I'm dsmping this and making Minecraft the reality you're both in. The king in yellow is not present in this au (At least, not yet). Not much romance but I'm working on it.
A book reader.
An active one, at that. The kind of book worm that would keep the library at a good 72°F. If, of course, temperature was a luxury the both of you could afford.
He built it one off day. Roof high and shelves stacked head to toe with story upon story upon recipe book and the occasional archive.
He likes reading to you when the day is quiet and there's no need to tend to his daily rituals.
(Rituals consisting of hunting, feeding you, feeding himself, and working on things that begged hard enough to catch his trained eye. How he knew what you fix―You were never too sure yourself―never seemed like such a heavy task.)
He enjoys fantasy. The liege and their knight were always his favorites, alongside mystery and action.
He'd never tell you this, and would rather it be buried away with his more.. embarrassing thoughts, but before you both had become official, he would pick up a page and recite a written confession like a vow.
A vow that, one day, he'd recite to you.
He wasn't the best at being a romantic guy.
He knew that basics; Bring flowers, compliment them, act like a gentleman.
That wasn't enough, he eventually realized.
It got him places, but they weren't enough to woo you.
He'd spend his days taking notes from the great man Shakesword, or by reading aloud 'A Red, Red Rose' by Lava Burns.
Pretty words for a pretty person, he'd say after learning poetry like a religious man would learn the Bible.
He learned many things simply to gain your favor.
That wasn't to say he was talentless.
He mastered chess, figured out puzzles within the span of a minute, and actively participated with textbooks of random knowledge the villages would leave behind.
He was a man of sound mind, and often liked to use such an ability to the absolute best.
He'd share fact after fact with you. Ancient civilizations that used to roam beneath the heels of your feet. Legends heard from the village folk when night approached and he'd snag a conversation or two.
And, if he heard a particularly good one, a romantic one, he'd play around with the idea of reincarnation.
He enjoys the idea of it.
He likes to think about it. when you're fast asleep beside him in a bed he built with his own two hands. When your head rests against his shoulders just right after almost stirring awake from a ghost of a kiss to the forehead.
Its times like those when he let's himself get lost in thought.
Thoughts about you, mostly. Other things as well, but mostly you.
You, and the multitude of things he likes when it comes to you.
Kisses on the forehead are like a passion to him. Your lips are perfect, but he's always been more of a gentle man.
Gentle in the ways that counted. Gentle when you needed him to be.
He's level headed, and isn't afraid to let that be known through the steadiness of his hands and the precision of his words.
Thought before action.
I'm not exactly sure how to write him or even characterize him in a romantic setting but I'm in love with him and I think he'd be the domestic type. Gentle giant, if you will.
“Sorry,” she said after a while, quieter now. “I don’t know if I’m doing it right.”
“You are,” he said. And when she looked down, he was smiling — faint and tired, but real.
Her throat tightened.
The towel slowed in her hands. She looked at the bruise near his ear — deep purple and yellowing at the edges. The scar along the base of his neck, too thin and too fresh.
She wanted to press her mouth to every one of them and say that he was safe now; she wanted to scream into the void for every mark that should never have been there to begin with.
Instead, she let out a shaky breath and ruffled his hair one last time, gently.
read it on Ao3
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
Jinu had gotten in the habit of wandering around Seoul ever since he could walk properly again.
The first weeks had been clumsy—his legs were stiff, his balance was uncertain, his very body feeling like something borrowed rather than his own. But slowly, almost stubbornly, he had taught himself to move through the city. Step by step, until the pavement didn’t feel like it was tilting beneath him anymore.
He would blame it jokingly on Rumi, just for the sake of blaming it on her and seeing the frown on her face, hearing that little offended gasp that wasn’t as offended as she made it sound. You’re the one who made me curious , he would say, and she would roll her eyes, lips twitching despite herself. But the truth was simpler: wandering calmed him. It soothed the restlessness that built in his chest whenever the world was too much to understand.
And, oh; how often it was hard to understand it.
There was no preparing for the twenty-first century, not really, and especially not when one was born in the seventeenth century. He had imagined skyscrapers and strange devices, yes, but he had not imagined the noise, the endless lights, the ceaseless motion. He couldn’t have guessed the way people walked so fast and yet seemed so distracted, always with little glowing screens in their hands, as if tethered to a world invisible to him. He had not expected how alive the city would be at every hour, how even at dawn the streets whispered and sighed with the echoes of night.
It was overwhelming, most of the time, and yet there were moments he liked.
He liked the Han River most of all, the way it cut through the city like a vein of silver, steady and certain amid all the chaos. At night, the bridges over every body of water shone with golden lights, and couples leaned over the railings, whispering secrets he could not hear and never tried to.
Jinu would linger there, breathing in the air—different air than he remembered, sharper somehow, tinged with something metallic, something artificial that made his lungs ache until they got used to it. The trees that lined the river smelled thinner, almost fragile, and didn’t seem alive like the lights round them did. The world itself seemed faster, harsher, even in its smallest details.
Still, he liked to stand there and watch.
He liked the food stalls tucked into side streets, the smell of oil and spice in the air, the heat that hit his face when he leaned close. He liked the neon signs, even if he could not always read their meaning because it was odd that words were glowing, how they painted everything in impossible colors, pinks and blues and greens that soaked into the puddles at his feet. He liked the cafés, the way people sat with steaming cups, headphones in, entirely self-contained, and he wondered if solitude had become easier in this new age.
Sometimes, he laughed at himself. How strange it was, to be bewildered by the present, when once he had fought with monsters and been a monster that could swallow cities whole. How strange, to find himself confused by subway lines instead of battle lines, to flinch more at the blare of a car horn than at the memory of claws and a voice screaming inside his head.
But perhaps that was the point, that he had survived the impossible, only to be returned to a world that moved on without him. And now, survival meant something smaller, quieter; learning how to cross streets without hesitation, how to order food without Rumi’s help, how to sit in a park and simply watch people live and not be weirded out by touching and laughing and skateboards.
The habit of wandering had become its own kind of prayer, a way to remind himself that he could belong there, that he could find rhythm in the chaos. He walked until his muscles warmed, until the city noise dulled to something like music. He let himself be part of the crowd, nameless and ordinary, and for someone who had once carried the weight of destiny and crowds on his shoulders, there was comfort in being no one at all.
And always, at the back of his mind, there was Rumi.
He imagined her expression if she could see him lingering in front of bakery windows, marveling at rows of pastries stacked like treasure, wondering how things came to be that way. Or the way she would laugh if she knew he had taken to feeding pigeons in a plaza, watching them waddle and flutter as though they were old friends (he didn’t remember so many of them when he was a kid). He thought of how her hand would fit into his if she were beside him, grounding him when the lights grew too bright or the air too heavy with exhaust.
Sometimes, he told himself he wandered for her—so he could return with little stories, odd observations, the kind of details that made her smile despite herself. But mostly, he wandered for him. To keep breathing, to keep steady, to believe that this world, strange as it was, could still be his.
Jinu found himself staring sometimes at things so ordinary to everyone else that they did not even look twice. Glass doors that slid open by themselves when he approached. A thousand little lights that blinked on machines small enough to hold in the palm of a hand. A voice from nowhere that spoke directions in the street, or sang songs in cafes.
It was sorcery without spells, alchemy without the price of blood, and yet no one seemed astonished by it. The children did not gape, the elders did not bless themselves. People just walked on, eyes buried in their glowing screens, breathing air thick with exhaust instead of smoke from woodfires.
He thought, sometimes, that his mother would hate it. She was the kind of woman who liked to know how things worked—the hinge of a door, the stitching of a hem, the way a kettle screamed when the water reached its boiling point. She would despise being surrounded by things that functioned in silence, keeping their secrets.
His sister, though… she would love it. He could see her wide-eyed, running her hands over every vending machine she could find, laughing at the absurdity of soda cans dropping from a metal box just because she pushed a button, and the amazement of soda cans themselves. She would walk the streets with music in her ears, the kind that no bard or wandering fiddler could carry, and she would never stop dancing.
He could almost hear her asking what this was, what that was, tugging at his sleeve and pointing. She would hate the smell of smoke and fuel, yes—but she would adore the moving stairs, the endless flavors of candy in bright wrappers, the trains that slid by on rails so smooth they seemed to float. And his mother, who always scolded but secretly smiled at her daughter’s delight, would insist on learning, on reading every pamphlet, on questioning every shopkeeper.
She would say she preferred her own time, but Jinu knew the truth that she would envy how clean the water ran in the faucets, how warm the lights stayed through the night, how far one could travel without wearing out their feet.
He often wondered if they would find the world crueler, too. Crueler in its pace, in the way people moved without lifting their heads, in the way no one seemed to truly look at each other. Back then, even in hardship, there had been stories by the fire, neighbors who bargained not only with coin but with care, despite the poverty and the misery and all else that led him to an endless fate. Now, the city was vast, a thousand voices all speaking at once and none of them touching.
And he wondered what they would say about him—walking here, alive when he should not be, moving through a place that belonged to neither of them. He thought they might laugh, shake their heads at how slowly he learned the simplest things, how often he stood rooted in place just to watch the light reflect on glass. He thought his mother would tell him not to lose himself staring backward, and his sister would drag him into the current, whether he wanted it or not.
But both were gone, and only his imagining of them remained. Times were gone, too, and he was supposed to be the same; and so he let himself walk, let himself breathe in the acrid air and call it sweet for the way it filled him. He let himself marvel, even when no one else did.
Sometimes, when Jinu let himself drift too far into memory, it was Rumi, again, who called him back without even knowing it. She had the same hunger in her eyes his sister had carried—the kind that saw the world not as it was, but as it might become if she could only touch it long enough, mold it in her hands. And yet, unlike his sister, Rumi’s curiosity was tempered with discipline.
She did not run toward everything all at once; she chose. She had to choose, because the stage demanded it, because every step and every breath were measured against rhythms greater than her own pulse. Still, she looked at things with a kind of tenderness, as if she wanted to memorize the texture of the world even as it slipped past her.
He found himself watching her sometimes, quietly, when she was not looking—marveling at how the light curved against her cheek, how she tilted her head when she was trying not to laugh, how she moved through a space as if she were rearranging it by simply existing in it. Rumi was an anchor, but not the kind that dragged him down. She steadied him by being so undeniably herself in a world that seemed determined to forget where it had come from.
She reminded him that wonder was not weakness. That wonder could be survival, too.
Another day passed like that, wandering streets whose names he still could not recall when he tried, weaving through crowds that felt endless. He stopped too long at a corner where a boy balanced headphones on his head, sound spilling out loud enough that Jinu could catch the beat from where he stood (and he was pretty sure it was something from Huntr/x, but he wouldn’t make a move to find that out).
It was a day of restlessness, when his feet wouldn’t stop moving and his mind wouldn’t stop racing, and he wanted that energy out of his body. Derpy chose not to follow him, tailing Rumi instead (he knew that because she had sent him a message warning him about Derpy being with her), but Sussie had come along. She flew low, hat still over her feathered head, and was a silent companion.
He barely spoke. She, of course, never pressed, and her eyes miraculously didn’t judge him as much as he thought they would.
The pavement blurred under his steps, strangers brushing his shoulders as though he had always belonged among them — and yet, the thought dug at him: did he really belong? He felt suspended between places, between worlds, between the ghost of what he used to be and the fragile human skin he now carried like a garment he didn’t fully know how to wear. People laughed as they passed him, mouths open, faces bright. Their joy sounded like something rehearsed, something understood. He, on the other hand, felt like a student who had entered a class late, with no textbook and no knowledge of the subject, expected to keep up as though it were second nature.
He didn’t know enough. About streets, about time, about all the human subtleties that folded themselves into gestures and pauses. About how to live without always waiting for something to break. Even in rest, he carried the tension of survival, of fighting, of needing to react before he thought. Humans seemed born knowing when to laugh, how to buy groceries, how to talk about the weather as if it mattered. He had none of that written in his body, no instinct for the small rituals that made the world turn smoothly.
The truth was, sometimes he still felt like a fraud walking among them. Like one wrong move would give him away.
So he tried to make sense of it. Every corner he turned, every new streetlight flickering to life, every child tugging at a parent’s sleeve — he hoarded it all in memory, as though piecing together a map of a place that wasn’t his, but might one day accept him. It was a quiet desperation. A yearning to believe he could do more than just exist here, that he could understand .
Jinu stopped at another corner, hands shoved into his pockets, and tilted his head at the sky as though it could offer answers. The blue was fading, the street lamps humming awake, and he whispered something in his head he didn’t dare say aloud: What if I never learn enough? What if I never get it right?
Sussie landed on the top of a post box, watching him with her sharp eyes, and Jinu gave her a lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach his own.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he muttered. His voice was low, roughened by the thought spirals that wouldn’t let him go. “I’m just trying to figure out what makes this place… this life… worth deserving. Again.”
But of course, he already knew the only answer that ever soothed him was back at the apartment. And by the time he finally turned toward home, the city had begun to glitter with artificial stars.
The building greeted him in silence, as it always did, a kind of cavern with steel bones and humming lights. He slipped his key into the door, and as it swung open, his chest filled with a small warmth he hadn’t expected to be present right then.
Shoes. A pair of them—hers, dainty and scuffed from practice—were resting neatly by the door.
Then his eyes moved further in to find her rehearsal backpack slouched across the couch, straps dangling, as if it had been dropped there without thought, heavy from hours of carrying leggings and water bottles and maybe a sweater she forgot she packed.
The place, once so bare and hollow, felt touched. Lived in and his in a way he was relearning his thoughts could be. The thought made him smile, slow and unguarded, that reached all the way into his chest. He padded quietly inside, not wanting to disturb the spell of it, and made his way down the short hallway toward his room.
And there she was.
Rumi stood near the edge of his bed, phone in hand, gaze bent low as her thumb brushed over the glowing screen. She hadn’t sat, he realized at once. He knew that it was because her jacket was still on, because the hem of her jeans bore a faint trace of dust, because she had always been particular about not dragging the day’s dirt onto clean sheets. That little detail—so hers—struck him with more tenderness than he knew what to do with.
For a moment, he only watched her. He observed how her hair caught the faint gold of the lamp, how her brow furrowed slightly at whatever she was reading, the quiet curve of her mouth. She fit into his room without forcing it, as though she had always belonged there, though he knew it had only been months, weeks even, of this strange rhythm they had found.
He let himself breathe it in before he moved, soft as a shadow, closer and closer until his voice brushed against her like a hand might.
“Hey, love,” he whispered, coming closer to her and hugging Rumi around the shoulders from behind. “What a nice surprise,” he hummed against her temple, pressing a kiss there.
She leaned back into him with a smile he could feel even before he saw it, and lowered her phone as she did to her shoulders, tension leaving.
“Hey,” she smiled back, lazy and calm. “I’m sorry I didn’t warn you beforehand that I was coming.”
Jinu shook his head softly, soundless laughter in his voice.
“You don’t have to announce yourself, my heart; you know that. It’s why you have a key,” he smiled, his words always murmured. “And I’ll never complain about you being here. Unless I’ve gone completely insane.”
“Only a matter of time until it happens, then?” she joked, and he sighed playfully.
“Kill me when it does, please,” he said, and she elbowed him in the ribs without a second of hesitation. “ Ouch , woman!”
“No murder jokes,” she murmured, turning her head just enough for his breath to brush her nose. “But sure,” she added, lower still.
Jinu froze at that, caught between a groan and a laugh, because it was so her—sharp and serious, but unable to resist softening the edges for him. Before he could say anything, she leaned closer, brushing her lips against his in a kiss so unhurried and feather-light it made his chest ache. Sweet, the kind of sweetness that threatened to undo him more than any flame or blade ever had.
He leaned into it, guiding the moment with the care of someone who had learned the fragility of touch too late in life. His hands slid down her arms, gentle as silk, until his palms covered hers, his thumbs tracing idle shapes over her knuckles. He kissed her back like she was a prayer, like she was the only way he knew how to keep the air in his lungs steady.
When they parted, just enough for their lips to break, he lingered there—forehead pressing against hers, breath mingling in the small space between them. Her lashes fluttered, her mouth curved ever so slightly, and Jinu thought he might never need to wander the city again if he could wander her instead.
“You know,” he whispered, voice dipped low like a confession, “if this is what insanity looks like, then maybe I won’t want a solution after all.”
Rumi made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh, the kind that trembled with exhaustion and warmth in equal measure.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love it,” he murmured back, brushing another kiss over the corner of her mouth, just because he could. He couldn’t resist. He didn’t think he’d ever learn how to resist her.
“I do,” she admitted softly, her eyes lifting to meet his, unguarded for a fleeting second. Then she added, with a quick, mock-serious tone, “But don’t push it. No more murder jokes.”
“Fine, fine,” he surrendered easily, wrapping his arms more securely around her waist, drawing her closer against him until he felt the quiet rhythm of her heart beneath his own ribs.
She spun in his arms and leaned back into him then, head finding its place against his shoulder as though she’d been there a thousand times before. The world outside—its chaos, its noise, its endless demands—faded into nothing. There was only this imperfect apartment, still in the process of becoming a home, and her body soft against his, her presence filling all the spaces that used to echo hollow.
“Are you spending the night?” he asked.
The question came soft, almost hopeful, like he was trying not to sound as eager as he felt. Rumi caught the tone instantly—of course she did—and the smallest tug of a smile ghosted across her lips. She knew. She always knew.
It was a thing that sometimes was harder, staying over, considering that Rumi didn’t live alone and Mira, Zoey, and her often had plans together in the early mornings or late nights. They had their routines, their shared chaos, their endless plans that could keep her out all night or up before dawn. Sometimes, it meant she couldn’t come at all, and other times it meant she was gone before he even had the chance to wake up with her still beside him.
He hated those mornings, though he’d never say it aloud—not when he understood, not when he loved her too much to make her feel guilty.
“And staying the morning, if you’ll have me,” she told him, leaning ever so slightly back into the circle of his arms.
She could feel how his breath caught against her hair, how the hesitation lasted only a heartbeat before his whole expression melted. He tried to play it off, his face crumpling into a familiar look of mock indignation—‘as if,’ it said, as if she could ever doubt her welcome here. His brow arched, daring her to really mean the question.
“I am, yeah,” she reassured, her tone gentle, and she watched the relief spill across his face like sunlight on water.
“Mira and Zoey?” he asked after a pause, curiosity slipping into his voice. He wasn’t prying; he simply wanted to map out the shape of her world for the night, where her people were, what little corners of freedom she had been granted.
“Mira found a rap battle happening somewhere a few hours’ drive from here,” Rumi explained, the corner of her mouth twitching in amusement. “And apparently it’s a big thing. Zoey was adamant she must go, and it wasn’t very hard to convince Mira.”
Jinu laughed under his breath, the sound warm and low. He could picture it vividly—Zoey with her stubborn gleam, Mira with that restless grin—and it almost made him shake his head. Of course they’d run after something like that with all the urgency in the world.
“And didn’t they try to convince you?” he asked, already imagining how Rumi must have looked when she refused them—quietly stubborn, perhaps even teasing, with that steady refusal no one could quite push past once she had decided.
“Yeah,” she admitted with a little shrug. “But I’m not very keen on third-wheeling for hours inside a car.”
Her tone was light, playful, but he caught something softer beneath it. He knew it wasn’t just that. Rumi could have gone, if she’d wanted to. She could have laughed it off, endured the long drive, been swept into the chaos, but she hadn’t wanted to. She had wanted here—his apartment, his arms, the stillness that they carved out of the world when it all got too loud.
He tilted his head, brushing his lips against her hair, and thought—not for the first time—how miraculous it was that she chose him. Again and again, even when she didn’t have to.
“Well, it’d definitely be an experience,” he said. “And it’s not like you really mind them being all romantic in front of you, love. You take pride and joy in having called their feelings for each other ages before Zoey decided to make a move on Mira.”
Rumi snorted softly, hiding her face against his shoulder for a moment.
“I called it, yeah,” she murmured, a small, secretive smile tugging at her lips. “But that doesn’t mean I want to be stuck in a car watching the aftermath of every blushing glance and dramatic confession for hours on end only to hear Mira saying how gorgeous Zoey is when I’m trying to actively listen to what Zoey is rapping.”
He laughed low in his chest, the sound warm and unrestrained.
“That’s fair,” he said, pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of her head. “But it does make me happy seeing you so invested in the people you care about, even when it’s a little… torturous for you.”
She tilted her head back to glance up at him, a faint blush dusting her cheeks.
“You think I’m torturing myself?”
“Absolutely,” he replied, voice playful but affectionate. “But it’s adorable. You can’t help yourself. You love them too much not to notice and love the little details.”
Rumi let out a small, wistful sigh and leaned back fully into him, letting her hands rest lightly on his chest.
“I just… I like being here more,” she admitted, voice soft, almost shy. “Being with you. Even if it’s just for a quiet evening.”
Jinu’s fingers traced lazy patterns on her arms, lingering just enough to send warmth straight through her.
“And I love that you choose this over everything else sometimes. You don’t have to, yet you always come back. That’s…” his voice faltered just slightly, raw with sincerity. “…that’s everything to me.”
Her smile widened, genuine and tender, as she pressed closer.
“Well, lucky for you, I’ll always come back,” she whispered.
Jinu leaned down just a little more, brushing his lips against hers in a soft, lingering kiss that made Rumi’s knees go weak. She melted into him immediately, the small apartment fading entirely from her awareness. The world outside—the news, the schedules, the obligations—didn’t exist in this tiny sphere of warmth and scent and heartbeats pressed together.
Their kiss deepened, gentle and unhurried, a tender reaffirmation that neither needed to speak aloud. Rumi wrapped her arms around his neck, hiding her face against his shoulder, savoring the quiet intimacy. When they finally parted, it was only enough for their foreheads to rest against each other, breaths mingling in the small space.
They breathed in together, and when Jinu leaned back just slightly, it was only to tug at the belt loop of his trousers with one hand, loosening the leather and setting it aside on the nearby chair. The small sound of the buckle clinking against wood seemed louder than it should have in the hush of the room.
Rumi let her gaze follow the motion, a flicker of heat sparking in her eyes, but before she could tease him for it, her expression faltered.
A soft groan escaped her throat as she raised her hands to her temples, rubbing small, firm circles against the skin.
Jinu stilled immediately, all easy warmth shifting into worry.
“A headache, love?” Jinu asked immediately, his frown full of concern, eyes scanning her face like he could read every ache she carried.
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