Archive of Our Own

With his bedroom right next to Dylan’s music studio in Mars’ group home, Jun had gotten used to sleeping through noises.

Not that Dylan was particularly loud. But throughout the night, there were always faint beats or just the sound of door opening and closing as Dylan went to the bathroom. Jun never complained about this because he actually preferred noises to complete silence–his thoughts were always too loud if there was nothing outside to distract him. Dylan either didn’t know he was making the noise or didn’t care about Jun’s sleep quality.

Tonight, Jun laid awake, listening to the sound of Dylan’s rapping. He couldn’t hear enough to make out the words, only catching the shadow of an addictive groove.

His phone chimed. It was the sound of Google Calendar’s reminder.

The clock on the screen showed 23:50.

It was ten minutes until Dylan’s twenty-first birthday.

Jun recorded the birthdays of all his acquaintances on his calendar. He also recorded a lot of other dates, like people’s wedding anniversaries and debut anniversaries, so that he could always give them timely greetings and wishes. It was one of the most basic but effective ways for him to ingratiate himself to people in the industry, building connections to be leveraged for his career in the future.

He wondered if Dylan realized it was ten minutes until his birthday.

Dylan had never seemed to care that much about birthdays. He thanked fans for all the wishes, as an idol was supposed to. But he always turned down Thame’s plan to celebrate and rejected the idea of making wishes while blowing candles. It’s just another day, he always said. Or I don’t feel older than I was yesterday anyway. At least he accepted presents though, except that one time Thame tried to give him something too expensive. Jun never knew what it was, just that Dylan threatened Thame to take it back or he would throw it into the Chao Phraya River.

Now, Jun stared at the clock while listening to Dylan’s rapping. With nothing better to do, he counted down the minutes, then seconds to Dylan’s birthday. One wall separated them, so close yet so far. He could listen to songs that Dylan would never show anyone else. But Dylan couldn’t know Jun was counting down to his birthday.

“5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”

Happy Birthday.

The sound of Dylan’s rapping suddenly stopped.

Jun blinked in surprise. The moment was too precise to be a coincidence. Did someone send Dylan a happy birthday message right at midnight? Or maybe a few seconds before? But would Dylan pick up his phone while he was in a flow state and pause just because he realized it was his birthday?

Jun didn’t consider himself an expert on Dylan. Even Thame couldn’t claim to be an expert on Dylan. (The way they dug through Oner’s whole backlog of discarded lyrics before finding out that they didn’t need it to bring Dylan back at all was a prime example.) But there was an alarm going off in his head now. Something wasn’t right.

It was a well-known rule in their house that Dylan in the studio was not to be disturbed, not even for mealtime or fire escape.

Would Dylan get mad at Jun for interrupting?

Well, Jun thought as he jumped off his bed with casual determination, it’s not like he’s rapping now, so I can’t be interrupting. He opened his door and took two steps to stand in front of the studio. And he’s always mad at me anyway.

With that in mind, he knocked on the door and waited. Three seconds passed with no response. Jun weighed potential possibilities.

If Dylan was wearing his headphones, he might not hear it. If he wasn’t, he might still ignore Jun. But if he already realized it was his birthday, he wouldn’t think the person knocking would be Jun. He would suspect Thame or Nano to come and give him his birthday presents, so he would respond because, deep down, he was a softie like that.

So, he was probably wearing headphones.

Jun knocked again to be sure and put his right ear against the door, straining to listen and feeling like he was going a little insane for putting his much effort into an inexplainable hunch.

Click.

The sound of the door unlocking from the inside made Jun jolt away from the door. And then, the door slowly opened.

No one was there.

No.

Wait-

Jun was expecting someone on his eye-level, so there was no one, but if he looked downwards….

A boy so small he didn’t even reach Jun’s waist. He was practically a lump swimming in adult clothes–Dylan’s clothes, Jun’s mind supplied–which pooled around him like too much frosting on a cupcake. He had black hair and small, brown eyes, which were not blinking up at Jun, scared and confused.

He looked very similar to Dylan, based on what Jun remembered from that one time seeing Dylan’s childhood photos. Dylan didn’t have a lot of childhood photos, though. His background was a bit of a mystery, so Jun couldn’t say for sure.

“Who…? Where…?” Jun tried to form a question with much difficulty. There were too many questions in his head trying to get through his mouth all at once. He settled on, “What’s your name, kiddo?”

A beat of silence.

“Dylan,” replied the boy. His voice was so small and high that Jun had to strain his ears to catch the words.

“Your name is Dylan,” Jun repeated, incredulous. He pushed the door open a bit wider and looked inside, just in case Dylan–his Dylan, Mars’ Dylan–would pop up and say, Oh, have I never told you I had a son with my secret lover? Meet Dylan Zhou Jr. Not that he would want Dylan to have a secret lover and son because that would be a hell of a scandal for an idol. He just wanted this situation to make sense.

But the studio was empty. The monitor still showed the interface of the music editing software with multiple tracks on it. The keyboard was on. The microphone was still recording; the track still ran forward on the screen. But Dylan of Mars was nowhere to be seen.

“Where.. am I?” The child asked, voice still so quiet Jun almost missed it.

“This is…” Jun paused, unsure how to explain where he was without knowing where Dylan went and who this boy was. “This is a house my friends and I live in together,” he settled on, nervously. “Can you tell me how old you are?”

“I’m five years old,” Little Dylan replied, holding up his tiny palm to show the number.

“Oh, you’re five, huh,” Jun repeated, having no idea how to proceed with the situation. One part of his brain was racing to find some solution, while the other part of his brain screamed for him to call Thame right now and throw this burden onto Thame’s shoulders.

“What… What’s your name?” Little Dylan asked, tilting his head to the side.

Okay, so maybe Jun was a bit possessive of this burden after all.

“You can call me P’Jun,” he said, crouching down to put his face at the same level as the boy. “I’m not sure how you got here but maybe we can try to find your parents? Do you know your parents’ phone numbers? Or at least their names?”

The boy suddenly looked sad. “They won’t come,” he said. “They’re very busy.”

“No matter,” Jun pushed through. He needed more information to form a plan of actions. “Anything you can tell me would be helpful. Your dad’s name, your mom’s name, your birthday….”

“Today’s my birthday!”

Jun blinked. The boy’s voice suddenly brightened as he said the words, his eyes twinkling with genuine excitement. It was so strange how the features so similar to Dylan’s could look so different under such emotion.

“Oh, then, happy birthday, Dylan,” Jun smiled his best, softest, kindest smile, although his brain had conjured up an impossible explanation. He tried to disregard it, but the facts kept staring at him right in the face. What was it that Sherlock Holmes said? Once you have discarded every possibility, the only one remaining, no matter how unlikely, must be true, or some shit?

“And, um, my… my dad’s name is Mr. Edward Zhou, and my mom’s name is Khun Mattana….” Little Dylan said, his voice turning smaller again, as though he was afraid of doing something wrong–of having done something wrong. Was he afraid of showing excitement? Was he afraid that he answered Jun’s question in the wrong order? Jun couldn’t even start to guess.

One thing he knew for sure, though, was that his insane, unreasonable, illogical hypothesis was right on the spot.

“Holy shit,” Jun gasped as he fell to the floor, landing on his butt. In his defence, he wasn’t slow. He was simply too pragmatic for this fever dream. “You’re Dylan.”

The boy frowned, not comprehending Jun’s surprise. It was understandable, since he had already introduced himself as Dylan a few moments ago. Jun just didn’t believe this was really his Dylan–Mars’ Dylan. He didn’t make the connection until this moment.

How the fuck did Dylan regress to five years old?

Thame and Pepper were staying over at their partners’ places today. So, Jun first woke up Nano, who looked grumpy, but started cooing incessantly when he saw Little Dylan, as Jun dubbed in his mind. Jun had helped the boy step out of Dylan’s training pants and put on one of Jun’s t-shirts like it was a dress. They had no child’s clothing in the team’s house, so this would have to do for now.

“He looked so much like Dylan!” Nano squealed.

“That’s because he is Dylan, duh.”

“What?!”

He called Pepper next, hoping that he didn’t catch Pepper in the middle of an intimate moment with Gam but hoping that Gam would be there because he direly needed a mature adult woman’s advice. It turned out that Pepper had already finished his intimate activity with Gam and was already asleep. He didn’t appreciate Jun blowing up his phone with a request to video call, but as soon as he saw Little Dylan, his eyes instantly cleared.

“What the fuck, Jun?”

“Yeah,” Jun ran a hand down his face, feeling like he had aged ten years in the past hour. “And language, Pepper, since there’s a kid here. Or whatever, actually. Not like he’s gonna grow up to be polite anyway.”

Pepper looked lost, probably only catching one in every four words Jun said. But at least he started to shake Gam awake. “We’ll be there in fifteen.”

Thame was last because Jun had called him around this time before and heard noises from his best friend and his ex-crush that he should never have heard and would sell his mom to have them removed permanently from his memory. Thame, being the generous guy that he was, somehow thought it was okay to give Jun attention at the same time as giving Po his body. Jun had already educated him afterwards that this was unacceptable, but he couldn’t say how much Thame took it to heart.

“He’s so cute!” Nano was still squealing behind him. “How come he doesn’t have more childhood photos? Who could resist taking photos of this cuteness?!”

Jun had handed Little Dylan over to him, thinking Nano seemed much comfortable and delighted to be around the kid, whereas Jun was constantly scared he would break it if he so much as blinked. Now he glanced back at Nano and saw him squishing, pinching, and stretching Little Dylan’s cheeks like it was a playdough. Little Dylan’s face was all red. His eyes were wide as they met Jun’s, and maybe it was Jun’s imagination, but he seemed to be asking for help. He couldn’t be sure. Little Dylan wasn’t making any sound.

“Nano, are you trying to knead him into a pizza?” Jun swatted Nano’s hand, lightly. Nano let go with a gasp and, seeing the red patch on Little Dylan’s cheeks, moved back in as if to scrub at it. So, Jun held him back by the shoulders and turned his body to face the kitchen. “How about you go and see if we have any kid-appropriate snacks? Milk? I don’t know what kids can eat but maybe you do.”

Nano brightened at that, beaming with his whole face. “You can leave it to me, P’Jun.”

Jun sighed after him. Nano had matured quickly during the time that their team fell apart last year. Now, it seemed that seeing regressed Dylan made him regress, too. Jun felt like he was looking after two kids instead of one. It was a good motivation to call Thame and brave another potential emotional scar.

But before that, “Your cheeks hurt, kiddo?” Jun asked the boy, who now held both his cheeks in his little hands.

Little Dylan nodded, mutely.

“You can tell him, you know, if you don’t like something,” said Jun, while realizing how weird it was that he had to tell this to Dylan of all people. Dylan who had never had problems voicing any complaints ever. “Or just scream and cry. That usually communicates enough.”

Little Dylan’s gaze dropped to the table. He still didn’t say anything.

I’m not equipped to deal with this, Jun thought, a little fond and more than a little terrified, then he called Thame.

Thankfully, Thame and Po were truly watching a movie for once (instead of using movies as an excuse for doing the sex stuff like they always did). Po kept asking Jun if this was a prank, while Thame was trying to get Little Dylan to answer him through the screen, but to no avail.

“Do you have Dylan’s parents’ contact information?” Jun asked, interrupting Thame’s increasingly melodious cooing noises. “We need to revert him back.”

“Do we?” Nano shouted from the kitchen.

“I probably have his father’s business card somewhere at home. I’ll head to you now,” said Thame. “P’Po, are you coming, too? It’s fine if you want to rest, though. You have an early day tomorrow.”

“Nah, I won’t be able to sleep with this mystery hanging over me anyway,” said Po. “Don’t kill the kid before we get there, Jun.”

“So pessimistic. I’ll have you know that I found him first and had kept him alive for the past hour. Give me some credits.”

“Don’t wanna,” Po stuck out his tongue. It had been a year, and he still saw Jun as someone to pick on. Whatever. Made it easier for Jun to move on, at least.

Jun put down the phone and directed his attention back to Little Dylan, who, at some point, had grabbed the hem of Jun’s tank top and not let go. Jun chuckled and decided to snap a photo. Mars’ Dylan would never believe he ever stuck to Jun like this without proof.

“Are you sleepy?” Jun asked him.

The child tilted his head, frowning a little at Jun. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. “A little bit,” he said, eventually.

“Do you want to go to bed now and have some snacks first?”

The grip on his top tightened, visibly. “No eating food from strangers,” he said. It was obviously something he had memorized word-for-word. “But I’m hungry,” he added in a small voice.

Jun wondered why Dylan didn’t employ this small voice anymore. He would get so much more out of people if he utilized it properly. Jun would kill to have a cute voice like this. Alas, he was born to have a sexy, breathy voice, and so he had to go a different route.

“That rule doesn’t exist in this house,” Jun declared, confidently, fully aware that he was bullshitting. “I will eat any snacks that you give me. And you can eat what I give you, unless you hate it, then you can throw it away, no hard feelings.”

“If I hate it,” Little Dylan repeated slowly, eyes slowly widening, like he was learning a mind-blowing truth about the universe, “I can throw it away?”

There was so much Jun needed to ask Dylan’s parents, probably while tying them to an electric chair. Why was Thame taking so long to get here?

“Yes,” Jun replied, putting his hand on Little Dylan’s head and ruffling the black hair gently. Dylan had dyed his hair for so long that Jun almost forgot it was naturally black. “Or better, you can throw it in Nano’s face. Take revenge for how he pulled your cheeks. How about that?”

Little Dylan blinked slowly. He did that a lot. Jun had come to understand that this was him blanking or being confused, but it was him trying to make sense of the world and contemplating his next action. A smart kid, Jun concluded in his head. Jun at five years old was probably moving through the world with nothing but spinal reflex.

Why would a five-year-old need to think so hard before moving a muscle?

“No,” Little Dylan shook his head at last. “I don’t want to throw things at people.”

Jun’s mind instantly replayed the scene where Dylan flew into the recording booth and threw a hard disk right by Thame’s face, spitting out “You’re fucking fake!” with all the rage in the world. And then, the other time that Jun punched Thame because Dylan was advancing towards them like an elephant in heat, and Jun didn’t think he would survive a punch from Dylan. Thame had agreed.

But really, had Dylan ever landed a throw or a hit on anyone?

“You’re too nice, kid. It’s kinda weird,” Jun ruffled the soft, black hair a bit more before letting go. Lights from a car shone into the house through the window at the moment, signalling the arrival of Pepper and Gam. Jun sighed in relief. Gam would know how to take care of Little Dylan. Not to stereotype women, but she just seemed like the perfect kind of person to handle crises.

“Come on, Dylan. Let’s go meet some other friends.”

Little Dylan didn’t seem very happy to be introduced to Gam and Pepper.

The boy held tight to Jun’s tank top, as Gam asked him questions like “What was the last thing you remember before coming here?” and “What’s your home address?”. He looked at Jun with wide eyes, which were driving Jun crazy.

What did the child even see in Jun to think he could look to Jun for help? Why would he keep sticking to Jun like this? How did Dylan go from this child who trusted too easily to someone whose walls Jun never managed to crack as a teenager?

When is Thame getting here? Is he taking a detour to the Moon along the way?

Pepper, on the other hand, was looking up options for buying kid’s clothing. It was almost 2AM now. Most stores were closed. But 7-11 was opened, and in some major branches, there were clothing items. Nano, who had returned from the kitchen, offered to call his mother to ask if there were any old clothes from when he was five at home. But Pepper said that they shouldn’t risk anyone outside their little group knowing, which led him to realize that he, as the current leader of Mars, had to cancel tomorrow’s schedules for the group and prepare some statements for the public.

Pepper had become more active as a leader. But even then, Jun had never seen him looking so shaken. His legs kept bouncing. Every minute, he got up from the couch and walked around the living room then out to the balcony, typing on his phone and muttering to himself.

Well, if there was ever a situation to be weirded into a new personality, Jun guessed it would be this one.

“You’re surprisingly good at this, Nong Jun,” Gam said, after she had exhausted her questions. Sipping water, she glanced at Little Dylan, who had finished his warm milk and was getting quite drowsy, probably exhausted from the overwhelming adults with no concept of sleep schedule.

“What can I say, P’Gam?” Jun smirked, even though he, too, was very tired. “No one can resist my charm.”

Gam shook his head but there was a soft smile playing on her lips.

“Jun,” Little Dylan called in a small voice, his hand tugging Jun’s tank top twice.

“Hmm?” Jun looked down at him.

“May I sleep?” The child asked. It seemed like he was putting in a lot of effort into keeping his small eyes opened. Not “I’m sleepy” or “I wanna sleep” or “Let’s go to bed” but asking for permission to sleep? What a weird question for a kid to have.

“Whenever you want, kiddo,” Jun chuckled, patting the little shoulders. “Let me show you your bedroom.”

Waving goodbye to Gam, Jun let Little Dylan piggyback him. It would take too long for Little Dylan to walk in this sleepy state, and Jun didn’t have enough arm strength to carry him up the stairs, so piggyback would have to do.

Jun debated where to put the kid. One option would be to sleep with Jun. At this point, if the child was going to sleep with one of the members, it seemed that he would be most comfortable with Jun for some reasons Jun couldn’t fathom. Another option would be to sleep in Dylan’s room, but the kid should probably sleep alone in that case, because Dylan was very strict about his personal space, and Jun had never been on the permitted list to go inside.

Sure, Dylan wasn’t around to complain now, but Jun still didn’t want to violate that trust. There was already very little trust left between the two of them after all.

“Do you like sleeping alone or with someone?” Jun asked.

Little Dylan made an intelligible sound against Jun’s neck, making him feel quite ticklish.

“Come again?”

The child strained to open his eyes, as if trying to become more awake, and said that devastating, small voice, “With you.”

Jun’s heart, a cold and fickle thing that he had long since hardened to face the idol industry, ached at the answer. Little Dylan wasn’t even thinking hard, like he did downstairs – he was too sleepy for that now. But it felt like a very long time since someone last said simply that they would prefer Jun’s company. Dylan, obviously, had never said it before.

Maybe, deep down, when Jun was lying on the other side of the wall, staring at the clock, counting down to Dylan’s birthday, he had always had a wish that he couldn’t even acknowledge to himself.

A wish that Dylan would one day reach out to him, too.

“I can’t believe this.”

“They’re so cute!”

“Shh, P’Po, you’re going to wake them up.”

“The world needs to see this. I’m taking a hundred photos.”

“Nano, we’ve talked about this. No one can know about this until we know what’s going on.”

The noises around him were getting louder and louder. Jun squinted his eyes as he came awake. The moment was disorienting. Why were there so many people in his room? And there was a warm weight resting on his chest….

Oh.

Little Dylan was soundly sleeping, using Jun’s chest as his pillow to drool on. His mop of black hair tickled Jun’s chin as he wiggled slightly, as though annoyed by the voices around him.

Carefully, Jun manoeuvred the child onto an actual pillow next to him on the bed, before sitting up to glare at his friends, who were looking at him as if he and that child were animals in the zoo.

“Thame,” he croaked, voice not fully functioning yet, “Please tell me you’ve contacted his dad.”

“Straight to business,” Po clapped his hands. “How about we all go and talk downstairs? P’Gam should be finished with breakfast right about now.”

Jun nodded and was about to get up when he hesitated, looking back at Little Dylan who was still sleeping. Would he panic if he woke up and not saw Jun there?

Jun had a feeling that he would definitely panic. Another hunch. But his hunch had been proven right before.

“Dylan,” he called out, poking at the child’s shoulder. “Wake up. It’s time for breakfast.”

Little Dylan blearily opened his eyes, then, as though he was hit with a thunder or a realization, his whole body jolted so hard that his head bounced against the bedroom wall. The sound of the collision froze everyone in their steps. Nano squeaked, Thame swore, and then the room fell into absolute silence, where Jun (and likely everyone else) held their breaths and waited for the child to start crying. There was no way that hit didn’t hurt.

But the crying never came.

Little Dylan pressed his lips together. The lips were a little wobbly, and his eyes were a little wet, but he made no sound.

Fuck this.

“Are you hurt, kiddo?” Jun broke the silence first. He opened his arms but didn’t try to get too close to the child. “Can I look at your head? We’d all be kinda sad if you became stupid.”

Little Dylan stared at Jun for a moment, once again weighing his options. Then, he seemed to come to a conclusion that Jun was serious. He leaped into Jun’s arms and hid his face in Jun’s shoulders. Ah, those eyes are definitely wet.

Jun caressed the back of the child’s head with as much care as his sleep-addled head could muster. “It’s okay,” he murmured. “Do you remember who I am?”

“P… P’Jun,” the child said, hiccupping.

“Man, what do I have to do to get your adult version to call me P’?” Jun joked, knowing that it wouldn’t make sense at all to Little Dylan. “Okay, let’s go get breakfast. I’ll carry you just this one time, alright, kiddo? Just because it’s your birthday, and we want to keep you from going stupid. We can’t make this a habit, got it?”

There was a sound of another hiccup, but this time, it sounded like it might be from a mix of tears and laughter.

Good enough for Jun.

“You’re surprisingly good at this,” Thame said, patting Jun’s shoulders as he passed by.

“I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that,” Jun huffed in pretended annoyance, although he was surprised by himself, too. “Obviously, my charm is potent and works well on humans of any gender and age range.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Thame shook his head, clearly exasperated but also fond. Then, he sighed and seemed a little more serious. “We need to discuss his parents. I’ve been making calls to many people. There are good news and bad news, but we probably shouldn’t talk about it where he can hear.”

“Good luck with that. He has been gluing himself to me since last night,” Jun said, smugly. Little Dylan looked up at that moment and pushed himself away from Jun, although Jun was still holding his waist and legs. Jun met the small gaze and shook his head. “That wasn’t a complaint, kiddo. It's a birthday privilege. You can glue yourself to me for the whole day. How’s that?”

A shy smile slowly bloomed on Little Dylan’s face, making Jun’s heart constrict again. It wasn’t like he had never made Dylan smile in the time that they had known each other. Even though Dylan wouldn’t admit it, Jun was the best in the group at lessening Dylan’s nerves before a show. His targeted teasing and prodding usually got Dylan to either laugh out loud or run around to room to give him a smack. Either way, it worked. Jun had it down to a science.

Didn’t mean Dylan would like to spend time glued to him like this Little Dylan, though.

“He’s a big boy. He can handle talks about his parents,” Jun said to Thame. “Actually, I think he’s more aware of what’s going on than we think.”

With breakfast done, the meeting on Dylan’s condition commenced.

The couches in Mars’ living room didn’t have enough room for six adults and one kid to sit. So, some people had to sit on the floor. Today, because Little Dylan came as a package with Jun, and everyone wanted the kid to be as comfortable as possible, Jun got to sit on the main couch comfortably without having to race against Nano for it.

“You’re my lucky star, kiddo,” Jun whispered, and Little Dylan giggled.

If it wasn’t the future of his career on the line, Jun might never want Dylan to revert back to adulthood at all.

“Okay, listen up,” Thame clapped his hands for attention. He and Pepper stood on two sides of their usual whiteboard, looking all serious and determined. “Last night, I called the number on the business card that Dylan’s father left for me. Let me say first that this business card came in the mail during our trainees’ days. I’ve never met the guy.”

“Who the fuck send business card to their son’s friend via mail?” Jun shook his head.

“Jun,” Po admonished, “language.”

“He’ll be worse than me once he reverts back,” Jun shrugged. “So, Thame, you called. Did someone pick up?”

“Yes,” Thame nodded. “Dylan’s father’s secretary.” Pepper wrote the name on yellow post-its and put them on the whiteboard for some reason. Jun didn’t think the story was so hard to follow that they needed a visual representation. “She wouldn’t connect me to Edward Zhou. She said that, if anything strange happened with Dylan, she was supposed to only help me cover it up with the media or pay charges, if there were victims involved.”

“Anything strange?” Nano frowned. “Not anything bad, for example?”

“I tried to persuade her for a while, but she wouldn’t tell me about what anything strange meant. At that point, I thought this meant she probably knew that age regression was a possibility and mentioned it directly,” Thame continued, looking quite furious and frustrated now. “Anyway, I got her to tell me eventually that Dylan…” He swallowed, hesitating. “Well, there’s no way around it, so I’ll just say it. Dylan is a witch.”

Right.

A witch.

In the grand scheme of things that happened in the last twelve hours, it wasn’t that surprising that this was the answer.

Jun ran his hand up and down Little Dylan’s back, but Dylan’s face was just blank. There was no indication if he was feeling anything about the story at all. At the claim that he was a witch, he simply looked down at the floor, looking dejected and gloomy.

“Are you really a witch?” Jun asked him quietly.

Little Dylan looked a little pained, but he nodded anyway.

“Can you show me magic?”

“Jun,” Thame interrupted, “Not now. We still have a lot to cover.”

“Yes now,” Jun waved his hand, dismissively. “We’re not continuing this discussion until the kid is bright and upbeat again. So, Dylan,” he turned his attention back to the child, “what’s your favourite spell?”

Dylan looked around the room, as if gauging everyone’s reaction. Fortunately, everyone had the decency to look excited or at least encouraging. Jun was secretly worried that Dylan’s magic might be something destructive. Not that he knew anything about magic other than stuff from Harry Potter. But seeing that Thame didn’t continue to oppose, Jun thought it wouldn’t be so bad.

Dylan reached out his small hand and pointed towards the orange tree.

The orange tree looked a little dry and sad these days. Winter was just not the season for it. Didn’t matter if Jun still watered it regularly. There were still a lot of leaves, but they all looked as if they were bleached. The orange fruits were nowhere to be seen.

And then, Dylan’s palm started to glow.

Jun stared. Somehow, when he heard that Dylan was a witch and asked Dylan to perform magic, he didn’t think… he didn’t expect to witness real magic. Of course, he had seen the result of magic, the age-regressed Dylan was unmistakably real. But to see magic happening in real-time, and to see if emanating from someone whom he had known for half a decade, was mind-blowing.

“Oh, my god!” Nano shrieked. “He’s making oranges!”

The orange tree was transforming in front of their eyes. It was sprouting fresh, green leaves that looked like they were well fed with mineral water from France. Little orange fruit started appearing on the branches and kept enlarging to a size bigger than Jun had ever seen this tree produced.

A dried-up tree came alive and abundant within half a minute in the middle of Winter.

This was Dylan’s favourite magic spell.

“Wow,” Po blinked, as Thame, gaping, held on to his arm with a tight grip. “I mean, wow….”

“Very eloquent, P’Po,” Jun snickered and patted Dylan’s head softly. “That’s pretty cool, Dylan.”

“What do you mean, pretty cool?!” Nano jumped up from the bean bag and was now prancing around the room. “That was amazing! Never been seen before! Show-stopping! Once in a lifetime-”

“Okay, Nano, we get it,” Jun sighed, feigning casual disinterest, although his heart was pounding hard. And since Little Dylan was pressed up against him, he was probably feeling it, too.

The boy smiled, shyly, at the praises, and looked down at his hands with something new in his eyes.

“I guess I can move on to the next part of my investigation now,” said Thame. He tried to sound serious like before, but his voice trembled. Obviously, although he had heard that Dylan was a witch, he also hadn’t really expected to witness magic, just like Jun. “So, apparently, Dylan’s mom is a witch. She concealed this fact about her and got married to Dylan’s dad. However, Dylan manifested his magic when he was four years old, and so the secret came out. Dylan’s dad considered witches…” he faltered a bit before lowering his voice, “he considered witches to be freaks. He didn’t want his business to be affected by scandals. He couldn’t look at his wife the same way. So, in the end, they divorced.”

Little Dylan went back to looking at the floor again. But there was nothing Jun could say now. Obviously, Dylan already knew about this. Dylan of Mars had always known about this, had carried the knowledge that his magic caused his parents to divorce for his whole life.

If Jun had known….

There was nothing to be done. This all happened long before they first met. And even after, it wasn’t like Jun and Dylan were close enough for this piece of information to mean anything.

“Neither Dylan’s mom nor dad wanted to take care of him, so Dylan was sent to a Zhou family estate in the countryside to grow up with a witch babysitter that his mom hired through her witchy connection,” Thame sighed, looking a bit miserable. “The secretary didn’t know anything else, but she gave me Dylan’s mother’s contact, said that if this was some witchy thing, then maybe I should ask the witch. So, I called her.”

Thame’s expression made it clear that the story wasn’t going to take a turn for the better.

“At least she picked up,” Thame didn’t sound happy about the fact. “She seemed to still be… she seemed to blame Dylan for being the reason Edward Zhou abandoned her. She's now remarried to another man, whom, once again, has no idea she was a witch. So, she told me to never contact her again.”

Jun’s hands curled into fists sometimes during the story. No wonder Dylan never talked about his family, never went home during holidays, never cared about celebrating birthdays. No wonder Dylan didn’t think his parents would come to pick him up when he found himself in a weird house surrounded by suspicious-looking strangers like Jun and Nano.

On the beanbag, Nano now looked so angry he started tearing up. So, Thame moved over to squeeze his shoulder a few times for comfort.

“Did she at least tell you how to revert the age back?” Pepper asked, quietly, looking no less miserable.

“Yes,” Thame said, firmly, and everyone seemed to exhale at the same time in relief. “That’s the good-news bit in all of this. It’s the nature of witches that if they remained a virgin until their twenty-first birthday, their age-regressed to five years old for twenty-four hours, and then they would turn back into a twenty-one-year-old person. No need to do anything about it. Because Dylan left home at around fifteen, it’s likely his babysitter never bothered telling him about this, so he wasn’t able to prepare or, you know, alert us beforehand.”

Twenty-four hours.

Dylan was coming back at midnight.

Jun sighed again, an uncomfortable mix of feeling brewing in his chest. Little Dylan leaned his head against Jun’s arm and relaxed, like he understood, like he, too, wanted what everyone else wanted, even if it meant he would disappear.

“I would, never in a million years, thought P’Dylan was a virgin,” Nano muttered, his eyes bright with excitement. “What the hell? You know how he does sexy dances and talks about sex, like when we gave advice to P’Thame about what watching movies meant? He totally sounded like a seasoned veteran.”

“And how is age regression related to being a virgin?” Po added with a frown. “How is becoming a kid going to get you laid, unless you’re targeting pedophiles or something?”

Thame and Nano shared a twinned, horrified look on their faces.

“Don’t be stupid, P’Po. No one’s gonna think anything like that about Dylan here,” Jun stepped in before the discussion went down the route that was totally inappropriate for kids’ ears. “It’s our first time hearing about witches. Let’s not jump to conclusions about their biology and culture.”

“That’s rich, coming from you,” retorted Po, good-naturedly.

“I agree with Jun, though. We don’t need to focus on that for now,” said Pepper, twirling his phone around in his hand. “Anyway, it’s good that I won’t have to cancel any more schedules.”

“And we can return the child’s clothing that we ordered last night,” Gam nodded in agreement.

The conversation came to a lull after that, where everyone took their time unwinding from the tension of last night. Nano started to drowse, since he was too consumed with thoughts about how they should child-proof their house and didn’t manage to get any sleep last night even after Jun and Little Dylan went to bed. Po seemed to start making plans for the job from earlier today that he skipped on the creative team meeting, while Gam called for a Grab taxi to go to her office in the afternoon and handle some documents.

Jun didn’t like how they treated this incident as if it was already over. If anything, it had already just started.

“So, what’s the plan for him for the rest of today?” Jun asked with a nod to the kid, who just sat there, prim and proper and quiet, much to Jun’s internal distress.

“Let’s brainstorm,” suggested Thame, looking all warm and earnest. “According to Dylan’s mom, even though he only has the memory of his five-year-old self now, he will retain all the memory of what happens today after he reverted back.”

That got Nano to perk up again and start Googling. Jun also took out his phone. It was a little after noon. The weather forecast predicted a sunny day with low temperature–a perfect Wednesday in Winter. Many places would be empty because adults were at work and children were in school.

Also, he had a voucher at an ice-cream shop that was about to expire.

“Hey,” he nudged Little Dylan slightly. The kid sat up straight and met his gaze, confusedly. “Would you like to have a birthday party?”

The boy widened his eyes, slightly. His tiny body vibrated in barely contained excitement. “My birthday party?”

It was answer enough. “What do we think, guys?” Jun called out to the room. “We never managed to throw one for the big, grumpy version before. Maybe this is our chance to develop Dylan’s taste in birthday celebrations.”

“That,” Thame nodded, approvingly, “is the best idea you’ve ever had.”

Contrary to most fans’ speculation, it was not that difficult for the biggest boyband in Thailand to go out and have fun from time to time. Thai fans were usually not sasaeng and sometimes even ran away when they saw their favorite idols in their vicinity. Thame was the only one in Mars who had ever had a close encounter with sasaeng, who worked for an international brand that signed him as their product presenter. Paparazzi was a whole different beast, but Thame and Pepper already went public with their dating, so they didn’t need to be afraid of getting caught while doing anything.

It would still be a pain to be caught with a five-year-old kid, though. Fans’ speculation would go wild.

“If someone somehow takes a photo of us, just say he’s Dylan’s nephew,” Jun waved Pepper’s concern away. “No one knows about his family and whether he has siblings anyway. Dylan has a nephew that he foisted on us because he is locked in on a new song he’s working on. How’s that? We can explain away his absence and get the fans excited from the prospect of a comeback at the same time.”

“This ability of yours to spin a story to your benefit at the drop of a hat,” said Nano, pointedly, “is why P’Dylan hates you.”

“Then, I guess I’ll try to do it more often,” Jun responded with a wink. Then, taking Little Dylan’s hand in his, he asked, “Hey, Dylan, do you hate me?”

Little Dylan–now dressed in age-appropriate fit–looked up with an expression that made Jun see a question mark floating above his head. It seemed to say, Would I be holding your hand instead of anyone else’s if I hate you? Is this adult actually stupid?

Ah, Jun could see a hint of the snarky Dylan that he knew well underneath that prim and proper façade now.

Surprisingly, it was nice to get a confirmation that Dylan didn’t always hate him, even if it was wordless and came from a five-year-old version of the rapper.

Maybe if I had met him when I was five….

They let Little Dylan decide, and the decision was an amusement park. It was, intentional or not, the perfect choice considering the weather and the fact that the ice-cream chain store that Jun had a voucher for actually had a branch inside the park. There was going to be a parade at 6PM and a firework show at 7, too, which made Little Dylan’s eyes sparkle in anticipation.

Mars didn’t get much free time nowadays. And even when they got a day off, they were usually too tired to do something like spending hours in the amusement park, preferring to binge watch something in their bedroom and order delivery food so that they could exert the least amount of energy. Jun could see, though, that everyone was actually excited by the idea of an amusement park, and the moment they got inside, Nano immediately ran off to the station he wanted to play the most.

“Nano, wait up!” Pepper called after him, but the youngest kept on running. Mars’ leader could only sigh.

“Considering the kid’s height, he probably can’t play the stuff Nano wants to try,” said Jun as he scanned the map of the amusement park. “What about you two? Anything you want to do in particular?”

Thame and Pepper made eye contact, as if they were trying to communicate something telepathically without Jun hearing. But Jun had lived with these two for years and perfected the arts of predicting their thoughts. So, he could see through the leader and ex-leader of Mars at a glance.

“Listen, if you feel bad about keeping me or Dylan company, I’ll smack you,” Jun said. Seeing the sheepish look on Pepper’s and Thame’s faces, he was spot on. “We’ll meet back here for the parade and firework show anyway. You can celebrate his birthday, then. I’ll keep him distracted in the meantime. You guys go ahead and do whatever you want.”

“But don’t you want to go play some more serious stuff, too?” Thame asked, worrying his lower lip. It was understandable. There were only three stations a five-year-old could play: a dwarf’s house, a grandfather’s trail car, and the Ferris wheel. “We can take turns looking after him.”

At the suggestion, Little Dylan gripped Jun’s hand harder. Jun looked down at him in surprise.

To think there would come a day when Dylan preferred to stay with Jun over Thame…. Dylan probably wouldn’t believe his own memory of this when he came back.

“Nah, I’m too lazy to play the serious stuff anyway,” replied Jun to the background screams from the roller coaster and the distant view of the Vikings’ Ship. “Go, now, or you’ll miss a ride with Nano. Shoo! Shoo!”

It seemed that Thame and Pepper truly wanted to play because they didn’t need a second round of encouragement from Jun. Jun watched them disappear into the roller coaster station then started walking towards the Dwarf’s House, lightly swinging his right hand that Little Dylan was still gripping hard.

“It’s okay, kid,” said Jun, staring straight ahead. “You don’t have to go with anyone if you don’t want to.”

They walked in silence for a minute before Little Dylan spoke up, quietly. “They’re nice.”

“Aren’t they?” Jun laughed, ignoring a stab of jealousy in his heart. Of course, Thame and Pepper were nice. That was how they scored the two people Jun flirted with. Dylan chose to be here with him, he tried to remind himself. “So, why do you not want to go with them?”

“They don’t look at me,” Little Dylan said, then frowned, seeming to find it difficult to turn his thoughts into words. After a moment, he added, “You found me.”

Jun raised his eyebrows. “That’s just because you appeared next to my bedroom,” He pointed out. “And what do you mean they don’t look at you? Everyone looks at you.”

“No,” Little Dylan argued right away, looking up at Jun now with determination. “They… They don’t focus on me. B-but… you looked for me.”

It took Jun a conscious effort to not pause in his steps.

Five-year-old Dylan was shunned by everyone. Jun remembered what he said when Jun first mentioned calling his parents. They won’t come. They’re very busy. And then, the excitement in Little Dylan’s face when he pronounced that today was his birthday and when Jun suggested a birthday party. Combining what Jun knew of the adult Dylan, it wasn’t hard to figure out that Dylan had never celebrated his birthday as a kid. He had wanted to at five-year-old, Jun didn’t think Dylan resent his birthday totally. But maybe, as he grew older and came to understand how his parents divorced and abandoned him, the very idea of his existence probably turned to something bittersweet that he didn’t want to spend too much time chewing.

Honesty wasn’t Jun’s forte.

He knew Dylan would remember this tomorrow.

And yet.

“I went to your room because it was your birthday,” he confessed, trying to keep his voice casual and light. “I was counting down to it. I could hear your rapping–it sounded not so bad, by the way–so you were probably not counting down. And then, your voice stopped exactly at midnight. I had a bad feeling about it, so I went to see if you were…” alright “you know, if you dropped dead or something.” He could only muster so much honesty in one go. “Wouldn’t want a ghost haunting the room next to mine,” he finished, lamely.

Little Dylan didn’t seem to comprehend half of what Jun was saying, but he nodded anyway. What a cute kid. “I don’t like ghosts either,” he said, as though to comfort Jun.

“Really,” Jun chuckled. “Have you seen one?”

Little Dylan shook his head.

“Maybe your magic can fight them,” suggested Jun.

“My magic…” Little Dylan started then paused again, looking for the right words. Jun’s heart clenched at the thought that this boy was going to grow up into one of the best lyricists of their generation. “My magic only works on flowers and trees and fruits.”

“Oh?” Jun blinked in surprise. “It only works on plants. Good to know your adult self isn’t gonna turn me into a toad after this is over. Is this the case for every witch or just you?”

“A witch can only do one type of magic,” Little Dylan explained, patiently. Jun thought he sounded a bit older than five years old. Probably like a seven-year-old. “Mrs. Forrester,” who was his babysitter, according to Thame, “can control things. Like making the broom clean the house by itself. She said my mom could do water magic, but I’ve never seen it.”

Jun looked around the amusement park. There were a lot of trees, but not many flowers in this season. “Do you like doing magic?” He asked the boy.

Little Dylan looked down at his feet. If a time machine got invented one day, Jun would use it to go back and fix this habit for him, or better, prevent it from ever forming in the first place. But since he only got one day with him, he just had to hold in his frustration and console himself that Dylan had gotten over it now at the age of twenty-one.

“It’s okay, kiddo. I’m just asking because I’m curious. I don’t know anything about magic at all, so I can’t judge you, see? You know more than me.”

“Magic’s… nice,” Little Dylan answered, sounding scared, as if someone was going to jump out of the bush because of his answer and drag him away. “I made the garden at home look pretty, like the rainbow. But Dad and Mom hate it, and…. And….”

Jun stopped walking and crouched down to match Little Dylan’s eye level. “I happen to love pretty gardens,” he pronounced, even though he had never cared about plants or gardening before in his life. As expected, lies came to him much easier than truth. Crazy ideas that might get him into trouble, too. “But I have high standards, you know. So, I won’t believe that you made a pretty garden unless you show me one.”

Even twenty-one-year-old Dylan constantly fell for Jun’s provocation. Five-year-old Dylan was no different. The kid’s nose scrunched up as his gaze seemed to sharpen.

Then, the trees that line up the pathway started to change all at once.

As far as Jun’s eyes could see, the trees stretched taller and broader, the leaves started sprouting and changing colours, green on the left, red on the right, even though no native trees in Thailand had red leaves. Around their bases, giant mushrooms started popping up, some blue and some orange. Then, flowers started blooming, white and yellow and pink and violet in dizzying patterns. It was a very childish design. The way kids thought about pretty colours was obviously different from adults. But true to his word, Little Dylan’s colour scheme could be described as very rainbow-y.

Around them, petals started falling like snow, and more flowers bloomed back in their places. It wasn’t just one type of flower either. Apparently, it didn’t matter what kind of trees it was. Dylan could make an apple tree produce an orange tree and turn a red rose into a teal lily–a colour Jun had never seen before–regardless of the weather and soil quality.

Little Dylan turned back to Jun cocked his head to the side as though daring Jun to critique his creation.

“Huh,” Jun made a noise, even though his heart was beating very hard again. Holy shit, what the fuck? He screamed, internally. Manipulating one orange tree in the same room to produce an orange was one thing. But this? This has to be too fucking powerful for a five-year-old who can’t even say how many types of magic there are!

Faintly, Jun could hear people exclaiming, some in wonder, some in alarm. The amusement park didn’t have a lot of visitors, but it wasn’t completely empty. And this would surely end up on the news.

“Can you turn it back to what it was like before?” Jun asked.

Little Dylan sighed, looking gloomy and resigned, as though he had expected the request. “I can turn the trees back. But the petals and flowers that are already on the floor won’t go away,” he said. “So, it’s not pretty?”

Fuck my life, Jun thought.

“It’s pretty. Super pretty. Never seen a prettier scene in my life,” said Jun, and even though he aimed for exaggeration, he realized that it was true. Not because Little Dylan had a sense for colours, but because it was a true show of magic, something beyond any fantasy movies and games. It blew Jun’s mind that, with all the magic this small body possessed (or however magic was used), Little Dylan just wanted to use it to make a pretty garden.

“But you want it to go away,” Little Dylan pouted, his cheeks puffing out as he looked around himself with sadness in his eyes.

Jun gave himself a moment to think. But really, it wasn’t a decision at all. There was no other option. This was Little Dylan’s birthday. Even if the clip got out, nobody was going to think that witches were real. It was much easier to say this was some kind of contraption made by the park, or even easier, that it was AI-generated.

Little Dylan was going to turn back to Mars’ Dylan tonight anyway.

“Actually, you know what? I changed my mind,” Jun took a hold of the boy’s hand again. “This is too pretty for me to keep to myself, even if you made it just for me. I’m a generous person after all. Such beauty and wonder are meant to be shared, right?”

From Little Dylan’s shy smile, Jun was certain he thought right.

Later, his phone started blowing up with texts from Thame, Pepper, and Nano. Obviously, they had seen the magical walkway full of magical trees and guessed. So, Jun told Pepper to coordinate with their social media team and used an anonymous account to tag it as AI-generated.

“Why do you do this to me?” Pepper groaned through the phone.

“You have to see his face when he does it, Pepper,” Jun said, softly. Opposite to him on the Ferris wheel’s compartment, Little Dylan was gaping at the view of Bangkok’s evening. The sky was painted in hues of pink. From up here, Jun could pinpoint the walkway that Little Dylan had transformed with just a glance, even if the petals seemed to have stopped falling and all the mushrooms had stopped growing now; the red and green leaves were too distinct to miss.

“I hate that I get it,” Pepper mumbled with a tired sigh. “Should I even go talk to the park manager? It’s not like I can explain how this happened anyway. They won’t take a witch boy as a reason.”

“Other than witches, no one will know how this happened. And it seems like witches like to lay low anyway, so if we say it’s AI-generated, I’m sure they’ll jump on the train and support us,” said Jun with confidence, even though he was spouting bullshit again. Or speculation with very thin ground, more like. “Let’s meet up at the ice-cream shop soon. I already called to order an ice-cream cake. And it has a patio that provides a nice view of the parades and the fireworks.”

“If only you put this much effort into our team’s work, too,” Pepper mused but without any real grievances. They both knew Jun always pulled his weight, even if it wasn’t obvious sometimes where those weights went. “See you. And please don’t let the little guy play with another tree.”

Little Dylan made another pathetic-looking bush bloom with the biggest jasmine flowers Jun had ever seen on the way to the ice-cream shop. But Pepper didn’t have to know about it.

The ice-cream cake was delicious. Little Dylan didn’t know to make a wish before blowing the candle, but they all assured him it was okay to make it after. The boy looked very serious and determined with his wish. Jun wondered what he wished for, but Thame told him his wish wouldn’t come true if he told other people, so Little Dylan kept his mouth shut.

Thame was a good guy, but sometimes he was really too much of a bore.

The parades came soon afterwards, with loud music and costumed characters. Little Dylan watched it all with wide eyes, his feet tapping unconsciously to the beat. When he saw something particularly interesting, he would grip Jun’s hand a little tighter to get his attention. Jun had never loved parades, but somehow, experiencing it through the lens of a witch made an ordinary event a bit more magical.

And then it was time for the fireworks, which marked the climax of today’s celebration. To Jun, who had been to the New Year’s Countdown celebration along the Chao Phraya River, this firework show was quite underwhelming. But Little Dylan gaped in awe and didn’t even blink as the fireworks lit up the night sky. The various colours reflected in his eyes as if a rainbow spread across the Milky Way.

“Happy Birthday, Dylan,” said Jun, patting the kid’s head while thinking of his silver-haired teammate.

Little Dylan smiled up at him. It was a true, wide smile that bloomed and stretched from ear to ear and made his eyes crinkle into two curved lines. If Jun was a lyricist like Dylan, he would’ve compared that smile to a star or a flower or magic. But since he was a pragmatist–a normal human trying to make his way up the social ladder and find stability in life in one of the most precarious industries, he just thought: So, this is what success feels like.

Better than when Mars got an All-Kill. Better than when fans scream their names at the top of their lungs. Better than when he managed to debut in a group with his best friend. Better than when he passed an audition and had a first real chance to escape a future of looking after his mother’s fried chicken restaurant, which wasn’t even shabby; he had just always wanted more.

He had just always wanted this.

It was late when they got back to the group’s house. Little Dylan was asleep. Thame seemed to feel bad about abandoning the boy to go play with the stuff he wanted earlier and so volunteered to carry the boy into the house and up the stairs. It was stupid of him to feel bad about this, but Jun didn’t want to exert any more energy today, so he didn’t say anything and let Thame do the work.

“That was fun!” Nano declared as he flopped down on a beanbag. “Let’s do it again after P’Dylan turns back to normal.”

Good luck dragging him out to a crowded place to spend hours in the Sun and away from his studio, Jun thought but didn’t voice it out loud. He would like to do this again soon. And maybe, with the memory of today, it wouldn’t be so hard to persuade Dylan to have fun once in a while anymore.

“So, what’s the plan for when he becomes an adult again?” Pepper prompted, as Thame came back down the stairs to join in their discussion. “Should we wake him up for it? Should we stay with him when it happens?”

“We know it’s gonna happen exactly at midnight, right?” Thame asked, and Jun nodded in confirmation. “It’d be weird to watch him change, right? Like, that just feels like an invasion of privacy somehow.”

Jun agreed, even though, now that he had witnessed some magic, he was kind of curious. “When he turned into a baby, the clothes didn’t change, so it’s likely that when he stretches out to full size again, the kid’s clothes will be ruined. Probably shouldn’t stay around to see that. As for whether to wake him up….” He shrugged, having no opinions about it.

“I’d like to say goodbye to him before he turns back,” said Nano, quietly. “Like, I know this isn’t time-travel. He isn’t going back to sixteen years ago with this memory or anything, and P’Dylan’s going to remember today anyway. But… Do you know what I mean?”

Pepper nodded. “Yeah. I feel like something is easier to say to a five-year-old Dylan than a twenty-one-year-old Dylan.”

“Like happy birthday,” Thame sighed. “But honestly, without this weird incident, we’d never have known that he was a witch or that his parents were… like that.” Thame seemed to be holding back some very bad words there. “Maybe this is what age regression is about. Forcing you to be vulnerable with people around you and inviting them to understand you a bit better?”

Jun felt a chill at those words. “I’d kill myself rather than having anyone digging around my childhood, though.”

“Well, good thing you aren’t a witch,” Pepper quipped. “We’d kill ourselves if we had to deal with a five-year-old version of you, too.”

They kept the conversation going like that. It had been a while since they all gathered just to talk. After leaving Oner and going independent, the members of Mars had to work much harder, not just to pay off the debt, but also to handle stuff that the company had done for them before. Even basic stuff like booking a van to go to events, scheduling make-up artists, and registering copyrights for their songs took time. Even though today’s break wasn’t planned and would cost them quite a bit, it was something they could afford. Jun might even say it was necessary.

At around half-past eleven, they went up to check on Little Dylan and saw that he was still sleeping soundly on Dylan’s own bed.

“Doesn’t it feel a bit cruel to wake him up?” Nano whispered, looking a bit torn.

“Let’s just leave him here,” Thame suggested, closing the door quietly. “Let him come back and get dressed and come to us on his own. As for us, let’s resolve to say whatever it is we want to say to the kid to Dylan himself. Even if it feels more difficult to face him at twenty-one, he deserves it from us.”

Trust Thame to always be a bore who made sense, even though he was no longer their leader. The team therefore went back downstairs to lounge around the living room. Nano put on an action movie to keep everyone awake. But at one minute to midnight, it was clear that nobody was paying attention to the movie anymore. Like Jun yesterday, everyone was counting down the seconds. At ten seconds to go, Nano couldn’t feign nonchalance anymore and paused the movie.

5… 4… 3… 2… 1.

No curses, no footsteps, no door opening.

Nothing.

“Should we go up and check?” Nano was vibrating in his seat. “What if he hasn’t come back?”

“Maybe he’s too shy to face us now that he’s back to normal,” Pepper said, reasonably. “In which case, we should all go to bed and see him tomorrow morning, since we have a schedule together anyway. He’ll have to show up, shy or not.”

“I can barely keep my eyes open anyway,” agreed Thame, then yawned as though to prove his point.

Nano didn’t look appeased and turned to Jun with a pleading look on his face. Jun did want to check on Dylan, but Pepper made a good point that Dylan might not want to face them now. Actually, it made a lot of sense, given what he knew of Dylan’s character.

“He won’t appreciate you barging in on him wiggling out of a kid’s boxer, Nano,” said Jun. That seemed to get through to Nano. He even seemed to imagine the scene, judging from the bashful look on his face. Thame and Pepper just laughed.

“Alright then,” Nano conceded, standing up and turning off the movie. No one was paying much attention anyway. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Or today, since it’s already past midnight. Whatever.”

With that, they all went back to their rooms. Jun chanced a glance at Dylan’s bedroom’s door when he walked past it, but he held himself back from knocking and from plastering his ear on it to try to figure out what was happening inside.

But this wasn’t like last night, when he wasn’t sure if there was something wrong. Today, in some ways, nothing had gone right (even if it was one of the best days in the past year for Jun), and it was a matter of not making things worse.

What was the worst that could happen in the morning? Probably waking up to find that Dylan was still five-year-old, which meant that Dylan’s mom had lied to them, Pepper had to cancel another day of their schedule, and they had to start anew from scratch to find a fix.

It was quite unlikely. Dylan’s mom didn’t want Thame to call her again, so she must have given him the truth.

Other than the worst-case scenario, any outcome would be fine.

With that thought, Jun walked back to his room and fell asleep before the faint beats from next door began playing again.

The worst-case scenario didn’t happen.

The silver-haired rapper of Mars was present, healthy and familiarly grumpy in the morning. Nano leaped at him, trying to question how much he remembered but received no answer other than the sight of dangerously reddening ears. Seeing that Dylan was in no mood to debrief about yesterday, Thame and Pepper also refrained from commenting and got straight to business. Today, they had an MV shooting for their next single. And they were supposed to arrive on set in half an hour, which meant they should have left at least ten minutes ago.

The first strange thing that happened was when Jun climbed to the back of the van – his usual spot – then Dylan, climbing in after, dropped into the seat next to him.

Nano’s eyes were bulging so hard Jun thought they were going to pop out of the sockets.

Dylan closed his eyes and put his headphones on, preventing himself from hearing any comments. So, Nano turned to Jun instead. Sadly, he got only confused blinks in return.

Jun had no idea what was going on either, but this wasn’t a change he would complain about.

The next strange thing happened while they were preparing to shoot with the first set. The main shots for the morning had been filled with made-up stone statues, covered with vines and white flowers. They had to finish filming the scene before the flowers started to wilt. One of the assistant directors kept spraying water on the flowers to keep them fresh, but it just meant that the floor around the statue was getting a little bit too slippery to dance on.

“Sorry,” the assistant director quickly apologized when Nano slipped, dangerously, in the second take. “I’ll mop up the floor.”

“We still have five more shots to do with this set,” the director–not Po this time, since they were now rich enough to outsource it to an international production house–frowned in concern. “This isn’t going to work. How long would it take to get artificial flowers instead? We can rearrange the filming schedules and do the afternoon scenes first.”

“No need to change.”

It took a moment for everyone to realize that Dylan had spoken up. He had zipped his mouth shut for the whole morning, so it came as a surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll keep the flowers fresh,” said Dylan, resolutely not meeting the gazes of his team members. “No need to spray more flowers. They won’t wilt.”

The director didn’t buy it. Quite reasonably so. “How?”

Dylan looked a little constipated at that, like he regretted speaking up at all.

Staring at the rapper now, Jun remembered the kid from yesterday who turned the whole walkway of the amusement park into rainbow colours. Magic’s nice, the kid had said. Had Dylan used magic at all since they first met? Seeing that his parents hated it, their house garden was just grass and no flowers, and their orange tree never produced much fruit, it seemed unlikely.

“He can do it,” said Jun, putting on his most confident and charming smile. “It’s his family’s secret trick, so he can’t share. But you’ll see.”

The director seemed doubtful. But Mars wasn’t just an artist, they were also their own management and the payers, so the director didn’t oppose them. The assistant mopped up the floor, and they continued filming.

The flowers stayed perfectly fresh for the next four hours without needing a single drop of water.

“Very useful trick, you have there,” the director commented to Dylan afterwards, looking a little suspicious but mostly just relieved to be done. “Thank you for your help.” Jun watched as Dylan awkwardly nodded, unsure how to respond to a positive comment about his magic at all.

The last strange thing that day happened during the breaks. Each member had to shoot solo scenes where they lip-synced to their own parts. While one member was filming, the rest could take a break, visiting the food trucks that their fanbases sent to support them or catching up on sleep. It was around 10PM when Jun finished his solo scenes and went back to the breakroom to call Thame to film next.

Nano was apparently outside, filming TikTok challenges, while Pepper, the reliable leader, was discussing with the production house about the schedule of MV release.

That left only Dylan in the room.

Jun balked at the door.

Dylan usually slept during any breaks during this kind of shoot, even the five-minute bathroom breaks. But today, he was awake, scrolling on his phone and scowling. Jun paused, unsure what to do, whether he could bring up yesterday’s event – why would he talk about it with Jun when he wouldn’t talk to Nano?

Annoyingly, Thame’s words resurfaced in his mind: Let’s resolve to say whatever it is we want to say to the kid to Dylan himself. Even if it feels more difficult to face him at twenty-one, he deserves it from us.

Damn it.

“Hey,” Jun greeted, hating how awkward he sounded. Jun was never awkward. He didn’t even have that word in his vocabulary, thank you very much.

Dylan looked up, meeting his gaze.

The distance between where Dylan sat and the door might as well be the Pacific Ocean. Jun was painfully reminded of why he had never told Dylan before yesterday that he laid awake at night listening to Dylan through the wall.

Then, Dylan held up his phone, turning the screen to face Jun. “Why would you let me do this?”

It was a clip of the walkway at the amusement park. Someone captured the moment when the trees were transforming from something normal into magic. Pepper, as promised, had coordinated with their social media managers to use some disposable accounts to call it AI-generated, making sure it wouldn’t connect back to Mars at all. But people still debated hotly about it online.

At least the clips didn’t manage to capture Jun or Little Dylan.

“Is it hard to understand?” Jun raised his eyebrows, pretending nonchalance. This was supposed to be easy. “I told you, I’ve always been generous.”

“This is stupid,” Dylan hissed the last word with so much bitterness it took Jun aback. “The only thing Harry Potter gets right about witchcraft is the fact that we’re supposed to stay hidden.”

Oh, no. “Are you going to get summoned to the Ministry of Magic for showing magic in front of Muggles?”

“Of course not,” Dylan scrunched his nose at the idea–Jun remembered the kid making the same expression yesterday. “As I said, there was only one thing Harry Potter got right, and it wasn’t the Ministry of Magic. I’m not getting… punished… for this.” The way he said it, it was obvious he had been punished for it before, which was what Jun expected, but it still made his heart clench in fury.

Forcing all the unnecessary emotions down, Jun shrugged. “Where else am I gonna get to see magic if it’s hidden, right? Gotta get it out of a five-year-old.”

“It wasn’t even… pretty,” Dylan looked down at his phone, something like a mix of longing and anger in his eyes.

“True,” Jun chuckled and finally walked inside the room, plopping down on a different couch in the room. “Your sense of complementary colours is quite hideous.”

At that insult, Dylan predictably threw something his way. It was just a tiny crumbled post-it, though, and didn’t even hit Jun. I don’t want to throw things at people. “I like you from yesterday better,” Dylan muttered.

A reply came to Jun’s mind instantly. This was the moment. The perfect timing. But because he was aware of it, he chickened out in the last split second and said, lamely, “You were not bad yesterday either.”

It wasn’t what he wanted to say. But at least the tension between them seemed to ease a little as Dylan laughed softly, shaking his head. They didn’t talk again until Thame came back to call Dylan out for his solo shoot.

“Have you talked to him about yesterday?” Thame asked Jun after Dylan had left.

“In a way,” said Jun, shrugging, but vowing to do better next time.

The changes were not obvious, but since Jun was paying attention, he saw it.

Whenever Mars gathered together, either for a movie night or just lounging around in the waiting room behind the stage, Dylan would sit next to him. Not that they had never sat next to each other before, but it had never been this consistent. All members of Mars were close, and each of them usually just sat wherever the biggest space remaining happened to be.

But Dylan was always next to Jun these days. He wouldn’t be so close that they touched, but close enough that Jun was aware, felt the heat from his body and the minute movement of him shifting to find a comfortable posture.

One time, though, Dylan fell asleep in the middle of Pepper’s debriefing their new presenter deal, and his head came to rest on Jun’s shoulder, his hair tickling Jun’s chin.

Nano’s eyes had gone comically wide when he saw this. He quickly pulled out his phone to snap a photo, even though Jun was in the middle of rolling his eyes. It was only because Nano was their precious youngest that he didn’t give him the finger.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Jun nudged him a little. “The meeting's over.”

Dylan groggily woke up, rubbing his eyes, and in that moment, Jun saw the child he used to be so clearly his heart ached. Then, the rapper blinked, took in the situation and their members’ teasing gazes, and promptly sprang himself to the other end of the couch at lightspeed.

“Not,” he shot a pointed look at Thame, who looked annoyingly gleeful, “a word.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Jun shrugged and sent a wink at Dylan. “Your five-year-old version clung to me like a koala all the time.”

“I’ve experienced character development over the past sixteen years, so I’m not gonna do something so stupid anymore,” Dylan retorted, but his ears were red.

Cute, Jun thought, then had a weird rush of gladness that Dylan had learned to retort in the past sixteen years and didn’t drop his head gloomily to stare at the floor anymore.

Dylan also started using magic more and more. At first, he didn’t tell anyone, as though he was trying to hide the fact that he used it. But Jun noticed the excellent state of the orange tree and just knew. He offhandedly complimented Dylan about it, to which the witch vehemently denied all accusations. But later, the garden in front of their house started becoming fresher and greener. And soon, whimsical-looking flowers started to bloom out of season. And their garden turned into a place where Jun expected to find fairies and pixies jumping out to greet him any day.

“Are they even real?” Pepper wondered, when Jun voiced his thoughts out loud.

“Yes,” Dylan answered as he methodically squeezed sweetened condensed milk onto his toast. “But not in our plane of reality.”

There was absolute silence for a few seconds.

“This is getting a bit too overwhelming for my little brain,” said Nano in a wheezing voice. “Seriously, P’Dylan, don’t you feel like your everyday life right now is too ordinary for you?”

It would sound absurd to anyone else. Mars was the most popular boyband in Thailand. The first T-Pop act to ever score an All-Kill. The first T-Pop act to do a world tour. They lived under the spotlight and can move millions of hearts in a single beat. No one would think about their lives as something ordinary.

But in the face of real magic, it did pale in comparison.

“No?” Dylan replied, sounding confused by the question. And then, seeing the looks on his members’ faces, he seemed to understand. “For me, magic is the ordinary thing. It’s like… having legs. It’s always there, a part of me since forever. But this thing I’m doing–being well-known by the public, writing music–this is special.”

This, too, was a new development—Dylan taking time to communicate with everyone, not just Thame. Talking at length without defensiveness, sarcasm, or annoyance, about things that mattered to him.

“You mean, witches don’t do music?” Thame looked surprised and a little sad at the thought.

“Not music itself, but being a celebrity through self-producing,” Dylan specified with calm patience. “It’s something witches don’t do because the first lesson of Witch Survival 101 is to blend in. We’re taught at a young age to lay low. No matter if we use magic to make a living, we’re supposed to keep to ourselves but not too much that it draws attention, to never express our true thoughts and emotions. It’s an antique idea that remained from the time of witch hunts in ancient times.”

“There’s no witch hunt anymore, though,” Pepper looked horrified by the idea. “Right? Is someone going to come hunting for you for that flower fiasco at the amusement park?”

“Not like in the ancient times,” Dylan shook his head. “Still, this mindset isn’t unfounded. In any era, people who are different will threaten the order of the society and face some form of discrimination. But that kind of secrecy, hiding yourself, hurts my family, so I’ve always had a bit of a rebellious streak to go against it growing up.” He looked a little sheepish at this. “Not that I’ve been completely transparent with you guys about being a witch, but that’s more because I don’t think you’d believe me than being scared that you’d kick me out of the team.”

“Who wouldn’t want a witch in a boyband,” said Jun with a smirk. A truth masked by sarcastic delivery.

“Apart from the fact that we had to baby sit. Will we have to prepare for you to turn five again next year if you remain a virgin?” Nano asked with an innocent face that didn’t match the devious glint in his eyes.

Dylan looked a little uncomfortable at that. But Jun could see him visibly steel himself to answer. “Yes. The idea is that you don’t get to celebrate your birthday if you remain a virgin. The 24 hours of your birthday will pass by while you’re stuck in the body and mind of a child.”

“That’s crazy,” exclaimed Thame. “Twenty-one isn’t even that old. I was also a virgin at twenty-one.”

“We know, P’Thame,” said Nano, placatingly.

“It is what it is,” Dylan shrugged. He had never been very good at pretending to be casual when he was worried or annoyed about something. “I’ll find a way.”

The rest of Mars exchanged glances, as if trying to communicate telepathically how they felt about that statement. Jun didn’t know if by “a way” Dylan meant finding someone to have sex with or finding a romantic partner. Somehow, he didn’t feel good about either option.

And he knew why. He knew.

It was just not something he could bring himself to think slowly and clearly about because it would open a door to a rabbit hole of complicated feelings and inevitable heartbreaks.

“Just… be careful, okay?” Pepper ended the conversation with a vague statement that didn’t encompass nearly enough of Jun’s thought.

He was an idol. Dylan was his bandmate. Thame and Pepper were romantic, brave, and crazy enough to go for their ideals. But Jun was the level-headed, realistic one. He wouldn’t entertain an idea where the path ahead was clouded in thick fog. There might be a path to continue on, but there might also be a cliff.

But then, he also didn’t know if he could stand counting down to Dylan’s birthday next year, knowing that Dylan wouldn’t turn five anymore because of someone else.

Ah, fuck, Jun thought, I’ve already entered the fog.

Not that this realization made Jun do anything. He was the resident coward. The slippery one who didn’t know how to do things straightforwardly. The competitor who bowed out before the competition started, if he saw no chance of winning.

Strangely enough, it was Dylan, who kept doing more.

Today, they were going to Hua Hin for a summer music festival. It had become a routine for Dylan to sit next to Jun in the back of the van. Nano didn’t even tease them anymore. Any magic could become ordinary if you were around it often enough. Jun also didn’t take any particular notice, just enjoyed the shallow contentment of knowing that Dylan still preferred to sit next to him.

Then, an airpod was plugged into his left ear. A cold fingertip gracing Jun’s earlobe like a flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

Jun whipped his head, eyes wide, to see Dylan staring straight ahead, looking nonchalant.

Dylan casually pressed the play button on his phone screen.

Jun didn’t recognize the song that was playing. But it did sound quite familiar. He found that he could anticipate the beat drop and could even hum parts of the melody.

“You really listen to my in-progress songs through the wall, huh?” Dylan murmured.

Jun jolted again and started to feel annoyed. How did he let Dylan catch him off-guard so often these days? This was not who he was.

He was about to retort with something equally nonchalant, like, now that you know, will you start soundproofing your studio more? or Be grateful I’m such an understanding neighbour. But the words just wouldn’t come out.

Sarcasm and insults were exactly who he was. But he had seen how Little Dylan had reacted to understanding and just the smallest, most inconsequential bit of kindness, and Jun found he didn’t really want to be that person anymore.

“Wear headphones if you don’t want me to,” replied Jun in a low whisper. He didn’t want the other members to hear about this. It was unreasonable, but he was possessive of this – of that faint noise that came through the bedroom wall at night, lulling him to sleep. It felt like something uniquely his.

“If I don’t want you to, would I have plugged this airpod into your ear?” said Dylan, an undercurrent of amusement in his voice. They sat in silence, just listening to the synth melody for a while before Dylan spoke up again. “My five-year-old self has probably mentioned this before but thank you… for coming to find me.”

Jun blinked. It was already summer. Half a year after the fever-dream-like day. Half a year since Jun told Little Dylan how he had counted down to Dylan’s birthday on the other side of the wall. He had thought (hoped?) that Dylan might not remember it. Maybe something that Little Dylan couldn’t comprehend wouldn’t be retained in the memory or some such.

But it seemed that Dylan had just been sitting on this knowledge for the past few months. He sat next to Jun everywhere with this knowledge. He talked more openly and used magic more freely with this knowledge.

What a devious, insufferable, absolutely precious creature.

“Is this your way of asking me to find you again for this year’s birthday?” Jun asked, trying not to sound hopeful or awkward about the prospect.

Dylan turned to look at Jun – finally – his eyes narrowed. Then, with a thoughtful note, he asked, “Why do you think my child version was so attached to you out of our members?”

Jun frowned. “Well, you told me it was because I went to look for you. Doesn’t that mean you imprinted on me like a duckling or something?”

Dylan huffed a quiet, breathy laugh. Jun had never admitted it, not out loud, not even to himself, that Dylan was absurdly pretty when he was happy. Today, for some reason, that knowledge settled on the forefront of his brain and refused to let go.

“I don’t know why I didn’t realize before,” Dylan said, so quietly that Jun almost missed it – almost as if he didn’t really want Jun to hear it. “Turns out… you’re not such a bad person.”

Jun raised his eyebrows in mocked defensiveness. “Excuse me,” he hissed. “I’ve always be-”

“The things you said to the kid version of me,” continued Dylan, as if he didn’t hear Jun. “That I could tell Nano if I didn’t like him touching my cheeks. Or that I didn’t have to eat something I didn’t like, even if you gave it to me. Or that you wouldn’t judge me if I liked magic. Or that… that those flowers I conjured were… pretty,” he said the last word very quietly, or maybe he didn’t voice it at all, and Jun only knew because he was staring at Dylan’s lips. “I didn’t know it myself, but I’ve probably been waiting for someone to say those things to me for a… very long time.”

Jun’s heart clenched painfully. He had the vision of tying Dylan’s parents to an electric chair again but forced himself to focus. It was a bit difficult though. His inside was turning all soft and gooey at Dylan’s admission. It was disgusting.

His automatic response should be to cringe or even poke fun at Dylan’s vulnerability. But once again, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“You never had problems saying no,” Jun pointed out instead.

“I learned to do it myself,” said Dylan. “And because it wasn’t taught by a well-meaning adult, I did it–still do it sometimes–for the wrong reason.”

All of this felt too intimate to be a conversation in the backseat of a van when they were surrounded by their members (although Thame, Pepper, and Nano all have airpods plugged into their ears) and the hired driver. It felt too important to happen out of the blue in the morning of just another summer day.

Jun didn’t know why Dylan chose this moment, right here, right now. But he could recognize that he was already trapped in the centre of the fog.

He was blind, but Dylan seemed to be extending him a hand.

Here was the chance to push forward.

“What’s the reason?”

“To make people pay attention to me,” answered Dylan, simply. “It’s a common behaviour in problematic children, right? Rebelling, resisting, demanding, pushing, to figure out where they stand in the world. To figure out the condition of affection and care.”

Jun had suspected it, but hearing it confirm still made him mad.

“I tried following the rules, keeping my head down, and it seemed I just faded away,” Dylan continued. “A convenient me was easy to overlook. So, I started saying no and throwing things – tantrums, most often. And it kind of worked, even if the attention mostly came in the form of punishment.”

He didn’t expound what punishment meant, and Jun wasn’t ready to ask.

“An attention whore, one of the witch babysitters used to call me at twelve years old. She said it like it was a disease,” Dylan chuckled, but the humour was dry. “That’s when I thought, well, if this quality’s so innate to me, I should try being a celebrity.” He looked to Jun, “And here I am.”

There were so many things Jun wanted to say. Dylan deserved a carefully thought-out, handwritten, five-paged letter through which Jun articulated with precision all the diseases he wished Dylan’s babysitters would contract and how Dylan did a good job growing up and arriving here even though he was dealt a difficult hand from the start.

But they were in the backseat of the van, having a casual conversation on a normal day.

So, Jun just pointed to his left ear and said, “This song is pretty cool.”

It seemed like the right thing to say because Dylan looked relieved. Maybe he had just wanted to say the first half of the conversation. Jun had already given him all the responses he wanted half a year ago.

“You said the same thing the first time I used my magic on the orange tree,” Dylan pointed out.

Jun smiled. “Exactly.”

That night, at exactly twenty seconds to midnight, after they had already finished with the summer music festival and Jun was on the verge of passing out in his single hotel room right by the venue, someone knocked on his door.

Groggily, Jun pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door, squinting through the peephole.

The sight of Dylan on the other side of the door immediately jolted his consciousness into focus. He opened the door a bit too quickly to play it off as a cool and casual gesture, but he was also too tired to care.

“What are you…?” Jun began and trailed off, not really knowing what to ask.

Dylan looked relieved to see him – a strange sight to see, even after everything. He raised his wrist to look at the watch and whispered, “5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

“Happy Birthday, P’Jun.”

Jun gaped, his mind not comprehending what he had just heard. But vaguely, in the back of his mind, he heard his voice from half a year ago, Man, what do I have to do to get your adult version to call me P’?

“I’m calling you P’ this one just because it’s your birthday, okay?” said Dylan with a shy smile on his face. “We can’t make this a habit.”

Holy shit, Jun’s brain glitched, leaving only one clear thought—one that he hadn’t been able to say but that Dylan deserved to hear: I’m in love with Dylan Zhou.

Dylan looked stunned, and then his ears quickly turned red as he awkwardly looked anywhere but at Jun’s face. And that was when the realization dawned on him.

“Did I just say that out loud?” Jun asked and groaned into his hand when Dylan nodded. “Gosh, okay, look, Dylan. I don’t wanna do this after you just wish me happy birthday in the cutest way possible and I just blurt out my thought like a fucking teenager, but can you please leave? I’m too sleepy to function, and I’m gonna embarrass myself to an early grave if I don’t go back to bed now.”

Dylan turned his gaze back to him at that, an amused smile playing on his lips. And, as unbelievable as it was to see, he also looked at Jun with such blatant fondness that it hurt.

“Okay,” said Dylan, good-naturedly. “Just, umm,” he reached out and put a portable CD player into Jun’s hand. There was a CD inside. “Your birthday present.”

“Oh,” Jun blinked, dumbly, staring at the object in his hand like he was a time traveller who had never seen a CD before in his life. “Thank you.”

At that, Dylan laughed again, the sound pretty like wind chimes. “Good night, Jun.”

“Good night,” Jun replied, his lips moving on autopilot, not really processing anything beyond the fact that Dylan had really called him P’ and that he had confessed to being in love with Dylan.

Did Dylan realize that Jun didn’t really know what to call this feeling or how far the feeling had grown until he blurted it out? Did Dylan realize that Jun truly discovered his own feelings at the same time as Dylan did?

“Ugh, I can’t deal with this right now,” Jun shook his head and went back to bed. He connected his airpods to the portable CD player and laid back onto the hotel bed.

He vaguely registered that the songs were the same ones that Dylan had played for him during the car ride from Bangkok, but before he could think of what it meant, he fell asleep.

For the first time since forever, Jun slept in an unfamiliar bed and didn’t wake up at all throughout the night.

They didn’t talk about it again. Not on the way back (Dylan still sat next to Jun while sharing airpods) and not back at their house. Their lives just continued on as summer turned into the rainy season.

Sometimes Jun thought it was his own hallucination. But the portable CD player and Dylan’s self-produced mixtape of unreleased songs would always stare right back at him.

That and the way that Dylan was never awkward or in denial about being in Jun’s space or leaning onto Jun anymore.

What are we? Jun thought and couldn’t say it out loud. His brain to mouth filter when he was on full battery was impenetrable, so effective that it was annoying. Jun wished he could blurt out the question without thinking just one more time, but he just didn’t have that kind of spontaneity in him. His guard only dropped that one time because Dylan had called him P’ and caused his brain to glitch severely.

Jun still didn’t dare to think too hard about it. He was an idol. Dylan was his bandmate. Anything meaningful and real would be risky for not just the two of them but all of Mars.

Jun might generally seem like a selfish person, but if it was between his personal desire and the group’s career, he would always choose the latter. He had prepared himself from the start for the cliff – the inevitable heartbreak. He would live.

And so, they continued on living like that, until the rainy season gradually turned into winter. The weather in Bangkok never really turned cold, but idols could easily notice when they walked onto an outdoor stage in layered clothes and no longer sweat bullets before the performance started.

But this year, Jun also noticed it in the changing flowers in the little garden outside of Mars’ house. Overnight, Dylan changed the plants in the garden to the Christmas theme, with red and green leaves like the time in the amusement park, but now interspersed with white winter roses with much better taste in arranging the colours and controlling the shades.

“What do you think?” Dylan asked Jun the morning after.

“You can do better,” said Jun because if he had to live in this limbo of uncertainty then he was going to be annoying about it. 

And then, he told Dylan to go and pose in the middle of the garden so that he could take a lot of photos of him and his masterpiece.

“Admit it,” Dylan smirked as he posed. He was wearing a scarf today, too, which was unnecessary for this weather but made him that much cuter. “My garden is pretty.”

Not as pretty as you, the thought came to Jun, unbidden, but he muttered “yeah, yeah, whatever” instead because his master flirting skill simply couldn’t be activated around people he actually cared about.

This time, not only Jun, but every member of Mars, plus Po and Gam, were all aware that Dylan’s birthday was approaching. There was a tension in the air that they were all aware of as they pretended every day was just another day and not one less day to Dylan’s twenty-second birthday.

Sphere fanbases were planning something big this year, since last year Dylan had disappeared on his birthday. (Most fans speculated that he went abroad to spend time with his family, while Mars went out to the amusement park). There were many LED projects and café events. Although they didn’t mention Dylan in their social media posts, it was clear that fans were hoping for some kind of appearance and interactions from Dylan this year.

A week before Dylan’s birthday, Jun found Dylan, once again, on the other side of his door in the middle of the night.

These days, Dylan had become more comfortable knocking on Jun’s door, asking him to come over to the studio and comment on his new songs or asking if Jun had a Bluetooth mouse he could borrow. That mouse had, more than once, decided to connect to Jun’s laptop instead of Dylan’s, since the locations of the two devices were so close, only separated by a wall. Dylan would send him a chat message, asking him to turn off his Bluetooth for a bit so that the mouse would search for another device. It made Jun feel all fuzzy inside, like they were sharing custody over a pet or something.

But looking at Dylan now, Jun could tell that Dylan wasn’t there to make these familiar requests. Dylan looked quite nervous. His gaze was on the floor, and he flinched very slightly when Jun opened the door.

Unacceptable. As if Jun could ever deny him anything anymore with his feelings all out in the open.

“Can I come inside?” Dylan asked.

Jun opened the door wider in response.

The house was quiet, Jun realized before he closed the door. At this time, there would usually be noise from the TV in the living room or Thame and Pepper taking turns using the bathroom before going to bed. But it was completely, eerily quiet today.

“The other three are not home,” said Dylan.

Jun frowned. “I thought your magic only works on plants,” he muttered and closed the door. “Maybe I’m getting turned into a toad after all.”

Dylan’s lips twitched in amusement, as he went to sit down on Jun’s bed without asking. Not that Jun minded. He actually liked that his relationship with Dylan had improved this much, that Dylan felt this comfortable in Jun’s space.

“Okay, speak up,” Jun said, sitting down on his computer chair and swirling it around to face Dylan. “You’re making me nervous.”

Dylan’s hands curled into fists, then he closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. It was difficult for Jun to sit and wait, but he could tell this was serious for Dylan, so he tried his best.

Then, Dylan opened his eyes and stared into Jun’s eyes.

“I need you to know,” said Dylan, “that I’m not saying what I’m about to say is not only because I hate the idea of turning into a five-year-old again on my birthday.”

“Okay,” he nodded. Be calm. Be cool. Well, Jun was a smart guy, okay? Most of the time, he understood things without needing it spelled out, which meant, it took all he had to not panic and run out of the house right now. “I think I know what you’re getting at. But you do need to explain yourself.”

“I know,” Dylan snapped, and then immediately softened. “I know that,” he sighed, looking frustrated but more with himself than with Jun. “You deserve to know why I waited half a year.”

“Other than not wanting to turn into a five-year-old again, yes.”

Dylan bit his lower lip. It was a bit distracting. Jun forced himself to focus.

“I’ve got this virgin witch thing hanging over me,” said Dylan. It was obvious that he was thinking up the words in the moment because his five-year-old self had the same look on his face as when Jun asked if he liked magic. “I didn’t know how to make it clear that I’m not just trying to use you just because you confessed or just because you’re a convenient next-door neighbour.”

Jun thought he should probably feel defensive right about now. Who he used to be would certainly be defensive, would bite something snarky and sarcastic and kill the potential of whatever was brewing between them. But Jun found that he wasn’t afraid at all. Seeing Dylan so careful with his words, so nervous, and yet so determined to keep going, his heart just grew fond.

He was still the same person at his core, though, so he couldn’t help but tease. “I did confess, though. And I’m a convenient next-door neighbour.”

“Ugh, why does it have to be you?” Dylan sighed in exasperation and held up his hand. “No, don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question, and I do know why it has to be you.”

Jun smiled. “Mind sharing with the class?”

Dylan took a deep breath again, and when he spoke, his words were sharp with intent, like when he stood on a rap battle stage, aiming to deliver a killing blow.

“Because you looked for me,” said Dylan. “I used to be afraid of it, you know? I used to think that you’re too observant, too sharp. You look at someone and can pinpoint their weaknesses that you can use to your own advantage. And I’m full of those. I’m a witch. I lack parental affection. I can’t say what I feel unless it’s in a song. Deep down, I wish for attention, but not yours.”

The worst part was that Jun couldn’t deny it. He was a self-aware jerk. He wouldn’t hurt his bandmates beyond teasing, but his sense of where the boundary between teasing and actual hurt lay wasn’t always right.

“But you look for me anyway,” Dylan continued, gazing at Jun with bright, earnest eyes. “Strangely, when your attention is fully on me, it isn’t sharp-edged. It doesn’t draw blood. It’s just there, hovering around me, on the other side of the studio wall, listening to my half-baked music, counting down to my birthday.”

It sounded so grand when Dylan said it like that. So special. When it was just a simple thing that required no effort at all on Jun’s part.

“And then,” Dylan’s face bloomed into a small smile, “when I’m at my most vulnerable, literally turning into a traumatized five-year-old, you knew exactly how to patch me up. Not with overwhelming affection or expressive concerns like everyone else. You were just… there. Respecting me. Telling me that it’s okay to be me.”

“I… did all that?” Jun murmured, feeling embarrassed now. Maybe Dylan was seeing something that wasn’t there. Jun didn’t think he was all that Dylan had just described. He was a much worse person than that. Maybe that experience as a five-year-old made Dylan too biased, too favourable of Jun.

Jun didn’t think he could match the version of himself that Dylan perceived him to be.

“P’ Jun,” Dylan said, softly, and that was such a cheat move. It was so unfair Jun wanted to cry. “Sorry for leaving you on Read for so many months. I know I’m late. But if you’re still in love with me, I’d like to spend my every birthday with you.”

Jun waited for that voice inside himself to speak up. That pragmatic voice that didn’t think an idol could date happily (despite what he had seen from Thame and Pepper). That self-loathing voice that didn’t believe a manipulative flirt like him deserved Dylan. That pessimistic voice that said, if he happened to break up with Dylan, it would ruin the dynamics of the whole group, and he would be responsible for the downfall of their careers.

But there was only silence.

Dylan had somehow managed to silence all of it.

“You needed half a year to come up with that speech?” Jun tried to make it sound teasing, but he was all choked up in emotions.

“Actually, I needed the time to convince myself that I read you right,” Dylan looked a little nervous at that. “That the way I saw you wasn’t through the rose-tinted lens of a five-year-old. For a long time, even after you said you loved me, I wasn’t sure if you’d be as nice to me as you were to the young me.”

Jun still didn’t think Dylan was seeing him properly. But it did make him feel a bit better than Dylan had spent time thinking this through. It was good to know that Jun wasn’t the only one with worries. “Fair point,” he conceded. “Well, I’m glad to have passed your test, even if I didn’t know I was being tested. Guess my charm really does work on any age range.”

Dylan burst out laughing at that, his eyes crinkling. Once again, Jun wondered why he took so long to notice how pretty Dylan was when he was happy, how beautiful his laughter sounded.

Emboldened by the rush of fondness in his chest, Jun stood up from the chair, cupped his hands around Dylan’s face, and swallowed the sound with his lips. Dylan threw his arms around Jun’s neck and pulled him closer, falling back so that Jun laid atop him on the bed, legs and breaths all intertwined.

It was quite obvious that Dylan was a novice to kissing. The way he tried to imitate Jun, mirroring the movements of his lips, the angle and pressure, was cute. But then, Dylan learned quickly and started opening his mouth experimentally, and Jun found that cute, too.

“Dylan,” said Jun, panting the words almost right into Dylan’s lips. “My witch.”

Dylan smiled into the kiss. “P’ Jun,” he whispered the words like a spell. “Make me bloom.”

DYLAN, MARS @mars_dylanz – 20:41PM

[3 photos attached - one of Dylan alone, one with Jun, and one with Mars]

Happy 22nd birthday to me. I went to an amusement park with Mars today to celebrate my birthday and took a lot of photos for you!

Sphere, thank you so much for all the birthday wishes.

In the past year, I’ve tried counting down the seconds to someone’s birthday for the first time to say happy birthday to them at exactly midnight. It makes me think of how my fans always post birthday wishes for me – long essays about what you appreciate in me, along with fanarts and edits – at exactly midnight. This means you must’ve thought of me and my birthday way before midnight, counting down the seconds, to hit send at such an accurate time.

Because I’ve tried it, I now know how much effort, thoughts, and hearts are put into this. Thank you for viewing my birthday as something so special. I must confess that I used to not care that much about birthdays, but now it’s become a special day because you guys make it so.

I’d like to take this opportunity to also tell you that… I have a boyfriend. It’s that person whose birthday I tried counting down the seconds for.

In the past two years, two members of Mars have gone public about their sexuality and relationships. Even though I know that Spheres, who are still here, have been supportive of our decisions, I’m still nervous. So, even if this feels like a cheat, I decided to announce this on my birthday.

If you don’t wish to support Mars anymore because of my relationship, I ask you, as the last birthday gift, that you leave quietly without throwing hateful words at us.

If you stay, thank you so much for allowing me, as I truly am, to continue to be your source of happiness. 

I won’t make it a habit to announce shocking news on my birthday every year. I promise.

With love, as always,

Dylan