You know, between the two of us, Hajoon has always been the more expressive one.
Like, I'm talking laughing so loud his voice sounds like windshield wipers and his broad shoulders shake. And when he gets frightened, his eyes go comically wide and he lets out a shriek at a decibel no person could possibly measure correctly. Also, he has this weird thought to act on most of his impulsive thoughts as well.
Which is sort of what he does right now. "No," Hajoon says, letting out a small laugh. "No he isn't."
I sigh, having kind of guessed that this was going to be his response. Another part of me is actually still taken aback by the fact that I blurted it all out in the first place.
Cal looks at me with a horrid expression on his face. Guess he's as shocked as I am about not keeping my mouth shut about this. "What happened to letting as few people as possible know, Kiama?"
I actually don't know...I sort of panicked.
"Look, Hajoon," I say, resting my hand on my brother's shoulder. "I know it sounds super ridiculous. Trust me, I know. But I'm actually telling the truth here."
"What benefit do we get from telling your brother all this?" Cal asks, clearly bitter about this. He should consider this payback for working on my nerves since yesterday.
Hajoon gives me a once over, a questionable look on his face. He then glances over at Cal, sceptical look on his face. "So, if he is a genie like you said, why is he with you? And why isn't he blue?"
I let out a laugh of my own, relishing in Cal's annoyed look at that comment. "Trust me, he's not the genie from the movies," I say, even shaking my head. "Literally far from it."
Cal looks back at Hajoon, resting his hand on his hip. "Well, considering you know my secret now, I guess it's no need to keep up the pretence, sir," he says, rolling his eyes. "I am much older than you anyway."
"Well, I guess it does explain why your eyes are so unnaturally blue," Hajoon replies, narrowing his eyes at the genie. "But it doesn't explain why you're in proximity of my sister."
"Wait, you can see the colour of his eyes?" I ask, eyes wide. "You can see that it's blue?"
"Anyone with eyes can see that it's blue," Hajoon answers, frowning. "I mean, it's rivaling the ocean if you look closely. Which I don't want to, but am being forced to do anyway."
I look back at Cal, looking for an answer to this, but he seems as shocked by this information as I am. "What does this mean, Cal?" I ask anyway, more out of hopeful delusion than anything. I am asking the world's most clueless genie, after all.
"I don't know," he mutters, eyes lost thought. "I'm still wearing my disguise, after all. No one but you is supposed to be able to see it."
"What, why?" Cal asks, flipping his head back and forth between the two of us. "What's going on here?"
"I'm his Holder."
"She's my Holder."
We both speak at the same time, looking at each other rather than at my brother. There's this small smirk that plays in the corner of Cal's mouth, like he's impressed by the fact that we were in sync like that. I just roll my eyes, but something about the action lingers in my mind.
"Wait, what?" Hajoon asks, tapping me on the shoulder. "How is it possible? You don't have a music box in your possession, Kiki."
This makes me frown, and Cal turns white as he looks back at my brother. "What did you say?" he asks, voice uncharacteristically soft.
Cal scoffs, shaking his head as he takes a small step back. "All these years, I always thought he was speaking nonense," Hajoon mutters, rubbing his hand over his face. "But no, turns out it's true. Apparently. I want to think that you're lying or joking, Kiama, but the fact that your ears haven't turned its red shade yet proves that this is the truth, right?"
"Joon, what are you talking about?" I ask, feeling even more confused than when Jimin was literally floating in the air. "Who was talking nonsense?"
"Lee, my friend," Hajoon says, still looking like mix of disbelief and exasperation. "He's my buddy over at the Geology department."
I nod my head, remembering this morning's first class. When Jung Lee felt the need to point me out in the middle of class. When Micheal and Jia were all curious about Cal and who he was.
When Jimin stood up for me in front of everyone...
"Yeah, I know," I say, glancing back at Cal. He's still pale in the face, not a an unreadable expression on his face. "We had class with him this morning."
"You were with him all day?" my brother asks incredulously, eyebrows through the roof. Well, clouds, if we're being technical. "Seriously? Is that why you didn't bother to let anyone else know you're okay?"
"Can you blame me?" I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. "I've been busy dealing with all this magic crap while trying to keep my attendance up. As you can see, I can't exactly multitask as is already."
My voice quivers a bit when I say that, a reminder that I was on the verge of tears just before this conversation. And before Hajoon even showed up in the first place.
This whole day has had me scrambling through so many emotions, actually.
"You said something about a music box," Cal speaks up again, giving Hajoon a pointed look. "How do you know about that?"
"Music box?" I ask, confused. "What music box?"
Hajoon sighs, brushing back the stray locks in his face with both his hands before continuing. "Ugh, so back when Lee and I were both still undergraduates - him in first year and me on the way to finishing my last - the two of us met by accident."
"Accident?" I ask, intrigued. I've never heard this story before. But then again, I've never met Lee before today, so that makes sense.
"Yeah. It was in the library, and the two of us bumped into each other for some reason. Like, literally bumped into each other," he continues, laughing a little as he speaks. "So, all our books fell to the floor and obviously, we both bent to pick it up. He had in his possession boos about ancient artifacts and magic entities and none of them were storybooks either. Of course, I was intrigued and asked him about it."
"What does this have to do with my music box?" Cal asks, clearly impatient.
Did he just say...my music box?
"I'm getting there," Hajoon answers, glaring at Cal. "Anyway. So, he starts talking about it. About magic and how it existed in the world once and how he believes it still does, but very muted for some reasons I can't remember. I didn't believe in it, of course, but hearing him talk about it had me intrigued. So much so that the two of us started having regular meetups in the library just for him to fill me in on the stuff he read about."
"Wait, so Lee knows about the existence of magic?" I ask, thinking about Hyeling and how he also had similar interests. "Like, an actual professional in the field?"
"I wouldn't know about professional. How does one even get to that position in something like magic knowledge?" Hajoon replies, crossing his arms across his chest. "But yeah, he seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the things he was reading."
"Cal, do you know what this means?" I ask, a smile on my face. "There's someone we could ask to help us. They could help us figure out the missing pieces of the puzzle! Right?"
"The music box," Cal insists, not done with that piece of information. "Tell about it. Now."
"Geez, no need to be so rude," Hajoon says, narrowing his eyes at him. He takes a step forward, so that there's an obstacle between me and the genie. See, protective. "I remember one of the days in which we hung out like that, when he took me to this clubhouse of sorts. It was empty when we were there, but he told me that that was the eplace where other people who believed what he did hung out and chatted with one another. He invited me to join said club, but I didn't feel the need to talk about magic with anyone other than Lee. So I declined."
I look from the genie back to my brother, trying to visualise the memory he's retelling.
"While we were there, he showed me something in this thick leather wrapped book," Hajoon carries on, looking down at a shorter Cal. "In it, there was a inscription in Greek, and to talked about the existence of djinnies. Apparently, they were magical entities made from the pools of magic unknown who were meant to serve a master that came across them. And each one was tied to a music box of ancient times."
Cal's eyes go a little wide, and I can see him swallow slowly. This perplexes me even more.
"But Cal is a genie, not a djinni," I say, noticing that the pronunciation is totally off. "Are those two things even the same?"
"Yes," Cal answers before Hajoon can. "It's the same thing, and the pronunciation just differs across cultures sometimes."
I comb my fingers through my pink curls again, groaning at yet another layer of information washing over me. But then I realize something. "Cal," I say, glancing down at the necklace around my neck. "This isn't a music box."
"Of course not," he bites back, making me frown at him. Hajoon also had an unimpressed look on his face. "I told you, Zeneddys bound me to it."
"Why?" I ask, finally uttering the question I wanted to ask in the Psychology lecture. From what Hyeling and Cal himself told me about this guy, he's very dangerous. "How did you even come to know him?"
"Wait, you're not talking about the god of dark magic, are you?" Hajoon asks, eyebrows lifted.
"You know about him too?" I ask, although that's a stupid question. He just admitted to me that Lee revealed everything he knew. It's actually a little jarring to know that my brother was aware of magic and its existence before me, even though I'm the one stuck with the genie. "Did Lee tell you about him."
"Well, yeah," Hajoon says, shrugging. "He's apparently the big bad of the magic world as well, or something like that."
"Oh trust me, he isn't the only one," Cal comments, balling his fists. "He's definitely not the only one."
"There's more?" I exclaim, shocked. "What exactly is happening right now? Do they have something to do with your wish granting and my visions?"
"Visions?" Hajoon asks, glancing back at me. "What visions?"
"Well, according to Cal, they're more like memories," I mutter, still unable to process all that. "But it contains images of people that neither I nor Jimin can recognise. Well, except for Selene."
"The goddess of the moon?" Seokjin asks.
"Who else?" Cal scoffs, pulling a face.
"I'll let you know that I have an ex girlfriend named Selene, okay," Hajoon answers, sassily pointing his finger at Cal. I kiss my tongue to my teeth at the memory; Selene was Hajoon's girlfriend when he was still in high school, and the only thing I can distinctly remember about her is that she continuously bailed on Hajoon when they had plans to hangout or go out.
As it turned out later, it's because she was cheating on him the entire time. And now he's with Jaeri. Which really makes me wonder what type of girl Hajoon always goes for; it's a little alarming, don't you think?
"Well, it's certainly not her we're speaking of," Cal says, tolling his eyes. In a way, I think he's even more full of crap with my brother than he was with me. Score one for the genie for always being unpleasant to converse with.
"That's besides the point," I interject, galring at both guys as a signal for them to stop their childish nonense. "Cal, Lee knows stuff. And the fact that he has a book containing information that you didn't even disclose to me must mean he's legit, right? He can help us figure it out, how to bypass the wish thing and what connection this all has."
"Bypass what wish thing?" comes a curious Hajoon. "Are you taking him not being able to grant your wish like you just said a few minutes ago?"
"Yes," Cal and I say in unison again. We've got to stop doing this.
"We need to figure out how and why our skin touches when we touch," Cal continues.
"What do you mean touch?" Hajoon asks, voice weary.
"Not like that!" I exclaim, eyes wide and hands shaking no. "So not like that!" Although, the sudden grin on Cal's sullen face doesn't really help the situation.
"I'm watching you, Kiki," Hajoon comments, glaring at Cal again. "Besides, there's only one guy who has my blessing to be with you. No one can beat him."
"What?" I ask, confused. "Who?"
"Oh, don't play dumb, Mimi," Cal says with a wink. "He's obviously talking about your loverboy."
"Jaeun?" I exclaim, and incredulous look on my face. "What? No! He's my best friend."
"Friends to lovers is a trope, Kiki," Hajoon says, with a wink of his own. This makes a slight blush spread across my face even more aggressively.
"But back to the point," Hajoon says, copying my earlier words, "why do you need a wish granted, Kiki? Also, why is he calling you Mimi?"
"Because she summoned me without knowing that she did, and now she's stuck as my Holder until I can grant her wish successfully."
"But if there's no music box, where did you come from?" asks Hajoon.
"From the necklace," Cal says, pointing at the sapphire stone. "Didn't you listen to a lick Mimi and I just said?"
"Why are you calling her Mimi?" Hajoon asks again, looking annoyed. "It's a dumb nickname."
If I wasn't still in shock at the Jaeun comment, I would've jubilated over the fact that my brother agrees with me on the whole nickname thing. But I'm still trying to bury my own thoughts regarding what I think about Jaeun, so I remain silent.
"But wait," Hajoon says again, "wasn't that the necklace that Kookie gave you yesterday?"
"Kookie?" Cal snorts, humour written all over his face. "I'm definitely remembering that one."
I slowly nod my head yes, looking back down at the beautiful piece of jewellery. The same piece that has catapulted me into a world of damn chaos.
"That's very strange," Hajoon comments, tapping his chin. "The book doesn't mention anything about a genie in a necklace."
"Surprise," Cal comments sarcastically, even doing jazz hands. "Here I am. Now, are you going to take us to your Lee friend it not?"
"Do you guys really think he has the answers you're looking for?" Hajoon asks, this question more directed at me.
I snap out of my mini trance, looking at the sincere look swimming in my one and only sibling's eyes. I purse my lips, giving a small nod. "We don't have any other leads or clues to go on."
"More importantly, we want to get rid of each other's company, don't we, Mimi?" Cal asks, sly smile on his face. He looks at me, blue eyes shimmering. But for some reasons, they're not as bright when he makes that comment.
***