This Place is Magic
1. Chapter 1
By the time Eunjae found the door, his brothers were already piling into a van outside their hotel. A plain black van with windows like portholes reflecting the abyss of deep space. No one could see inside its dim interior, where it was widely assumed that all were accounted for: their manager, a stylist, three members of the global K-pop juggernaut known as Apollo. But, as the travelers would realize shortly after reaching the airport, one person was missing. That person was Eunjae.
Eunjae didn’t care about any of this, though. Not then. Dusk had fallen in strokes of blue violet that seeped across the sky and down the sides of buildings. The city seemed different, now — softer, kinder. In the glow of the streetlights, he noticed things he’d somehow missed in the glaring illumination of day. The number of people walking hand in hand, for example, and a popsicle tumbled to the sidewalk, bleeding out on the concrete in a glorious shade of magenta. He had a disposable camera and an unfounded certainty that the others were somewhere just around the next bend. Eunjae was beyond all his usual concerns.
Besides, he’d found the door.
It was an orange door set with four panes of stained glass. The paint was almost a perfect match for the fancy orange and almond gelato he’d chosen for dessert, which had to be a good omen.
In Eunjae’s favorite book, there was a door that looked a lot like this one. Long before he left Australia for Korea, and even before his existence became a blur of voice lessons and dance classes, he’d been searching for that door. A gateway to magic.
Some part of Eunjae had continued to believe that such a threshold existed, that it could be found if he only remained faithful to his quest. It was a part of him that had been sleeping for a decade or more. Now, coming upon that door on a balmy summer evening, Eunjae suddenly felt wide awake.
He hadn’t felt that way in a long time. The quest returned to him, tart and vibrant as a burst of citrus, and Eunjae wondered where his copy of The Brass Key had gone.
That battered mass market paperback used to be his most constant companion. He could see it in his mind’s eye even as light hewed through the stained glass, casting a miniature aurora onto his clothes. When was the last time he held the book in his hands? There was never any time, and when he had the time, there wasn’t energy to spare. He made a mental note to look for it anyway, once he got back to Seoul. The door in the story would still be there, waiting for him to turn the knob and step through.
In the meantime, the door he’d discovered in real life had flown open. Eunjae breathed in a gust of sugar-scented air, warm despite the roaring AC, tinged with top notes of fried dough. And on the threshold, staring expectantly at him, was a girl brandishing the most gigantic waffle Eunjae had ever seen.
This place is magic, he thought to himself then. It wouldn’t be the last time.
The girl in the doorway smiled at Eunjae. “Coming in? You’ll never guess, but we’ve got waffles.”
She pointed to the sign mounted above the orange door. He took a step back, craning his neck to read. Hanging slightly crooked, it featured two words in looping electric blue script: WANNA WAFFLE. Not a question, but a fact. For emphasis, the period at the end was styled to look like a waffle, perfectly round and graced with a pat of butter.
“It’s Waffle Wednesday for another twenty-ish minutes. Here, I’ve got that.” She propped the door open with her foot and Eunjae went inside. Why not? They didn’t need to be back at the hotel until 8:00. At least, that’s what Eunjae remembered from their manager’s speech that morning. In any case, wasn’t the hotel just a few blocks away? Surely he didn’t have to rush anywhere just yet. Surely he could stop to see what was behind this door.
“Waffle Wednesday,” he mused, tugging his mask more securely over the bottom half of his face. Turning to the girl who had welcomed him, Eunjae asked the first question that rolled into his head, quickly translating it from Korean to English. “What’s Waffle Wednesday?”