Ships Passing In The Night ｜Markhyuck (OT21 AU)

Chapter 15

By the time Jaemin finally started running out of questions, the afternoon light outside was just starting to fade into grey and Donghyuck had a mild case of deja vu. Their conversation hadn't taken exactly the same path as the one with Renjun, but he thought he was getting pretty good at relaying the details at this point. He'd even managed to preempt several of the questions, causing the boy sprawled out on the bed next to him to gasp in surprise. He'd been oddly proud of that, immediately followed by laughing at the awestruck expression on Jaemin's face.

"So, was that the list that you mentioned? The one Renjunie had that day in the cafe," Jaemin asked, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling. Donghyuck eased back onto the bed beside him, until they were lying side by side. He considered reaching out to connect their hands, but he didn't think Jaemin was ready for that kind of familiarity from him yet. "You know, it makes sense now why he didn't want me to see it. It would have probably freaked me out, seeing my own name on it, even though you'd already told me I was involved. Paper makes it real somehow, you know?

"Yeah." He wasn't sure which of Jaemin's questions he was answering, but he didn't think it really mattered at this point. Turning his head to look at the boy next to him, Donghyuck couldn't help but enjoy the way that he seemed to be so much more relaxed now than when he'd first arrived. It was obvious in hindsight, just from comparing this Jaemin to the Jaemin of the past few days at school, that this had all been weighing heavily on his mind. He was glad that they had finally gotten everything out in the open, and that Jaemin had embraced the truth without protest. "The list was Renjun's idea, actually, to keep everyone straight in his head."

"Is that the only copy? I'd be interested to see it at some point." Donghyuck was about to reply in the affirmative, to tell him that he'd ask Renjun to show him the next morning, but then he remembered that it would be easy enough just to create a new copy. After all, they were names he knew as well as his own at this point, and Renjun hadn't made too many changes to his original scrawl.

"Hang on," he told the other boy, then rolled off the bed and retrieved his school bag from where it had been abandoned against the wall under the window. It took him a minute to find a blank page in the small notebook he'd largely doodled in for the past two weeks, but he tore out a couple of sheets and brought them back over to the bed. In minutes, he'd recreated the list that lived perpetually in Renjun's blazer pocket, in roughly the same order, thrusting it quickly into Jaemin's outstretched hands.

Jaemin took a while to fully process the information, as Renjun had done. He read the entire list through twice, staring down at the pages so intently that Donghyuck wouldn't have been surprised to see the paper burst into flames from the sheer intensity of his gaze. He didn't speak for a long time, chewing his lower lip as he concentrated, before the list was abruptly returned to its owner.

"I shouldn't be allowed to keep that," he informed Donghyuck solemnly, scratching the tip of his right ear as it went slightly red. "I have a habit of losing important things, and we don't want to risk any of the people on here coming across it accidentally." Donghyuck couldn't disagree with that so he just nodded and folded the papers in half neatly, tucking them under his thigh.

"I know some of those people," Jaemin continued, lifting one finger after another as he silently counted them off in his head. As he reached the ring finger of his second hand, he frowned and looked up at the other boy in confusion. "Wait, so Jaehyun-ssi really isn't your brother in the other galaxy?"

"No, he's not," Donghyuck agreed, lips twitching at the unique choice of words employed by his friend. "In my...galaxy, we're like brothers, all of us, but we don't share blood." He thought for a moment and then tried to explain the feelings he had never really quantified before.