ill met by moonlight: chapter one
Cover Illustration by Phoebe Nerem
chapter one: i have had a most rare vision
“What are the odds you’ll say ‘penis’ to the waiter?”
Twinkling chandeliers reflect circles dappling light
on Indre’s face, catching the glisten of their lipgloss in the
otherwise dim light. They’re staring at Leo intently;
eyebrows cocked, lips pulled into a frown, prolonging
the inevitable after he just named the game. Leo stares
back, a grin tugging at the corner of his lips. The pink
chiffon dress he had picked out for Indre hangs like a
cloud off their figure, ribbons at the waist, tied up and
topped off by a sweetheart neckline. The dress was a
four-hour long project. After begging Indre to blow off
their poetry slam and come to this charity gala, they got their
revenge by dragging him into three boutiques in the
city, tossing fabric to and from dressing rooms faster
than he could keep up; “No way am I wearing this green
with my skin tone” and “This one bunches at my waist”
and “Oh my God, Leo, that looks like a cupcake.”
Despite the overly long-winded and dramatic saga,
Leo is confident their work paid off. Indre is a vision
in this dress, in this light. He takes a moment to
appreciate the beauty of his long time friend.
“Leo, that’s just fucking stupid.”
The vision is not amused, but that does little to stop him.
“I didn’t know you were so stuck-up.”
Indre kicks him under the table, Leo wincing but
not backing down. The server, performing a
balancing act with a massive tray of champagne flutes,
starts to make his way towards their table. Reluctantly,
Indre accepts the challenge. “One in three.”
Leo begins the count with his fingers, their gazes
interlocked with a simmering intensity, and on
three they both say, “Two.”
Indre curses under their breath. They catch the server
out of the corner of their eye, shooting one last cold
glance at Leo before flagging the unsuspecting victim down.
They smile at the server and pluck a champagne
flute from the tray, raising the glass in a toast. “Penis.”
The server nearly tips over the tray in his hand,
bewildered. Indre maintains their show-stopping
smile, flashing teeth and all. Heat rushes to the
server’s face, who mumbles something incoherent
and shuffles away. Leo is beside himself, giggling
like a child.
Indre lets out a laugh too. “Not so stuck-up after all, am I?”
“I stand corrected.”
Indre is in the middle of coming up with their own
‘what are the odds’ dare until a sweeping hush falls
over the venue. The pair averts their attention to the
podium at the front of the room, empty seconds ago
but now occupied by a slim woman their age, a taller
gentleman standing firmly behind her. They look
uncannily similar, not just in appearance but also
demeanor; composed, collected, contained.
It is the first time Leo has seen the Mun twins in
ten years, an entire decade after their parents
were murdered.
—
“It’s been, what, ten years?”
“Something like that.” Leo straightens the collar
of his shirt, slipping the length of a satin tie around
his neck. He looks damn good. His tan skin stands out
beautifully with the formal black and white tux, and
his normally unruly, curly hair has been neatly gelled
and kept (courtesy of hair master Indre Lange). Suave
appearance aside, he nearly jumped when Indre popped
up by his side with a skeptical look on their face.
“Weren’t you guys, like, best friends for the first half of
your life? Your mom made it sound like you worshiped them.”
Leo audibly scoffs. “I’ve never worshiped anybody.”
Indre rolls their eyes. “You’re not at all excited to
see them again?”
“I never said I wasn’t,” Leo says defensively, doing his best
to beat around the bush. “But as you so helpfully pointed out,
it’s been ten years. I don’t even know if I’d recognize them.”
Indre squints at him. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
“Leo, rápidamente!" The shrill voice of Mama Perez
could be heard from two blocks down. It was that very
tone that Leo’s body developed an instinctive response to:
“Ya voy, Mama!” But it was obvious he was going nowhere fast,
glowering at his reflection in the mirror, fingers tangled in hair.
“Quit messing with how perfectly I did your hair and let’s go.”
Indre turns their back on him and starts down the stairs.
“Ya voy, Indre,” Leo mumbles, tossing one last look at himself
and following their footsteps. It was beyond him why everybody
was in such a rush to attend this gala. He was somebody who
made a point to be fashionably late. The ever-esteemed Mun
children are coming back to their hometown a decade after
the infamous murder of their parents to host a charity gala.
Despite Leo’s flippant attitude, it’s a pretty big deal.
The last time he saw them was prior to the murder.
The Perez family and the Mun family had taken a
weekend getaway to the beach, all expenses
paid for by the latter family. Leo and Nero were busy
disrupting the fish in the water, acting out their
Point Break-based alternate universe. Eleven-year-old
Leo giggled with glee as salt water filled Nero’s sinuses –
cursing his decision to pull Leo (the taller one) in to
an arm hold instead of kicking the back of his knees.
With much effort and struggle, Leo had swung him
over his shoulder and into the wake, the brutal cold
water smacking Nero between the shoulder blades
and washing over his face. He staggered to his feet,
coughing up a lung, rubbing sand and salt from his eyes.
Leo’s notorious shit-eating grin spread across his face,
rubbing even more salt in the wound. “I thought you
were supposed to be better than me at karate,
Special Agent Utah!”
Nero scowled. “I study aikido, not karate.” He threw
a glance at his sister on the sand, who was squinting
at them in her prepubescent disapproval, all the while
pretending to ignore them. Leo remembers the way
the wind whipped at Nero’s pitch black hair, long
enough then for the thick locks to stick to his shoulders.
He remembers the way golden rays of light filled his eyes
as the sun sprawled over the ocean, a paintbrush with
an orange and pink canvas. He remembers the way Nero
pouted, bringing his lip between his teeth. “Why do you
always get to be Bodhi?”
“Because you’re smaller than me,” he replied simply
a moment before something miraculous happened.
Mari shouted “Look!” from across the beach, and the two
boys whipped around to see a flash of green over the horizon,
hovering above the sinking sun. Leo remembers the way
Nero’s smile, rare enough on its own, encompassed his
entire face in a sense he could only describe as sublime.
That memory, once so precious and pure, flashed across
Leo’s mind as he drove with Indre and his mother to the
gala. It played out like a movie he had no part in. Distant,
detached. Almost like it had never even happened.
“Leo, stop sign.” His mother interjects the daydream.
Leo eases the brakes in the nick of time, rolling his eyes
as if he wasn’t about to run it. The memory tastes bitter
in his mouth after recalling the aftermath. He had never
seen the Muns again; Nero and Mari didn’t show up for
their parents’ funeral. They were gone, off to live with
their mysterious aunt and uncle, existence erased.
But that’s how the night starts out;
a waking dream Leo simply walked through dejectedly.
Indre is doing their best to keep him entertained at their
assigned red-clothed table, and that works well enough until
The Muns twins make their appearance at the front of the ballroom.
“Words fail to express my deep gratitude for each and
every one of you who showed up tonight.”
Marisol Mun, clad in a tight-fitting black dress that
drapes in tailored layers over her slim figure seems to
sparkle under golden lights alongside her brother.
Her voice is clear and eloquent; she knows exactly
what she’s doing, commanding the room.
Leo renders her unrecognizable. Her long black hair
gives silk a run for its money, neatly brushed over
her pale shoulders without so much as a strand out
of place. Delicate strands of rubies sit on her
collarbone, dark eyes sharp and pointed.
Raniero Mun stands behind her like a bodyguard,
stoic with a resting frown that loses its intensity
in the way his hair curls whimsically around his neck.
They are ungodly gorgeous.
Leo doesn’t realize he’s gawking until Indre nudges
him with their elbow, breaking his trance. Indre
was on the same page, however. “They’re fucking
beautiful.”
Mari, who has not yet missed a beat in her speech,
goes on about the charity for orphaned children
they’re here to promote. Her voice is honey,
deep and rich, smooth and suave. Leo is unable
to pay much attention to the content of her words;
something about their travels, something about
generosity. Leo’s foot taps anxiously under the
table, mind and body mesmerized. Before he
manages to register the completion of Mari’s
monologue, she’s already stepping down from
the podium, Nero at her hip. The rest of the
expansive room rises on cue, a flock of people
rushing to greet the Mun twins. The initial shock
of their entrance dissipates into the collective enamored
moment, but Leo does not share those warm feelings.
His fleeting admiration sours into a sinking pit
in his gut, the bitterness of something like betrayal
settling in. He had spent his most formative years
with two kids who are, now, stranger to him than
somebody he’s never met. A frown settles over his face.
Indre, particularly perceptive of his sudden mood change,
decides it’s best not to pry. “Wow. I was so invested in her
speech I forgot how bad I need to pee.” And with that they
rise as well, making their way towards the restrooms.
Leo says nothing but stands up too, shuffling towards the
table full of champagne bottles. He determines he’s way
too sober for this.
The smiling, warm-hearted girl claiming to be Marisol
was not the same girl he once knew. It had been ten
years, but the Mari Leo remembers was cold. Stubborn.
Callous, even. They were indeed best friends growing up,
but she always pretended she was too mature to participate
in the games Leo and Nero made up; until the fear of missing
out got the best of her and she begrudgingly joined in. The Mari
he saw tonight was the polar opposite; friendly, approachable,
warm. Something was off.
But it wasn’t Mari that ensnared his attention now. She seemed
To have disappeared from the crowd. Nero Mun was soloing the formalities,
a bright, toothy smile never leaving his face. Leo found himself
unable to take his eyes off of him. Nero seems less pale in the golden
light, more sanguine with a smile. He floats effortlessly through the
hoard of people, greeting each one as if they’d known him forever.
The way he moves is entrancing, like fire flickering from a candlewick.
Contained and quick. Leo refills his glass and takes a sip before
nearly choking on champagne–
“You should talk to him.”
The voice he had just spent fifteen minutes being captivated by
now had a harder edge to it. Leo whirls around to come face to face
with Mari, back against the wall and donning a smug smile. Once
having caught his attention, she takes definitive steps in his direction
and places a hand on his shoulder. It occurs to Leo how impossibly
intimidating she is despite her short stature; she towers over him
in presence alone. “You’re exactly his type. Like, to a tee.”
Incredulous, Leo stares back at her, attempting to regain a
Semblance of composure. After clearing his throat quietly,
he says without greeting, “What are you talking about?”
Her hand slips off his shoulder, eyes rolling impatiently. “My brother.
The one you’ve been staring at for the past five minutes.” She takes a
sip of her drink, her eyes now scanning the room with nonchalance.
“You know, I always thought you were straight. Funny.”
Leo nearly laughs but is too caught off guard by her assertiveness.
“And how do you know I’m not?”
Without looking at him, she says, “I have eyes.”
Despite the fact they hadn’t seen each other in a decade, old tensions
never seem to die. It’s almost comforting, her sudden coldness. That
is the girl that haunts his memories. Still, Leo feels apprehensive.
“Why is this any of your business, anyway?”
Instead of retorting, Mari shrugs and downs the rest of her glass.
“I’m bored. Everyone here is sending their deepest condolences
for my parents, it’s infuriating. Like, did they even listen to what
I had to say? That’s not what this is about.”
It kind of is, though, Leo thinks. Of course it is. The double homicide
of the Mun parents was all anybody could talk about for years after
it had happened, and to this day remains a mystery. The charity they’re
fundraising is directed towards orphaned children, after all. He knows
better than to argue with her, though. Despite how flippantly she
dismissed the death of her parents, he can imagine growing resentful
of people’s pity. Her memories of her parents must be so far away compared
to the pestering of fake friends so up close. “I guess that makes sense.
It must be suffocating, having all of these people jumping down your throat.”
Mari’s empty gaze is no longer fixated on the crowd and instead turned
towards him. He can feel his breath catch in his throat; she had a piercing
way about her as if she’d pinned you up on a table like readying a butterfly
for dissection. “So, are you going to talk to him or get buzzed off champagne
all night?”
The chattering of the countless guests carried to the corners of the high ceiling,
so much so that he almost pretended not to hear her. Instead, annoyance took
over. “Why are you so–”
Leo’s voice tragically trails off before he can finish the accusation. Nero is
holding Leo’s mother in his arms, an embrace so warm and genuine that
even Mari stops smirking to observe. Leo thinks he hears her whisper,
“He’s getting good at this,” but his attention is no longer on the sister.
Nero is smiling poignantly at his crying mother, nodding at her bittersweet
expression, running his thumb up and down her elbow.
If not for the stark contrast of the blue light from Mari’s phone suddenly
illuminating her face, Leo could stare at him in awe for the rest of the night.
Instead, the tapping of Mari’s acrylic nails against her phone steals his
attention. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but in the next
moment, it’s obvious what Mari is doing. Across the room, Indre moves to
comfort Leo’s mother while Nero subtly checks his phone. As one final
‘fuck you,’ Mari stretches to whisper into Leo’s ear, “The dance is about to start.”
Once again speechless, all Leo can do is watch as Mari leaves as quickly
as she appeared, black hair swinging in the rush. The dim lights grow dimmer.
Leo desperately searches for Indre, but they seem to have vanished as well.
The vast ballroom is now lit only by the plethora of candles scattered
around the tables and placed in the chandeliers. Mi-Suk Hanja,
who Leo recognizes as the Muns’ aunt, smiles widely at the front
of the room, delicate fingers placed on the needle of a timely
record player. With a sinking heart, Leo can’t help but be grateful
Mari gave him some kind of warning, especially when the
mysterious elder brother makes his way towards Leo right then.
And then the prince himself is in front of him, like an apparition
too unreal to look at directly.
“Long time, no see, Leo.” A flash of dazzling white teeth,
an outstretched hand. “Dance with me?”
