A/N: Fluffy chapter this time! This chapter was going to be longer (like double the size it is), but I don't know if I will get the other half done this month, so I'm posting this first half by itself. I think you can probably guess what will happen in the next chapter by how this chapter ends ;) Enjoy! :)
Korean Terms:
bojagi: traditional Korean wrapping cloth
norigae: traditional Korean knotted tassel accessory originally used to decorate women's hanboks; functions as both a decoration and a good luck charm
hwajeon: pan-fried sweet rice cakes embellished with edible flowers
Present Day, Early April
These days, Rang often felt like he was walking through a dream, like he was living someone else's life.
Two months had gone by since Ga Eul had begun living with him.
Well, okay, she didn't exactly live with him. She spent half the week at his apartment and the other half of it at her own apartment.
They had agreed upon a schedule. On Thursdays, Rang picked Ga Eul up from school, and she spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at his apartment. On Thursdays, they ate takeout, and afterwards, Ga Eul did work for school in her bedroom. On Fridays, they either went out somewhere or spent an hour arguing over what show or movie to watch. On Saturday afternoons, they had a taekwondo lesson, and on lazy Saturday mornings, they twisted their bodies around each other, retracing familiar lines, like a dance they'd choreographed together, one that was growing more instinctual by the day, and Rang kissed one particular spot on Ga Eul's neck until she giggled uncontrollably, and she restlessly slid her fingers through his hair. They spoke in sounds and half-sentences that only made sense to them, and this was, by far, Rang's favorite part of the week.
On Sundays, he brought her back to her apartment so she could 'run errands' and have dinner with her parents, and she spent Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights at her apartment so she could concentrate on her work for school. This arrangement suited both of them—well, it was tolerable for Rang—and he appreciated only having to wake up early one day a week. As for Ga Eul, she said it made Thursday feel a little like Friday—whatever that meant.
Ga Eul had her own toothbrush—a purple one—which sat in the toothbrush holder next to his toothbrush—a blue one. She had the right side of the bed, and he had the left side. She had a preferred coffee mug and a preferred blanket, and she'd brought extras of her most-used items and kept them in a drawer in Rang's bedroom. As time went on, she'd brought more and more things and made herself more and more at home in his apartment, and though Rang generally did not like sharing, in this case, he found her gradual takeover of his space reassuring.
Like acceptance.
And nothing made him happier than seeing her wear her butterfly necklace constantly—except, perhaps, the day he'd noticed her using the planner and some of the other office supplies he'd bought for her. She'd tucked the supplies back into the desk that she used on Thursday nights and was rifling through them when he came into her room one night to tell her their chicken order had arrived.
Yes, little things, like that planner, had appeared gradually, and so had other things, like the photo of them that sat on Rang's nightstand next to his alarm clock with the alarm he only used on Fridays. The photo showed them in their coffee shop—Ga Eul had made one of the baristas take it—sitting next to each other with their ssaeng-cream cakes and hot coffees on the table in front of them. Rang was wearing his signature red suit, and he had his arm around Ga Eul, who wore a doll-like, long-sleeve light blue dress with a wide white sailor collar and a light blue and white plaid headband with a little bow. They were a mismatched couple if there had ever been one, but this was Rang' s favorite picture of them because Ga Eul was smiling in that bubbly, effervescent way she did when she'd been laughing, which she had been because Rang had made her laugh right before the picture was taken.
Rang had a lot of pictures of Ga Eul on his phone now, mostly candid shots of her making funny faces that she'd taken when she'd stolen his phone one day. He had a random assortment of funny videos and photos of food items Ga Eul had sent to him on her lunch break; he also had a growing collection of suggestive photos she'd taken wearing one of his black dress shirts, which she'd stolen to sleep in at her apartment. He was going to get her back for all her bold teasing one day.
When they were apart, they messaged each other throughout the day, and though it wasn't quite the same as being with Ga Eul in person, it was at least something. A very nice something.
Of course, Rang always made it a point to visit Ga Eul as someone else during the week, and so far she'd guessed wrong every single week. He'd considered making it easier on her, but then he'd remembered he had his dignity as a fox to consider.
At present, it was early spring, and the snow had melted away as milder temperatures set in, so on today—the first Saturday in April—Ga Eul had insisted they go on a picnic by the Han River. Earlier, she'd tried to convince him to trek up Mount Goryeo for the azalea festival there, and despite the temptation of wild mountain azaleas, he'd made it abundantly clear that his days of trekking up and down mountains were over, outside of absolute necessity.
'But we could take such beautiful pictures together,' she'd insisted, and though he never minded having more photos of Ga Eul to scroll through in her absence, he could care less about being in pictures himself. And if she wanted flowers in the pictures that badly, there were plenty of beautiful flowers right there in Seoul. No need to drive two hours just to go on an exhausting hike.
And no. He didn't care that Ga Eul had never been to the Goryeo festival before.
He didn't.
'No,' Rang had repeated firmly, and thankfully, Ga Eul had dropped the subject, only to come up with the picnic idea a day later. Fortunately, a picnic was an idea Rang could get behind, seeing as it involved Ga Eul's home-cooked food.
But if she thought they would be tandem biking or paddling one of those ridiculous duck boats around the river, she was kidding herself.
Currently, they sat on a blue and white blanket spread under a shade tree with a superior view of the river and conveniently located as close to their car as possible. They'd truly lucked upon the space.
Or, rather, when they'd arrived, another couple had been cozied up beneath the tree, and while Ga Eul was busy finding another shady spot in which to sit, Rang had covertly worked his fox magic and shooed the couple away.
Now the two of them were sitting cozily on their blanket while people biked and walked along the broad walkway in front of them. Clusters of pink and yellow spring flowers bloomed nearby. Aside from the high-rises towering over the background and the humans milling about—too many humans, in Rang's opinion—the scene reminded Rang of picnics with his brother when he was a child. He could smell azaleas in the air, along with the earthy scent of grass and trees. The park they'd come to couldn't match the mountains of his childhood by any stretch of the imagination, but the air seemed clearer there than in the rest of the densely populated city. Soon, there would be cherry blossoms everywhere. Contented, he leaned back against the trunk of the tree and stretched out in his jeans and navy blue dress shirt while Ga Eul set out their picnic lunch—lunchboxes filled with beef bulgogi, vegetable kimbap, kimchi, and several other side dishes.
Rang swiped a pair of chopsticks and snatched up a piece of kimbap while she was still unpacking.
"You know, it's nice when boyfriends wait for their girlfriends to sit down before they start eating," Ga Eul commented. She was bent over on her knees, pulling items from the large red cooler bag she'd made him haul from the car.
"Why don't you consider it a compliment to your cooking that I can't wait?" Rang gave her a mischievous grin.
"You can wait. You simply won't," Ga Eul replied without looking at him, but she didn't appear upset by his lack of manners. She also wore jeans, along with a white long-sleeved blouse dotted with tiny blue and purple butterflies.
"Why wait when you can eat?" Rang popped another piece of kimbap into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, enjoying the view of the sunlight glinting on the river, but mostly of his girlfriend's butt conveniently blocking some of the view.
Ga Eul sat down across from him, cross-legged, and the pleasant moment was over. The stones in her butterfly necklace winked in the sunlight. She'd curled her copper hair, loosely, and it spilled over her shoulders as she leaned over the food.
Picking up her chopsticks, Ga Eul plucked a piece of kimbap for herself and stuffed the whole thing in her mouth. Rang would have liked to point out that her own table manners were not the most delicate, but he held his tongue. This was probably not something a 'nice boyfriend' should say.
As they continued eating, Rang surveyed the broad river, which he'd traveled many times when Seoul was still named Hanseong and the waterway still thrived with commerce and as a central mode of transportation. Once, there'd been nothing but floating pontoon bridges where the modern metal bridges now towered over the water. He'd watched wars being fought around the river—power struggles waged between families and countries and corporations—and he'd seen the landscape of its banks transform over and over again. He'd seen people swim in the river and pollute the river, and long ago, he'd drowned someone there once, during the Japanese occupation. Or before. His memories were fuzzy now. It didn't matter.
What mattered was that, of all the things he'd witnessed there, he'd never thought he would live to witness this: himself, on a picnic, with his human girlfriend, basking in the return of spring like all the other couples around them. Purely human couples, all of them. He was sure.
Things always changed, but not for him. At least, not in a way that meant anything.
Ga Eul placed a few more pieces of beef on top of Rang's rice.
"There. Before I eat the rest." She smiled, looking guilty. It was true. She had eaten most of the beef bulgogi already, but now she was noticeably slowing her bites. Painstakingly so.
Rang chuckled.
"If you were going to eat so much, you should have cooked more," he complained, but he did find it cute how much food she could stuff inside her small body, not to mention how much she could cram in her mouth.
Ga Eul gave him a playful glare, and he smiled when she began piling food into her bowl with renewed speed.
Mealtime with Ga Eul was always entertaining. And bedtime. And all the times in between. But, as always, when things were going so well, Rang began to get nervous.
They'd passed their hundred day anniversary a few days ago, on March thirtieth, and although Rang thought couple rings were a pointless human tradition, he'd assumed Ga Eul would want them, but she hadn't said a word about it. Not one peep. Not even over the special dinner they'd had to celebrate their anniversary. And he'd be damned before offering up the idea himself.
Still, it bothered him that she hadn't brought it up. Ga Eul seemed like the type of person to want couple rings and all the other couple-y things people were currently wearing and buying. What if she was still debating how she felt about being with him? What if she was still trying him on for size, like he was a shoe in a department store or a car she was test-driving?
Rang tried to put the matter out of his mind—it was a beautiful day—but there were all these other couples floating around them on a wave of sickening giddiness, flaunting their matching outfits and the occasional t-shirts that made gag-inducing statements such as 'If lost, return to babe' and 'I am babe.'
For a split second, Rang was jealous of a guy wearing a black hoodie that had one half of a heart printed on it—his girlfriend was wearing the other half, of course—and he kind of wanted to kill himself afterwards.
But why didn't he and Ga Eul have something like that?!
Rang stuffed clumps of rice into his mouth and directed his annoyance into chewing.
He'd seen couples with matching shoes and matching hoodies and matching hats. Matching phone cases and matching bags. Matching everything. He thought it all looked comically terrible, but at the same time, it left him feeling cheated out of something he couldn't name.
"Jagiya, don't even try to get me one of those ridiculous couple outfits," he remarked, pointing with his chopsticks at the guy he'd been envying earlier.
Ga Eul turned her head in the direction Rang indicated.
"Oh?" Ga Eul laughed. "I won't," she said, smiling. And why was she smiling? She looked far too certain of her statement.
It wasn't that Rang wanted to wear one of those hideous things. Certainly not.
But shouldn't Ga Eul want him to?
"Why not?" he blurted out.
Amusement danced in Ga Eul's eyes.
"What do you mean, 'Why not?' Wouldn't you hate it?"
"Of course, I'd hate it. I'm not blind," Rang snapped, then amended, "But you...Wasn't that something you always wanted to do with your boyfriend? Like...stealing his shirts?"
Ga Eul laughed.
"Of course. All girls want that when they're younger. I also wanted to go to the azalea festival at Mount Goryeo, but obviously we're not doing that." She shrugged. "I'm adapting." Ga Eul dug into her food once more, and Rang felt a twinge of guilt. Just a twinge. It wasn't enough to make him offer to pack up their picnic and drive her all the way to the mountain, but he also didn't want her to be too disappointed. It wasn't her fault her soulmate was a six-hundred-year-old fox who'd tired of pretty much everything.
Rang sighed.
"How about this? After we finish our picnic, we can go anywhere you want in Seoul and see the flowers."
Ga Eul brightened.
"Anywhere I want?"
"In Seoul."
"Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you." Ga Eul reached over and mussed up Rang's hair, and Rang hurried to straighten it out as she returned to her food. She happily polished off the rest of her lunch, then set aside her chopsticks. "I have a surprise for you," she announced cheerfully.
"A surprise? What is it?" Rang asked, perking up immediately. He usually liked Ga Eul's surprises. Unless they involved certain human activities. Like climbing a mountain, for instance.
Ga Eul smiled.
"Close your eyes, and you'll find out," she instructed, and Rang took orders from no one, but he did as she asked.
A moment later, he felt a weight being dropped into his lap—a box. When he opened his eyes, a package wrapped in a dark blue and silver silk bojagi was sitting on his lap. A norigae hung from the silver bow on top of the gift, and this accessory featured a knotted silver butterfly, symbolizing happiness, and long dark blue silk tassels.
"Where was this?" Rang frowned. The elaborate gift was too large for Ga Eul to have hidden in her purse, and he was normally too observant for her to slip anything by him.
"I put it in the bottom of the cooler bag," Ga Eul informed him.
Ah. That was why she'd insisted on setting all the food out herself. Not that he'd wanted to set out the meal, or that he'd offered, but she had kept the cooler on her side of the blanket, and he'd noticed her being highly protective of it, though he'd assumed that had to do with her large appetite.
"Open it!" Ga Eul prodded. "I was going to give it to you on Wednesday when we had our anniversary dinner, but then I thought it would be better for a picnic, since you didn't like my festival idea."
Better for a picnic? Now Rang was totally lost.
He opened the gift slowly, the silk cloth falling away to reveal a dark rectangular box without a label. He shook the box, and its contents shifted. A lot of small pieces. He pulled off the lid, and inside lay a dozen hwajeon, pan-fried sweet rice cakes embellished with edible flowers. Since he was a child, it had been a tradition to make them in the spring; back then, women would pick wild azaleas in the mountains and fry the rice cakes for a picnic called hwajeon-nori, and sometimes Rang would be there too, disguised as a woman, so he could eat the cakes and learn all the village gossip—information which he used for his own gain at a later date. For her cakes, Ga Eul had also chosen azaleas, their pink petals forming a delicate flower shape in the center of each flat white circular cake.
Rang stared at the cakes, speechless.
"You said azaleas were your favorite food when you were a kid, correct?" Ga Eul prompted.
"Oh...Yes, they were."
"And I know you like rice cakes a lot, so I thought you would like these."
"Did you make them?" Rang asked, glancing up at her, a lump forming in his throat. He could tell that she'd made them, though; they looked delicious, but not precise enough to be professional.
Ga Eul nodded, smiling, her eyes searching for his approval.
"You should try one." She pointed to the cakes.
Rang picked one up and took a bite. The cake was faintly sweet, and though he had tasted better rice cakes, the flavor of the azalea was perfect. It reminded him of eating hwajeon in his brother's home.
"You've probably had a lot of those. Sorry if mine aren't too good. I haven't made them that—"
"They're delicious," Rang interrupted, smiling at her. "You should make them lots of times."
Immediately, Ga Eul's expression shifted from an apology to a soft beam of pride. She returned his smile.
"Are these all for me?" he asked anxiously, clutching the box to his stomach. He knew Ga Eul had made them, but it was precisely for that reason that he really didn't want to share.
She nodded.
"Yes, they're all yours." Ga Eul produced a box of strawberry pocky from her purse. "This is my dessert," she informed him, "and you can't have any." She shook the box at him.
"I guess that's fair," Rang said evenly. In truth, he wanted to burst out of his skin. No one had ever made hwajeonjust for him before. Not as a gift. Not because they simply wanted to.
He finished eating the cake in his hand, then reached for a second one. His earlier irritation had vanished. This was one of the best presents he'd ever received.
They ate their dessert in silence for a while, gazing at the scenery again. Ga Eul cleaned out her box of pocky fairly quickly, and Rang had nearly polished off the entire box of rice cakes when Ga Eul spoke again, hesitantly this time. She shifted on the blanket, rearranging her legs.
"I have another gift for you. You might think it's sort of silly, but I wanted to give it to you anyway."
Something else? Rang grew even more curious, though he wasn't sure what could be better than the rice cakes.
"Nine-tailed foxes like to receive gifts. Whatever it is, I'll accept it." Rang smiled in that semi-threatening way Ga Eul liked.
"Okay." She laughed under her breath. Rummaging through her purse, she pulled out a small rectangular box. Dark, like the box of cakes, but much too small to hold anything of the sort.
A watch?
"Open it." She thrust the box at him, and as he took it in his hands, he realized that, rather than a watch, it was more likely to be...well...He didn't want to say it, even in his mind, and be wrong.
He opened the box before he could think much more on the subject, and there they were—what he hadn't wanted to hope for—a pair of couple rings. The rings were simple white gold bands, and he could tell they weren't too expensive, but Ga Eul told him to look inside the bands, and when he did, he saw that they were engraved with 'little human' on Ga Eul's and 'pet fox' on Rang's.
Rang couldn't help but laugh a little, wondering what the human jeweler had thought when Ga Eul had given him instructions on what to engrave. But more than amused, he felt awestruck. By the inscription. By the couple rings. By the cakes. By the whole picnic. He'd never expected to receive anything like this. He didn't deserve it. He was outside of himself, in a dream again.
"I know it's a human tradition," Ga Eul explained, "so I thought maybe you wouldn't care much for it, but...I think it's neat because it means we're a set. Like, it shows that we're soulmates…But you don't have to wear it if you don't want to."
A set. Soulmates.
Of course, Rang knew they were soulmates, at least on paper, but...Did this mean they would be like a normal human couple? That strange feeling of acceptance washed over him again. He didn't know what to do with it, but Ga Eul was waiting for him to react. She seemed hopeful but hesitant, as if she were afraid he'd reject her gift.
Well, so far all he'd done was laugh.
"Like you said, we're a set. Of course, I have to wear it," he remarked casually, slipping his ring onto his right ring finger. It fit almost perfectly. He guessed they could have it resized.
Smiling, Ga Eul put the matching couple ring on her own ring finger. She grabbed his hand and held it up next to hers. "They're pretty cool, right?"
"They're a human tradition." Rang gave her a skeptical look. "I'm not sure how 'cool' they can be."
"Well, let's take a picture of them anyway," Ga Eul urged.
Of course. A picture. Ga Eul loved documenting everything. She took so many pictures each week that Rang was certain she had no idea what half of the pictures in her camera roll were. She probably never looked at them afterwards, and Rang wasn't sure why she bothered, but the activity seemed to make her happy, so he usually let her take as many photos as she liked until they started to annoy him.
In true Ga Eul fashion, she got up and made him move so she could sit between his legs. She placed her small hand over his larger one and took a picture of their hands together with the rings showing. She made him take a selfie with her; then she flagged down a passing couple and made the girl take several pictures of them in different poses. One picture of them on either side of the tree and one of them with their arms around each other and one with her sitting between his legs, his arms caging her in. When Rang had had enough, he cut off another pose by snatching up Ga Eul's phone from the stranger's hands and bidding the couple a curt goodbye.
Ga Eul, who had been mid-sentence in her explanation of her desired pose, frowned as he handed her phone back to her. As always, she would think him rude, and, as always, he wouldn't care.
"It was just going to be one more," she complained.
"Oh? I've heard that one before." He gave her a smile that said he didn't believe her one bit.
One more, his ass.
Rang sat down and resumed lounging against the tree, and though Ga Eul spent several minutes pouting, scrolling through the photos they'd taken, and glancing at him periodically to let him know she was displeased, eventually she came back to him.
He smiled when she did.
She settled herself between his legs, reclined against his chest, and played with his fingers. She twisted his ring around his ring finger, sliding it up and down.
The ring rested heavy on his finger, a foreign sensation. An overwhelming one, for something so small. There was a crowd of humans now, and he could hear a lot of their conversations. If he only thought about it a moment, he would know exactly how to twist their desires into something he could profit from, which had been the only reason he hung around crowded human spaces before.
But Ga Eul's presence dulled the noise; everything else became fuzzier as she became sharper. Finally, he could only concentrate on her fingers touching his, as if she were a small world unto herself.
"Thank you," Ga Eul said softly.
"For what?" Rang glanced down at the empty gift box where the rice cakes had been. Perhaps he should have asked if Ga Eul wanted one, but...oh well...next time.
"After I was sad for a long time," Ga Eul explained, "you made me really happy. Thank you."
Rang glanced down at the rings on their hands. He supposed she was referring to how sad she'd been after her heart had been broken by that spineless potter, and though he would hardly call two years of sadness 'a long time,' he understood her sentiment. He was her Lee Yeon.
"I'm your soulmate. Of course, you should be happy with me." Rang smiled. "Let's have a picnic again. I like this one."
"Okay," Ga Eul agreed enthusiastically. She laced their fingers together and squeezed his hand. "We can have lots of them since the weather's getting warmer." She tipped her face up to his, and her youthful eyes shone as they peered into his ancient ones. A tiny smudge of eyeliner smeared her eyelid. Rang wanted to kiss the corner of her eye.
He kissed her forehead instead.
They passed a few more minutes in contented silence. With his head resting against the tree, Rang shut his eyes, unusually peaceful, and he might have dozed off with his arm around Ga Eul if she hadn't spoken again.
"So...I wanted to ask you for a favor."
Rang opened his eyes. Again, the background human chatter came into sharp relief.
A favor? She wanted a favor?
Of course, there was a catch. There always was.
Well, wasn't a fox's life built around favors? A gift for a gift.
"What is it, little human?" he asked, an edge to his voice.
As if realizing the implication of her wording, Ga Eul stammered, "Oh, s-sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just meant...there's something else I'd like you to do with me. Besides the picnic."
Rang squinted at the top of Ga Eul's head, though he knew she couldn't see it. Favor or not, he had a suspicion that she'd been buttering him up.
"Go on," he said hesitantly.
After an equally hesitant pause, Ga Eul continued, "Would you like to be a chaperone for Soo-oh's upcoming field trip? Our class is going to the botanical gardens your brother works at, and I think it would be a lot of fun for Soo-oh if you were there. For me too." As she said this, Ga Eul gestured with much more enthusiasm than anyone should display at the thought of herding a group of small humans.
"No," Rang answered automatically. She'd said this wasn't a favor, so he would hold her to that.
"Yu Ri will also be there as a chaperone," she tried.
"No."
"But—"
"No."
"But—"
"No."
"Please." Tilting her face up to his, Ga Eul switched on those puppy eyes he'd come to dread, as they weakened his resolve every time.
Well, this time it wouldn't work. What type of self-respecting evil fox spent the day socializing with tiny snot-nosed humans?
He peered down at her with what he hoped was a slightly menacing and altogether firm expression.
"No."
