She was running endlessly. 

The dark isles were so haunting that she could feel eyes peeking from in between the open spaces of tiny holes formed by the bricks on the walls.

She could hear herself breathing so loudly that she feared that if she kept breathing like that she would sooner or later get caught. But she wouldn't stop anywhere to calm herself down.

Her legs were sore from running but she had to keep going. 

She didn't trust where the isle was leading her to but she had no choice but to run from whoever was chasing her.

Suddenly, there was a crack of lightning and thunder boomed across her ears right after the entire area became visible from the giant bolt that flew from the sky to the earth. In that split second she saw that it wasn't an isle that she was running on, nor was she running on land itself. She was running on water.

She was running on the salty waters of the ocean surrounding her from all around. And in a flash her legs gave in and she fell into the water almost unable to catch her last breadth. But she popped right back up floating while her legs paddled slowly.

"I need to get back home," she said panting heavily while she looked about in panic. Whilst searching for no reason, her eyes caught the faint luminous aqua green light from bottom of the ocean.

Without realizing she kept looking at it while curved watching it for it kind of made her relaxed. The faint light then began to get clearer and clearer, and at the same time grew in size while swimming towards her.

The slight smile on her face began to disappear by the minute and she found her brows knit before the aqua green gigantic blob just below her shaking feet swooshed out of the water just inches away from her nose. She held her high pitched scream in while it rose out of the water and began to fly onto the sky and shoot up.

"It's a whale? What?!"

And as she said those words and green emanating whale that was shooting up to the starry sky turned right back and started gliding towards her with extreme speed making her crack her voice screaming and struggle to swim away while her legs did nothing but freeze.

Thud!

Seulgi fell right down her bed and it made her wake up.

She was sweating from head to toe, and was breathing very loudly.

She gulped as she sat with her back against the wall next to her bed while she struggled to catch her breadth.

Suddenly, her bed room door flew open and the dim hallway light entered the room following a shadow of a person who rushed in and stopped at the door slanting his head.

Seulgi wanted to say it was nothing but the words didn't come out of for was all dried up.

"Here..." she heard the faint voice speak, and in a second she was back on her feet with Sehun's hand wrapped around her waist and the other pulling her up from her right arm.

Seulgi knew she held her breadth when she unexpectedly found herself being lifted up and bumping onto his chest. She found him looking down at her with the shimmer of the moonlight that entered her room from the half closed curtains making his jawline look extremely attractively sharp that she knew she would definitely cut herself if she kept on looking for another second longer.

"Are you okay?"

He was letting her go from his grasp slowly when he asked in his low voice which sounded like she woke him up from a very comfortable sleep.

Seulgi nodded knowing it was useless speaking for she was not sure of what would come out of .

Sehun's sleepy eyes looked at her not hearing her answer. As he realized that she only nodded, he too gave a slight nod and let his fingers run through his messy bed hair and asked once more,

"It was just a dream, I guess?"

"Ye...yeah," Seulgi squeaked and immediately wanted to hide her face seeing that Sehun sensed the awkward sound that came out of .

Luckily he brushed it off quickly.

It wasn't long before Sehun went away after taking a final look around her room, silently checking whether everything was fine, and Seulgi was left alone sitting on her bed recalling as to what just happened. 

"Forget that..Gosh! Forget it already..." she repeated to herself as the images of her bumping on to Sehun played on her mind. That was an unexpected moment that seemed like may haunt her for a good week or two. And the last thing she wanted was to get stuck in a loop of feeling anxious whenever Sehun was around for he was always around in her own house.

But her mind finally went onto remembering what she saw in her dream. Although most of it was just a blur she distinctively remembered how the aqua green luminous emanating whale rose up from the waters and glided back onto her. She shook her head as the images scared her one more time.

And then it hit her; The color of the whale was way to familiar. She had seen the beautiful mesmerizing color before. And automatically her hand went to the second drawer of her small study table with books messily piled up on it.

She slowly opened the drawer stretching her arm and just as the edge of the frame formed a small opening, the entire dark room filled up with the same aqua green color she saw in her dreams. 

It looked magical seeing her room in this different color.

She opened it up fully and looked inside to see a cherry blossom flower laying there with half of the flower covered by a book on top of it. 

She quickly pushed the book away and picked up the flower. It was the flower Taek Woon gave her back when she teleported away with Kai. The flower from Taek Woon's 'forbidden garden' lay on her palm; the flower that glowed in the dark. It seemed to be still alive after so many days after she placed it there having found it squashed in her pocket the night she returned home. 

Seulgi watched as the light seemed to swim within the flower petals like it was a living being breathing solemnly. She couldn't take her eyes off of it, but her mind was already trying to find the meaning of why she saw such a dream. It may have just been her subconscious mind playing with her but she knew that the dream meant something.

 

***

It had been days since Seulgi saw Kai. She had been going to school and returning home disappointed each day after finding that there was no trace of him at all. She wanted to visit him, but always ended up just returning back to her house.

It had already come to a place where she worried about him not because it was her obligation to do so for Suho asked her to. She was genuinely feeling it; and she didn't quite know whether this feeling was good for her mental health. It seemed like even his previously worried fans, who would flock around Taemin in the morning to know where Jongin was, had already moved on and didn't really bother anymore. But she was silently more worried. 

Seulgi also found the happy little bubble, Baekhyun, return to school.

He made it well aware that he was back after pulling a prank on the math teacher having the poor adult almost have a heart attack finding dead skin of a lizard sitting on his shoulder. The prank was the talk of the week! He even held a mini concert during lunch time twerking, standing on top of a table while pleasing his fans (He also gave a speech at the second meeting of his official fan-club certified by him).

It seemed like forever since Seulgi saw Baekhyun as well. But he seemed a bit too tired, worn out and maybe a bit thoughtful than of the last time she saw him.

He had already poured out everything saying that they had found another one to Seulgi the minute he got to sit down with her by the edge of the school field during PE.

"...It was crazy really. I had to watch out for myself and Kris hyung as well. And I got called out as a ert. Me! Out of everyone was called out as a ert!" he exclaimed while Seulgi chuckled. It seemed so much like Baekhyun enjoyed talking away with Seulgi for he sounded like a person telling how horrible his vacation went to his bestie.

"So is Kris finally back at Xiumin oppa's place?" Seulgi asked for she had no idea what was going on with them as none of them really came out to see her whenever she went to deliver milk in the mornings.

 "Well...not really..."

Baekhyun explained how after Suho, D.O and Sehun found him, they went back the next night to find Kris, however, security had already been tightened. It was because of the incident where Baekhyun ended up in the actress's room and people just assumed he was a crazy ert sasaeng. Also Baekhyun had found a wanted sign with an awkwardly drawn picture of him on it being handed out around and pinned to walls. Since then, following Kris and trying to single him out had been hard since everyone was being careful. There were too many eyes watching. And the last thing they wanted was to have themselves exposed and have the hunters chase them.

"...But D.O has his eyes on him. By the way, how is Sehun? I haven't seen him since last week," Baekhyun asked chewing onto a long strip of candy.

"Um..." Seulgi stuttered not knowing what to say. After her confronting Sehun as to why she couldn't mention their encounter with the hunter to the others, they have not been in exactly speaking terms. Sehun would slither away quickly after she appeared after school or be joking around with Ji Yeon. It was only last night did Seulgi see eye to eye with him and have a short conversation after he appeared hearing her fall out of her bed.

"...He's great, really. He keeps my mother company so that's great, I guess."

"Really? That kid must be missing his mom," Baekhyun commented looking up to the sky while Seulgi agreed with a nod while she actually did think about how Sehun must be missing his mother as well for she often found him trying to make Ji Yeon laugh as loudly as possible. Seulgi was silently thankful, for she had never seen her mother so happy and carefree. And she knew that her mother already considers Sehun as her new found son.

"I wonder what Kai is doing. How can this kid just disappear? Shouldn't he at least show up to school once? I keep indirectly asking Taemin where and what Kai is doing I feel like Taemin suspects me for having fallen in love with Kai. Aish! This kid!" Baekhyun grabbed another strip of sugary candy and bit onto the end of it.

Seulgi watched Baekhyun struggle as the candy got stuck down his throat and he started choking while she wondered whether she'd ever see Kai again.



 

Maybe Kai seemed a bit too serious and protective of himself for hiding away from the world to everyone else, but he was actually having a dangerous little secret of his own.

"Hey kid! What are you doing outside? Get in now!" the security guard by the school gate trotted his way near to the road where he found a student wearing the school uniform tying his shoe lace crouched down. 

"Oh! I was just tying my--"

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter