future Soulmates from arguing?

“That doesn’t make sense,” Hoseok says with a frown when Jeongguk posits this to everyone. Namjoon’s gathered them all in the kitchen (newly-installed door swinging happily on its hinges), and had suggested his theory to varying degrees of scepticism. “Why would a house care that we’re arguing? Why would the High Council care?”

“I mean, it’s in the High Council’s interests that we stay together, and it’s more likely that we’ll stay past the end of spring if we’re not constantly at each other’s throats,” Jimin says. “Sounds like the kind of backwards thinking the High Council like, honestly – maybe if we don’t let them argue, they’ll be happy!”

“Arguing is a perfectly healthy means of communication,” Namjoon agrees.

“I don’t know,” Seokjin says. Because he’s sitting opposite from Jeongguk. Jeongguk can see the way Seokjin’s jaw pulses as he takes a pause. “Maybe some arguments could be avoided.”

“Maybe,” Namjoon says, not meeting Seokjin’s eye.

“Maybe,” Taehyung says, looking between them like he’s watching a tennis match. “The house only cares about an argument if we don’t resolve it?”

“You think the house knows?” Jeongguk says.

“Honestly, I’m willing to try anything to get the bathroom tiles back, it’s so cold in there without them.” It seems, in Jeongguk’s opinion, too convoluted, and that Jimin’s explanation seems a little more likely – that the High Council had haphazardly put in a preventative measure without considering the implications – but Taehyung turns to Jimin, and Jeongguk keeps his thoughts to himself. If this is the push Jimin and Taehyung need to go back to their normal selves, he’ll gladly believe in all sorts of weird and wonderful spells that the house is capable of. “Jimin, I’m sorry that I said I’d ignore you, and I’m sorry I’ve not apologised since, I was too embarrassed to.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t told you that you were right sooner!” Jimin says. The pair of them immediately leap out of their chairs, scramble around the table to meet one another half way, and collide in a hug so forceful that it almost looks painful.

“We can try not to argue with one another?” Yoongi suggests. “Even if it’s just until we make more headway on making the house nicer.”

“Sounds good to me,” Seokjin says, with everyone else murmuring in agreement.

Not long after that, Seokjin takes his sabbatical.

“Honestly, I should’ve done this right from the beginning,” he says on his first Monday off. “It feels great not to have to go into work.”

“Why not find a new job?” Jeongguk suggests. They’re both sitting out in the yard – Jeongguk’s just sent off his application for his Mastery exam starter kit, and he’s got a lot of nervous energy. Seokjin had found him out here doing push ups in the sand, and had sat down on one of the rocks surrounding the sand and called out random numbers until Jeongguk had collapsed in a giggling heap.

“That’s not such a bad idea,” Seokjin says simply. “I’m not sure what else I could do, though.”

“Didn’t you used to do set design for films?” Jeongguk asks. “Why not go back to that?”

“Yeah, in college, for student projects and tiny studios,” Seokjin says. “I don’t think a studio would want to hire me now when my experience is handling the weather in Seoul’s flight paths and a handful of films that you literally can’t watch anymore.” He shrugs. “Ah, it couldn’t hurt to apply to a few places of the next few weeks though, right? Make the most of the fact that I’m being paid to take time off.”

He makes it sound so easy that Jeongguk can’t help but feel a little envious. All of his hyungs, as a matter of fact, feel so much more adult than Jeongguk himself feels. They all seem to have grown up jobs, some of them even running their own businesses, while Jeongguk has only just quit working the same job he’d interned at as a teenager. They’re sure in themselves, certain of who they are, while Jeongguk just feels…

“Hyung, do you ever feel… Small?” Jeongguk asks quietly.

He half expects Seokjin to crack a joke, but instead he just hops off of the rock he’s sitting on with that odd, half-floatiness that makes Jeongguk feel like he’s being pulled into the ground in comparison. “How so?”

“Like… You’re just one tiny speck in the universe, and everyone else is barrelling ahead without you..” Jeongguk says; Seokjin hums. “I don’t know, it’s probably stupid.”

Seokjin looks up at the sky for a moment, then tilts his head back down to look at Jeongguk. “You ever seen a sunset in the sky?”

“That’s where sunsets always are, hyung.”

Seokjin snorts. “Don’t be smart with me, brat.” He says ‘brat’ with so much fondness that, if he hadn’t already been sitting down, Jeongguk thinks he might’ve needed to. “I meant have you seen one while you’re in the sky?”

“You’ve seen me fly, isn’t it obvious that I don’t really get up there much?” Jeongguk replies. Seokjin stands up and holds out his hand towards Jeongguk, palm up. “Hyung?”

“I want to show you something.” He wiggles his fingers impatiently. “Have you flown with someone before?”

“Not since I was a kid, on the front of my mom’s broom.” Jeongguk doesn’t actually remember this, but he’s seen the photos – Jeongguk, smiling wide with just a few of his baby teeth grown in, oversized hat plopped onto his head and feet caught mid-swing as his mother hovers a few inches off the ground.

“This is a little different.” Seokjin’s outright shaking his hand now, moving faster and faster until Jeongguk drops his own hand into Seokjin’s with a tap. Seokjin adjusts their hands until their fingers are threaded together, swings them back and forth a few times, then nods firmly. “Okay, jump.”

“Jump?”

“As you get used to flying, you can sort of step into the air, but it’s a lot easier for beginners to jump – you’re less likely to fall over that way.”

Jeongguk thinks back to his childhood flying lessons, where his teachers – old, severe-faced men with steely eyes and downturned mouths – had made him take off without even stepping, let alone jumping, just moving into the air through sheer force of mind.

He jumps.

He’d thought it would feel like being lifted up into the air, but it’s not like that at all. It’s more like the air is holding him in place with the same surety as he feels with gravity holding him permanently on the ground. Seokjin’s stepped up alongside him; in comparison to Jeongguk, who’s wiggling his feet back and forth, Seokjin holds his feet in place like he’s standing on something solid.

“We’ll get a better view if we go a little higher.” Seokjin squeezes his hand. “Just focus on walking, I’ll take care of the height.”

Jeongguk does as he’s asked, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other – it’s not a task he really needs to focus on for long, so, once they start gaining height, once they’re high above the rooves of the hanoks and the apartment blocks and even the skyscrapers, once he’s confident that he’s got the rhythm of it, he just takes the opportunity to marvel at the fact that he’s flying. He’s so used to feeling the creep of anxious bile when he’s flying, so focused on wind currents buffeting his broom and following air safety regulations and making sure that he doesn’t tip too far in any one direction, that he can’t remember the last time he actually enjoyed himself up in the air. As they get higher, they come out of the wind tunnels in the winding streets, and the breeze, a little chillier than he’s used to, feels refreshing on his face.

Seokjin turns, seemingly not minding the fact that he’s tipping around in the air; seemingly trusting that, if he falls, it won’t be far or for long. “This’ll do.” He crosses his legs underneath him, identically to how Jeongguk’s seen him drop to the ground dozens of times, legs folding and torso dropping.

Jeongguk tries to hold his upper body in place and fold his owns legs up towards him, but it’s not really a manoeuvre he’s familiar with. Eventually, Seokjin gently tugs him into place, adjusting them mid-air until they’re both sitting cross-legged in the sky.

Jeongguk had once gone on a date with a girl in college, and they’d ended the date laying in the middle of a road in Busan, staring up at the stars. Jeongguk had thought it would be romantic, had seen it in plenty of romances, but he’d just been constantly worried that a car was going to come.

This, sitting in the sky as they wait for the sun to set, feels like the movies had made laying in the road look.

“Don’t let go, unless you really want to test my reflexes,” Seokjin says, waving their still joined hands. Jeongguk laughs. “I’m being so serious right now, the others would never forgive me if I had to go back and explain that I’d dropped you out of the sky. I’d never forgive me if I dropped you out of the sky.” The surprise must show on Jeongguk’s face, because Seokjin frowns at him and says, “I know this hasn’t been smooth sailing for any of us, but nobody wants you to fall out of the sky.”

“Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that,” Jeongguk huffs, folding his arms. Because he’s still holding onto Seokjin, Seokjin’s hand ends up stuffed underneath Jeongguk’s armpit.

“I know it’s been… Frustrating, hearing everyone argue, and the rest of us have really needed an adjustment period to this. Not everyone’s taking to this as naturally as you have been.” Jeongguk almost laughs, because these last few weeks have felt anything but natural. “Okay, maybe it’s not been coming as easily to you as I thought?” Seokjin says with a grin. Jeongguk hums in agreement. “Well, I think it’s a good thing for everyone to air out our shit now, even if it makes our house disintegrate around us.” He scoots them around in the air to get a better view of the sun. “Obviously I can’t promise that all seven of us will stay together at the end of the season, but for those of us that do stay, us learning to communicate now is setting up a good foundation, even if that foundation has bricks in it that are made up of Namjoon and Yoongi tossing glass at each other in the yard, or Taehyung and Jimin not talking to each other for days, or Hoseok…” Seokjin frowns. “Huh. Hoseok doesn’t really get into fights, does he?”

Jeongguk still doesn’t really know all that much about Hoseok, considering. It’s not like Hoseok is reluctant to share details when asked, he just doesn’t seem like the type of person to go out of his way to share details about himself. Resolving to sit him down and get to know him better, Jeongguk taps his knee against Seokjin’s. “What about you, hyung? You’re not getting into fights with the others.”

Seokjin turns to look at him, surprised, then huffs out a laugh. “No, I suppose you didn’t see. Namjoon and I got into a big spat just last week. It’s what tipped him off to his ‘the house is falling apart whenever any of us argue’ theory, Taehyung yelled up about the bathroom tiles right as we were going at it.”

“You and Namjoon-hyung?” Jeongguk asks. Namjoon really only bickers with Yoongi on a regular basis, and even then that’s not that often. Namjoon’s not really a natural bickerer, not in the way that Jimin and Yoongi bring out in one another.

“Why do you sound more surprised about Namjoon than you do about me?” Seokjin laughs. Jeongguk opens his mouth to respond. “No, don’t answer that, I know you hero worship the guy.”

“I – what? No, that’s-” Jeongguk blows a raspberry. “That’s ridiculous, I barely even know him? Even if I did-”

“It’s cute,” Seokjin interrupts. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he has a clue, although everyone else definitely knows.”

Jeongguk sighs, and almost takes his hand out of Seokjin’s to rest his chin glumly in his hands; Seokjin, despite his earlier comments about not wanting to test his reflexes, automatically grips tighter. “Great. Embarrassing.” He looks out towards the sunset, which is turning the sky a delicate, watercolour pink. “Wasn’t this supposed to be making me feel better?”

“Hm? Oh, right!” He points at the sunset. “See that?”

“Uh… Yeah?” Jeongguk squints. “I mean, it’s pretty, hyung, but I don’t-”

“You said sometimes you feel small, right?” Seokjin waits until Jeongguk nods before continuing. “You can’t see a sunset from space. The only reason you’re able to see this,” he waves his hand, “is because you’re here, now. You’re exactly as small as you need to be.” Seokjin is kind enough to wait for Jeongguk to stop crying before he knocks their shoulders together. “You know, you’re the first cute boy I’ve taken up into the sky who’s cried and it’s not been from fear.”

Jeongguk snorts, knocks his shoulder back. “I don’t know, hyung, if you’ve taken multiple boys up here and they’ve cried, maybe the problem’s you?”

Seokjin sucks his teeth. “Ah, maybe. It’s really the only trick I’ve got going for me, though, flying.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Jeongguk says. “You’ve got a lot going for you.”

“I meant my magic, Jeongguk, I know about my handsome face-”

“You’re kind,” Jeongguk says, which shuts Seokjin up so fast that Jeongguk can hear his mouth snap shut. “You’re not only a great cook, but a thoughtful one, I’ve noticed that you’ve already memorised everyone’s favourite meals.” He watches, fascinated, as Seokjin’s ears pink up. “You jump at the chance to help everyone else, whether that’s Taehyung coming to you and asking you to come up with a brand new spell to help him with an idea he’s just had, or when you make extra food to drop off to Yoongi’s room because he’s been working too hard.” Seokjin genuinely looks like he’s going to cry, so Jeongguk, to deflate some of the tension, says, “You’re funny, most of the time.”

“Most?” Seokjin laughs, high and squeaky. “What kind of a compliment is that?”

“Your dad jokes have got to go, hyung,” Jeongguk says seriously. “I get second-hand embarrassment just listening to them.”

“That’s because you’re young,” Seokjin says. “Trust me, when you get to my age, you’ll find them just as funny as I do.”

“But I’ll never get to your age, hyung,” Jeongguk says, blinking faux-innocently. “You’re always going to be older than me.”

Seokjin sighs, deeply, through his nose. “I’ve changed my mind, the others wouldn’t blame me for dropping you out of the sky.”

Despite his words, Seokjin escorts them down, very gently, until they land back in the yard.

“Hey,” Jeongguk says. “Thanks.”

Seokjin smiles at him warmly. “Any time, Jeongguk.”

“I heard you argued with Seokjin-hyung last week?” Jeongguk asks curiously at breakfast the next morning. He’s waited until everyone else is out of earshot, because he doesn’t want Namjoon to feel like he’s been put on the spot.

Namjoon, frowning at his coffee intently, takes a second to react. When he does, he briefly looks up from his coffee, glances down at it again, then back up. “He told you?”

“Shouldn’t he have?” Jeongguk replies.

“No, nothing like that.” Namjoon shoves his cup aside so vigorously that a little coffee spills over the edge and onto the table; Namjoon sighs, picks up his coffee spoon, and transmorphs it into a silver-coloured dishcloth, which he uses to mop up the coffee. When he transmorphs it back, the spoon is a little misshapen, a little browner than it had been. It’s the first time Jeongguk’s seen Namjoon perform magic other than scrying, and it’s also the first time he’s seen him mess up a spell, and he feels a little shaken by the thought. “I just wasn’t expecting him to bring it up, that’s all.”

“Are you… Okay?” Jeongguk asks, unsure if they’re at a stage in their relationship where it’s even his place to be asking. He feels like they’re all friends, at this point?

“Hm? Oh. No, not really.” He smiles at Jeongguk. “Thank you for asking, though.” The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but not in a mean way; rather, it’s like he’s physically too exhausted to make it reach that far.

“Do you want to talk about it, hyung?” Jeongguk says.

“… Yeah, actually.” Namjoon looks just as surprised to be agreeing as Jeongguk is to be hearing it. “I keep getting these random power surges, these incredibly detailed, specific visions whenever I scry. It’s like my eyes keep suddenly changing to telescopic vision, and it’s giving me a headache.” He waves vaguely at his coffee cup. “Usually I’ll scry in my coffee in the morning and it’ll give me a vague idea of what I’ll be doing during the day, but instead I’m seeing my shopping list I’ll be using in forty years.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fuck knows what I’ll need eight kilos of spinach for. Do you realise how much spinach that is?”

“I’ve… Honestly never thought about it,” Jeongguk says apologetically.

“Neither had I.” Namjoon snorts. “I feel like I know too much about everything every single time I look at a flat surface.” He sighs. “That’s why I argued with Seokjin-hyung, I found out… Something about him, forgot he hadn’t told me himself, and asked him about it. People get weirded out when I do that, understandably, but I thought he was accusing me of spying on him. He wasn’t, it turns out, but we argued about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeongguk says.

“It was just a stupid argument,” Namjoon says.

“No, that you’re feeling worn down,” Jeongguk says. “I guess having your powers amplified by six Soulmates is pretty intense when you’re already pretty powerful, huh?”

Namjoon blinks at him. “I’d forgotten about that. Yeah, I guess so.” He picks up his coffee, brings it to his mouth, and chugs it with his eyes closed. Only when the mug is empty and back on the table does he open his eyes again. “What about you, how’re you holding up?”

Jeongguk laughs. “Hyung, six times zero is still zero, don’t worry about me.”

“You don’t have zero magical ability,” Namjoon says with a frown.

“Oh.” Jeongguk thinks. “I haven’t told you yet, have I?”

“Told me what?”

“I haven’t passed my Mastery exams,” Jeongguk says. “I’ve sent off for the introductory pack, but I’ve never been good enough to pass before now.”

Namjoon squints at him. “I’ve seen you do magic.” Then, he frowns. “No, wait, I actually haven’t? But I’ve heard the others talking about seeing you do magic, so you obviously don’t have zero magical ability.”

“Okay, maybe not none,” Jeongguk acquiesces. “But seriously, not enough that I need to be worried about getting tired out from it.”

“But you’re… Incredibly talented?” Namjoon says.

“What?” Jeongguk laughs again, but even he can hear how strained it is. “Hyung, have you mixed me up with someone else? Jimin-hyung, maybe, or Yoongi-hyung? Anyone else, really?”

“You flew to the High Council Chambers,” Namjoon says, counting on his fingers. “Hoseok told me that you can do healing magic, Taehyung said you performed a Light spell he’s never seen before, Yoongi-hyung said you managed to cast one of his spells really powerfully, and that you’d somehow been using an old Compendium without a translation for years-”

“I flew from the train station to the High Council Chambers, not Busan,” Jeongguk interrupts. “Hoseok-hyung had a tiny cut that he probably could’ve healed himself much quicker, I’m still not one hundred percent sure that was even me casting that Light spell, and I messed up Yoongi-hyung’s spell so badly I turned everything in his room yellow.”

“Most Witches can’t do multiple branches of magic with anywhere near the amount of power you have,” Namjoon says earnestly. “Seriously, Jeongguk, you might not think it, but what you can do is fucking impressive.”

“I… Thanks,” Jeongguk says quietly, cheeks burning at the praise.

“Look what I found!” Taehyung shouts from the front entrance.

Jeongguk, who’s helping Jimin batch-cut potions ingredients (he’s been tasked with dicing up the plum blossom petals from the tree outside, a mind-numbing, painstaking task, considering how tiny the petals are to begin with, but it turns out Jimin has an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop songs, so they’ve been keeping themselves entertained with a litany of hits they’d both grown up listening to on the radio), looks over at Jimin, who shrugs.

“Honestly, it could be anything from a cool rock to an actual live animal,” Jimin says, landing shy of exasperated and right smack into ‘desperately fond’. Since their argument, they’ve seemed to grow impossibly closer; very rarely separated, except when they leave the house for work, they both seem to look for any excuse to touch one another – a hand on the lower back, fingers clasped at dinner, sitting, hip to shoulder, together in the yard to watch the sun set. “We should go see, because Hoseok-hyung’s not going to be happy if it’s anything that could be defined as a creature.”

It's not a creature.

Taehyung peers out from behind the biggest beanbag chair Jeongguk’s ever seen. In fact, it can’t even be called a beanbag chair – almost certainly a beanbag couch, it looks like it could consume Taehyung like magnetic slime if he’s not careful. It’s a pretty hideous shade of mint green, and Taehyung’s grinning at them like he’s just brought home gold.

“Did you… Find that in the trash street?” Jimin asks, referring, unaffectionately, to the road down the hill that’s filled with everyone’s garbage from yesteryear.

“No!” Taehyung says. He pauses, tilting his head – the action means he lays his head on the beanbag couch. “Kind of? Somebody that lives on that street was about to toss it out, and I said we’d take it. So it’s not actually touched the street!”

“Small mercies,” Jimin mutters to Jeongguk.

“Is that for upstairs?” Jeongguk says at normal volume.

“Yeah, I’m getting sick of sitting on the cold floor every time I go up there.” Taehyung shifts the couch in his arms. “Can I get some help getting this upstairs? It’s not that heavy, but I can’t really see where I’m going.”

Jeongguk hurries over to help. Taehyung’s right, the beans don’t make for a heavy piece of furniture, but it’s surprisingly difficult to keep hold of – the beans keep shifting around wildly, so he has to clutch at the beanbag, tight, as they take it upstairs.

There’s still a lot of space to fill in the upstairs room, enough that even dumping the couch right in the middle of the room doesn’t do a lot to make it look less empty, but the atrocious mint colour works surprisingly well against the dark wood of the floor.

“With this couch and the woods, it looks like we’re interior designing based on ice cream flavours,” Jimin says. He sits down on the couch, and immediately sinks down in the middle of it, both sides rising up on either side of him and holding him in place like he’s a singular egg in a carton. He looks down at himself with a frown, then up at Jeongguk and Taehyung. “Help?”

“Sorry, I think you just live there now,” Taehyung says solemnly.

Jimin holds his hands out and wiggles them until Jeongguk takes hold and pulls him up. Once Jimin is extracted from the bean couch, the three of them look down at it.

“We should tell the others not to sit on this on their own,” Jeongguk says. “Unless they enjoy getting captured by a bean couch, I guess.”

“We could,” Jimin says slowly. “Or we could… Not.”

“I’m sure they’d learn pretty quickly,” Taehyung agrees.

Somebody rings their front doorbell.

Namjoon looks around the breakfast table; judging by the little bob of his head, he’s counting them. “Are we… Expecting anyone?”

They all shake their heads, then Seokjin says, “Jeongguk, weren’t you expecting a package from the High Council?”

Jeongguk frowns; then, eyes wide, he scrambles up from his chair and runs to the door.

Sure enough, the postperson is waiting for him with a dark teal box. It’s clearly emblazoned with the High Council’s Education Department crest in embossed silver; the postperson looks down at the box, then up at Jeongguk.

“You look a little young to have a kid taking their practice exams!” They say cheerfully, handing over the box.

Jeongguk smiles, and hopes it’s not as strained-looking as it feels on his face, pulling up the corners of his mouth like marionette strings. “It’s for me, actually.”

The postperson blinks at him for a moment, then smiles widely. “Well, that’s fantastic! Good for you.”

Jeongguk smiles again, takes the parcel, thanks them, and waits until he’s watched them disappear down the hill before sighing in frustration. He’d gotten used to the surprised, then sympathetic, looks he’d get from people when he told them he hadn’t passed his Mastery exams, but his Soulmates have taken the news so nonchalantly that this person’s surprise hits him more than it used to.

He takes a moment to compose himself, then heads back to the kitchen.

The others are in varying states of nonchalance – Seokjin is washing the dishes very slowly by hand; Yoongi is making a shopping list, but Jeongguk can see that he’s not actually written anything down; Hoseok is reading one of his teal-paged reports for work, but is still on the first title page; Namjoon is pretending to scry in his empty coffee cup; Jimin has his head tilted back as he pretends to doze, but Jeongguk can see he has one eye cracked open to watch the door. Only Taehyung isn’t attempting any subterfuge – he’s watching the kitchen door outwardly, and so is the first to say, “Show us, show us, show us!”

The others immediately drop their pretences once Jeongguk agrees, sitting back down around the table as he drops the box with a thud that shakes said table on its legs.

“I do not remember my practice materials sounding like that,” Seokjin says. “What’ve you got in there, bricks?”

“There should be…” Jeongguk carefully opens the box, and the cardboard creaks and scrapes against itself as he lifts the lid. “… one theory textbook, on general magic usage,” he lifts the book out and drops it on the table – Namjoon immediately swoops in to pull it in for a closer look. “One on Compendium magic, specifically.” That one goes to Yoongi, who picks it up and leans back comfortably in his chair to read it. “The last twenty years’ worth of practice theory exams, which are going to test me on those two textbooks, apparently.” He pulls out a thick wodge of practice papers – no one picks those up, which he can’t exactly blame them for. “Guidelines for the practical exam, and mark schemes for both exams.” He pulls out two pieces of paper, which Jimin picks up immediately.

“That’s it?” He says, flicking each piece of paper over, back and forth, as though expecting to find more.

“What do you mean, that’s it?” Hoseok says with a laugh. “Poor Jeongguk’s got enough study materials to last him a lifetime!”

“For the Potions Mastery exam, we got sent a list of specific potions we’d need to brew on the day, so we knew what potions we’d be tested on, what ingredients and tools to bring, and we had time to practice. They always set at least one nasty potion, and my year it was Lavender Hazy Sleep, which would’ve made me fail the whole exam if I hadn’t had months to practice it and learn that most almanacs show or describe the potion as purple because they’re secretly adding butterfly pea flowers to get a more marketable colour, not the colour I had, which Taehyung described as-”

“Lavender piss,” Taehyung says helpfully. “It still worked – I slept so well during Jimin’s revision – but it was the wrong colour.”

“And we get marked on colour! Don’t even get me started on that, by the way, colour doesn’t even matter for most potions-”

“That’s the amount of information I got for my practical exam,” Yoongi interrupts, pointing to the card Jimin is still waving about emphatically. “Just, We’ll give you half an hour and a list of prompts you have to complete. There’s a lot of prompts, I think you have to cast ten spells in thirty minutes in order to not get immediately disqualified.”

Jeongguk feels his stomach lurch. Ten spells? At least one spell every three minutes? And that’s just so he doesn’t immediately get disqualified, most Witches who pass would be able to cast much, much more.

“What sort of prompt?” Namjoon asks curiously. “There’s such a huge range in Compendiums, I’m surprised they don’t give you guidance closer to Jimin’s.”

Yoongi nods. “The prompts have to be pretty vague, yeah. They usually focus on the same few branches of magic – you know, your transmorph this object we have given you into something that can fly, conjure up an object you have at home, cast an illusion of something alive.”

“The lack of structure would drive me crazy,” Jimin says, shaking his head. “What about the rest of you?”

“I walked in, they called out weather patterns, I showed them those weather patterns.” Seokjin shrugs. “There’s really only so much weather, you know? And even then they didn’t ask for anything too intense, I didn’t even need to demonstrate sleet before they told me I’d passed with flying colours.”

“They sent me two lists,” Taehyung says. “One of light colours, one of light intensities, and told me I could do whatever I liked, as long as I hit all of those metrics in my performance. It was pretty fun, actually, I wrote and performed a shadow puppet show about an alien who leaves home to defend the universe.”

Silence falls over the table at that, and Jeongguk catches the expressions of the others – like him, they keep sneaking fond glances at Taehyung.

“It still isn’t a lot of guidance to give you,” Jimin says with a frown at the leaflet. Suddenly, he smiles; it’s such bright, unexpected beam that Jeongguk almost misses what he says next. “We can help you study!”

“Oh!” Jeongguk shakes his head. “That’s so kind of you, hyung, but you don’t need to go out of your way-”

“You’ve helped all of us with our projects at one point or another,” Jimin insists. “You’ve been in and out of my lab, helping me chop up ingredients, and I can guarantee the others will say you’ve helped them, and you’ve helped at pretty much every stage of making this house nicer to live in, right?” Jeongguk nods reluctantly. “Then let us help you with this, it’s clearly important to you.”

With the force of six expectant gazes on him, Jeongguk can’t help but agree.

Jeongguk’s not sure whether he needs to tell everyone when he’s planning to study, but he doesn’t want everyone to feel obligated to help every time he’s studying. However, the others had been adamant that they wanted to help, and he doesn’t want them to think he’s not grateful for their offer.

He decides to take a middle road. He won’t outright tell his hyungs he wants to spend the day revising today, but he’ll take his books upstairs, rather than study in the privacy of his room. That way, if someone happens upon him, and they want to help? They’re more than welcome to do so.

Admittedly, he’s chosen a time to go upstairs when no one’s likely to see him go up there. Everyone’s doors are shut, meaning they’re either asleep, not in there, or working, and he can’t hear anyone else pottering around the house.

That changes, though, on his way back downstairs to get his second pile of books – there’s a crash, a muffled yelp, then a quiet laugh, followed by a repeated, muted slapping noise. It almost sounds like…

Jeongguk can feel his face get hot as he freezes on the staircase. It makes sense – his hyungs are all hot, and romantic and sexual relationships between Soulmates are so common that there are entire romantic subgenres about it in film and books. But who is it?

He almost wants to laugh when he realises he can’t narrow it down, that it really could be any combination of his Soulmates in there, but the laughter disappears almost immediately when he realises that the noises are coming from the bathroom closest to the stairs, the one that he absolutely has to walk past to get back to his room.

Trying to sneak down the rest of the stairs as quietly as possible, down the hallway, past the door, he thinks he’s gotten away with it until the bathroom door flies open.

“… See how you – Jeongguk!” Hoseok grins at him. Through the now open door, Jeongguk can see Yoongi sitting on the edge of the wooden bath, still laughing. They’re both fully clothed, but that means nothing, and Jeongguk needs to stop thinking about them like that when they’re both looking at him curiously, like they’re waiting for him to say something-

“I didn’t hear anything!” He blurts out.

“O…kay?” Hoseok says slowly, glancing over his shoulder at Yoongi. Yoongi’s still looking at Jeongguk consideringly – suddenly, he smirks.

“Did you think we were hooking up?”

“No! I mean, maybe?”

Hoseok laughs so loudly and bodily that he has to grip the doorframe to hold himself upright. Yoongi’s still grinning at Jeongguk, but his eyes keep slipping in Hoseok’s direction.

“I dropped one of the new bathroom tiles,” Hoseok explains once his laughter has subdued to intermittent giggles. “And it made me jump! It didn’t shatter or anything, but I wasn’t expecting it to make as much noise as it did, and hyung laughed at me, so I smacked his arm to get him to shut up.”

“You looked like a startled squirrel,” Yoongi says. “Be honest, if there was a tree nearby, would you have climbed it to get away?”

“No, because we’ve got the tree in the yard, and I’ve never wanted to climb that even once,” Hoseok says triumphantly. He turns to look at Jeongguk again and claps his hands on Jeongguk’s shoulders. “Poor Jeongguk, though, trying to politely let us get on with our hot bathroom sex.”

“No, it’s fine!” Jeongguk squeaks; he coughs. “It’s fine,” he says, much more normally. “If you want to have sex with each other, that’s cool with me.”

“Noted,” Yoongi says with a knowing grin in Jeongguk’s direction. Suddenly, he frowns. “I don’t think I’d like bathroom sex with anyone, though. Sorry, Hoseok.”

“How come?” Hoseok asks curiously, as though they’re discussing Yoongi’s breakfast preferences, and not how he likes to have sex.

“Anything you can do in a bathroom, you can do much more comfortably in a bedroom, and you don’t need to worry about slipping,” Yoongi points out. He seems to remember that they’d been in the middle of a job – he hops down off the edge, picks one of the tiles up off of the pile, then crouches down under the sink. Jeongguk watches, fascinated, as he raps a spell over the tile, lines it up with the wall, then presses the tile against the pedestal – the tile smooths down, moulding perfectly to the curve of the pedestal.

“But the bathroom is hot – literally!” Hoseok says, reminding Jeongguk that they’re still in the middle of a conversation about how they prefer to have sex. Are they flirting with each other? Should he even still be here?

He makes his excuses and tries to flee as slowly and naturally as he can. He’s not really in the mood to study at the moment, so he goes into the yard instead – the sand needs raking, compacted into undulating, hard lumps after a few days of them walking over it, so he grabs the rake from where it’s been propped up against the plum tree and gets to work.

The plum tree is in the height of its blossom – odd, because the plum trees by Jeongguk’s house growing up had usually shed most, if not all, of their blossom by now. It’s magic, obviously, but why? Who would cast a spell on a tree to make it stay in blossom for peculiarly too long?

At least it means he doesn’t need to work to separate fallen petals from the sand just yet, and raking the sand only takes him a few minutes. It’s enough time, however, for Jimin and Namjoon to appear out of their rooms – Namjoon leans against one of the screen frames and Jimin sits on the wooden floor, letting his legs dangle out into the yard.

“Good morning, Jeongguk,” Namjoon says when Jeongguk sets the rake back against the tree’s old bark. “You look like you’ve had a productive morning.”

“Honestly, I just don’t really want to start revising,” Jeongguk says, looking in the vague direction of the upstairs room.

“In that case, you should come with us!” Namjoon says with a smile. “Jimin’s doing some ingredient picking, and I said I’d come along if we could stop by the antique store on the way back.”

“You probably should study,” Jimin says. Then he shrugs. “But sometimes going out for a walk is the best way to get in the mood to study.”

Jeongguk’s first, immediate thought is to say no – that Namjoon and Jimin had planned to go out together, to spend time with one another, and he shouldn’t intrude. But they’d specifically invited him, both of them, so he nods.

“We were going to go now, before breakfast – something about needing damp forsythia?” Namjoon says, unsure, to Jimin.

“It needs to be dew-soaked when I pick it,” Jimin says with a laugh that makes his eyes scrunch up. “I’m not sure I like the word damp, hyung!”

“I just knew it needed to be wet for some reason,” Namjoon says with a wry grin at Jeongguk.

“Why does it need to be… Dew-soaked?” Jeongguk asks as they leave the house. He’s been out a few times in the last month, but it’s always been for grocery shopping. He keeps meaning to explore more of the paths around the house, maybe make his way up the nearest mountain to get a better view of their surroundings, but he’s been so busy that he keeps putting it off.

“I need forsythia for a Calming Potion commission,” Jimin explains, turning right out of the gate and leading them up the hill, towards the mountains – maybe Jeongguk will get to do his mountain trip sooner than he’d thought. “And it’s at its freshest when it’s still got dew on it – some sellers will try to cheat and just mist it with tap water before they sell it to you, so it’s just easier for me to pick it myself.”

It doesn’t seem easier, at least to Jeongguk. The mountain Jimin starts to lead them up isn’t even their final destination – cutting through the mountain park that casts shadows over their house at certain times of the day, they end up coming through on the other side of the park and heading close to the Han before Jimin points at the silhouette of yet another mountain.

“Eungbongsan,” Jimin says. “This time of year, it’ll be covered in forsythia.”

“Are you allowed to just… Pick it?” Jeongguk says dubiously.

Jimin nods. “Potion Witch privilege. We pay higher taxes to the High Council than either of you would, but we can help ourselves to anything that we can use as ingredients, provided it’s not on private property. We could help ourselves to the flowers during flower festivals, too, but that’d be a dick move, so we generally don’t do that. Take only what you need, you know?”

Sure enough, as they approach the mountain by following the Han, Jeongguk can see it take on a yellower and yellower tinge, and it’s not long before they’re starting along the path up the mountain, yellow flowers on either side of them.

“Not these,” Jimin says with a dismissive sniff. “Everybody picks these.”

He doesn’t even start considering to pick anything until they’re a good way up the mountain, and he doesn’t actually start to pick until they’re almost at the top. Jimin hands Namjoon a basket, which he takes without question, and hands Jeongguk a pair of gloves.

“Because I know you don’t have yours,” Jimin says with a good-natured eyeroll. “Don’t worry, I only carry spares that’re hypoallergenic now, just in case.”

“In my defence,” Jeongguk says, pulling the gloves on. “I wasn’t planning to do anything that needed gloves today, it’s not like I need protective gear to turn pages. My highlighter pen isn’t going to poison me any time soon.”

“Don’t be glib with me, young man,” Jimin teases. “Hold this branch for me.” The branch in question is thicker than most, almost as thick as one of Jeongguk’s fingers, and the flowers coming off of it are a deep, buttery yellow. Jeongguk holds it carefully apart from the rest of the forsythia, and Jimin starts pulling different sizes of pruning shears off his toolbelt.

“You say young man like you’re not only 28 yourself,” Namjoon points out with a laugh.

“I’m ancient, if you listen to my uncles,” Jimin says, putting on a low, gruff voice. “28, and no Soulmate? You should get out of the potion lab and meet some people!” He rolls his eyes.

“That’s not even how Soulmates work,” Jeongguk says with a frown. “You’ve got to be assigned them by the High Council.”

“Ah, there’re so many old superstitions, you know? If you get out more, you’re more likely to meet your Soulmate naturally! If you make a name for yourself, the High Council will send out your invitation sooner!” Jimin finally pulls a pair of shears off his belt that meet whatever criteria he’s looking for and snips the branch off the bush cleanly; he drops the branch into the basket Namjoon’s holding. “Ridiculous.”

“Can you even imagine us all trying to meet naturally?” Namjoon says incredulously. “It would’ve taken an amazing stroke of luck to get us all in the same place otherwise.”

Jimin snips a few more branches away, then holds one up thoughtfully. “You know, I’m surprised you managed to make a broomstick with these, Jeongguk.”

“Huh?” Jeongguk says, eloquently. “How do you know what my broomstick’s made of?”

“I’ve… Seen your broomstick before?” Jimin says. “We’ve lived together for a month. Also, I remember seeing you on the train, doing your broom maintenance. I thought they were fake forsythia branches, but they’re not, are they? They’re real.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, it’s real forsythia!” He dutifully holds the next branch in place. “It used to be plastic bristles.”

“How do you get the forsythia to stay alive?” Namjoon asks curiously. “I mean, I know Garden Witches have soil graft cubes that mean they can grow plants out of anywhere and anything, but they’re usually pretty big, and I’d imagine that’d disrupt the flight path of your broom pretty wildly…”

“I just found a sticking spell in my Compendium,” Jeongguk says. He’d been so pleased, at the time – the spell had only been a few lines long, so he’d carefully read it over the pile of twigs he’d assembled into a broom head at the end of his broomstick, and he’d carefully guided it all into place with his wand. Then he’d seen all the flowers that came out of it, and he’d felt downtrodden, convinced he’d gotten it wrong again… But now that he thinks about it, it’s pretty cool, how long the forsythia’s managed to stay alive for.

Jimin’s not cut through the next branch Jeongguk’s holding for him, so he looks up to check if Jimin wants him to move it; Jimin is looking right at him. When their eyes meet, Jimin huffs a laugh through his nose. “What?”

“You’re just not what I expected,” Jimin says, shaking his head in disbelief.

Jeongguk’s got the basket of forsythia as Namjoon leads them towards the antique shop he had in mind. Jeongguk had, admittedly, thought he meant a regular antique shop, maybe to pick up some new furniture for their still almost completely empty upstairs room, but Namjoon instead leads them down an underpass, opens up one of the doors that Jeongguk’s walked past hundreds, if not thousands of times without so much as a thought, and gestures for them to step inside.

“I didn’t take you for an underground shopper, Kim Namjoon!” Jimin says delightedly as Namjoon holds the door open for them.

“Underground?” Jeongguk says. He steps through into what looks like any other shopping street, except for the fact that it’s being lit with streetlamps with perfectly circular orange lamps on the top of them, not the mid-morning daylight. It gives the whole street an eerie, late-winter vibe, the sort of light that usually accompanies deep snow.

“Some Witches prefer to only do business with other Witches,” Namjoon explains. “I don’t, but that’s because I’m a Scryer, I could imagine I’d feel differently if I was trying to sell potions ingredients, or if I was running a broomstick carpentry business.”

It makes sense – Jeongguk’s heard the stories about non-magical people who’ve gotten their hands on magical equipment and tried to use it, only to accidentally cause destruction. Jeongguk’s family had always ordered their supplies online, so he’s never really thought about how other Witches would go about buying things in person.

“So why wouldn’t hyung be an underground shopper?” Jeongguk asks Jimin.

However, it’s Namjoon that answers, with, “There can be some… Questionable shops down here.”

“Fully illegal,” Jimin chimes in cheerfully.

“Not illegal,” Namjoon says hastily when Jeongguk turns to look at him in alarm. “Well, I mean, it’s not like I’d know if some shops down here do have illegal side hustles, I’m just down here for the magical antique stores. One time, I found this really beautiful frosted glass cylinder that, when I scried in it, the cylinder would play out visions like a side scrolling video game.”

“That’s pretty cool,” Jeongguk says. “Do you still have it?”

Namjoon shakes his head. “There’s only so much use that sort of scrying has, you know? Most of life don’t play out like you’re sitting in the passenger seat of a car, so I’m sort of limited in what I can see like that.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Jeongguk says. “It sounds like fun, though.”

“Yeah, it was,” Namjoon says, pointing them in the direction of the store he wants to go to. “I briefly entertained the idea of writing a paper on it – why certain surfaces produced differently angled visions, whereas if you look into a crystal ball you see the angle you’re expecting to see, but I just never got around to it.”

The antique shop looks like any regular antique shop, at least the ones Jeongguk’s seen in movies – tables of knickknacks ranging from well-loved curiosities to just straight up garbage, outdated furniture and electronics, old magical textbooks that don’t have the prestige of being traditional, just outdated. Jimin gravitates towards a pair of weighing scales that look much more impractical than the digital set Jeongguk knows he owns, while Namjoon immediately heads towards the person at the counter.

Jeongguk meanders around the shop while he waits. There isn’t anything he wants or needs, so he amuses himself with looking at the old technology, the sorts that haven’t yet come back into fashion as vintage – portable CD players just too big to fit into pockets, laptops so bulky they could probably be used as paving slabs, even an old, square television with a built in VHS player.

“That could be fun for upstairs,” Jimin says suddenly, making Jeongguk jump. He taps the screen with his fingernail. “Look at that, I haven’t seen a TV screen that curved since I was a kid.”

“I think we’d need to be a Technology Witch to run Netflix on this old thing,” Jeongguk laughs.

“We don’t need Netflix,” Jimin says, heading over to the counter, where the cashier is bagging something up for Namjoon. “Excuse me, do you have any VHS tapes you’d be willing to sell with that television?”

“Yes!” They reply, a little too eagerly. “I’ll be honest, I never thought we’d sell them.” They lean a little over the counter, conspiratorial. “Between us, the owner’s wife is non-magical, so whenever she wants to throw things out my boss just puts their junk in here, rather than make a trip to a Waste Disposal Witch or something.” They wave their hand vaguely at the room at large. “No Witches are interested in most of this crap, except for Technology Witches and eccentrics-” They gasp. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

“You’re good,” Jimin says. “Just point us in the direction of the VHS tapes, would you?” They nod mutely and point towards a table towards the back of the room, stacked with plastic boxes packed to the brim with VHS tapes, CDs, and cassette tapes. “Jeongguk, can you go grab some movies that look interesting while I grab the television?”

The sheer number of tapes on offer makes it look like he’ll be spoilt for choice, but in actuality Jeongguk can kind of see why nobody, Witch or not, wants to buy these films. One tape out of what looks like a boxset for a sitcom he’s never seen, a sequel to an American movie he’s never even heard of, and dozens of dozens of sketchy-looking films with covers that look like they’ve been made up with the shittiest jpegs available on the internet. There’re a couple of action thrillers that don’t look like the worst things imaginable, and a few romcoms about Soulmates that Jeongguk remembers watching and enjoying when he was a teenager, so he makes up a small pile and takes them to the counter.

“…so strong, hyung,” Jimin is saying to Namjoon as Jeongguk approaches, squeezing Namjoon’s bicep.

“Jimin, you absolutely could’ve lifted this television yourself,” Namjoon says, not looking too put out by the attention. They both look like they’re in their own little world, as a matter of fact, and normally Jeongguk wouldn’t think twice about his Soulmates building their relationships with one another, but this is the second time it’s happened just this morning. Once is a coincidence, twice is…

Jeongguk frowns. Once can’t be a coincidence, surely, once must be just a thing that’s happened. Maybe twice is a coincidence? Who even said that? It doesn’t feel like a coincidence, it kind of feels like his Soulmates are taking their relationships to different levels without him, which doesn’t feel great. Then he feels bad on top of that, because it’s not like any of these people owe him anything in this Soulmateship, and he knows he’s being irrational, which just makes the bad feeling worse-

“Jeongguk?” Namjoon calls out to him; Jeongguk startles. “You all right there? You looked like you’d zoned out for a bit.”

“Coming, hyung,” Jeongguk says, adjusting the tapes in his arms as he brings them to the counter.

The last straw on the camel’s back, as it were, comes almost as soon as they get back home. Namjoon’s taking his delivery, a six-foot tall mirror with mirror rot that he wants to experiment scrying with, and Jimin’s basket of forsythia back to their rooms; Jimin, showing that he absolutely could lift the television by himself, is taking the television upstairs. Jeongguk goes into the kitchen, and finds Seokjin making lunch.

More accurately, he finds Seokjin feeding Taehyung, who’s sitting on the counter, a mouthful of food.

“’S good, hyung!” Taehyung says, his mouth still full of food.

“Swallow it, first,” Seokjin laughs, taking his hand away from where he’s cupped it under Taehyung’s chin. “Does it need anything else?”

“Nope!” Taehyung says. “I can tell you’ve put love into it, that’s all it needs.”

“This dakgalbi has enough cheese in it, you don’t need to be cheesy on top of it,” Seokjin complains, but Jeongguk can see just how pink the backs of his ears have turned.

When Seokjin moves away to take the pan off the heat, which puts Jeongguk right in Taehyung’s line of sight; Taehyung beams at him. “Ah, you’re back! Did Jimin take you forsythia picking?”

Jeongguk nods. “Then Namjoon-hyung needed to pick up a package.”

“Productive morning,” Seokjin says, looking over his shoulder. “I’ve just finished making lunch-”

“We’ve just finished making lunch,” Taehyung interjects.

“Right, yes, can’t forget your helpful contributions of sitting on the counter and telling me to cut the chicken into ‘interesting shapes’,” Seokjin says. “Did you want any, Jeongguk?”

“If you don’t mind?” Jeongguk replies.

“Not at all! I’ve made enough for everyone.” Seokjin starts pulling bowls out of the cupboard. “Can you go ask the others?”

Namjoon and Jimin are easy enough to find – Namjoon is still in his room, Jimin is still upstairs – but Hoseok and Yoongi take some searching. Jeongguk has a quiet, alarmed thought that gets louder as he searches more and more rooms that maybe this time will be the time he finds them in an actually compromising position, maybe his assumption this morning has prompted them to realise-

He finds them out the back of the house. Jeongguk doesn’t spend much time here at all, so it’s the last place he’s checked – to get out here you either have walk around the edge of the house, hacking through the overgrown weeds they haven’t gotten around to clearing yet, or hop over the fence surrounding the house, and still end up needing to clamber through weeds anyway. Hoseok is standing with his hands on his hips, squinting up at the underside of the roof, while Yoongi is up on a stepladder, poking at something with a stick.

“Um,” Jeongguk says, not really wanting to interrupt them, but also not wanting to go back to Seokjin to tell him that he hadn’t passed the message on. “Seokjin-hyung’s made lunch?”

“Is it that time already?” Yoongi says, giving whatever he’s looking at another poke. “We’ll be right in.”

“Jeongguk, come check this out, Yoongi-hyung found the thing that’s spitting that weird ash into the house!” Hoseok says.

“That’s still happening?” Jeongguk says, crunching his way through the long grass. “Why haven’t either of you said anything?”

Yoongi looks down at him, briefly, to share a commiserating grin. “That’s what I said.”

“Seokjin-hyung’s been using his magic to blow it clean each morning, and I’ve been using an equally powerful dustpan and brush,” Hoseok says. “It takes five minutes, tops.”

“Five minutes a day that you don’t need to be spending cleaning,” Yoongi says. “Honestly, I thought it was dust, and the fact that you both stopped mentioning it basically confirmed my suspicions. If either of you had said-”

“Then you would’ve suggested coming out here to check for leftover magic, yes, yes, hyung, you gave me this lecture earlier, you don’t need to re-give it just for Jeongguk’s entertainment,” Hoseok says with an eyeroll. “Anyway, hyung thinks the previous occupants, as part of their continuous magical warfare against one another, left that.” He points up. The that in question, placed almost exactly between Hoseok and Seokjin’s windows, looks like a beehive, except it’s smoky grey and every time Yoongi pokes it, it emits a little belch of soot. “I kind of just assumed that the reason why I haven’t been able to shut my window since we got here is because it’d rusted into place or something, but now I think somebody’s magicked it open.”

“So… What is it?” Jeongguk asks.

“It looks like a localised dust cloud, which makes me think one of the Witches who lived here was a Weather Witch, like Seokjin-hyung,” Yoongi says, giving it another poke. “I’m going to knock it off the wall and give it to hyung to look-” He yelps as the cloud bursts, covering himself and Hoseok, and lightly dusting Jeongguk, in ash.

“I mean, that’s one way to solve my problem, I guess,” Hoseok splutters out, trying to wipe his face clean but just smearing more dust around. “Remind me not to get into waste disposal with you, hyung, if your plan is ‘poke it till it bursts’.”

“I was trying to knock it off the wall,” Yoongi insists, coming down off the ladder. “Come on, let’s go tell hyung we might be a little late to lunch.”

By the time they’ve pushed their way through the long grass, back into the house and into the kitchen, everyone else is sitting at the table, bowls of dakgalbi in front of them.

“There you are, I-” Seokjin stares at them. “Jeongguk, where did you even find them, up a chimney? Do we even have a chimney?” The other three turn to look at them with varying degrees of concern, from Namjoon’s outright alarm to Jimin very clearly trying to hold back a laugh at the state of them.

“We solved your never ending soot room,” Yoongi says. “It looked like a tiny dust cloud – I was trying to take it off the wall to show you, but-”

“He popped it like the world’s worst balloon,” Hoseok says.

“All right, come on, in the yard, we’ll get you clean,” Seokjin says, standing up.

“We can just shower, it’s fine-” Yoongi protests.

“It’ll be quicker my way,” Seokjin insists.

It’s rather like how Jeongguk’s imagines walking through a car wash would be. First, Seokjin barrages them with carefully angled gusts of wind, positioned so that he doesn’t blow the sand in their yard around but can still get most of the dust off of them and scoop them up into his own little dust clouds.

“I was right,” Yoongi says when he catches sight of one of them, scrunching up his face when Seokjin whips wind through his hair.

Next, for the more persistent streaks of dust on their skin and clothing, Seokjin douses them in rain, before blow drying them with even more wind. By the time he’s done, Jeongguk feels like he’s emerged on the other side of the weirdest storm he’s ever been in, and he hadn’t even been that dusty.

“You should open a salon,” Yoongi says, trying to smooth his hair back off of his face. Both he and Hoseok look like they’ve been dragged through multiple hedges, but at least they’re not dusty anymore.

After lunch, Jeongguk goes upstairs – ostensibly to study, but in reality he’s just staring, unseeing, at his theory textbook. He’s booked his Mastery exam for the end of May, and just thinking about how much he needs to study in just under two months is enough to make his head spin, but instead he’s sitting here, trying to remind himself that he’s not a perpetual third wheel. There have been so many days when he’s hung out with the others one on one! Not to mention that third wheeling doesn’t even mean anything in a Soulmateship of seven, it’s just a holdover from all of the bad romance movies he watched where the most special, romantic relationship was between two people, despite the fact that Witches have been having romantic relationships with more than two people in them for longer than movies have even existed-

“Jeongguk?” Jeongguk looks up from his textbook that he hadn’t really been looking at. Namjoon’s standing at the top of the stairs, looking over at him with concern. “You all right? You barely spoke at lunch.” His gaze moves to the textbook open in Jeongguk’s lap – he’s got so many study materials that he’s sitting on the floor in the midst of them. “Are you stressed out about your exam?”

“No,” Jeongguk says. Namjoon raises an eyebrow. “Well, yes, but that’s not… I’m just letting some insecurities get to me, hyung, don’t worry about me, it’ll pass.”

“You know the best way to make insecurities pass?” Namjoon says, coming over and sitting, cross-legged, next to him on the floor. “Talk them out.”

“They’re so silly, hyung…” Jeongguk says evasively, rolling his eyes at himself.

“Maybe,” Namjoon says. “Or maybe the same voice that’s telling you these insecurities is the same one telling you that they’re too silly to talk about.”

“I just… Feel like an afterthought, sometimes. Here, I mean.” Namjoon raises his eyebrows high – whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t that. “Not all the time! That’s why it’s silly, it’s just sometimes I see how well you all get on with each other now, and then I feel like I’m intruding, even though you literally invite me to join you-”

“Is this in general, or about today, specifically?” Namjoon asks.

“I used to feel it more often,” Jeongguk admits. “Like, I used to wonder what I even contributed to this Soulmateship, because of the whole, you know, not being very good at magic thing. I know I didn’t need to think like that now,” he adds quickly, because Namjoon looks set to argue. “But that’s how I felt at the time. And I know that you all hang out with each other, that’s just how Soulmateships – how friendships – work, and I swear it doesn’t normally bother me, or even register, hyung, but today was – it just kept happening. Like a bit in a comedy, except I wasn’t really finding it funny.”

“You said it was silly,” Namjoon says consideringly. “Does that mean you know we aren’t doing it to hurt you?”

Jeongguk nods emphatically. “Hyung, I know you’re not even doing it at all! I’m probably just stressed and oversensitive because of this exam, but even on the day we all first met I thought you were all hot and interesting, and I was just me, the guy nobody was going to pick.” Namjoon stares at him, mouth slightly agape. “I’m just saying,” Jeongguk barrels on, with seemingly no thought about how he’s providing himself with anxiety dream fuel to last for the rest of his life. “I thought you were so cool when I first saw you, and I acted like an idiot.”

“That’s…” Namjoon coughs. “That’s not how I remember it.” He looks around, a little frantically; his eyes come to rest on the window, so he scrambles up and over to the window, then beckons Jeongguk over. Once Jeongguk’s standing next to him, Namjoon fogs the glass up with his breath, pulls his sleeve down over the heel of his hand, and then wipes at it vigorously.

The window doesn’t show the house next door anymore, but the Greenhouse of the High Council’s Chambers. “I didn’t know you could do this,” Jeongguk whispers, watching somebody filling up their basket with strawberries. His suspicions of whose eyes he’s looking through are confirmed when he hears Yoongi muttering through the window, the sounds of his words indistinct, garbled.

“Scrying is just making a window into something,” Namjoon explains as, through the window, they watch Namjoon’s memory of the Greenhouse. “Obviously most of us are taught to look into the future, because that’s what most people are interested in, that’s what’s marketable, but we can look backwards, sideways, even into the figments of imagination, if we wanted.” That’s a sentence Jeongguk is keen to explore, but he’s distracted by the sight of himself. He’s crouched over the baskets, neatening them up, and Namjoon’s approaching him, slowly at first, then faster, until he’s standing almost right behind Jeongguk.

Jeongguk watches, fascinates, as the Jeongguk in this memory stands up and turns around. Jeongguk, for his part, remembers stuttering, blushing, barely able to get his words out, but that’s not what Namjoon shows him. The Jeongguk in the window looks up, eyes wide and startled as Namjoon steadies him. “Oh,” he says. He bites his lip. Jeongguk does not remember doing that. “Wow.”

“Hi,” Namjoon says in the window.

“I was so nervous,” Namjoon says next to him. “My palms were so sweaty, I was afraid you were going to shake my hand.”

The Jeongguk in the window looks much calmer, but a lot more doe-eyed than Jeongguk ever remembers being. When Jeongguk points this out to Namjoon, he laughs. “Yeah, I showed Yoongi-hyung this memory, and he said I was misremembering things, that I was looking back on it with rose-tinted glasses.” He smiles at Jeongguk. “What probably happened was something close to the midpoint between what both of us remember. My point is that you made an impression, Jeongguk, you weren’t ever the ‘guy no one picked’.” He wipes his sleeve over the window and, just like that, the memory dissipates. “I know you said you knew it was ridiculous, but I don’t really think it’s fair to yourself to belittle how you’re feeling.” He claps his hand on Jeongguk’s shoulder. “Just talk to us, and I can guarantee we’ll all remind you that we’re all choosing you, too, just like you’re choosing us.”

Jeongguk finally manages to settle into something resembling a study routine. He doesn’t like to leave all of his books upstairs in the communal space, despite the fact that everyone’s said they’re more than happy for him to leave his stuff up there, so every morning he takes it all upstairs, spends an hour going over the theory book (which, he’s surprised and pleased to learn, he knows more about than he’d initially expected), then two hours for his practical exam (which he’s less comfortable with, but he’s hoping that consistent practice will make him better).

After a week of daily study, Jeongguk’s starting to get a little bitter over how big his theory textbook is, and how little of it actually applies to him. So much of the textbook is devoted to theory applicable to other types of magic, with several chapters dedicated to schools of magic so ancient, Jeongguk’s pretty sure literally nobody practices them anymore – although if an Abacus Numerology Witch wants to prove him wrong, they’re more than welcome to. However, even though the textbook only has a small portion that’s actually relevant to him, Jeongguk’s reluctant to go chopping up a book, even if it does belong to him. So, when he takes his study materials upstairs, he has to balance his workbooks on the top of the textbook in a teetering pile he can only just see over the top of and carefully make his way upstairs.

“Ah.” Jeongguk almost drops his books in alarm, but manages to keep hold of them and shuffle around until he can see who’s just spoken to him. “Come sit next to your hyung.”

Seokjin is sitting on – practically in – the bean couch. He’s more sunken in than Jimin had been on the day they’d helped Taehyung drag it upstairs, as though Seokjin’s tried to wriggle free and gotten himself even more wedged.

Jeongguk hums. “No, it’s all right, I think I’ll sit on the floor,” he says. “More room to spread my study books out, you know?”

“Uh huh, uh huh,” Seokjin says. “But if you sit next to me, I can help you study.”

“You could help me study from there as I sit on the floor,” Jeongguk points out, trying not to smirk when Seokjin sighs so violently that it makes his lips splutter.

“Jeongguk, I’ve been trapped here for ten minutes, please help me.”

“Oh, well, why didn’t you just say so?” Jeongguk replies gleefully, setting his books down on the floor.

“Because it was embarrassing to tell anyone that I’d been kidnapped by a couch?” Seokjin says. Jeongguk drops down next to him violently enough to send him bouncing a few inches into the air as the beans redistribute. Once they’ve settled, Seokjin pats him on the thigh a few times, then stands up, leaving Jeongguk to sink into the couch.

“Hyung,” Jeongguk says indignantly, scowling up at Seokjin. “I helped you, don’t leave me here.”

“Ah, I couldn’t possibly, you look like a toy rabbit that’s accidentally fallen down the side of a bed,” Seokjin says, holding his hand out for Jeongguk to take. He pulls him out of the couch with a surprising amount of strength, so much so that Jeongguk stumbles forward and almost collides with Seokjin – who’s chest and shoulders, Jeongguk suddenly notices, are very wide. Seokjin laughs before helping steady him. “Careful you don’t fall for me!”

“Put me back in the bean couch and leave me there,” Jeongguk says, rolling his eyes heavily at both Seokjin’s pun and as a way to remind himself not to stare at how Seokjin’s shoulders are wide enough to pull slightly at the material of his t-shirt.

Seokjin laughs again, squeezes Jeongguk’s upper arm, then lets go. “My offer to help you study still stands, by the way.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Jeongguk says, glancing at his huge pile of books.

“No,” Seokjin agrees. “But I’d like to.”

Jeongguk doesn’t know whether the others talk about it amongst themselves, or whether they’ve all come to the same conclusion, but after Seokjin spends the afternoon helping him make notes on what the Mastery exam entails, he’s very rarely without a study partner. On the days when there isn’t someone already up there, waiting for him, at least one person has come to see him before he’s finished studying his theory.

Unfortunately, having people to help him study isn’t exactly helping him pass the practice exams.

“Your paper exam score got higher,” Taehyung says encouragingly as he and Jimin go over the mark scheme. “95%, that’s incredible.”

“Not enough to pull my practical exam score up, though,” Jeongguk grumbles. He’s lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling– with so little furniture up there still, it’s perfect for Jeongguk to do his practice exams in, and Jimin’s just put him through his paces, calling out spell after spell for Jeongguk to look up and perform from his Compendium. Having Yoongi’s translation guide is definitely helping, but he’s still spending too much time looking up the spell, looking up the translation, and then reading the original spell, which means he only just manages to cast the bare minimum number of skills required in his half an hour slot.

But his main issue is his wand – using a wand in a Mastery exam, it turns out, carries an automatic 50% mark deduction, and because the practical exam is more heavily weighted than the theory, he could get a perfect score on the paper exam and still fail overall.

“No, but you’re getting faster at using your Compendium,” Jimin says, checking. “You’ve gone up from a 25% score to 32%, that’s a pretty big improvement.”

“It’s still a fail,” Jeongguk says.

“It is,” Jimin agrees simply. “But it’s a better fail. If you keep getting better, we can either try without the wand, or you’ll be fast enough that the wand penalty won’t matter so much.”

“I’ve told you before, I can’t do wandless magic properly.”

“And I’ve told you before that Taehyung, Hoseok-hyung, and Yoongi-hyung all say otherwise,” Jimin says firmly. “But if you want to use it, we’ll get you more familiar with your Compendium so you can cast faster.”

“It’s not that I want to use it,” Jeongguk says frustratedly. “It’s that I have to.” He sighs and sits up. “I know it looks like I’m just being lazy or annoying by using a wand at 26-”

“No one thinks that,” Taehyung says with a frown.

Jeongguk snorts. “I assure you, they do.”

“Okay, we don’t think that,” Taehyung amends. “Use whatever amenities you need to make casting magic easier for you.”

“But the High Council-”

“Fuck the High Council!” Jimin says heatedly.

“Is this a bad time?” Hoseok says, stopping midway up the stairs so that they can only just see the top of his head, eyebrows, and eyes from where they’re sitting.

“No, come up, come up, we’re just talking about how the High Council’s archaic exam practices prevent perfectly competent Witches from passing their Mastery exams,” Jimin says.

As he finishes climbing the stairs, Hoseok grimaces sympathetically at Jeongguk. “Still no luck?” Jeongguk shakes his head. “Why not ask Yoongi-hyung if you can borrow one of his Compendiums? I know he’s got a few with indexes, and I think he’s got one with a search function spell in it.”

“Isn’t that… Cheating?” Jeongguk asks.

“Using a search function spell?” Hoseok shakes his head. “Nope, you’re allowed to use whatever you bring with you, the only penalty is for wand use.”

“No, I meant using someone else’s Compendium. I thought you had to use the one you trained with?”

“No?” Hoseok looks suddenly unsure and turns to Jimin and Taehyung, who both shrug.

“I’ve never heard that before,” Jimin says. “It’s definitely not a thing for potions’ almanacs or cauldrons or anything.”

“I mean, I guess a lot of people do use the stuff they trained with,” Taehyung says with a thoughtful head tilt. “But I think that’s just because it’s the stuff you’ve got on hand? Light magic doesn’t need anything, although I know a few Light Witches like to use glass and crystals, and they can rack up to be pretty expensive.”

“Same with cauldrons,” Jimin says. “I’m still using the one I trained with, but that’s only because a decent cauldron like I’ve got, with the separate mixing compartments, is about a month’s salary.”

“You don’t have to, obviously,” Hoseok says. “But if you need to make up some points by casting more spells, Yoongi-hyung might have some advice?”

When Jeongguk goes into Yoongi’s room later that afternoon, the first thing he notices is a distinctly singed smell, a combination of smoke and sulphur that has him screwing up his nose. The second thing he notices is that Yoongi’s sitting in the middle of his floor, dusting a ring of bright yellow powder in a circle around himself.

“Don’t come closer,” he says mildly, closing the loop. “I had an accident with a heating spell earlier, and it’s still active, I think.”

“What sort of accident?” Jeongguk asks, looking him over from his position by the door. He doesn’t look hurt, but he’s sporting a different hairstyle than normal, all of it gathered up into a sprout on the top of his head.

“I’m trying to write a spell that can dry you after you come in from the rain.” He snorts. “Or one of hyung’s rain spells after you accidentally coat yourself and your Soulmates in soot. It’s difficult to get the temperature right, though - I singed my hair a little, but that was only because I had it dangling in the way when I was casting the spell.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Jeongguk says worriedly. He can’t sense any residual magic in the air, but if Yoongi’s writing his own spell, that doesn’t mean anything – Jeongguk’s not sure he could detect something that’s never existed before today.

“I’ve set – and doused – my fair share of magical fires in my time,” Yoongi says with an airy wave of his hand. “How did your practice tests go?”

“Terrible,” Jeongguk says. “Well, my score’s getting better, but a fail’s a fail, you know? That’s why I’m here, actually,” he continues quickly, because Yoongi looks set to argue. “Hoseok-hyung thought you might have a Compendium I could use that would be easier to search through? The translation you gave me for mine is great, but…”

“But you need to cast as many spells as quickly as possible to offset your wand penalty,” Yoongi says thoughtfully. He leans back on his hands, taking care not to dislodge the yellow powder, to get a better look at the collection of Compendiums he has displayed on the wall. “Okay, yeah, give it a few minutes for this spell to wear off, and you can take the Compendium Cards, I think that’ll work best for you.” He points to a small, unassuming deck of cards in a card box, the front of the box cut out to make a little window showing the top card.

“It doesn’t need to be a book?” Jeongguk asks.

“A Compendium is just a collection of written down spells that can be performed orally,” Yoongi says. “Most Compendium Witches use books because blank books are cheap to buy, easy to carry round, and simple to add a new spell to, but provided you can write on it and carry it around, you could use whatever you liked.” He licks the pad of his thumb and holds it up in the air; then, very carefully, he smudges a break into the yellow circle of dust around him.

“What’s that?” Jeongguk asks as Yoongi stands up.

“Spell containment powder,” Yoongi explains, scuffing at the powder with his foot, which makes it disperse into the woodgrain of his floor. “So if my heat spell got any more out of hand, I wouldn’t set fire to the whole house.”

“But you could’ve set fire to you,” Jeongguk says, frowning as he thinks about how tiny the circle enclosing Yoongi had been.

Yoongi snorts again. “It’ll take more than a miscast heating spell to set me on fire, Jeongguk.” He unties his hair and shakes it about – Jeongguk can tell he’s singed it a bit, because it doesn’t flop neatly into place like it normally does, instead maintaining a shape more akin to a dandelion. “It’s sweet of you to worry, but hyung’s all right.”

Jeongguk purses his lips out irritably but doesn’t push it any further. “Thank you for the Compendium, hyung.” He heads over to the shelves and picks the pack of cards up. It’s light, and much easier to hold than his own monstrously huge Compendium. “Do I just pull cards out at random until I find one I want?”

“No. No offense, but that sounds like a horrendous way to use a Compendium.” Yoongi pauses at his side. “Is that how you’re using yours? Just flipping through to try to find the spell you need?”

“I thought that was how Witches were supposed to use their Compendiums,” Jeongguk says. “And eventually you just memorise where everything is – one of my teachers could open hers to within two pages of the spell she wanted, every single time.” The two page discrepancy, she’d always said seriously, had been to account for the times when her Compendium pages would accidentally stick together. She used to make him recount the specific orders of spells in chunks of his Compendium, hours of rote memorization that he can still remember parts of today: tea cup conjuration for emergency hosting, small pond cleaning, baking utensil transmorphology, vision correction-

“Compendium Witches can start to memorise where their spells are out of habit,” Yoongi says slowly, as though weighing each word. “But it’s not a requirement, and it usually happens with spells you use a lot and just get used to finding.” He frowns at Jeongguk. “I don’t think I’ve ever memorised the entire order of a Compendium, even the ones I’ve written myself.” He seems to be waiting for a response, but Jeongguk doesn’t know what to say – every Compendium Witch tutor he’s had has given him repeatedly proven to be bad advice, but he’s never once stopped to think about the absurdity of asking a child to learn a huge hunk of text through rote memorisation.

Eventually, Yoongi nods at the deck of cards. “The top card is a search card – say the spell you want to cast, open the deck, and it’ll spit out that card, or a spell that’ll give a similar result.” Jeongguk turns the deck of cards over in his hands curiously. “It’s not 100% - I asked for a spell to help me find my way back here during the first few days after I got lost coming back from the shops, and it spit out a spell for a compass, which is great, and technically helps me find my way, but only if I know what direction to follow on a compass.” He hums. “But it should serve your needs, when I took the exam the High Council jurors were pretty lax on which spells counted for the questions they asked. For one question they asked me to transmorph a bouquet into something edible, so I just transmorphed all of the flowers into roses.” He taps his foot. “Honestly, I think the jurors only passed me so I wouldn’t have to come back.” He shuffles from side to side. “Sorry, I just keep talking-”

“Thank you,” Jeongguk says, which makes Yoongi look relieved for a moment, then confused.

“For the Compendium Cards? You don’t need to thank me, they were just sitting on my shelf.”

“No, for all of it,” Jeongguk says. “Taking the time to explain things to me, being patient with it, just… Thanks.”

Jeongguk watches, fascinated, as Yoongi turns the pinkest Jeongguk’s ever seen him turn. “Ah, don’t mention it, Jeongguk, seriously.”

“No, I think I need to,” Jeongguk replies. “I think you need to know just how grateful I am, not just to have you as my Soulmate, but as my hyung.”

Yoongi, impossibly, flares even redder, then covers his face with his hands. “You’re welcome,” Yoongi says, so quietly behind his palms that Jeongguk almost misses it. “Now stop thanking me before I set you on fire.”

Jeongguk’s exam is in a month and a half – coincidentally, the day before the official end of their Soulmate trial season. The two dates, back to back, loom large in Jeongguk’s head, the anxiety of an exam mixing with the nervous anticipation of whether or not they’ll all agree to continue with this Soulmateship indefinitely.

It doesn’t help that he hasn’t managed to pass one practice exam yet. He’s stopped studying for the theory paper after a run of perfect scores on it, devoting all of his time towards practicing casting magic. He’s never cast so much magic in such quick succession, and he can see, even though he’s casting magic badly, that he’s improving. He’s brought his test scores up to be consistently above 35%, and while it’s nice to know he’d be getting 70% or above if it wasn’t for the wand penalty, that doesn’t help him. They’ve done the math, and he needs to score at least 45% on his practical test in order to pass his Mastery exam, a score that just feels so far away.

“Cast a spell that’ll take me from one place to the next without breaking a sweat,” Hoseok says. He’s surprisingly good at coming up with plausible sounding prompts the High Council could give him during his exam, so while he’s working on coming up with new ones to give Jeongguk, Yoongi is critiquing his Compendium use and spell casting, and Namjoon is tallying up his marks against the mark scheme.

This is the last prompt for this half an hour, and Jeongguk already knows he’s not going to pass. He’s only cast nine spells so far, and he’s got less than two minutes to figure out a suitable spell, find it, and cast it. ‘Without breaking a sweat’ means he can’t risk anything that would require physical exertion, so bikes, broomsticks, and running shoes are out of the question. He’s not sure the High Council would give him an object big enough that he’d be willing to risk a transmorphology spell on to magic up a car, and he definitely can’t conjure up anything that big.

Suddenly, he gets an idea and says, out loud, to the index card at the front of the box, “I need a spell to conjure up a Seoul subway ticket.”

Hoseok laughs delightedly, clapping his hands as the deck of cards spits out the exact spell Jeongguk had asked for, and he manages to recite it before the alarm on Namjoon’s phone rings out.

“Excellent job coming up with that idea, Jeongguk,” Yoongi says with a grin.

“Would that even be allowed?” Jeongguk asks worriedly.

“Of course,” Yoongi says, handing Namjoon his notes. “The secret to the Compendium practical exam is that they’re testing how assuredly you can use a Compendium, as well as how good you are at casting spells. As long as you fulfil the prompt, you can basically cast whatever you want.”

“39%,” Namjoon says.

“Really?” Hoseok says incredulously. “I’d have given that over 40%, hyung.”

“I’m trying to be overly critical,” Yoongi says, casting an apologetic look at Jeongguk nonetheless. “Just in case you get some nitpicky asshole on your judging committee.”

“Some easy fixes, though,” Namjoon says, looking over Yoongi’s notes. “If we keep doing transmorphology practice, I reckon you’ll be able to start transmorphology a smaller object into a bigger one, which’ll really open up your range of possibilities. You’re consistently excellent at conjuration, you just need to… Hyung’s words,” Namjoon says, looking up from the paper briefly at Jeongguk. “Trust that you know your shit.”

“Noted,” Jeongguk says with a wry grin.

“You keep second guessing yourself before you cast,” Yoongi elaborates. “You could probably save yourself, what, a couple minutes extra time?”

“It added up to three minutes, five seconds,” Namjoon confirms.

“Could get an extra spell in there,” Yoongi says.

“For what it’s worth,” Hoseok says. “I think I’m giving you much more difficult prompts than they’d actually give you.”

“No, that’s good,” Jeongguk says. “At least then I’ll be prepared when they ask me something like ‘transmorph this cube of wood into a sphere of wood’.” He frowns. “No, wait, that sounds pretty hard, actually, I’ll leave the prompts to you, hyung.” He stretches his hands. “Can we go one more round?”

“I think we should take a break, actually,” Namjoon says. “The last thing you want to do is magically burn out.”

Jeongguk huffs, but he can’t exactly argue with all three of them at once, so he sits down on the bean couch. He sinks down in the middle of it like quicksand, but he can’t find that he minds much – his limbs feel surprisingly heavy, the kind of ache he gets the day after he’s been to the gym, so the smothering press of the bean couch feels quite nice.

“How’re you feeling about your practices, Jeongguk?” Hoseok asks. “You look like you’re getting more confident in your casting.”

“I mean, I know I’m getting better, and that my terrible scores are just because I’m using a wand,” Jeongguk says, closing his eyes and leaning his head back. “But it’s hard to feel good about a 39%, you know? Not to mention that I might be getting better in front of you all, but I might still choke in front of the judging panel. I might be so bad that they start pelting me with rotten tomatoes, like they did in the olden days-”

“That’s actually a misconception,” Namjoon explains, looking up from the mark scheme he’d been rereading. “Most cultures that had audience participation where they threw rotten fruit and vegetables didn’t have access to cheap tomatoes until well after the medieval period. Tomatoes weren’t really thrown until the nineteenth century.”

Yoongi nods. “One of the vegetables they did used to throw was turnips, apparently.”

“Turnips?” Jeongguk squeaks, lifting his head up so fast he feels dizzy with it. He’s never been pelted with anything, but he’d imagine turnips would be pretty painful – will the jurors let him choose?

“You’re not getting any fruit or vegetables thrown at you,” Hoseok says. “The jurors are behind magic-proof glass, which means they can’t throw anything at you, either.” Jeongguk breathes a sigh of relief and lays his head back down again.

“When I did my exam, they were trialling a magic dead-zone between the jurors and the Witches taking their exams,” Yoongi says. “But I kept hearing horror stories about how the zone kept ballooning and cutting people’s displays off.” He looks at Hoseok, open curiosity on his face. “You must’ve had your exam pretty recently, then, for them to have already installed glass. I only took mine last year.”

“Last year?” Jeongguk can’t help but interrupt. “But you seem so… So…” Mature? On top of things? Yoongi seems so sure of himself, so comfortable in his own skin, that Jeongguk had just assumed he’d taken his Mastery exams at the first opportunity.

Yoongi shrugs. “Never got around to it. The only reason I did it at all is because having a Witch Mastery Certification is a requirement to getting an expanded travelling licence, and I wanted to try building a flying bicycle.”

“That’s pretty impressive,” Hoseok says. “Bikes are difficult to fly, right?”

“Apparently,” Yoongi says. “Seokjin-hyung would probably know more about it, but it’s something to do with the wind blowing through the spokes?”

“Makes sense,” Namjoon says. “A broom’s pretty aerodynamic, but a bike’s got all those fiddly bits for magic to get trapped in…”

Jeongguk can feel his eyelids getting heavy, and it sounds like his hyungs’ voices are getting further and further away. It feels warmer in the room than it usually does, too, and has the sunlight always come in so brightly through the window?

“…what you get when a bunch of workaholics are left to test another workaholic-”

“We told him to take a break!”

“After letting him do eight practice tests back to back-”

Jeongguk grumbles and tries to swat the loud voices away. Whatever his arms do, it isn’t what he wants, just a feeble wiggle, but it gets the voices to shut up, at any rate.

“Jeongguk, can you drink this for me?” Says a different voice, a quieter one at his side. “Promise you’ll feel better.”

“…Can I have a straw?” Jeongguk asks, because the thought of sitting up, holding whatever he’s being offered, and tipping his head back to drink it just sounds like too many steps.

“Sure, baby, you can have a straw.” No one’s ever called Jeongguk baby before, and he can’t tell if the heat in his cheeks is from how hot the room has gotten, or how pleased he is to get called such a cute nickname.

There’s some muttering, then the sound of something metal chinking against glass. “Okay, open your mouth, just a little.” Jeongguk does as he’s told, and the cold metal of the straw is blessedly cool against his lips.

The potion he’s drinking through it tastes like ass, though.

“That’s the worst potion I’ve ever had,” Jeongguk moans once he’s finished. However, he can open his eyes without feeling like there are spots of light flashing behind his eyeballs, so he can see Jimin sitting next to him on the bean couch, holding a glass bottle with a metal straw poking out of the top. “Hyung, did you just make me drink piss?”

“Yes, Jeongguk,” Jimin says flatly, wiggling the bottle of bright teal fluid. It looks less viscous than water, so it sloshes around more violently than Jimin’s little wiggle would’ve suggested. “It’s medicinal piss.”

“Congrats on your first magical burnout,” Seokjin says, smiling wryly. “As magical burnouts go, that was pretty tame, but I don’t recommend doing it again, you scared the shit out of us.”

Jeongguk sits up slowly, trying to hold his head as still as possible – he still feels pretty fragile. Once he’s fully sat up, he can see that Seokjin’s crouched down in front of him, Taehyung is tidying Jeongguk’s books into a neat pile, Yoongi is pacing around the room, Hoseok is sitting against the wall, staring at Jeongguk with wide eyes, and Namjoon is approaching Jeongguk, jaw clenched.

He brings his hand to Jeongguk’s face and, for a brief, wild moment, Jeongguk thinks Namjoon’s about to kiss him. However, he brings his hand up to Jeongguk’s forehead, cupping his fingers and palm around the curve of Jeongguk’s head. “He’s still quite hot.”

“I’m not a miracle worker, hyung,” Jimin says. “I’m not even a healer, I just happened to have that on hand for my own magical burnout.”

“What is it?” Jeongguk asks, grimacing a little when he realises he can still taste whatever the potion was where it lingers on his teeth.

“It doesn’t have a name yet,” Jimin says. “But it’s close to… Do you work out?” Before Jeongguk can answer, Yoongi snorts. “Sorry, hyung, did you have something you wanted to add to the conversation?” Jimin says.

“No, it’s just… You’re asking him if he works out?” Yoongi says. “His shoulders compared to his waist are like, the golden ratio.”

“Just say you find him hot and go,” Jimin says with an eyeroll, while Jeongguk tries not to preen too visibly. “Anyway, this potion is sort of like when you drink something to replace your electrolytes.”

Seemingly satisfied that he’s not in any more pain or distress, the others dissipate, going back to whatever it was they’d been doing before Jeongguk had passed out – everyone, that is, except for Hoseok, who’s still sitting against the wall, watching him very intently.

“Hyung?” Jeongguk looks behind himself, but there’s nothing there for Hoseok to be looking at. “You alright?”

“Are you?” Hoseok turns the question on its head.

“I’m feeling better now after Jimin-hyung’s potion,” Jeongguk says. “Don’t worry about me.”

“You shouldn’t need to push yourself to exhaustion just to study for an exam,” Hoseok says with a frown.

“Sorry, hyung.”

Hoseok shakes his head, and his hair flops with the movement. “No, don’t apologise to me! I wasn’t telling you off, I was just frustrated.” He sighs and pushes his hair back; when he’s finished, he’s smiling again. “We should make plans for breaks during your studying!”

“We don’t need to make plans, I’ll be more careful from now on,” Jeongguk promises.

“No, no, for fun! Get out of the house, get some fresh air, you know,” Hoseok says. “Tell you what, we’ll go out tomorrow morning! That way, you can leave your books here and get a proper mental rest.” Hoseok doesn’t look like he’s going to take no for an answer, so Jeongguk nods, a little helplessly. “Great! I’ll look for some nice places to go.”

“This was fun, Jeongguk!” Hoseok says, holding the gate open for Jeongguk to pass through ahead of him. “If I’d known you liked going for morning walks, I would’ve been inviting you much, much earlier.” Jeongguk smiles, a little weakly; he’s reluctant to open his mouth because he’s trying to mask just how out of breath he is.

Hoseok, true to his word, had knocked on Jeongguk’s bedroom door bright and early, packed breakfast in hand. They hadn’t been out for long, just over an hour, but Hoseok walks fast, even when he’s eating, and Jeongguk’s still feeling a little woozy from his magical burnout.

“Namjoon told me about a great mountain path nearby,” Hoseok says as Jeongguk opens their front door. “We should invite him on our next walk! If he’s the type to know about local walks he’s probably somebody that enjoys walking, right? What do you reckon, should we – oh!”

“It’s not what it looks like!” Jimin says, pulling back from Taehyung. He’s two steps up from Taehyung on the staircase, and they had been, very clearly, kissing – Taehyung’s still standing on his tiptoes, a white-knuckle grip on the banister to hold himself up. “I was… I had something in my teeth!”

“And Taehyung-hyung was… Getting it out? With his mouth?” Jeongguk asks, tilting his head to the side to emphasise the teasing, sidelong glance he’s giving them. When Jimin starts spluttering, Jeongguk laughs. “Relax, I’m just teasing – it’s not exactly breaking news that you two kiss, you know?”

Jimin frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re… You know?” Jimin looks down at Taehyung, who turns to Jeongguk and offers him a helpless, confused expression. “You?”

“How long do you think we’ve been kissing, Jeongguk?” He asks.

“I mean, since before I met you?” Jeongguk replies, feeling less and less sure of himself with every word that comes out of his mouth.

“Jimin only kissed me for the first time this morning,” Taehyung says, smile warm and eyes bright.

“We were going to tell you all at dinner,” Jimin explains. “We didn’t want to keep it a secret from you, really, we just wanted to tell you all at the same time-”

“Don’t worry about it, Jimin,” Hoseok says, crouching down to unlace his shoes. “It’s your business, not ours, you can tell us if and when you’re ready.”

He’s looking down at his feet, so he doesn’t see what Jeongguk sees; Jimin, frowning down at the crown of Hoseok’s head, and Taehyung looking down at him with raised eyebrows. They both look at Jeongguk at the same time; he shrugs, not least because he doesn’t know what’s prompted those expressions on their faces.

“Well, it kind of is your business,” Taehyung starts slowly. “We’re Soulmates and all.”

“We can have our own private relationships in a Soulmateship!” Hoseok laughs. “We don’t need to know everything about each other. Most Soulmate relationships aren’t romantic – most Soulmates don’t even become friends, they’re more like business partners.”

Jimin opens his mouth to speak, but Taehyung gets there first. “Changes like that, that can affect everyone’s dynamic… I think that is your business. At least while we’re sharing a home.” He grins suddenly. “Who knows? Maybe some of the others will want to join in on our dynamic change.”

It works to break the sudden mire of tension; Jimin giggles, hand flying up to his mouth, Jeongguk can feel himself grin wide, and Hoseok laughs hard enough that he misbalances, toppling over onto his hip.

It feels less like a joke over the coming days.

Jeongguk’s not completely oblivious, of course – he’s noticed the steady increase in tentative flirting over the last few weeks, has even done some of it himself, but it’s like a dam has broken somewhere, and now all he can think about is his Soulmates.

He’s sure he’s not the only one, either – he catches Jimin and Taehyung sizing up Namjoon over lunch like they’re trying to decide whether to jump him or eat him; he sees Yoongi turn up his whiny pout to eleven for Seokjin, using their height difference to his own advantage to look up at him with an expression which makes Jeongguk blush, and he’s halfway down the hall when he sees it.

He sees some of his own interest redirected back at him, too – long looks over a meal, hands that linger on his lower back or arms while he’s studying. He’s never been made so much food, either, as though everyone’s decided behind his back that his love language could be food and are acting accordingly.

It feels like they’re all on a knife’s edge, waiting for something – or someone – to tip them over.

Whether Jimin and Taehyung had given them the idea, or whether they’d just been waiting for an excuse to go for it, Jeongguk doesn’t know, but he finds Namjoon and Yoongi in the yard three days later – they’re bickering about something, but before Jeongguk can get closer to find out they’re talking about, Namjoon’s pushing at Yoongi’s shoulders, backing him up against the plum tree, then Yoongi’s pulling him close, getting up in his face-

It's a position Jeongguk’s seen them in before when they’ve argued, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen them look this charged, this close to teetering over the edge; Jeongguk can see Namjoon’s shoulders, rising and lowering fast with the force of his breath.

He can see Yoongi, staring right back at him over Namjoon’s shoulder.

Yoongi stands up on tiptoe, whispers something to Namjoon, a mirror of that day in the Greenhouse, right down to the reddening of Namjoon’s ears. This time, though, Yoongi only pulls back a little before they both lean in to kiss one another.

Jeongguk wonders if he should feel jealous, that two of the hottest, kindest men he’s ever met have just kissed for the first time when they know, they know, he’s standing right here, and he’s not exactly been subtle about his crush on either of them.

He’s not jealous.

What he is is horny, and his dick has absolutely gotten the memo.

He stumbles back across the yard towards his room, grateful that his corner room only shares a wall with Jimin, who’s thankfully out delivering a potion order, so that he can have a little privacy to deal with this alone.

Unfortunately, he’s barely shut the door behind himself when somebody starts banging on it frantically.

“Go away, please!” Jeongguk says, rummaging through his drawers for his lube and tissues.

“It’s us,” Yoongi calls back.

“Please let us in?” Namjoon says, a little too loud for how thin the door is.

Jeongguk looks down at his dick. “I’d really rather not, actually!”

“Please?” Yoongi says. “I think we should talk, we – I’ve got some explaining to do.”

“We both do!” Namjoon says.

Jeongguk sighs, and looks over at the door. The sweep of his eyes means he spots his joggers, still on the ground from his walk with Hoseok. Making a split second decision, he kicks off his current trousers, a little tight and revealing for his current situation, and pulls on his joggers, which give him a little more leeway in the crotch.

Once he’s satisfied that his hardening dick is really only visibly from certain angles, he opens the door – the quicker he can get rid of them, the quicker he can get off.

Both Yoongi and Namjoon look genuinely contrite when they see him, although Yoongi frowns, confused, at his trousers. “I needed to change,” Jeongguk says, leaning against the doorframe in an attempt to show just how casual he’s feeling right now. “They were dirty, from the yard.”

“Okay,” Namjoon says slowly.

“So, uh.” Jeongguk moves to rest his forearm on the doorframe. Then he leans his back against the doorframe, arms folded. Then he props his upper arm against the doorframe, posture titled so that his hip is jutting out. “What’s up?”

“Can we come in?” Yoongi asks.

“Uh, sure,” Jeongguk says, grateful that he hadn’t gotten so far as to set out his lube and tissues. He doesn’t invites the others into his room that often. Not out of shyness, or embarrassment, but because he really doesn’t spend much time in his room, except when he’s sleeping. Everyone else uses their rooms for magical experimentation, work, research, but when Jeongguk studies, he much prefers to do it upstairs. There’s not a lot of furniture up there, still, but it feels a lot more homely and welcoming than his own room does.

It’s understandable, then, that Yoongi and Namjoon would be looking around curiously. However, there really isn’t enough in the room to warrant just how long they spend looking around – there’s really only so many times you can look at a wall before you’ve seen all it has to offer, in Jeongguk’s opinion, yet Yoongi’s looking at it like it’ll tell him the secrets of the universe, and Namjoon’s crouched down in front of a pile of his old textbooks.

“Can I borrow this?” He asks suddenly, pointing at one of the books.

“Which one?” Jeongguk asks curiously, sitting on the edge of his bed.

“Uh,” Namjoon squints at the tiny font on the spine of the book. “Classical spells; or, spells to improve young persons in the arte of magical writing and in the principles of virtue and-”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Jeongguk laughs. “That’s one of my old textbooks.”

“How do you even have that?” Yoongi asks, surprised. “It went out of print centuries ago.”

“A scholar left it with us when he said I was ‘unteachable’.” Jeongguk shrugs. “I was never able to get past the first chapter, there was a lot of chanting from memory.” He swings his feet, tapping his heels alternately on the floor. He’s trying to be patient, wait for them to explain why they’d followed him, but both of their nervous energy seems to be rubbing off on one another-

Jeongguk shakes his head – his joggers are only going to give him so much leeway, he needs to stop thinking phrases like rubbing off on one another.

When he looks back at them, Namjoon’s scowling at the textbook, and Yoongi’s looking at Jeongguk like his heart is breaking.

“You’re not unteachable,” he says fervently. “And that’s not why we’re here, but once we’re done we’re going to have a good, long talk about-”

“Hyung!” Jeongguk interrupts. “Don’t worry, you’ve all told me how bad my old teachers were, I’m just saying a fact, you know? They told me I was unteachable, that doesn’t mean I believe them anymore.” Yoongi looks like he wants to argue, but Jeongguk ploughs ahead. “What did you want to say?”

“Right.” Namjoon stands up, book under his arm. It makes him much taller than Jeongguk sitting on the bed; he seems to notice at the same time that Jeongguk does, because he takes a few steps and then squats in front of Jeongguk. This leaves him looking up at Jeongguk, which he seems to prefer, but leaves Jeongguk feeling like his brain has short-circuited. “We wanted to apologise.”

“I wanted to apologise,” Yoongi says. “Namjoon didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It was a mutual decision,” Namjoon insists. “You might’ve suggested it, but I agreed-”

“I don’t actually know what you’re talking about,” Jeongguk says. “I don’t know what you’re apologising for?”

“You… I saw you watching us,” Yoongi tries to explain. “And I told Namjoon you were watching, knowing that Namjoon’s liked you since he saw you, and I was hoping if you saw us kissing and you saw that I’d seen you watching, you’d want to join in, but you ran off, and…” He skews his mouth to the side, confused. “You weren’t upset?”

“You’ve liked me since you first saw me?” Jeongguk asks Namjoon, still stuck on that concept.

“I’m not the only one,” Namjoon says, his sarcastic eyeroll at odds with the pretty pink blush rising on his cheeks. “I might’ve been first, but that’s just because I saw you first, Yoongi-hyung was right there with me-”

“You’ve liked me since you first saw me?” Jeongguk squeaks at Yoongi, who looks like a startled cat.

“Uh, yeah, I thought that was obvious?” Yoongi shakes his head, eyes closed. “Wait, not important – we’re here to apologise for upsetting you-”

“Hyung!” Jeongguk laughs, half-delighted, half-nervy. “Hyung, I wasn’t upset, I was-” He stops so suddenly that he almost bites his tongue, eyes wide.

“You were…” Namjoon prompts.

“Horny,” Jeongguk whispers. Namjoon suddenly seems to be aware that he’s almost eyelevel with Jeongguk’s crotch; he stares up at the ceiling, cheeks burning. “I came in here to, you know…” He glances inadvertently at his nightstand.

“Right.” Yoongi coughs. “Well, we can leave you to get on with that, as long as you’re all right-”

“Hyung!” Namjoon says. “We’ve just found out he likes us, he’s just found out we like him, and you’re offering to leave?”

“I’m just trying to be polite-”

“You could both kiss me?” Jeongguk offers, very reasonably, in his opinion. “Maybe not at the same time, even though I’d like to. Honestly, it’d be cool to kiss you both at the same time, you know?”

Yoongi looks at him consideringly, then grins, a little quirk of his mouth. “I’ve got an idea – Namjoon, stand up.” Namjoon does, stretching out his legs once he’s done so. “Jeongguk, if you close your eyes, we can kiss you, and you won’t be able to tell which of us is which. It’ll kind of be like if we both kissed you first?”

“Like Schrödinger?” Namjoon asks.

“I don’t think he was kissing people in that experiment,” Yoongi says.

“You’re both so cute,” Jeongguk says, closing his eyes expectantly.

Having his eyes closed means he’s hyperaware of the sounds going on around him – the breeze coming in through his open window, Yoongi’s cleaning spells gently whooshing their way through the hallways of the house, the sound of a coin landing on the ground-

“Did you seriously just flip a coin to decide which of you kisses me first?” He asks wryly. Neither of them answer, but he figures that’s because one of them is now gently cupping his face in their hands, and it’d kind of give the game away if they spoke.

His hyperawareness extends to his sense of touch like this, too. One of them is just holding his face, but every point where their fingertips touch his jaw, their thumbs lay close to the corners of his mouth, their forehead rests against his – all of it feels so warm.

When they lean in to kiss him, there’s a brief moment where Jeongguk can feel their pleased sigh brush against his lips. Part of Jeongguk wonders whether he should be trying to guess who’s kissing him, but most of him knows that he doesn’t want to try, more than happy to just focus on the fact that he can feel this person smiling as they kiss him.

Whoever it is takes a step back, and is immediately replaced by the second person; he puts two of his fingers underneath Jeongguk’s chin and tilts his face up, then kisses the tip of his nose.

“Hyung,” Jeongguk says exasperatedly. “What was that?”

They’re close enough that he can feel, rather than hear, them huff a breath of laugh out through their nose. Then they lean in to kiss him properly, guiding his mouth open in a way that has him stuttering for breath. They’ve got their hands on his shoulders, moving their thumbs slightly along his collarbones as they run their tongue along the most sensitive parts of Jeongguk’s mouth, and it’s such a sensory onslaught that he’s panting when they move back.

“Okay,” Yoongi says, his voice giving absolutely nothing away. “Open your eyes.”

Jeongguk has to blink his eyes open gradually, because he’s kind of worried that if he adds his sense of sight on top of all that, he’ll just overload entirely. Once he’s opened his eyes entirely, he takes in the sight of Namjoon and Yoongi standing in front of him; Yoongi, pink faced and pleased, Namjoon, grin so wide it’s making the little laughter lines by his eyes stand out.

“Wow,” Jeongguk manages eventually, which makes Yoongi laugh the loudest Jeongguk’s ever heard.

“Do we all just want to say we’re dating?” Taehyung asks; Seokjin, in the middle of slurping up some noodles, promptly chokes, leaving Namjoon to thump him on the back a few times.

“Wow, Taehyung!” Hoseok laughs. “So sudden!”

“What brought this on?” Yoongi asks curiously.

“Well, we were talking earlier,” he says, gesturing between himself and Jimin, who nods earnestly. “And we both feel like something’s…” He trails off helplessly, then turns to look at Jimin; when he turns, he shifts his entire body so that he’s directly facing Jimin. “I thought I’d have come up with the word by now.”

“Not missing,” Jimin clarifies, only very briefly looking away from Taehyung to the table at large before turning back to him again. “What we have together is a complete thing. It just feels like we’re not seeing all of it?”

“Like if you could define your relationships with the rest of us,” Yoongi says slowly. “And we could label what we are to each other, it would expand what you know about your relationship?”

“Yes!” Jimin says enthusiastically, leaning across the table so that he can look past Taehyung at Yoongi. “Hyung, you’re so good with words.”

“It’s like I should consider writing spells with them,” Yoongi says mildly.

Jimin huffs and flops back in his chair; Taehyung automatically flings his arm out behind him, a habit clearly born from years of catching Jimin falling out of chairs. “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want any sort of relationship with Yoongi-hyung. The rest of you can date him, he’ll just be my roommate or something.”

“What do you all think, genuinely?” Taehyung asks, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Maybe… Maybe we should talk to each other separately?” Namjoon suggests. “I think if we discuss it as a group, anybody with misgivings might not feel comfortable speaking up?” He coughs, then looks at Yoongi and Jeongguk. “And, uh, not to keep secrets until dinner, but Yoongi-hyung, Jeongguk and me are kind of right smack in the middle of defining our thing, so-”

“Our thing?” Yoongi teases.

“-so I think I should discuss this with them, first,” Namjoon ploughs on, with a quick squint in Yoongi’s direction.

“Okay, so we’ll all discuss it as we see fit, then get together to talk about it after?” Jimin suggests waiting for everyone to nod before continuing with, “Great.” He pulls Taehyung up by the hand and away from the table, out of the kitchen; Hoseok quickly follows. Jeongguk listens for their footsteps, but he can’t tell if he’s gone after Jimin and Taehyung or not.

“If any of you have any confessions for me,” Yoongi jokes, standing up too. “Please hold off on them until after sunset, I want a nap.” He leaves the table, leaving Jeongguk with Namjoon and Seokjin.

As soon as the three of them are alone, Namjoon puts his head in his hands. “This was much easier when I just thought Yoongi-hyung was my only Soulmate,” he says, his voice muffled by his palms. “Every time I think I’ve got a handle on things, somebody drops some revelation in my lap – Namjoon, you’ve got six Soulmates! Namjoon, one of them is the guy you’ve been crushing on for years! Namjoon, the rest of them are super hot! Namjoon, Yoongi-hyung is interested, and he thinks Jeongguk is, too! Namjoon, it turns out that Taehyung and Jimin might also be interested!” Seokjin smiles at him patiently, even though, with his face in his hands, Namjoon can’t see it. Jeongguk likes that about Seokjin, how he cares about them all diligently, never performatively. “It’s a lot!” Namjoon finishes, a little hysterically.

“Make a list of everybody you want to talk to, and everything you’d want to talk about,” Seokjin suggests, gathering up the bowls. “Break it up into easy to manage tasks. And Namjoon?” Namjoon looks up from his hands, and Jeongguk is struck by how young he looks – eyes wide as he searches Seokjin’s face. “Maybe start with the guy you’ve been in love with for thirteen years? Perhaps before he falls asleep?”

“Haven’t been in love with him for thirteen years,” Namjoon protests, but he’s already standing up before he’s finished the sentence. He looks at Jeongguk questioningly; Jeongguk shakes his head, then jerks it towards Seokjin, who’s loading the bowls into the dishwashing spell.

Once Namjoon’s left the kitchen, and all of the bowls are spinning gently under the soapy suds of the spell, Seokjin looks over his shoulder at the almost empty kitchen and laughs through his nose. Then he looks at Jeongguk, shakes his hands dry, and leans against the counter. “You’ve been quiet.” Jeongguk nods, then frowns. “Hey, what’s that look for?”

“So have you,” Jeongguk says.

“What do you mean?” Seokjin laughs again, jerking his head towards the door. “Didn’t you just hear me give Namjoon a peptalk?”

“You’ve not said a thing about how you’re feeling,” Jeongguk points out.

Seokjin stares at him, and it’s only when he does that that Jeongguk realises that Seokjin has been avoiding making prolonged eye contact with any of them since Taehyung’s declaration. He looks confused, maybe a little hurt, but when Jeongguk opens his mouth to ask him what’s wrong, his face clears up with a little laugh. “Ah, you caught me, Jeongguk. I’m just thinking about who I want to ask to join their relationship first.”

Jeongguk looks at him out of the corner of his eyes. Then he stands up and walks over to Seokjin, who looks somewhat alarmed to see him approaching; he pokes him in the ribs until he squirms, batting Jeongguk’s hands. “Don’t do that, hyung,” Jeongguk says, getting another few pokes in. “Don’t joke about something you feel bad about.” Seokjin finally manages to shoo his hands away, ears pink. “Not to me, anyway.”

Seokjin sighs and sits up on the counter. “I don’t… Know how I feel.”

“But not good?”

He shrugs. “Some parts of it feel good. I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m attracted to all of you-” Jeongguk can physically feel his face shift with the force of his surprise – eyebrows high, eyes wide, mouth dropped open, which makes Seokjin giggle. “That’s a no, then?” He reaches out, puts the backs of his fingers underneath Jeongguk’s chin, and gently closes his mouth. “Well, I’m excited to explore that with everyone, and at least now I know that the answer won’t just be no from everyone.”

“And the bad parts?” Jeongguk prompts.

“I guess… I’m a little hurt that I’m not…” He laughs again, rolls his eyes. “This sounds ridiculous now that I’m actually thinking about saying it out loud, but it kind of sucks that I was no one’s first choice? Taehyung and Jimin had each other, obviously, and you, Yoongi, and Namjoon have whatever’s going on with the three of you…” He snorts. “See? Ridiculous.”

“I said the same thing to Namjoon-hyung a few weeks ago, more or less,” Jeongguk says. “Only for me, it was like I saw everyone pairing off, and I felt kind of like a loose part?”

“Okay, now that’s ridiculous,” Seokjin says. “You’re no more a loose part than any of the others.”

“Or you,” Jeongguk says. “For what it’s worth, I’m like you – I like all of you like that. You know, like like.” The smile Seokjin offers him is almost desperately fond. “Shut up.”

“Didn’t say anything,” Seokjin says.

“Anyway,” Jeongguk says. “I’d never have said anything to everyone if Taehyung-hyung and Jimin-hyung hadn’t been brave enough to bring it up first. And the only reason I kissed Namjoon-hyung and Yoongi-hyung is because they asked me. If it had been entirely up to me, I don’t think any of us would’ve gotten anywhere.”

Seokjin smiles down at his lap; quick, small, and so beautiful that Jeongguk can feel his own lips quirk up to match. “Then it’s a good job we’ve got the others, huh? Even Hoseok’s gone after Jimin and Taehyung, so between the five of them, they’ll be there to pull us both along with them.”

“Can I kiss you, hyung?” Jeongguk asks, which makes Seokjin look up.

“Didn’t Namjoon say he wanted to discuss it with you and Yoongi first?”

“I think he said that so we didn’t all attempt to have the conversation over dinner,” Jeongguk says. “Between us, I think Namjoon-hyung would be quite happy to know that I’d kissed you.”

“Oh, well, if it makes Namjoon happy,” Seokjin says, shifting his legs so that Jeongguk can stand between them and kiss him.

Perhaps it’s the fact that his eyes were open until he started kissing, or perhaps it’s because Seokjin’s literally sitting on the kitchen counter in the house they share, but something feels domestic and lived in, familiar, about this kiss. It’s warm, the kind of kiss that happens in the five-years-later epilogue of a particularly cheesy romcom, and Jeongguk loves it.

Jeongguk’s not the first to get up the next day. Jimin’s sitting at the kitchen table, watching, eyebrows raised as he sips his coffee, as Yoongi does something under the sink. He’s wearing dungarees, and it feels far too early for Jeongguk to be having the thoughts he is about Yoongi wearing those dungarees.

He doesn’t know who’s had what conversations with each other, but he imagines they’ll all get together at some point and discuss it. It’s almost the end of April,  which means they’ve got just over a month before they decide whether or not they’ll stay together – Jeongguk’s got a pretty good feeling, but they’ve still got time to talk about it and iron out the details.

He also quite likes that he doesn’t know everything about everyone’s relationships with one another. While he imagines he’ll learn the specifics with time, he’s always been a little sceptical of the Soulmate romantic films that seemed to revolve around one specific person – he likes that his hyungs very much have lives and relationships outside of him.

However, he’s willing to bet Yoongi and Jimin have not had a conversation, not least because the tension in the kitchen is thick enough to cut through with an axe.

“Sink’s broken,” Jimin says, in lieu of a greeting.

“I’m pretty sure it’s clogged, not broken,” Yoongi says immediately.

Jeongguk doesn’t say anything, just opens the fridge, picks out the first box of leftovers he can see, then sits down to eat.

“I poured water and it didn’t go down the drain,” Jimin says. “The sink is unfunctional. Not working. Broken.”

“Maybe if people weren’t pouring their potion residue down the sink, then it wouldn’t be clogged,” Yoongi grumbles.

Jeongguk can’t see Yoongi’s expression, but he can see Jimin’s – a deep frown, raised cheeks, pouted lips. “What’re you implying?”

“Nothing,” Yoongi says. “I’m literally stating an if/then scenario. Stop pouring your potions down the kitchen sink, this place has an outside drain for a reason.”

“I’ve been disposing potions for longer than Jeongguk’s been alive-”

“Please don’t bring me into this,” Jeongguk says through a mouthful of bibimbap. “Also, I don’t think that’s true.”

“-I know not to pour residue down the sink.”

“Then why am I looking at a pipe with a thick globule of…” Yoongi sniffs. “Have you used garlic jam in this potion? Face it, the instructions called for onion, you tried to cut corners with whatever hyung had available in the fridge, and you were too embarrassed to pour your abomination away outside so you dumped it in the sink.”

“First of all, I would never use garlic jam instead of onion, don’t libel me-”

“Slander.” Yoongi pushes up out from under the sink, stands up, walks over to the whiteboard Seokjin had brought home for meal planning, and writes, ‘Jimin uses garlic jam instead of onion’ on it. “That would be libel, if it was defamatory – but it isn’t, because it’s true, so.”

“You are so annoying, I do not use garlic jam!” Jimin stands up, storms over to the whiteboard, and rubs at the pen with his fist.

Then he rubs it again.

And again, in furious, squeaky circles.

He picks up the pen. “Hyung, this is permanent.”

Yoongi looks at the pen too, then shrugs. “Good thing I wrote something true and not libellous, then.”

Jimin throws the pen on the ground so hard it physically bounces off the stone, then he advances on Yoongi – Jeongguk half stands, because if he needs to break up a fight he’ll need to get over there fast, both of them look like they’ll fight dirty if pushed – but Jimin just backs Yoongi up against the wall, both fists clenched in Yoongi’s t-shirt as he kisses him. As Yoongi kisses back, Jeongguk sits down again to finish his breakfast, and that’s how Taehyung finds them a few moments later. He barely blinks when he sees Jimin and Yoongi, just beelines straight to the fridge for his orange juice.

“What’ve I missed?” He asks Jeongguk as he pours himself a glass. He shakes the carton at Jeongguk with a questioning brow raise; Jeongguk shakes his head.

“Jimin-hyung may or may not have clogged the sink with garlic jam, and Yoongi-hyung’s written it on the whiteboard in permanent marker by mistake, and they got so mad about it they started kissing.”

Taehyung nods and downs the glass like an especially large shot. When he’s finished, he smacks his lips together with a pleased little sigh. “Sounds about right.” He turns and looks at the sink. “That’s weird though, I don’t think I’ve ever known Jimin to dump stuff down the sink.”

Jimin pulls back from Yoongi; both of them look breathless. “Thank you, Taehyung, that’s what I’ve been saying. Even if I had used the wrong jam–“ He turns back to Yoongi and points at him; Yoongi goes a little cross-eyed looking at his finger. “Which I didn’t! – I wouldn’t dump it down the sink.”

“Oh my God, shut up about the garlic fucking jam,” Yoongi mumbles, pulling Jimin back in.

As he walks past to sit at the table, Taehyung tilts Jeongguk’s head back and kisses his forehead. It’s simple, easy, and he’s already sitting down.

“Come back,” Jeongguk blurts out, which makes Taehyung grin at him.

“I’ll kiss you properly later, if you want, I just haven’t brushed my teeth yet and I don’t want you to think I taste like morning breath smothered in oranges.”

It’s very thoughtful, but it does mean that Jeongguk’s left to stare, a little longingly, at Taehyung’s mouth as he finishes his breakfast.

As he’s finishing the last of his rice, he feels a hand, big and warm, rest gently on the back of his neck; as he tilts back into the feeling, fingers curve up to run through his hair. The feeling of his hair tugging ever so slightly at the roots with the movement feels grounding, reassuring, and he just sits under the attention, basking in it, until whoever it is pulls their hand away.

“My turn!” Taehyung says, tilting his head back like he’s about to get shampooed at a hair salon. Namjoon appears from behind Jeongguk, moves around the table, and threads both of his hands deep into Taehyung’s hair. Unlike with Jeongguk, Namjoon actively shuffles Taehyung’s hair around, flopping it this way and that like he’s playing with a puppy’s fur.

From this new angle, Jeongguk can see the exact moment that Namjoon notices Yoongi and Jimin, still making out, even as Jimin picks Yoongi up and deposits him on the counter.

“We make food there,” Namjoon says, although he doesn’t look too put out. On the contrary, his eyes look dark and intense, like he’s trying to commit the sight to memory.

“Tell Jeongguk that,” Seokjin says, coming into the kitchen with Hoseok. “He was kissing me in that exact spot just last night.” Jeongguk shrugs, then nods – it’s a good kissing place.

There’s a moment, with all seven of them gathered in the kitchen, where Jeongguk thinks this delicate thing they’re weaving is going to shatter into awkward embarrassment – that the knowledge of what they’ve spent the past 24 hours doing in various combinations will overwhelm them.

Then, suddenly:

“We should do something!” Taehyung says. “All of us, together. We don’t all get to hang out together often like this.”

Yoongi pulls away from Jimin; Jeongguk has to actively bite back a laugh when he sees Namjoon close his eyes, hornily distressed, at the wet smack their lips make when they part. “I was actually going to…” Taehyung turns immediately to Yoongi, eyes wide and sorrowful. “I guess I can take the day off from work,” Yoongi says, capitulating immediately.

“What did you want to do?” Hoseok asks, sitting down next to Jeongguk at the table.

“Funny you should ask!” Taehyung says, immediately standing up. “My parents sent up a box of strawberries, more than I can eat without being sick, so I was going to bake a cake with them.” He starts pulling ingredients out of the cupboard, then gasps, shooting Jimin a grin over his shoulder. “Wait, that’s like fate!” Jimin blinks, just once, then gasps too. “During the First Fruit, Jimin and I picked strawberries together,” Taehyung explains to the rest of them. “And now the first thing we’ll all bake together as whatever we’re going to name ourselves will be a strawberry cake.”

Jeongguk wants to revel in the romantic gesture – however, something’s niggling him at the back of his mind.

“You picked strawberries?” Yoongi asks, eyebrows raised. “No kidding, Namjoon and I did, too.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jeongguk frowns, remembering. He thinks he remembers Seokjin’s basket had strawberries in it, but he turns to him to confirm. “Hyung?”

“Yeah, so did I,” Seokjin agrees; as one, they all turn to look at Hoseok.

“I picked strawberries, too,” Hoseok admits. Jeongguk still can’t remember seeing Hoseok in the Greenhouse that day, but it had been a huge building – he’s not even sure he walked the entire span of it.

“Wouldn’t it be crazy,” Jimin laughs, finally taking a step back from Yoongi so that he can slide off the counter. “If that’s how the High Council assigns you your Soulmate? If they just looked at the baskets and basically played a game of snap to match us all up?”

Baking is not a seven man job, especially when you’re just making a strawberry cream cake. They’ve had to divvy out jobs at the absolute most microscopic level, which is why there’re currently three of them preparing strawberries – Taehyung is quartering the ones for the filling, Namjoon is mashing them up, and Jeongguk is carefully slicing the spare strawberries into thin, almost translucent layers to decorate the side of the cake.

Even with three of them on strawberry preparation duty, there are still, probably, too many chefs in the kitchen. It’s surprising how well they work together, though – part of it is just that the four of them are good cooks, but there’s an ease in how they navigate around each other, push ingredients towards each other moments before they’re needed, handing one another baking utensils-

Hoseok, who’s rummaging through the cutlery drawer for the spatula he’s insisting they own, holds up a spoon and frowns at it. “Was this spoon always so… Melted looking? And brown?”

Jeongguk resolutely avoids Namjoon’s eyes. “Maybe it got washed in water that was too hot?”             

“I don’t think that’s how metal spoons work!” Hoseok laughs, tossing the weird spoon back into the drawer before shutting it. “Give me a second, I think I might know where the spatula is.”

“We definitely don’t have a spatula,” Seokjin says as soon as Hoseok’s left the room. “Yoongi, can you magic up a spatula for us?”

“Sorry, hyung,” Yoongi says, pausing just for a moment in his whisking. “I haven’t gotten around to writing a spatula conjuration spell yet.”

“Oh!” Jeongguk looks up from his strawberry slivering. “I’ve got a spell!”

“Well, go get your Compendium, then,” Yoongi says with a proud grin over his shoulder.

As Jeongguk goes to his room, he runs into Hoseok, who’s waving something metal.

“Spatula!” He says triumphantly. “We were using it to lay the tiles in the bathroom.”

Jeongguk grimaces, opens his mouth to reply, but Hoseok’s already in the kitchen; Jeongguk hovers outside the kitchen just long enough to hear Seokjin yell, “We are not icing a cake with a trowel!” before he carries on heading to his room.

When he comes back into the kitchen, his hyungs have divided themselves into two camps.

“Jimin, you know you can’t use a trowel to ice a cake, are you even hearing yourself right now?” Yoongi says incredulously. At some point between Jeongguk’s short trip to his room, Yoongi’s somehow got whipped cream on his nose.

“Hoseok-hyung’s right, it’s basically a spatula,” Jimin says.

“It’s had cement on it!” Seokjin says, physically positioning himself in front of the oven, as though to protect their baking cake.

“I mean… It looks clean?” Namjoon says as he examines the trowel carefully.

“If you gave me a toilet brush and told me I could brush my teeth with it, it wouldn’t matter how clean you told me the brush was, the answer would still be no,” Taehyung says.

“In my defence,” Hoseok says. “I thought that was the same thing as a spatula.”

“No!” Yoongi points his whisk at Hoseok, and Jeongguk can immediately see how Yoongi’s managing to get whipped cream everywhere. “Baking utensils aren’t interchangeable! A trowel isn’t even a baking utensil!”

“I don’t know, hyung, it’s difficult to take baking advice…” Jimin leans over and, antagonistically slow, swipes the cream off of Yoongi’s nose with his thumb. “… From the guy with cream all over his nose.”

“It makes you look like strawberries and cream,” Namjoon says, handing the trowel back to Hoseok. “Because your cheeks are so pink, you know?”

Seokjin stares at Namjoon outright, and then very visibly makes the decision not to engage with this. “Jeongguk, do you think you can transmorph a trowel into a spatula?”

Jeongguk dumps his Compendium on the little table space they have left, flicks through to the spell, then reads it carefully. “It says it’s a spell for baking utensil transmorphology, but it doesn’t say that it needs to specifically be one baking utensil into another, so…” Hoseok lays the trowel on the floor, and Jeongguk recites the spell.

The handle stays the same, a sturdy tool grip with finger grooves, but the toothed blade smooths out into a bright green silicone spatula.

“Perfect,” Seokjin says, even though it very clearly isn’t. Jeongguk’s pleased, though – so what if it’s not a textbook perfect spatula? It’s helpful for what they need, which is all that matters.

“This was such a good idea, Taehyung,” Jimin says, carefully finishing off adding cream to the top of the cake with a flourish of his wrist. “Thank your parents for sending us those strawberries.”

“I have already, but I’ll thank them again from the rest of you,” Taehyung says – as soon as Jimin’s stepped away, he starts, very carefully, placing the thin slivers of strawberry around the base of the cake. If baking a cake hadn’t been a job for seven men, then decorating one really isn’t, so the rest of them are just sitting around the table, watching as Taehyung lays the strawberries in place.

Jimin had been right, this was a good idea, and not just because they were getting a cake out of it. By having the seven of them hang out immediately in the wake of them taking some of their individual relationships in new paths, it’s blasted away any potential awkwardness that could’ve come about by them going about their separate schedules. This way, if a doubting voice starts to creep into Jeongguk’s head, he can just look at how happy his hyungs look, and it just melts away.

There’re other emotions on their faces, of course – Jimin keeps looking between them all like he can’t quite decide who’ll get his attention first once they’re done baking, Hoseok keeps glancing around with nervous energy, although Jeongguk can’t tell who, or what, it’s aimed at.

Taehyung lays the final strawberry, and as Yoongi carefully carries the cake to the fridge for it to set, Taehyung curls his finger at Jeongguk. “Still want that kiss?”

It’s been hours since Taehyung had promised that, but the low, heady swoop of eagerness in Jeongguk’s belly is enough to have him clambering up out of his seat and over to Taehyung, who, just as excitedly, pulls Jeongguk into his lap to kiss him. They’re more or less the same height, give or take an inch, depending on which shoes they’re wearing, but being kissed by Taehyung makes him feel encompassed – although part of that could be because he wraps his arms around Jeongguk’s waist to pull him in as close as he can.

When they finally stop, only Jimin is left in the room; he’s sitting opposite them on the table, chin in his hand. “Don’t stop, that was nice,” he says, pouting. Because of the placement of his hand, it emphasises the curve of his pout even more.

“I need to breathe,” Taehyung says, looking around. “Where’d the others go?”

“Yoongi-hyung went after Hoseok-hyung, at last,” Jimin says with a fond roll of his eyes. “And honestly, if I can’t be the first to kiss Hoseok-hyung, I’m glad it’s Yoongi-hyung, he’s been nursing a crush for a while. Namjoon-hyung said something about wanting Seokjin-hyung to join him for a run, which I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be flirting or not? I give Seokjin-hyung half an hour exposed to sweaty, exercising Namjoon-hyung until he snaps.”

“And what about you?” Jeongguk asks Jimin. “What’s your plan?”

Jimin grins at him, a little wicked. “I’m waiting for Taehyung to finish with you so I can have my turn kissing you.”

“Well, come here, hyung, I’m comfy,” Jeongguk says.

Jimin sighs, but Jeongguk doesn’t think he means it, judging by the smile he’s actively trying to hide. He walks around the table slowly, like he’s savouring how long it’s taking him; Jeongguk suddenly realises why he’s doing it when he can feel Taehyung’s legs start to jitter underneath him in anticipation.

“Turn round?” Jimin asks. As Jeongguk does, Taehyung loosens his arms around Jeongguk’s waist – loosens, but doesn’t let go, so his hands end up clasped around Jeongguk’s front as Jimin leans down to kiss him.

Jimin’s hands are soft and warm where they’re resting on Jeongguk’s jaw, and he shifts the way he kisses depending on what Jeongguk reacts to – when Jimin’s tongue runs along the sensitive inside of his mouth, Jeongguk shudders, and Jimin actively seeks out the parts of his mouth that are the most sensitive. When he pulls away, he takes Jeongguk’s lip, gently, between his teeth; when Jeongguk whines, he does it again, just for fun.

“You need to stop making him make that noise,” Taehyung says underneath him, voice strained.

“Why?” Jimin asks innocently, before biting Jeongguk’s lip a third time. The resulting swoop in Jeongguk’s belly feels even more apparent when Taehyung’s hands inadvertently grasp him a little tighter.

“You know why,” Taehyung grits out.

“Sorry, Jeongguk, Taehyung doesn’t want us to have any more fun,” Jimin says, pulling back and shaking his head sadly. Jeongguk, rendered speechless, just stares openly at Jimin’s mouth as it quirks up into a grin.

“It’s not that,” Taehyung says, resting his chin on Jeongguk’s shoulder. “I just want the first time we have sex to be everyone who wants to, not all of us in little groups.”

“Oh.” Because he’s still looking, Jeongguk watches as Jimin’s grin turns softer, sweeter. “That’s romantic.”

“And it’s not going to be romantic if I come in my pants right here, right now,” Taehyung finishes.

Jimin snorts, and holds out his hand for Jeongguk to take. “No, I suppose not.” Jeongguk lets Jimin, surprisingly strong, pull him up out of Taehyung’s lap. When Jimin doesn’t let go of his hand, he smiles, pleased. “You doing alright there, Jeongguk?” Jimin asks.

Jeongguk doesn’t really have the words to describe how bright and warm and happy he’s feeling. Not just about this tentative new relationship he’s forging with everyone, but all of it – how he’s starting to think of this place, and his Soulmates, as home; how he’s never felt so at peace with his magical ability; how loved he feels, every day. So, he just smiles at Jimin, and says, “I’m doing amazing, hyung.”

When he goes into the kitchen the next morning, Seokjin is helping Hoseok make a packed lunch, and there’s a small suitcase by the kitchen door.

“Who’s going on a trip?” He asks, dumping his Compendium down on the countertop, something that makes Yoongi antsy whenever he sees Jeongguk do it.

“Me,” Hoseok says, clipping the lid of his lunchbox on. “I’m gonna go visit my sister for a week! She’s going away soon, so I wanted to see her before she goes.”

“That’s cool,” Jeongguk says. “Where does she live?”

“Only on the other side of the city,” Hoseok explains. “I just don’t want to have to travel back and forth every morning and evening, you know? No sense getting stuck in commuter traffic when I can just crash at her place.”

It doesn’t make sense, not really – a broomstick can take you from one side of the city to the other in less than half an hour if you fly above the skyline – but Namjoon comes careening into the kitchen before Jeongguk can ask.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Seokjin says. “What’s the rush?”

“Work just called,” Namjoon says, looking around the kitchen frantically.

“I thought you were self-employed?” Jeongguk asks.

“I am, sort of,” Namjoon replies, finally beelining towards the snack cupboard and pulling out a packet of chips that sends a cascade of other snacks - cup noodles, Pepero, and Jeongguk’s Banana Kicks among them – out onto the floor. Namjoon looks like he’s on the edge as it is, so Jeongguk rushes over to tidy everything away. “Thanks, Jeongguk – Scryer Witches are nearly all self-employed, but we’re all registered under a union, and the union boss just sent out a distress call that the mirror at the fire station is shattered, so they can’t scry the locations of the fires that’ll happen in the next few days, so they’ve asked us all to head down there and sort of piecemeal a vision together.”

“Want us to save you some dinner?” Seokjin asks; Namjoon shakes his head.

“I’ll probably just stay there until their mirror can get fixed, but I’ll text you all, love you!” He runs out just as fast as he ran in, leaving Jeongguk feeling rather like he’s just been put in a bag and shaken very, very quickly.

“I’m gonna head out, too,” Hoseok says, putting his lunchbox in his suitcase. “Tell the others I’m sorry for not sticking round to say goodbye, but I’m meeting my sister before work so she can let me into her apartment.” He leaves with a wave, the wheels of his suitcase juddering over the grooves in between the tiles of their kitchen floor.

“It’s going to be weird, not having them around for a few days,” Seokjin says. “We’ve more or less been under each other’s feet for the last… Wow, almost two months.”

“Time flies,” Jeongguk says, sitting at the table. He’d brought his theory textbook in to give it a quick reread over breakfast, but he can’t be bothered to go and get it from the counter – apparently sensing his laziness, Seokjin brings it over to him. “Thanks, hyung.”

“How’s your studying going?” Seokjin asks, flicking the stove off.

“I keep scoring 43% on my practical exam practices,” Jeongguk says. “Which I know is technically amazing because without the 50% penalty it’d be 86%, but technically amazing is not going to help me pass.”

“You’ve got time to find somewhere to glean a few more percentage points,” Seokjin says sympathetically. “Not to mention Yoongi keeps marking you harshly, you might find you automatically just gain a few more points in the real thing.”

“I don’t want to rely on that, though,” Jeongguk says, opening his textbook with a sigh. A part of him is hoping he’ll come across some theory point he hasn’t seen before, something that will shift his understanding of a spell to help him cast it better, faster, but he’s read through this textbook so many times that he’s pretty sure he’s gleaned every possible nugget of wisdom from it. He highlights a quote about how doing vocal warmups can improve spell recitation – not because it’s new information, but because he wants to feel like he’s doing something useful with his time.

Jimin meanders into the kitchen, rubbing his face tiredly. “Up late?” Seokjin asks.

Humming, Jimin pours himself a glass of water. “I was doing an ingredients order and lost track of time. On the plus side, I don’t think I’m going to run out of spinach for potion shrinking any time soon.”

“Potion shrinking?” Jeongguk says, welcoming the distraction from his textbook to learn about something actually interesting.

“When you see me using those tiny ampoules of potion, I’ve shrunk it down with spinach and a spell Yoongi-hyung wrote for me,” Jimin explains. “I used to just use microscopic amounts of ingredients to get the potions to be that small, but it’s more time-saving to make the potion at normal size and then shrink the whole thing down – that way I’m not working with point-something of a gram of ingredients, you know?” He looks towards the door suddenly and, a few seconds later, Taehyung walks through it, frowning down at his phone. “What’s wrong?”

Taehyung looks up, surprised, then frowns at his phone again. “My dad just text me to say that they got the weather report for the summer, and there’s going to be a drought that’ll kill most of the crops.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Jimin says worriedly. “Can they do anything?”

Taehyung nods. “Oh, yeah, my grandparents were both Farm Witches, they set up irrigation and sun shields years ago. I might still go down and help, though, the Light spells can be a little finicky, and they got the weather report later than normal, so they could probably use the extra help.”

“Do you want me to come?” Jimin offers.

“Don’t you have a big work order for Adhesive Potion?” Taehyung says. “The one you have to stir every six hours so that it doesn’t stick to your cauldron?” Jimin grumbles, but doesn’t argue any further.

“I could come?” Jeongguk says.

Taehyung gives him a look, then his open textbook. “You need to study, not spend the next few days working full days on a farm.”

“What about me?” Seokjin suggests. “You know, Weather Witch and all.”

For a moment, Taehyung looks tempted; then he shakes his head. “Thanks, hyung, but I don’t want the first time you meet my parents to be for work. Plus I’d like to introduce you all to my parents at the same time, you know?”

“Oh!” Seokjin nods. “Yeah, that makes sense. We could make a day of it, you know? All of our parents, meeting each other at the same time. It’d be great to meet six sets of parents at the same time, I’m great with parents. I’m not sure our oven is big enough to cook a meal for twenty-one people, so we’d definitely have to batch cook things in the days before, and that’s not even including anybody’s siblings-”

“Hyung,” Taehyung interrupts, because Seokjin’s talking himself into a face the colour of a sunset. “We can plan our big parent gathering when I get back, yeah?” Seokjin nods, mutely.

“44%,” Jimin says, looking up from the mark scheme. “And yes, before you ask, that was the most miserly way I could score it, I even took a point off because you had your left foot further forward than your right when you cast your levitation spell.” Jeongguk looks at the old pair of his trainers he’d cast the spell on – just as well that they’re old, because his Compendium, it turns out, doesn’t have anything resembling a levitation cancellation spell, so now they’re just stuck, perpetually floating two feet off the ground.

“You get marked on that?” Seokjin says incredulously – he’s sitting next to Jimin on the bean couch, and Jeongguk had watched them, during his practice, shift closer and closer to one another. Now, Jimin has his legs tossed nonchalantly over Seokjin’s thighs, while Seokjin has his forearms resting on Jimin’s legs. It’s domestic, and cozy, and Jeongguk’s jealous because he wants to be cuddling, too, not doing practice exams.

“It depends what my jurors are like,” Jeongguk says, twiddling his wand between his fingers. “Technically, I’m supposed to demonstrate proper footwork, something about grounding myself to the earth? Even though Witches haven’t been barefoot, walking on earth in nature for a while now.” He looks down at his feet and shuffles them into place.

“This spell you’ve cast is impressive, though,” Jimin says. “I think most Levitation Witches would be impressed with how long those shoes have stayed in place for.”

“Could you put them on?” Seokjin asks suddenly, leaning forward more.

“Uh…” Jeongguk puts his Compendium down on the floor, goes over to his still floating trainers, and nudges them a few times – they move about like he’s pushing them along the floor, but don’t lower or raise any further. “Yeah, you know what, I think I could.” He unties the laces on the shoes, then lifts his leg up.

Putting on the first shoe isn’t that much of a problem – once he can trust the fact that his foot isn’t going to come crashing down, and he can put more of his weight on that foot, it’s rather like tying his shoe with his foot up a few stairs. However, he can’t work out how to get the second shoe on. Pulling himself up to standing feels like a recipe for snapping his ankle, especially if the levitation spell decides to suddenly give out.

“Here, hang on,” Seokjin says, gently pushing Jimin’s legs off of his lap and standing up. When Jimin, sinking into the couch, makes an indignant noise, Seokjin turns back to help him up; then, keeping hold of Jimin’s hand, he comes over to Jeongguk. “Okay, up you go,” he says, holding out his hand for Jeongguk to take, which Jeongguk does, swinging it between them. “Not what I had in mind,” Seokjin says, squeezing his palm.

“This is nice, hyung,” Jimin says, taking Jeongguk’s other hand. “Just you, me, and Jeongguk with his foot suspended up in the air. The others don’t know what they’re missing.”

“Shame Yoongi has to work, otherwise we could make this a square,” Seokjin says sarcastically. “Now help me get Jeongguk into his other shoe.”

Jimin lets go of Seokjin’s hand, and both of them brace their hands so that Jeongguk can use them to boost himself up. “Okay, help me get this on my foot,” he says, poking his toes into the opening of his shoe.

It takes some finagling, but finally, Jeongguk is levitating. It feels supremely unsafe, having his centre of gravity localised below his feet, but he can’t help but giggle as he wobbles about.

“If we get the broom and mop, do you think you could use them like skis?” Jimin suggests.

“Yeah, go, let’s try it,” Jeongguk says eagerly.

“Hyung, don’t let him fall until I get back!” Jimin yells over his shoulder as he runs downstairs.

“I like the fact that he’s assuming you’re going to fall at some point,” Seokjin says. He shifts his hands until he can hold Jeongguk by the hips, like he’s holding him aloft in a dance. It’s probably not necessary – Jeongguk could probably get his balance eventually – but Jeongguk will be the last person on earth to mention it.

“I mean, it’s absolutely going to happen,” Jeongguk says. “I don’t think this levitation spell is permanent, you know?”

The spell shows no sign of stopping, though, and he’s still floating by the time Jimin comes upstairs, broom, mop, and so many cushions in hand, which he tosses on the floor around Jeongguk before raising his eyebrow. “Am I… Interrupting something?”

“Nope, I’m just showing Jeongguk how strong I am,” Seokjin says. “Look, one hand.” Very gently, he takes one of his stabilising hands away.

“Amazing, hyung,” Jeongguk says flatly. “I’m so impressed.”

“I thought you were,” Seokjin says, taking his other hand away as Jimin hands Jeongguk the mop and broom. “Look, no hands!” Seokjin giggles loudly, a squeaky hiccup that Jeongguk can’t help but grin along with.

Once he feels like he has his balance, he uses the mop and broom to, very slowly, inch forward. It seems to work perfectly, and while it’s not currently a fast mode of transportation at all, it still feels great to have made something that works.

“How do you think it works?” Jimin asks curiously, crouching down and wiggling his hand underneath Jeongguk’s shoes. “Do you think it’s based on ground level, so they’ll always stay up here? Or do you think it works off of the nearest solid surface?” Jeongguk frowns. “Can you go downstairs, is what I’m asking.”

“That seems unnecessarily dangerous – no, don’t go and try!” Seokjin says, trying to dissuade Jeongguk from inching closer to the stairs without actually touching him and accidentally knocking him off balance.

“I trust you to catch me, hyung,” Jeongguk says, determinedly continuing to shuffle. “Remember, like you did on the first day we met?”

“You remember that?” Seokjin asks. Because he’s behind Jeongguk, Jeongguk can’t see his expression, but he can imagine it from the tone of his voice – eyes wide, mouth dropped open, even after he’s finished speaking.

“Of course I do,” Jeongguk says, standing at the top of the stairs, which look much steeper from this new angle. “I almost face-planted on the landing strip.”

“Funnily enough, I’d actually been waiting there for you to land so that I could introduce myself,” Seokjin says. “Not a lot of people use the flightpaths below the skyline, you know? Despite how hard I work to make them safe to fly in. So I’m glad I was there.”

“When I first saw Jeongguk, it was on the train platform in Busan,” Jimin says.

Jeongguk turns, surprised, and almost overbalances, but a strong gust of wind keeps him upright. “Thanks, hyung,” Jeongguk says to Seokjin, before turning to Jimin. “I didn’t know that? The first time I saw you was on the train, you were dyeing your hair blonde.”

“Taehyung pointed you out to me.” Jimin laughs. “It was ridiculous, really – he’d come down to Busan to get the train with me up to Seoul, he said he didn’t want me to meet any of my Soulmates without him, because he wanted to get to know them too.” He shakes his head incredulously. “Anyway, we were on the platform, and he nudged me and said, “Jimin, look at him, imagine if he was your Soulmate.””

“I can’t believe I was intimidated by you on the train when you’d already been imagining our future together,” Jeongguk teases.

“You were intimidated by me?” Jimin says, ignoring the rest of Jeongguk’s statement.

“Yeah, I was,” Jeongguk says significantly. “Now you’re just my soft-hearted hyung who’s secretly been making us freshly made Cleansing Potion so we don’t need to buy bodywash.”

“That’s you?” Seokjin says. “I thought I was going crazy because my shower gel hasn’t been going down for weeks!”

“Maybe we should just go back to you being intimidated by me, actually,” Jimin mutters.

Jeongguk, slowly, turns back to the stairs, takes a deep breath, and takes his first, tentative step. His foot falls down until it stops, exactly two feet, above the stair. “That answers that,” Jeongguk says, carefully walking down the stairs with exaggerated steps. “I’m not going to tell anyone else about these, see if they notice.”

“See if they notice you floating two feet above the floor?” Jimin calls down the stairs. “I don’t know, why don’t you go see if Yoongi-hyung notices?”

“He’s working, I think,” Seokjin says, coming down the stairs after Jeongguk. “His door was shut when I walked past earlier, anyway.”

The house, obviously, isn’t built for somebody almost eight foot tall, and Jeongguk’s back is quickly starting to hurt from hobbling around, so he turns to Seokjin and Jimin. “Can you help me take these off, please?”

“You know,” Jimin says as he and Seokjin help Jeongguk lower himself to the floor. “You should really look into that levitation spell you cast. I know you’ve got a natural aptitude for every branch of magic you put your hand to, but these are really impressive.”

“You really think so?” Jeongguk asks. “You’re not just saying that?”

“Jeongguk, I’ve never just said anything in my life,” Jimin says.

Jeongguk thinks about it.

Over the next few days, his trainers stay floating in the corner of his room – he comes in to check on them while taking breaks from studying, and each time he sees them he goes back to his books, pleased to see such a tangible example of the fact that he is actually pretty good at magic, as long as he has the freedom to do it his own way.

Jimin’s given him a book about writing a research paper, which he wants to spend the afternoon reading in the yard to take advantage of the nice spring weather, so he heads into the kitchen to grab some snacks.

He’s practically climbed into the snack cupboard, looking for the Banana Kicks he knows are in there, when he hears, “Ah, there you are!” He half emerges from the cupboard – Jimin’s standing in the doorway, Seokjin behind him. “When did you last see Yoongi-hyung?” He asks. “Don’t overthink it, immediate answer.”

“I don’t know?”

“Okay, I’m going to need you to think about it a little more than that, then,” Jimin says flatly.

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” Jeongguk says, talking through his thought processes aloud as he shuffles out of the cupboard. “And I didn’t see him yesterday.” He frowns. “I don’t think I saw him the day before, either.”

“You see?” Jimin says triumphantly.

“I didn’t doubt you,” Seokjin says, with the air of someone who’s repeated themselves a few times. “What I said was you can’t just burst into his room, he’s entitled to some privacy.”

“Sure, sure,” Jimin says. “But multiple days?”

“If the door’s shut, don’t disturb unless it’s an emergency,” Seokjin says, but he doesn’t sound sure of himself.

“It is an emergency,” Jimin says. “We haven’t seen him for days!”

“Maybe one of us should check on him,” Jeongguk says uneasily, looking at the wall as though, if he stares hard enough, he’ll be able to look through all of the walls separating the kitchen and Yoongi’s room.

“Which leads us right back to where we were in our conversation,” Jimin says to Seokjin.

“All right, fine,” Seokjin says. “But we’re not all going, it’ll make it seem like an intervention. It needs to be casual, chill.”

“What about Namjoon-hyung?” Jeongguk says. “They get on really well. Or Hoseok-hyung?”

“Actually, I was going to suggest you do it,” Jimin says, looking at Jeongguk. “Not to mention Hoseok-hyung’s not due back for another few days, and we have no idea when Namjoon-hyung and Taehyung will be able to come back.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because if something is wrong with Yoongi-hyung, I think he’ll talk to you,” Jimin says.

“I think he’d talk to both of you, too,” Jeongguk says.

Jimin snorts. “Last week I tried to get him to talk to me about his Compendium, and we somehow ended up arguing about me using a brass cauldron instead of cast iron.”

“You shouldn’t use brass, though,” Jeongguk points out. “The brass might react with your ingredients-”

“Yes, thank you, Yoongi-hyung told me,” Jimin interrupts. “But putting us in a room together is like putting a cat amongst the pigeons, except we’re both cats and we’re wondering where the promised pigeons are.” Jeongguk squints at him, confused. “What I mean is he probably needs someone to talk to right now, not bicker with.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short,” Seokjin says. “But Jeongguk, if you’re happy to do this, you should bring some food with you, I’m not sure when he last had a proper meal.” He opens up the rice cooker.

“What about you, hyung?” Jeongguk asks, even as Seokjin starts spooning rice into a bowl.

“Oh, I’m no good at serious conversations!” Seokjin says with a laugh. “I’d make a joke or some ridiculous pun at the wrong moment.”

“Now who’s selling himself short?” Jimin says, rolling his eyes.

Jeongguk’s honestly not sure that he’s the right man for the job here. Yoongi’s incredibly close to Namjoon, for starters; Taehyung’s got a natural knack for conversation; Hoseok is such a good listener.

But none of them are here right now, and Seokjin and Jimin seemingly have their own hang ups around serious conversations, so Jeongguk seems to be the only man for the job.

He takes the bowl of plain white rice over to Yoongi’s room (“If he’s not eaten properly for a few days, the last thing he needs is gochujang or something hitting his empty stomach,” Seokjin had said when Jeongguk had looked into the bowl with a raised eyebrow), knocks on the door, and waits.

Yoongi makes a noise like it’s being clawed out of him.

“Were you sleeping?” Jeongguk says. “Oh, wait, sorry, it’s only me. Jeongguk,” he clarifies. “I brought you some food? It’s just some rice, but Seokjin-hyung said that’d probably be easier on your stomach.”

“Thanks,” Yoongi says. “Leave it by the door, I’ll come out and get it in a bit.”

Jeongguk hesitates. “Can… Can I bring it in?”

Yoongi doesn’t reply immediately, but Jeongguk holds his ground, bowl of rice clutched tight in his hand. “I’ve not showered,” he says eventually. “Wasn’t expecting to see anyone.”

“I don’t care about that,” Jeongguk says.

Yoongi snorts loud enough that Jeongguk can hear it through the door. “Yes you do, Jeongguk, you’re the most sensitive to smells of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Okay, well, yes,” Jeongguk replies with a frown. “But I care about how you’re doing more than I care about you being a little stinky.”

Yoongi laughs again, and Jeongguk takes comfort in the fact that he’s laughing, at least. “All right, come in.”

When Jeongguk opens the door, he’s immediately hit with a wave of the smell of still, stale air, but aside from that, there’s nothing immediately noticeable to indicate that Yoongi’s been holed up in here for a few days. But as Jeongguk starts looking closer, he starts to notice the signs – the missing bag of Jeongguk’s snacks, half-eaten, sitting on Yoongi’s desk; the pile of papers scrunched up in the bin, a few balls scattered around it but most landed neatly in the bin itself; Yoongi’s hair, pulled back into a tight, slick ponytail.

In the two months Jeongguk’s known him, Yoongi’s always been a hard worker, but he’s never been like this, has never prioritised what he’s working on so single-mindedly that every other thing has taken a backseat for so long.

“You really didn’t have to bring me food,” Yoongi says. He’s sitting at his desk, Compendiums piled so high around him it’s as though he’s trying to build a fort out of them. “I would’ve gotten around to it eventually.”

“It’s been over two days,” Jeongguk says gently, handing him the bowl.

Yoongi blinks up at him, looks out of his window, then at his phone. “Huh. Well, thanks.”

“What’re you working on?” Jeongguk glances in the direction of his notes, but doesn’t read any of them – he knows that some of Yoongi’s spells can be dangerous, and he doesn’t want another magical mishap with a spell more dangerous than a simple colour change.

“A memory exorciser,” Yoongi says. “I want something that will remove a memory without causing damage to the rest of your memories, but it’s more difficult than I thought it’d be – not to mention I can’t exactly test it, it’s not the sort of spell you want to have a trial period for.”

“Do you… Want to use it?” Jeongguk asks delicately.

“I did, when I started,” Yoongi says bluntly, closing one of his books and setting his bowl of rice on top of it with an irreverence that Jeongguk can’t help but smile quickly at. “But working on it has helped me realise that the quick moment of peace I’d get after using it wouldn’t outweigh everything else I’d lose, especially if I get it wrong.” He opens his mini-Compendium, raps a quick rhyming couplet, and a chair pops into place next to his; he kicks it, gestures for Jeongguk to sit down. “I’ve been trying to finish it because I want to know that I can, not because I want to use it anymore.”

“The thing you wanted to remove,” Jeongguk begins, taking a pause to work out how we wants to continue. “Is that why you haven’t wanted to leave your room?”

“In part,” Yoongi says, just as carefully. “I’m not used to sharing space with other people like this, you know? I’m used to taking a few days on my own to process how I’m feeling about something.” He frowns at his bowl of rice. “I’ll try and be better at it, I don’t want to worry you.”

“We won’t worry as much next time,” Jeongguk says. “Now we know you’re more or less okay in here, we’ll just check in to make sure you’re not living off of my Banana Kicks.”

“Oh, they were yours?” Yoongi says, worriedly looking over at the half empty bag. “Hyung’ll get you some more-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jeongguk says. “In fact, I’m more mad at the fact you’ve only eaten half of them.”

Yoongi grins down into his rice, then skews his mouth to the side. “When you say ‘we’…” Jeongguk hums questioningly. “You know, ‘we’ won’t worry next time, who did you mean?”

“Seokjin-hyung and Jimin-hyung were planning ways to check in on you without making you feel like they were staging an intervention.” The look that plays across Yoongi’s face is complicated, almost like a visual trick – simultaneously relieved and sad. “Oh, right, you weren’t here - Namjoon-hyung’s been called away for work, Hoseok-hyung went to visit his sister a few days ago, and Taehyung-hyung went back to Daegu to help his parents prepare for some shit weather they’re due to have this summer. Seokjin-hyung offered to go with him, but Taehyung-hyung said he didn’t want the first time any of us met his family to be for work.”

“Bet hyung reacted normally to that,” Yoongi says.

“It was great, his ears went so pink,” Jeongguk says with a grin at the memory. “And then he just started talking, you know how he does, talking about how we should all meet each other’s parents on the same day, and that our oven wouldn’t be big enough to cook for everyone…” He trails off. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep talking, I came to check you were all right, not distract you.”

“Don’t apologise,” Yoongi says firmly, shovelling in a few mouthfuls of rice before continuing. “I definitely needed the distraction. Tell me more about what you’ve been up to?”

So Jeongguk does – tells him about how Jimin’s been grading his practice exams for him, even doing Yoongi’s mannerisms while he does so; about how Taehyung had video called them from Daegu the day before to show them the little light canopies he’d set up for the sunflowers, little patches of makeshift sunlight just in case, going on a tangent about the spectrum of wavelengths he needed to include to supplement the natural light they’d still receive; about his shoes.

“Show me?” Yoongi says.

“They’re in my room,” Jeongguk says, pointing with his thumb in the general direction of his room. “Want to come with?”

Yoongi hesitates, then nods, letting Jeongguk lead him by the hand over to his room.

“Oh, that’s amazing,” Yoongi says, crouching so that he’s eyelevel with the trainers. “And you said Jimin had suggested you write a paper?”

“I’m not sure what it’d be about, I can’t exactly write I made some shoes fly. Source: they won’t come down,” Jeongguk says. “But it’d be pretty cool to contribute some magical knowledge to the world, you know?”

The kitchen is visible from Jeongguk’s open door, and he sees the exact moment when Seokjin and Jimin spot Yoongi, crouched down next to the pair of shoes. Yoongi sees them a second later, but by then they’re already hurrying down the hall towards him.

“Oh no,” Yoongi says, which is all the time he has to say anything before Jimin’s pulling him to his feet and bundling him between himself and Seokjin.

As Jeongguk had thought, the both of them had been doing themselves a disservice earlier – despite his oral misgiving, Yoongi preens under their fussing and attention, letting himself be coddled. Nevertheless, Jeongguk likes that they’d trusted him with this, that they’d specifically asked him to do this.

“Have you asked him?” Jimin says suddenly, apropos of nothing. Jeongguk thinks, for a moment, that Jimin’s talking to him, but then he sees that Jimin’s staring, hard, at Yoongi, who’s doing everything he can to avoid eye contact.

“I – no-”

“You should,” Seokjin says. “He’ll say yes.”

“I know, but I don’t want him to, you know, feel like he has to because I’ve forgotten to take care of myself properly for a few days-”

“Are you talking about asking me something?” Jeongguk asks. “Because I mean, yeah, my answer probably will be yes, but that’s because I like helping you out, not because of anything else.”

Yoongi sighs, but it’s clear he’s just doing it to try to buy time, rather than because he’s genuinely put out. Eventually, he says, not quite looking Jeongguk in the eye, “I was going to ask if you’d mind working with me for a bit.”

“Really?” Jeongguk’s still got enough savings to last him a few more months, but his unemployment has been starting to gnaw at him. “Why?”

“I’ve got a client coming up that’ll be a huge workload,” Yoongi explains. “Starting in the summer, this guy wants two Compendiums worth of spells for building and running a farm.”

“But I’ve never written a spell before, hyung,” Jeongguk says.

“I’ll be writing them, but when I’m writing new magic, a lot of my time is devoted to testing spells, rather than writing them, and I’m on a deadline,” Yoongi says. “And I’ll be honest, it won’t be cushy, easy work-” He snorts. “I mean, you saw me when I accidentally singed my hair, you know? So I want you to say no if you’ve got any doubts at all-”

“I’d love to help, are you kidding?” Jeongguk says.

Yoongi beams at him, then visibly pulls his joy back in. “Wait, you’re not just saying that?”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I want to see what your job is like. You’re not just asking because you know I’m unemployed, right?”

“No,” Yoongi says immediately. “I hope you’re starting to see it too, but you’ve got a genuine knack for magic, and I could really use your help.”

Jeongguk nods, excitement spilling out into his grin.

Taehyung, despite being the furthest away, comes back to the house first, coming back while they’re all upstairs watching one of the VHS tapes.

He actually scares Jeongguk half to death, because he initially thinks the sounds he’s hearing downstairs are coming from the film, and then Taehyung appears on the stairs, making Jeongguk jump so much that he startles Seokjin on the couch next to him, who, in turn, accidentally kicks Jimin awake from where’s dozing on the floor between Seokjin’s legs, which sends Yoongi sprawling off of Jimin’s lap.

“The house is pretty spooky when it’s all dark and no one’s about,” Taehyung says, setting his suitcase down and sprawling across Jimin and Yoongi’s legs. Jimin, immediately, starts running his fingers through Taehyung’s hair.

“It’s a big, old house,” Seokjin agrees. “And honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if the last tenants had had a Paranormal Witch who’d cast some sort of endless haunting spell, it seems like the petty sort of thing they’d have done.”

“That’s so sad,” Taehyung says. “They should’ve done a lot more kissing and a lot less fighting, look how happy we are.”

“You say that, yet you’ve not kissed any of us hello,” Jeongguk says, which prompts Taehyung to scramble upright and start planting loud, smacking kisses onto as many body parts as he can reach.

Next is Namjoon, who comes home after five days away, looking utterly exhausted and tense, digging his fingers into the muscle of his left shoulder.

“We’ve been sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor,” Namjoon explains, pink faced and pleased once they’ve all kissed him hello. “And I’ve spent most of the last few days hunched over a scrying mirror, but at least they’ve fixed the fire map.”

“You should go have a bath,” Seokjin suggests as Yoongi digs his elbow into Namjoon’s back, rubbing massaging circles. “Maybe lay off the scrying for a few days.”

“I mean, I’ll try,” Namjoon says wryly. “I can’t help it sometimes.”

Last is Hoseok, late enough on Sunday night that Jeongguk’s pretty sure he’s the only person still awake. He’d stayed up late reading the textbook Jimin had lent him, and he’s in the middle of shutting the yard screens for the night when he spots Hoseok in the opposite hallway; Hoseok waves as quietly and exuberantly as he can.

“Is everyone asleep?” He whispers when Jeongguk’s made his way over.

“I think so,” Jeongguk replies; on his way around the hallway to shut the screen, everyone else’s doors had been shut. “How’s your sister?”

“Good!” Hoseok says, going into the kitchen so that they can talk a little louder. “I went with her to the airport, but her flight got delayed – I was hoping to be back by dinner.”

“Yoongi put some leftovers in the fridge for you,” Jeongguk says.

Hoseok looks at the fridge, then at Jeongguk, eyes wide – then he smiles, soft and fond. “That was nice of him, I’ll thank him in the morning.” He takes out the leftovers and a pair of chopsticks, not even bothering with a bowl or a plate. “How’s everyone else? I’ve been so busy, I’ve barely had chance to text anyone beyond a quick hello.”

As Jeongguk fills him in on everyone’s goings on, he can’t help but notice that Hoseok looks even more attentive than usual, like he’s trying to absorb every single piece of information Jeongguk gives him. He barely looks at his food as he eats, just watching Jeongguk.

“Hyung, are you alright?” Jeongguk asks, frowning. Hoseok tilts his head expectantly. “You look…” Jeongguk trails off, because he really can’t put words to the expression on Hoseok’s face. It’s almost like the look given the final night before a goodbye, which is odd, because Hoseok’s just gotten back from a trip.

“My sister gave me a lot to think about,” Hoseok says, rubbing his face. “Work’s a lot at the moment, too, so it’s…” He sighs, then smiles at Jeongguk again. “Don’t worry about me, Jeongguk, I’ll be okay.”

When Jeongguk wakes up the following morning, he has the brief, alarming thought that he’d missed something in his conversation with Hoseok the night before, and that he was going to wake up and find that he’d moved out or something – but Hoseok’s sitting at the breakfast table, cheerfully talking to Seokjin and Taehyung.

They all settle back into life as the seven of them easily after their week’s separation, but Jeongguk keeps a careful eye on Hoseok for the next few days. Aside from him spending a little more time than usual working alone in his room, though, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in his mood.

“Maybe I was just being overly sensitive, it was pretty late when he came home,” Jeongguk says to Namjoon. He’s sitting in Namjoon’s room, door shut, because he needs to talk to somebody about this, and he doesn’t want to approach Hoseok about it until he’s sure what, exactly, he’s feeling so concerned about.

“I don’t know, Jeongguk, you’re pretty perceptive,” Namjoon says. Namjoon’s stretching on his bedroom floor, still stiff from his work trip – he’s currently in downward dog, which is a lot for Jeongguk, personally, when he’s trying to have a serious conversation. “Talk me through what he said?”

“That’s the thing, he didn’t really say a lot? He just said his sister had given him things to think about, and that his job was busy.”

Namjoon peers at Jeongguk through his legs – again, a lot to take in. “You know, I don’t actually know what Hoseok does? I know it’s some sort of office job, but I don’t know much more than that.”

“Do you think he’s magically burnt out?” Jeongguk muses. “I know it’s different for everyone, maybe Hoseok-hyung’s makes him… I don’t know, sad?”

Dropping down to his knees, Namjoon turns to look at him over his shoulder. “…Hoseok’s not magic,” he says slowly.

“What?” Jeongguk laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous, he’s a…” He stops. Frowns. What type of Witch had Hoseok been again?

“Have you seen him do magic?” Namjoon continues, turning around to face Jeongguk, cross-legged, on the floor. “Ever? Jeongguk, I don’t think the guy even owns a wand.”

“But…” Jeongguk shakes his head. “That’s impossible! We’ve never needed to explain anything magical to him – I mean, he was there for First Fruit!”

“But none of us saw him,” Namjoon says. “Think about that – all six of us were in there for a full hour, with no one else, and not one of us saw him at all?”

“It’s a big room,” Jeongguk says faintly.

“Not that big,” Namjoon points out.

“But why would he lie about being our Soulmate?”

“I don’t think he’s lying about that,” Namjoon says quickly. “I don’t think he’s lying about anything, except that he was in the Greenhouse at the same time as us. He’s just choosing to leave something out.”

“But… Why?”

Namjoon shrugs. “He’ll tell us when he’s ready, we just need to be patient and wait for him.”

Jeongguk tries to be patient over the next few days, but he finds himself watching Hoseok even more carefully, to the point where it’s starting to distract him from his studying.

“37%,” Yoongi says with a worried grimace he’s not quick enough to mask. “You feeling okay, Jeongguk? You’ve not dropped below 40% for a while.”

“Sorry, hyung, I don’t think I was concentrating,” Jeongguk says, trying not to look at Hoseok, who’s sitting next to Seokjin on the bean couch. Jeongguk had spent the last half of his practice thinking about how convinced Namjoon had been that Hoseok wasn’t a Witch, when Hoseok had told them, in detail, about the changes to the Mastery exam.

And yet Jeongguk hasn’t seen Hoseok do magic, ever. He knows some Witches have magic that just has less day-to-day use than others, but to have never seen him do magic, in over two months, is pretty unusual.

“Jeongguk!” Seokjin calls out, waving his arm in wide arcs.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jeongguk says, shaking his head. They’re supposed to be practicing with the Compendium Deck Yoongi had lent him for the exam, and Jeongguk had been hoping to get his first 45% with it today. “Can we go again?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Yoongi says. “No offense, but I think you’d just be wasting your time practicing when you’re so distracted?” Jeongguk tries not to look as dejected as he feels, but Yoongi does have a point. “We can still practice some magic, but we don’t need to do it in the specific framework of a practice exam.”

“What if we just call out random scenarios, and you talk us through what spells you’d cast and why?” Seokjin suggests.

“That sounds…” Hoseok rummages in his pocket, pulls out his phone, and grimaces at it. “Ah, work, let me just go take this…” He stands up and hurries downstairs, leaving Jeongguk to stare after him with a frown.

“Jeongguk?” Seokjin asks worriedly. “You good?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Jeongguk says, turning back to them. Yoongi’s gone to sit next to Seokjin on the couch, which means Jeongguk can see their expressions, side by side; Seokjin’s confused worry, and Yoongi’s much more incisive concern.

“Do you…” He glances at the stairs, then back at Jeongguk. “…want to talk about it?” Jeongguk shakes his head. Yoongi continues to look at him, as though hoping he can get Jeongguk to talk through silent attrition, but Jeongguk stands firm – eventually, Yoongi sighs and says, “Okay. Let’s do hyung’s idea, I think that’s a good plan.”

Jeongguk doesn’t think Namjoon tells any of the others about his worries about Hoseok, but the others seem to pick up on his general distracted mood, and the atmosphere in the house turns more and more uneasy – surreptitious glances between one another, more time spent alone, like everyone is waiting for the tension to break, but no one wants to be the one to shatter it. He misses the brief, halcyon period (less than two weeks ago, even though it feels like a lifetime) when he’d just spent his days studying and learning the ways his Soulmates kissed him and each other.

Eventually, Jeongguk can’t take it anymore, not least because his exam is very, very soon, and he can’t focus on revising for it when he’s thinking about whether or not Hoseok’s okay, so he gathers everyone else out into the yard to ask their opinions. Hoseok’s sequestered in his room, so if they sit in the yard, they’ll be able to see him open his door if he comes out.

“I don’t think all of us asking him about it is a good idea,” Jeongguk says immediately. “Because when we all first met, and I was keeping it secret that I thought I wasn’t good at magic, I think I would’ve been mortified if you’d all sat me down to say you thought I was keeping a secret.”

“Arguably, we could’ve saved you a lot of stress in the long run if we’d done that,” Namjoon points out.

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I think I needed to learn about my ability in my own time.”

“He’s clearly withdrawing about something,” Jimin says. “He keeps making excuses not to hang out with me one on one.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve spent time with him alone since he got back,” Seokjin says thoughtfully; Yoongi nods in agreement, mouth pressed together in a line.

“Sounds like you were the last person to spend time with Hoseok alone,” Taehyung says to Jeongguk.

“And honestly, I think that was by accident,” Jeongguk says. “It was late when he came back – he said his sister’s flight had been delayed, but-”

Hoseok’s door creaks open, and Jeongguk realises two things simultaneously – one, he’s still not seen anything remotely magical in Hoseok’s room, which still has its basic, non-descript show bedroom feel; two, all six of them have inadvertently turned to stare at Hoseok, more or less destroying any attempt they could’ve made to be casual about this.

“I feel like I’ve just walked in on a meerkat colony,” Hoseok jokes, eyes flitting between them. “Everything okay?”

“We could ask you the same question, hyung,” Taehyung says; Jimin knocks his elbow into Taehyung’s ribs. “A completely nonchalant question that you do not have to answer!” Taehyung adds hastily.

Hoseok inhales so sharply that Jeongguk can hear it from where he’s sitting on the walkway across the yard; then he sighs and smiles, a little weakly. “My sister said you’d all catch on eventually.”

“You shouldn’t worry,” Namjoon says. “I know some Witches can be a bit funny about the idea of non-magical Soulmates, but none of us are like that.”

“Non-magical?” Hoseok squints at them, then laughs. “Wait, you thought-” He stops suddenly. “Oh. Huh, I guess that is kind of true at the moment.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Seokjin suggests gently. He looks at the rest of them, all sitting on the walkway. “And you can sit down, you don’t have to stand in front of us if it makes you feel like you’re being interrogated.”

“No, no, this is fine,” Hoseok says. “So, I’m a Tome Witch.”

“That’s impossible,” Yoongi blurts out. “Nobody’s a Tome Witch these days.”

“Nobody except the High Council,” Hoseok says.

The silence that follows that statement is palpable, a choking cloud that sinks down over them as they all come to terms with that statement.

“I should’ve told you,” Hoseok adds quietly.

The weather, ironically, considering the cloud of silence, is beautiful, the first day where Jeongguk can really feel that summer is starting to spill into the days. The plum blossom, which has held onto the blossoms for far longer than any plum tree Jeongguk has ever come across, is starting to release its last petals, which flutter through the warm air idly.

Jeongguk’s not sure what to say, because he gets it. He’d been so nervous over the thought of telling one Soulmate about how bad he thought he was at magic; having to have that conversation six times had been one of the hardest things he’s ever had to do. The only reason he’d done it at all had been because he worried, constantly, that he was going to be caught out. Mostly, he just feels sorry for Hoseok, holding onto this burden of a secret for so long.

“Would you have been allowed to?” Namjoon asks. Jeongguk glances at him out of the corner of his eye; he looks serious, jaw pulsing, but not angry or sad. He knocks his knee gently against Namjoon’s anyway. “To tell us that you’re in the High Council, I mean.”

“They never said.” Hoseok sighs. “I never asked. I figured I knew the answer was going to be no, at least until the spring was over. If I stay here, they’ll kick me out of the High Council officially, I guess.”

Because the silence is so dense, Jeongguk can hear Yoongi’s sharp inhale from across the yard. Eventually, Taehyung is the one to break it, with, “…If?”

Hoseok looks over at him, eyes wide. “Yeah?”

“You haven’t decided yet?” Seokjin asks. “We have to make a decision soon.”

“I thought we were all going to talk about it,” Hoseok says slowly. “Have you all…”

“Not officially or anything,” Namjoon says; Jeongguk can feel him shift next to him as he looks around at everyone. “I think we all just assumed…”

Jeongguk nods quietly. He’d decided that he’d be staying almost from the minute that he walked through the door, true, but meeting everyone else had only solidified his certainty in that. He knows that everyone else wasn’t sold as quickly on the idea as him, although he thinks Taehyung came to a decision pretty soon after he did, but he’d thought that they were all in agreement.

“Is it… Because of me?” Yoongi asks quietly. Jeongguk looks down the line of his Soulmates at him; he looks genuinely cut up about something, and Jeongguk suddenly remembers those few days when Yoongi had been so sad and tense-

“No, no!” Hoseok says frantically. He hurries over to Yoongi so quickly that a little scuff of sand comes up under his feet. He crouches down in front of him. “I meant what I said, it’s not you, it’s me-” Yoongi snorts derisively. “-because I was hiding this from you. From all of you. I thought it’d be shitty of me to kiss you when I wasn’t telling you something so big about myself, but I wanted to kiss you.” He curls in on himself a little. “Wanted to kiss all of you.”

“But… Didn’t you go after Jimin-hyung and Taehyung-hyung?” Jeongguk asks. Hoseok looks at him, brow furrowed in confusion. “You know, that day when Taehyung-hyung asked us all to consider a relationship?”

“Oh, no. I went to my room – I was sort of relying on you all wanting to talk to whoever you saw first, and I was hoping that if I was out of sight…” He shrugs. “It didn’t work for long, Yoongi-hyung was at my door pretty quickly, so I went to visit my sister to give hyung time to tell you all that he’d asked and I’d said no.”

“Great plan, except hyung told us jack shit,” Jimin says, half exasperated, half fond. “Although it does explain why you’ve not been hanging out with us properly for the past few days.”

Hoseok nods. “I figured it’d be easy to avoid hanging out with you all individually if you were busy settling into a new relationship, but you’re all so kind, none of you would just let me wallow in peace.” He waves his hand vaguely at them. “So I guess thank you for checking in, and I’m sorry my answer was ‘surprise, I’m part of the High Council.” He chews his bottom lip for a moment, then adds, in a small voice, “Can you forgive me?”

Jeongguk’s not sure if this is something they’re supposed to have a group discussion about, but he already knows his answer. “I’m not sure you’ve done something that needs forgiving?” The others nod and hum in agreement around him, and Hoseok’s shoulders sag in visible relief.

“I do have two things I’d like to ask,” Namjoon says. “First, you said it was ‘kind of true’ that you were non-magical at the moment?”

“The High Council are all Tome Witches, but none of us actually own our Tomes,” Hoseok explains. “So if we leave the High Council, for whatever reason, we have to hand our Tome in. It was an accident that I got matched during First Fruit, Councillors aren’t actually supposed to have Soulmates, so the rest of the High Council agreed that I could take a sabbatical for the three month trial period, because I was adamant I wouldn’t want to stay. I can’t actually do any other magic than Tome magic, I never learned how.”

“We could teach you?” Yoongi offers, tentatively.

“Yeah,” Hoseok says hoarsely. He coughs. “Yeah, I’d like that, hyung. I’ve been trying to teach myself little things, but it’s not going well, I’ve fucked up more than my fair share of basic potions over the last few weeks-”

“It’s you!” Jimin blurts out, pointing an accusing finger at Hoseok. “You’re the menace pouring garlic jam down the sink! You’re the reason my name is up on that whiteboard for everyone to see!”

Hoseok winces guiltily. “Ah, yeah, that was me.”

“Hyung, I will happily give you all the potions lessons you could ever want if it would get Yoongi-hyung to stop accusing me of improper waste disposal.”

“I accused you one time-”

“My second question,” Namjoon interrupts. “You said you wanted to kiss all of us?”

“Oh!” Hoseok smiles so big that it shapes his mouth into a wide, happy heart. “Yeah, definitely.”

“Well, if everyone agrees,” Taehyung says, leaning forward to look at Yoongi. “I think Yoongi-hyung should get to kiss Hoseok-hyung first.”

“Hyung?” Hoseok says, looking up at Yoongi from where he’s still crouching in front of him.

Yoongi shrugs. “My offer still stands.”

“You make it sound like we’re striking a business deal,” Hoseok teases, eyes shining for a moment before he leans in, closing them.

Jeongguk sighs wistfully – he loves watching his Soulmates kiss. Partly because it’s hot, true, but mostly because it so clearly makes them happy, and Jeongguk loves anything that makes them happy like this, Yoongi’s cheeks rising as Hoseok peppers his mouth with kisses again and again and again. Jimin, by virtue of being closest, is next, and he presses a kiss into Hoseok’s hair first before trailing his mouth down, over his forehead, down past his nose, before finally landing a teasing, barely there kiss on his mouth. Namjoon’s surprisingly shy with Hoseok, but his gentle, tentative thumb across Hoseok’s cheekbone before he kisses him, equally gentle, is accompanied by eyes so enamoured that Jeongguk feels like he might burst just looking at them.

It's Jeongguk’s turn next, and, as he leans in, he almost wants to giggle at the realisation that Hoseok’s traveling down the line of them sitting down, like he’s sampling a breakfast buffet. As he kisses Hoseok, though, the impulse to giggle quickly dissipates – he’s fascinated to learn that his hands are big enough that, as he cups Hoseok’s face, he can feel his eyelashes fluttering slightly against his thumbs.

Hoseok pulls away what feels like far too soon, moving on to Seokjin. From this angle, Jeongguk can see the pink curve of Seokjin’s left ear as he kisses Hoseok with enough passion that Jeongguk can feel his own cheeks starting to heat up. Finally, Taehyung smacks a loud kiss to one of Hoseok’s cheeks, then the other, followed by an equally loud kiss on his mouth, each kiss with an exaggerated mwah sound that makes Hoseok laugh each time.

“So,” Taehyung says, Hoseok’s face still in his hands. “We’re all agreed that we’re staying here once summer comes, yeah?”

It would be easy to get swept up in the excitement of them all being in a romantic relationship, so Jeongguk quickly decides that he won’t be kissing anybody until his exam is done. It’s only for a few weeks, but as he plods through the final stages of his revision, it feels like it’s taking a lifetime.

“A few more hours,” Seokjin says, clapping Jeongguk on the back. “And you can kiss us as much as you like.”

They’re all standing outside of the High Council Chamber again, staring up at the giant white building as they wait for the time Jeongguk’s scheduled to take his exam. The others had insisted on coming with him, and had even gotten together in the early morning to make a picnic for them to eat when his exam’s over.

“That sounds great,” Jeongguk says, shifting his weight nervously back and forth between his feet. “We could even skip straight to that, actually, let’s just go home, I don’t need to do this exam-”

“You’re right, you don’t need to,” Yoongi says mildly. “But you want to, and you’ve done a lot of work studying for it.”

“You’re right.” Jeongguk takes a deep breath, then repeats, “You’re right!”

“Remember,” Hoseok says, straightening Jeongguk’s jacket for him. “The Compendium Mastery exam is literally just testing you on how well you can use your Compendium – trust your instincts on which spells to cast, and you’ll be fine.”

Jeongguk nods, feeling a little sick with nerves as he accepts back slaps and hugs and final words of wisdom from everyone before he steps inside the High Council Chambers.

They’re just the same as they had been three months prior, but being in this identical place is enough to make Jeongguk realise that he feels less nervous than he had been before the First Fruit. He has some nerves about his exam, sure, but it feels like a normal response to something stressful, rather than the intrinsic, bone-deep anxiety he’d felt about his place in the magical world.

“Jeon Jeongguk,” the disembodied voice calls out coolly. “Please step through the green door.” The door in question shimmers into view at the opposite end of the room. Unlike the white door, this one opens with ease under Jeongguk’s hand, and reveals a long, rectangular room, empty except for a table with five people seated at it at the very end of the room. The High Council’s décor choices remind Jeongguk of his own still pretty empty room, or the upstairs room that they still haven’t gotten round to decorating, which makes him quirk a small smile.

“Jeon Jeongguk-ssi,” the Councillor seated in the middle says. “Are you ready to begin your Compendium Mastery exam?”

“Yes, Councillor-nim,” Jeongguk replies, taking the Compendium Deck out of his pocket.

“Very well.” She consults her notes, then waves her hand across the table, conjuring the random assortment of items that Jeongguk will be able to use throughout his exam. “Your exam begins now. Cast a spell that would allow me to cross a river without getting my feet wet.”

Jeongguk immediately spots the pair of shoes sitting at the end of the table and smiles – for the first time, he’s pretty sure he’s got this in the bag, and even the Councillors raising an eyebrow at him pulling his wand out of his holster isn’t enough to knock him down.

He tries to pull a trick on everyone as he walks outside, tries to look sullen and forlorn as he walks towards them, but he can’t keep the ruse up for long, the triumphant grin blossoming helplessly onto his face the closer he gets to them.

“You are looking at a fully qualified Compendium Witch,” he says, waving the little tube they’d given him to safeguard his certification.

He’s never been hugged by six people at once, but now that he’s done it he’s not sure how he’s ever gone without it – it’s enough limbs and cheering and body heat and kisses on his head and pats on his back and squeezes of his waist that he feels fully encompassed in love.

“Don’t cry, baby,” Jimin says, pulling his sleeve over his hand and, very gently, wiping under Jeongguk’s eyes. “You’ll set me off.”

“We’re so proud of you,” Namjoon says.

“Hyung, I’m trying not to cry!” Jeongguk wails, burying his face in the nearest shoulder – he’s pretty sure it’s Seokjin’s.

They let him cry it out for a few moments – once he has, the general relief of having had a cry, and the specific relief of being done with a tough exam combine to leave him feeling both peaceful and suddenly, ravenously hungry. As if on cue, his stomach rumbles.

“Good thing we brought food,” Taehyung says, waving the basket. “Where did you want to go, Jeongguk? Your choice.”

“Honestly?” Jeongguk says. “Don’t laugh, but can we go home?” None of them laugh at him, but he’s met instead with six pairs of fond eyes.

“Yeah, of course,” Seokjin says, wrapping his arms around Jeongguk’s shoulders.

“…you were right, though, Hoseok-hyung,” Jeongguk says around a mouthful of bibimbap. They’ve brought their picnic, along with cushions and blankets, upstairs, the empty space easily converted into something of a picnic nest. Jeongguk looks into his glass of juice and sees his own eyes widen in recognition – this is the exact image of himself he’d scried at the start of spring, totally unaware of how far he’d come to reach this point. “Once the exam was done, they spent a good five minutes after giving me my score telling me that I could’ve gotten the highest mark ever received by a Compendium Witch if I just stopped using my wand, but I was honestly so pleased to score a 49% that I didn’t really care what they said.”

“Still shitty of them,” Hoseok replies, rolling his eyes. While they’d been at the High Council Chambers, Hoseok had handed in his official notice; it means he no longer has access to a Tome, so he’ll have to learn magic from scratch, but one of his friends who’d once worked in the High Council had offered him a job working in an outreach centre for Witches who needed to retrain in a different magical skill. He still looks a little keyed up about it – quitting your job can be stressful enough, Jeongguk thinks, but severing your link to your magic entirely has to be on another level - but Taehyung and Jimin have him squashed between both of them, which seems to be helping to settle him. “Although, who knows? Maybe seeing you pass despite their ridiculously outdated wand penalty will make them think twice about some of their older, out of touch traditions. Like,” he snorts suddenly. “Did I ever tell you how the Soulmate sorting works during First Fruit?”

“Are you allowed to?” Namjoon asks incredulously.

Hoseok shrugs. “What’re they going to do, fire me? Besides, this is just what they do, they don’t actually understand how the deep-rooted magic of it actually works.”

“Tell us, hyung,” Taehyung says, knocking his shoulder into Hoseok’s.

“So, you go in and pick fruit,” Hoseok says. “And then you get matched with whoever picks the same fruit as you.”

“… That’s it?” Jeongguk says. He’s watched countless romances that have speculated on how Soulmates get matched, but none of them have suggested something so simple.

“That’s how I got matched with you all, actually,” Hoseok says. “The head Councillor said you’d all picked the same fruit, and I said it seemed ridiculous to match six people, especially on the basis of you all just picking the same fruit.” He laughs again. “I was going on and on about how we didn’t even have that much fruit in the Greenhouse to begin with, so the odds couldn’t be that small that six people would, say, pick strawberries, and then I leaned over, picked a strawberry to emphasise my point, and that was that.”

“Well, that’s boring,” Jimin says with a frown.

“Actually, if you think about it,” Yoongi says. “The odds of seven people all picking one type of fruit, especially when one of those people wasn’t even supposed to be fruit picking that day, is probably pretty small. It sounds like one of those magical practices that’s lost its original meaning over time, but that we still do because it works, even if we don’t understand it. Like when you smile at somebody like this,” he makes a flat line with his mouth that puckers his chin and makes little dimples at the corners of his mouth, “when you walk past them in the rain and neither of you have an umbrella.”

“Hyung, that’s not magic, that’s just something you do,” Jimin says.

“No, it’s true, it’s magic,” Seokjin jumps in immediately, lying through his teeth. “Trust me, I’m a Weather Witch.” He keeps a straight face for a fraction of a second before laughing loudly.

“The odds are very small,” Namjoon says. “Because you’ve got to remember that we’re already working with the low likelihood of all of us turning up to the High Council on the same day. Yes, we only had a year to get sorted as opposed to the usual three, but that’s still 365 days-”

“366,” Yoongi interrupts. “Leap year.”

“Hyung, I am trying to back you up here,” Namjoon says wearily.

“I’m not arguing with you!” Yoongi replies indignantly. “I’m just saying that it’s a leap year, it’s a fact!”

It feels like a lifetime ago that Jeongguk had stressed over how much it seemed like his Soulmates bickered with one another. Now it’s like a soothing soundtrack to his days, a white noise machine to put on in the background – he’s learnt the difference between voicing their differences, and the mean-spirited arguing the previous occupants of this house had partaken in.

He looks around the room, tries to imagine what they were like. Outside of trying to clean up the mess they’d left the house in, Jeongguk’s not really given them a lot of thought. Do some of them still talk to one another? Did any of them choose to stick it out as Soulmates, and had just moved somewhere else?

“You tired, Jeongguk?” Taehyung asks, massaging the back of Jeongguk’s neck with slow, rhythmic circles; Jeongguk sighs and leans back into the touch. “You’ve gone a little spaced out.”

Jeongguk shakes his head. “I was just thinking about the people who lived here before us. Wondering if they’re happy, I guess.”

“That’s kind of you,” Hoseok says. “I could ask some of my friends from work, see if they’ve kept a record?”

Jeongguk considers this, then shakes his head again. “I think I’m happier not knowing.”

“I don’t think they were happy here, judging by the state of the house,” Seokjin says, throwing himself back onto a pile of blankets. “I mean, not to toot our own horns or anything, but I think the house is happier with us in it.” Taehyung shares a look with Jimin, then with Jeongguk; almost simultaneously, they throw themselves across the blankets to land on top of Seokjin, who oofs loudly which each thud of their bodies. “Although I’m not sure I’m happier, actually!”

“Tell that to your face, hyung,” Jimin says, poking Seokjin in the cheek. Because of the way he’d landed, Jeongguk’s face has ended up right next to Seokjin’s, and he watches, fascinated, as Jimin’s finger pokes a dimple into Seokjin’s cheek that makes his full lips pucker invitingly.

“Oh?” Seokjin says as Jimin pulls his finger away. “Jeongguk, do you like it when hyung looks,” he brings his own finger up to replace Jimin’s, then winks. “Cute?”

“You’re a grown man,” Jeongguk tries to deflect, because he can feel himself blushing.

“A grown man who looks cute though?” Seokjin teases, bring both of his hands up to cup his jaw and tapping his fingertips against his own cheekbones.

Suddenly realising that he has a foolproof method to get Seokjin to stop embarrassing him, Jeongguk leans down and kisses him, waiting until he can feel a heat in Seokjin’s cheeks that matches the one on his own before he pulls back.

“You could’ve just said I looked cute,” Seokjin says, inadvertently trying to follow Jeongguk’s mouth before realising what he’s doing and flopping back down.

“You’re very cute, hyung,” Taehyung confirms, shuffling up Seokjin’s body to kiss him, too.

Jimin taps Jeongguk on the shoulder, gesturing for him to sit up before pointing; Namjoon and Hoseok have sandwiched Yoongi between them, and both of them keep turning his head to kiss him, waiting until he settles into a kiss with one of them before the other interjects, over and over. “Don’t they look good together?”

“We all look good together,” Jeongguk replies helplessly, because it’s true – if he looks straight ahead he can watch Namjoon and Hoseok slowly building Yoongi up into a pink-cheeked wreck, while if he looks to his right he can see how Seokjin’s brought his heel up to trace along the back of Taehyung’s calf while they kiss. Even if he doesn’t look anywhere in particular, he can feel Jimin at his side, tracing a featherlight hand up his spine, then down, back and forth. Nothing especially hot on paper, except Jeongguk’s sensitive anyway, and these barely-there touches are making his hairs stand on end, making him even more susceptible than usual.

And Jimin knows, of course he knows, because Jeongguk’s breath is already catching in his throat just from this, and then Jimin leans closer and says, “Want to kiss me, or shall we watch them instead?”

He presents the two options as two equally good alternatives, and honestly, Jeongguk thinks he probably would like to sit and watch them all kiss each other some time. Right now, though, Jimin’s breath is warm on his cheek, and he’s running his fingers in slow, light circles all over Jeongguk’s back, waist, and stomach, like he’s tracking all the places that make Jeongguk shiver, so he turns his head towards Jimin and leans in-

“Wait, wait, wait,” Namjoon says suddenly, making Jeongguk jump.

“You good?” Seokjin asks from underneath Taehyung, breathless, red-cheeked, but very serious.

“I’m great,” Namjoon says. “Just want to check in how far everyone wants to go right now.”

“Do we even have lube in the house?” Hoseok asks. “Shop bought, I refuse to have hastily conjured lube or potions anyway near my asshole.” When everyone shakes their head, he says, “Well, we’re not doing penetration this afternoon.”

“We all want to do something, though?” Jimin confirms, to mutual agreement. “Then I say we stick to handjobs, blowjobs, maybe some grinding?” Once everyone has agreed, Jimin adds, “One thing before we start.” Using a finger, he turns Jeongguk’s chin towards him and kisses him, slow and deliberate. “Okay, all set,” Jimin murmurs against Jeongguk’s lips.

“Not that that wasn’t great,” Taehyung says. “But why was that the one thing?”

“You lot have spent the last few minutes kissing, Jeongguk and I needed to catch up,” Jimin explains.

“None of us were stopping you from kissing each other,” Yoongi says with an eyeroll.

“When Namjoon-hyung and Hoseok-hyung are finished with you, I’m coming over there to deal with you myself,” Jimin says; Yoongi just raises an eyebrow, and Jeongguk can feel the way Jimin’s muscles tense, like a wild cat about to pounce.

Jeongguk, however, isn’t done with kissing Jimin yet. His attention feels split six separate ways, so he’s having to go by proximity; as Jimin is still sitting closest to him, he cups his hand around Jimin’s elbow to tug him back in.

“Hello.” Jimin grins at him, mouth so close to Jeongguk’s that he can feel his breath ghosting over his lips. “What do you want to do?”

“I…” The choices spiral out in front of Jeongguk like spilled marbles – he wants to do everything that comes to mind, leaving him locked in indecision, because if he picks something, he won’t be able to do any of the other countless things he wants to try. “Everything.”

“All right, want me to pick?” Jimin offers; when Jeongguk nods, he clambers into Jeongguk’s lap, a position that makes him seem taller than Jeongguk. “I’m going to need you to keep talking to me when I do something new, okay?” When Jeongguk nods again, Jimin shakes his head. “With words, Jeongguk.”

“Okay, hyung,” Jeongguk replies.

Jimin smiles at him beatifically. “Good boy.” At Jeongguk’s full body, uncontrollable shiver, Jimin raises both eyebrows, tilting his head knowingly. “If I’d have known sitting on your lap made you polite, I’d have done it a long time ago.” He brings his hand up to Jeongguk’s hair, and starts threading his fingers through it; his hair’s longer than it’s ever been, so when Jimin combs through it, he can actually straighten the locks until they’re touching Jeongguk’s shoulders, which he does, a few times. “Although, I suppose the novelty of this will wear off before long.”

“I don’t think so, hyung,” Jeongguk says hoarsely.

Using his grip in Jeongguk’s hair, Jimin pulls him in for another kiss, but it’s not long before he moves his left hand down, over the sensitive skin just in front of Jeongguk’s ear, down his neck, over his collarbone. Jeongguk’s still wearing the buttoned shirt and dress slacks he’d worn for his exam, but he’d unbuttoned a few buttons almost as soon as they’d gotten home, so Jimin has just enough access that he can run his fingers over the top of Jeongguk’s pecs.

“Can I take your shirt off?” Jimin says.

“Definitely,” Jeongguk replies immediately, which makes Jimin grin.

As he pulls away from Jeongguk’s mouth to start taking his shirt off, something he sees off to the side makes him pause; when Jeongguk tries to look, Jimin, gently, turns his head so that he’s looking up at Jimin.

“I want you to keep looking at me until I say, all right? Let me just take your shirt off, and then I’ll tell you what I’ve got in mind.” Jeongguk says something that isn’t necessarily a word, but is definitely affirmative. Jimin makes quick work of his shirt buttons, then slides his shirt off his shoulders and lets it pool on the ground around Jeongguk’s hips. “I’m going to sit on the floor,” Jimin explains, tracing Jeongguk’s abs with his eyes and his fingers. “And you’re going to sit between my legs, back to me, and watch your hyungs have sex.”

“Can… Can I take my pants off first? Please?” Jeongguk asks, the first, immediate question that comes to mind.

Jimin thinks this over. “Yes, but I don’t want you to touch yourself. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes,” Jeongguk says eagerly, trying not to fall on his back in his haste to get his pants off as soon as Jimin is sitting on the floor next to him.

As he gets into position between Jimin’s legs, he can see what had distracted Jimin so much; Taehyung, already naked, is slowly drawing Seokjin’s pants down his legs, leaving kisses with each inch of skin he reveals. Yoongi and Hoseok, meanwhile, are mostly clothed, with Namjoon, fully naked, sandwiched between them, trying to grind up and down, moaning into Hoseok’s mouth when he brings his hands up to Namjoon’s ass and pulls down at the exact same time that Yoongi, kneeling behind Namjoon, snaps his hips forward.

“Don’t they look good?” Jimin whispers, so close that his lips touch the whorl of Jeongguk’s ear. He puts his hand on Jeongguk’s thigh, and Jeongguk whips his head down so fast to watch him track it up to the line where his leg meets his crotch that he’s almost dizzy with it. “Could you come from this, do you think? Just watching your hyungs make each other feel good?”

“Yes,” Jeongguk repeats, feeling like a stuck record, but it’s an accurate representation of his thoughts – yes, yes, yes.

Jimin hums. “Maybe one day. Right now…” He ghosts his hand over Jeongguk’s dick; just the visual of it makes his dick twitch, no physical touch required. “Can I touch you?”

A litany of agreement bursts out from Jeongguk’s lips, only to get cut off abruptly as Jimin curls his hand around Jeongguk’s dick. Without any lube, it’s dryer than Jeongguk’s used to, but Jimin’s not moving yet, just holding his dick in hand like he’s getting used to the weight of it. Then, very gently, he runs the side of his finger along the underneath of Jeongguk’s dick. Jeongguk’s abs contract, and he curls forward, panting for breath.

Because his hand’s still dry, Jimin doesn’t seem inclined to give Jeongguk a full handjob. Instead, he seems intent on teasing Jeongguk with gentle, exploratory touches that are working just as well to get Jeongguk hard.

Namjoon moans, sudden and loud, and by the time Jeongguk looks away from his own dick and at them, Yoongi is pressing a kiss in Namjoon’s hair and shuffling back, leaving Namjoon to roll off of Hoseok, panting for breath as he stares up at the ceiling. His dick’s soft, and both he and Hoseok are covered in Namjoon’s come.

“Are you sitting on cushions?” Yoongi asks, looking in their direction.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Jeongguk’s taller than me,” Jimin says, resting his chin on Jeongguk’s shoulder as he draws his thumb over the head of Jeongguk’s dick.

“Wait,” Jeongguk says; Jimin holds himself so still behind Jeongguk that he’d wager he’s stopped breathing. “I don’t want to come yet.”

“What do you want to do?” Jimin asks, pulling his hand away – Jeongguk immediately misses the contact, but he can almost see the rapidly approaching edge of his orgasm, and he doesn’t want to get there, not yet.

“Can I suck someone’s dick?” Jeongguk asks. “Please?”

Seokjin gasps in surprise; Taehyung scoots off of him, licking his hand, which makes Seokjin wrinkle his nose.

“That rules hyung out,” Namjoon says, sounding exhausted. “And I think if you sucked my dick right now, I’d probably cry, and I’m not sure I want to explore that today.”

“Have you done it before?” Hoseok asks, shucking off his pants. “I mean, my answer either way is of course, but do you want some pointers, is what I’m asking.”

“I have,” Jeongguk says, standing up on wobbly legs and taking much longer to walk the short distance over to Hoseok than he normally would. He ends up trading places with Yoongi, and while he can’t hear what they’re doing, the low moan Jimin lets out makes him wish he had eyes in the back of his head. Then again, he wouldn’t want to miss what’s in front of him, either – Hoseok, fully naked, reclining back onto his elbows and looking at Jeongguk like he wants to eat him. “But I wouldn’t say no to some pointers, I want to make you feel good.”

“I don’t think,” Hoseok says, breath catching as Jeongguk sinks his mouth down over his dick. “You could make me feel bad.”

He does offer gentle guidance here and there – never anything that makes Jeongguk feel like he’s doing a poor job, rather assurances that Hoseok’s enjoying something, or asking him to move his tongue a different way, or touch Hoseok, hold him. So, when he feels the muscles in Hoseok’s legs start to strain, and the way his fingers in Jeongguk’s hair start to tug just that little bit harder, he knows that he can guide him to finish with fast, shallow movements, bobbing his head up and down until Hoseok’s tapping him on the shoulder frantically.

“I’m gonna come,” Hoseok says. Jeongguk looks at him laid out on the floor, hair sticking up and cheeks red, and takes as much of Hoseok’s dick into his mouth as he can at once. Hoseok swears loudly, and under Jeongguk’s hands he can feel him sit up, bending at the waist as he comes in Jeongguk’s mouth.

Jeongguk pulls off and swallows (he hears Hoseok whine at the sight), looking around at his Soulmates. Yoongi and Jimin are panting into each other’s open mouths as they jerk each other off; Taehyung, meanwhile, has moved past Jeongguk at some point to sit with Namjoon, who is currently giving him what looks like the slowest, softest blowjob ever given.

Seokjin notices Jeongguk looking around and beckons him over. “Want me to suck you off?” Seokjin says, sitting up as Jeongguk approaches.

He does; the thought of Seokjin’s mouth around his dick is almost enough to tip him over the edge. He wants a lot of things, though, so instead he says, “Can I sit in your lap and you jerk me off, hyung?”

Seokjin smiles at him fondly. “Yeah, of course I can.”

Part of the reason he wanted this first, before everything else, is because he wants to be face to face with Seokjin when he comes, wants to be able to look into his eyes, wants to be able to kiss him – which is exactly what he does, barely lasting for longer than a few minutes before coming all over Seokjin’s hand.

He flops bonelessly in Seokjin’s lap, resting his chin on his shoulder as he tries to catch his breath. The rest of the room has fallen quiet, except for the occasional kiss, and when Jeongguk can finally bring himself to sit up a little and look around, he can see that everyone else is in similar states of sated contentment to him.

“Exciting news,” Seokjin announces. It’s the first day of summer, and Jeongguk is filled with the warmth of summer, of being in a house full of people he loves, and also of having spent the previous day having had a lot of sex with everybody in celebration of them all agreeing to continue to live together. They’d talked about it, so it hadn’t been a surprise when he hadn’t woken up to anybody packing their bags, but it was still something to be celebrated. “Though, Namjoon, you already know this, so you’ll just have to pretend to be surprised and delighted.”

“I can’t pretend to be surprised to save my life,” Namjoon grumbles, rolling over onto his back. They’re all out behind the house, attempting to make something of a dent in the one part of the house that’s escaped their cleaning – the thicket of grass that’s now gotten so long that it’s starting to brush up against Seokjin and Hoseok’s windows. They’re taking a break in the small section of grass they’ve managed to clear back to more manageable levels, more or less all piled up on top of one another because of the lack of space.

Suddenly, Namjoon sits up to look at Seokjin, almost dislodging Hoseok from where he had his legs resting over Namjoon’s. “Hey, I don’t need to pretend to be delighted, I am!”

“Is this about the vision you two argued about?” Jeongguk asks.

“What’s this?” Jimin asks. “You two argued? You’ve been keeping secrets from me, your beloved Soulmate?”

“Well, anyway,” Seokjin says, ears pinking. “I’ve found a job at a film studio that I think could be a really good fit for me.”

The garden erupts into a chorus of congratulations, which Seokjin attempts to subdue by telling them he hasn’t got the job, hasn’t even submitted his resume yet-

“What’re you waiting for?” Taehyung asks.

“I wanted to talk to you all first,” Seokjin says. “Your opinions matter to me.”

“Well, my opinion, and I think everyone else’s, is that you should go for it,” Hoseok says immediately.

“Also, it’s funny that you’ve just had almost three months paid sabbatical leave for a job you’re about to quit,” Yoongi says. “So if our opinions didn’t matter to you, that’s reason enough alone.”

“We should do something to celebrate,” Namjoon says.

“Again, I haven’t actually gotten the job,” Seokjin points out.

“It doesn’t matter!” Jeongguk says. “When I passed my exam, we did what I wanted to do, so it’s only fair that you pick something.”

“I don’t think we can equate you passing an exam you studied months for to me thinking about applying to a job,” Seokjin says; Jeongguk frowns at him. “All right, all right, don’t look at me like that.” He tilts his head thoughtfully. “I’ve got an idea.”

The strawberry picking field Seokjin brings them to is quiet – early June is nearing the end of strawberry picking season, so there aren’t too many people looking to pick strawberries that are nearly all overripe.

But it’s not about the freshness of the strawberries, not really. It’s about how they’re all picking fruit together under a bright blue open sky; how Jeongguk can hear his hyungs’ laughter intermingled with his own each time one of them find a misshapen berry.

It’s about how, even though Hoseok needs to relearn magic from scratch, and Jeongguk and Yoongi are about to start a stressful project, and Seokjin is weighing up quitting his job and starting fresh, and Namjoon still gets headaches from how powerful having six Soulmates makes him, and Taehyung’s work opportunities always slow in the summer, and Jimin accidentally blew up his cauldron the other day, and their garden is still a mess – none of that feels insurmountable, each day spilling out in front of them in a never-ending stream of possibility.