Chapter Text
Jabeom blinked as he stepped into his afternoon history class, seeing a lot of different posters and photos up.
“What’s going on?” He asked one of the seniors. The boy, a transfer student named Nichkhun, shrugged.
“I’m not sure, I don’t recognize it.”
Onew, another senior stepped in and immediately let out a cheer.
“Finally! It’s the Seven Princes Unit!”
Jaebeom and Nichkhun shared a look, then looked at him in confusion. Onew blinked back.
“You can’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Seven Princes? It’s a huge part of our history?”
“Transfer student.” Nichkhun volunteered. Jaebeom just shrugged.
“Oh, you’re in for a treat then.” Onew grinned, slipping into a seat as the teacher walked in.
Jaebeom didn’t go to his next class after they got out. Instead, he headed straight to the library, finding books, articles, old photos – anything and everything that he could find on the Seven Princes.
“One of the darkest times in history was the reign of the Black King. Historians have recorded no other name for the man who held an iron grip over the seven kingdoms. His reign was cut short by the guerilla group known as Bangtan…”
“In order to keep the kingdoms in line, the Black King held princes from six of the kingdoms hostage. The seventh prince was sent voluntarily by his uncle, King Doyun the Fourth, who came to rule after his brother, Jonghyun the Second, died under mysterious circumstances two years into his reign…”
“As a symbol of their new status, the Black King ordered that the prince’s crowns were melted down and turned into collars, only able to be unlocked by another person. While the keys have since been found, found on display in the Seven Kingdoms Historic Museum, the collars have been lost to time.”
“While the fall of the Black King has been recorded in great detail, as has the subsequent reign of King Namjoon the First, there is very little known about the fate of the Seven Princes. It is a commonly held belief that they escaped the castle in the chaos of the Upheaval, a series of battles and sieges held against the castle of the Black King. However, full proof has never been found. This thought is also complicated by the erasure of the castle’s location, done on King Namjoon’s orders. To this day, the castle has not been found, and the fate of the seven princes remains a mystery.”
Jaebeom shakily stared at the photo in the history book, reading the caption aloud.
“The only known portrait of the Seven Princes. After the fall of the Black King, many pictures of the princes were destroyed. Those that were not had their faces erased to memorialize the princes. There is no known record of what their faces look like.”
Except… there was.
Because Jaebeom knew.
He knew what all of them looked like.
Bambam’s mischievous grin when Yugyeom pulled off a prank. Mark’s pained face when his shoulder was pushed too hard. Jackson’s exhausted “everything will be alright” grin. Jinyoung’s protective glare. Youngjae’s worried frown.
He knew all of them so well, he could almost see them there with him.
Slowly, he pulled out his ID card, and the last article he’d pulled up.
“Second-Life Syndrome (SLS) is a phenomenon experienced by over 30% of the population. SLS is usually tested for at birth, as genetic markers make it easy to predict. Named in 1954, SLS is actually a somewhat misleading name, as it has since been found that those with it often live more than two lives. Outside of the medical community, the more common term for the phenomenon is reincarnation.
People who have SLS may experience vivid dreams of a past life, more intense moments of deja vu, and past memories of other lives, among other symptoms…”
Jaebeom shakily traced the engraved SLS on his ID card and let out a long breath before staring at the photo again.
Six years later, across his kitchen table, Jaebeom stared at the same photo from across his kitchen as he ate ice cream straight out of the tub.
“Stop judging me.” he grumbled, eyes roaming over the corkboard. It was filled with photos and articles from over the years – all connected to the Seven Princes and archaeological discoveries about the Black King. The latest was about a young history professor – rumored to have SLS – who had discovered the site of the Black King’s castle, and would be conducting an archaeological expedition later in the year.
“Good luck.” Jaebeom quietly toasted, mentally sighing as he thought of the papers on the Seven Princes he still had to grade. Being a history professor while having SLS wasn’t always fun… but there were certainly some humorous things about students making unsupported claims about your last life.
Mark ran a hand over his face with a groan.
“Repaint an old painting, she says. Just do the best you can, she says.” He sighed, looking down at the photo he was trying to paint – a medieval portrait of King Jonghyun the Second and his son, Jinyoung. Then he looked to his own canvas, which displayed a much different scene. A small room, with three bunk beds. Two people were smushed in the bottom bunk of the far bed, curled together, asleep. Three more were sitting on the middle bed, facing the viewer, while two more were on the last, facing away.
None had faces.
Mark sighed, looking over the other canvases he’d tried to paint over the last week. Each had similar characteristics – the same seven people, all faceless, all in different circumstances.
Maybe his teacher would know what to do.
In spite of what Mark thought, Park Jihyo didn’t take the paintings with any sort of humor. In fact, when he told her of what was happening, she looked rather serious.
“Mark.” She said slowly, “Were you tested for SLS as a child?”
Mark blinked.
“Yeah, I was. But I was told my markers were so low that I was just under the threshold."
Jihyo smiled, but it wasn’t fully pleased.
“Then I’m sorry to inform you that this assignment has definitely triggered past memories. You absolutely have SLS.”
Mark didn’t hear a word she said for the rest of the meeting, stuck in a haze until he reached his dorm room. Taehyung, his roommate, tried to get his attention, but he just shook his head, laying out on his bed.
It was late before he sat up with a start, a crazy idea shooting through his head. He pulled out his phone, taking a photo of one of his canvases and running it through a reverse image search.
What popped up was a recent article detailing the anniversary of the fall of the Black King King Namjoon’s rise to power – and the day of remembrance for the Seven Princes.
The canvases matched almost exactly.
When Taehyung checked in on Mark the next morning, he was knee deep in research.
There was a long repeated story in Bambam’s household. After he’d come back with a strong SLS confirmation, his grandmother had taken a long look at him and declared “he was a very important man in his last life.” Naturally, of course, this was repeated in all of the family lore, if only half believed – he could have been anyone, after all, and “very important” was a different definition depending on the context. More than likely he’d been the mayor of a small town in his last life.
Then Bambam, in school, had learned about the Black King, and began having nightmares.
They were all the same – a letter, a battle. Vague sensations of being pushed down, of something around his throat, of sheer and utter exhaustion. Being carried, held, loved, even as panic remained all the same.
They lessened, as he got older, and Bambam thought nothing of it. Thought nothing of his chronic fatigue diagnosis, just worked through it. Didn’t think anything of his hatred for chokers or high collars.
In fact, he didn’t think anything of it until one of his critiques for a sewing class, where one of his teachers asked why he kept putting in extra padding around the torso.
Which he… didn’t remember doing. He didn’t remember doing it to any of his projects, but sure enough, every one that he checked was thicker around the torso, knees, elbows, and not a single one of them had a high neck.
Bambam started wondering if his Grandmother had really been onto something.
This was only confirmed when he met Yugyeom – the newbie on the soccer team who was outperforming some of their most seasoned players – and someone else with SLS.
“It was a whole thing,” He explained to Bambam with a laugh late one night, “All the guys were convinced I’d been a star player in my last life, I had to sign a form and everything detailing what I knew about it.”
“Oh, really?” Bambam asked, simultaneously trying to listen and not stick himself with pins.
“Yeah. Furthest thing from sports at all, actually. I always used to wake up with my hands around my throat, like I was trying to pull something off. I remember carrying someone a lot? And being worried, I think they were always sick and tired, and it felt… a lot like carrying you…” Yugyeom trailed off, and both him and Bambam shared a wide-eyed look.
“You got that senior’s number, right?” Yugyeom asked, even as Bambam was already pulling out his phone.
“Yeah… let’s see what he remembers, because that sounds a lot like what I started remembering after learning about the Black King in school, and if we all felt the same thing when we met each other…”
Bambam bit his lip as he hit the call button.
Jackson Wang, despite his popularity, didn’t actually make it widely known that he had SLS. It was fairly common, in his family – his own parents had been star-crossed royal lovers in their past life, his uncle had been a military general, his cousin had been a seamstress. He had wondered if he was also royalty for a long time.
He also didn’t say anything because he often experienced intense deja vu, especially when it came to faces. It seemed nearly every day he would pass someone and get hit with such a sense of missing someone that he just started to expect it every time he went out.
What he wasn’t expecting, by any means, was for the two freshmen he’d helped after one of them fainted to call him up and ask if he’d ever heard of the Seven Princes.
To which his answer was, “Who hasn’t?”
Which was, in hindsight, a terrible way to start one of the craziest conversations of his life.
Two hours later, he was sitting at a coffee shop table with Bambam and Yugyeom, wondering what had happened for his life to end up like this.
“So you’re telling me. That based off of dreams we’ve all had, that are entirely too similar, and the fact that we definitely knew each other previously, we were probably three of the Seven Princes?”
“It makes sense, doesn't it?” Yuygeom asked weakly, as if he was still processing it.
They all were, really.
“No, no it makes sense.” Jackson groaned, running a hand through his hair. Then he groaned a second time, letting his head fall to the table.
“Dang it, this means I lose the family wedding game at my cousin’s reception tomorrow. I don’t want to be the one with the most historic past life out of my whole family.” He whined. Bambam giggled, and it was only a further confirmation of… everything.
When asked, Jinyoung and Youngjae couldn’t tell anyone how they became friends. They just… had. Had somehow clicked, despite nearly nothing in common, and different personalities, and all those things people usually relied upon to become friends. Whenever anyone joked that they had to have known each other in a past life, they just smiled and moved on.
Largely because they had.
And more than that, they knew how they’d known each other.
After all, it wasn’t very common for your best friend to walk into your room and announce, “I was one of the Seven Princes in my last life, and so were you.”
As Youngjae loved to later recount, Jinyoung had taken it in stride, but asked for proof. Facts. And Jinyoung would also confirm, rather reluctantly, that Youngjae had risen to the challenge. That he had the evidence to prove his claims.
It also meant that the two often felt a profound sense of something missing.
It was a lesser known side effect of SLS, especially if you knew who you’d been in your last life. The people you’d surrounded yourself with then were suddenly no longer there, but the instinct to turn to them wasn’t gone.
Most days, they could handle it, especially together.
The bad days, they couldn’t.
The really bad days, they couldn’t even handle being around each other.
Even so, they ended up as university roommates during Jinyoung’s third year and Youngjae’s first. It was workable, fine. Youngjae made friends. Looked more into SLS reunion chances, fell into rabbit holes of videos – including a recent one, about a man bursting into tears after meeting two of his past… well. He didn’t specify, actually. He had just said they were “his from a past life” in the video, taken from a convenience store’s security footage.
Youngjae had cried pretty hard at that one.
And then Jinyoung came home, looking frazzled, and said “I found Mark, he’s outside –”
Youngjae had run out, not even bothering to put on shoes. The moment their eyes met, his knees buckled at the way the constant feeling of missing lessened, just enough to feel like the piece of a puzzle had been slotted in.
“Welcome home,” He said, without really understanding why.
But by the smile on Mark’s face, he understood.