Chapter Text
“Jungkook-ah,” his father's deep voice rumbles in his chest. It’s putting Jungkook to sleep. He tries to blink awake but he’s just so comfortable. “Jungkook-ah,” his father repeats, more insistent. Jungkook smells the beach on him. Smells the sunscreen his mother forces them to wear. It smells like home. Jungkook sinks further. “Jungkook-ah are you listening?” This time the voice is a whisper, getting further away. “Remember, with magic, there is always a price.”
Jungkook doesn’t need to be awake to understand that particular lesson. He knows it first hand.
He’s pretty sure he hears another “Jungkook-ah.”
It’s been a long time since someone’s called him that, he thinks. But that doesn’t make sense, does it?
.
It’s a Tuesday morning so it’s a slow day at Centerfold.
Well.
Every day is a slow day at the shop. But. Jungkook would argue that weekday mornings are the ones that linger the longest, as if time’s bony fingers are clutching to the sun in an active resistance to its never ending march forward. Today is definitely worse than yesterday. Mondays are nice because he’s usually too tired to really feel the extra weight the weekday brings with it, not recharged enough to feel time drag its feet.
Tuesdays though? He can feel the slog on Tuesdays.
He sighs, flips a page in Magick Theory, readjusts on the uneven stool behind the cash register, and makes a note about the waxing gibbous on the margin of his book.
Jungkook is halfway through the chapter on lunar cycles and three-fourths of the way through readjusting his potion for hair dye in the margins to a color that is less offensively royal purple and closer to the lilac he’d originally been aiming for (this is what he gets for working with knock-off substitutes in place of real ingredients but he can’t exactly get his hands on those). He’s gnawing on his pencil eraser, trying to determine if he should make the switch to honeycomb as a binding agent when Nook winds between his legs and lets out a, “Mreow.”
It’s the only warning he gets before the half-charged protection crystals, acting as a windchime above the door, tinkle to signify a customer has arrived.
There is not enough time for Jungkook to process his shock and he is hard pressed to remain balanced on the stool, but it is enough of a warning for him to shuffle Magick Theory beneath the desk and replace it with a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice.
It’s not exactly surprising to see a stranger on a Tuesday morning, stumbling into the shop, brought in with a gust of warm summer heat, and looking for a book. Except it is, in this case, because usually Jungkook can anticipate someone stopping by. Feel their intention to stop, enter, look around almost like a physical touch. Most days, he can pinpoint what they’re looking for before they even ask.
The shop itself is not magic. The people who stop by are not magical beings. It makes them easy to read, they’re not hiding their intent as they bumble through life. Jungkook chose this shop in this neighborhood in Seoul because, although it did not pay much, it kept him from the hustle and bustle of the more magic-forward neighborhoods. Besides, the old man who owned the place was nice and let Jungkook rent the small apartment above it. But that was more of an added bonus, an old man worrying about a young boy with no family, and not his initial reason for answering the ad in the newspaper.
The shop itself is not magic. This neighborhood does not harbor magic.
No pixies will flit by to drop off the morning post, shifters will not brawl over their territory, witches will not peddle their potions on the streets.
And Jungkook has wrapped these facts around himself, tight as a safety blanket. Has let the prejudice of this neighborhood shield him. Has not run into trouble in the almost seven years he has been here. Has even let himself feel safe in the last year or so.
The shop itself is not magic. That much is certain.
But Jungkook is.
He is the only magical being around for miles.
Well.
Aside from Nook.
But she is an extension of Jungkook’s soul and therefore she is technically part of Jungkook and therefore, technically, she does not count.
The shop is not magic. Jungkook is magic. Nook is both part of him and also her own being. These are facts he knows. Facts he holds close. Facts that he lists now to provide comfort to himself.
The man who steps through the door on Tuesday morning is someone Jungkook cannot get a read on. Someone whose intentions he does not immediately know. Cannot innately understand.
The scars on his chest burn.
Jungkook is magic.
But he is no longer the only magical being around for miles.