It was Suho’s idea. Well, it was probably Kai’s idea, but he’d more than likely pestered Suho enough to get the older one to take credit for the idea. The guardian of teleportation was still getting some heat for causing the debacle that ended with Dahlia collapsing; he didn’t want to draw more attention to him with his idea.

That was why Dahlia was sitting in her tent after hours with Luhan, Tao, and Kai – Suho and Lay were standing nearby to observe while Kris was making sure the rest of the guardians didn’t sneak away from their duties as carnival employees.

 “Dahlia, concentrate,” Luhan commanded for what felt like the hundredth time.

Dahlia sighed and withdrew her hands from Kai’s, falling back against her chair. “I’m trying.”

“No, you’re not.” Kai disagreed. “You’re distracted by something. You’re barely keeping me out, and that’s with my own barriers about 80% up.”

“If you don’t want what happened in the parking lot to happen again, you need to focus,” Suho lectured. “None of us want to be afraid of setting you off again, and I’m sure you’d like to be able to not worry about it either.”

“I keep telling you guys, it took me a full year to block out things imprinted on clothing,” she huffed. “You can’t expect me to master this in a couple of days.”

“Actually, we can,” Lay argued.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the nice one?” She glared at him, her eyes narrowed.

“I am nice,” he smile softly at her. “But I would also like to be able to hug you, hold your hand, without you pulling away because of what you might see when we touch. And the sooner that happens, the better.”

Dahlia could feel her cheeks heat up at the mention of physical affection.

The guardians had become bolder with their declarations after Dahlia had woken up. It was as if they had been jolted out of their hesitation at the thought that Dahlia might not wake up.

There was that one time that Kyungsoo had given her a bouquet of dahlia flowers. While she was gushing at how pretty they were, Kyungsoo managed to land a quick kiss on her cheek. That resulted in him being chased around the carnival grounds by most of the guardians, yelling at Kyungsoo for trying to steal Dahlia’s first kiss.

Luhan wasted no time in outing Kris for having already kissed Dahlia, while he and Tao were more than willing to remain silent about the fact that they had been kisses two and three.

Dahlia drew in a deep breath, clearing the thoughts away. She’d tried everything, except…

But it couldn’t be that easy, right? She would’ve been told about that method when she first started training to take over the psychic position at the carnival.

It couldn’t hurt to try, though.

She closed her eyes, imagining a room with no windows…no doors. No way to access the outside from the room within her mind.

She held out her hands, eyes still closed, and waited with bated breath to see if it had worked. She felt warm hands slide into hers, grasping gently. She tensed out of habit…but there was nothing.

Was it really that simple? Had she really spent all that time afraid of people, afraid of being touched, holing herself away from the world to protect herself when all she needed to do was literally imagine a wall between herself and the other person?

No, it surely wasn’t that simple. Luhan, Tao, or Kai – whoever it was holding her hand – must surely have their own barrier up. Surely whoever it was would begin lowering their mental barrier to start testing whether or not she was able to block them out.

She cracked her eyes open to take a peek at whoever was holding her hands, sure that they were waiting to catch her off guard to see if she was truly trying. But what – or, rather, who – she saw made her eyes widen in surprise.

Suho. Suho, who had no abilities to block out his thoughts.

“Oh my god,” she breathed.

“Oh my god,” the five guardians echoed.

“You did it,” Suho looked at their joined hands, amazed.

“I did it,” she repeated, pulling her hands away to smack Luhan, Tao, and Kai on the shoulders with a pout on her face.

“Ow!” Tao whined. “What was that for?”

“Why didn’t you tell me that all I have to do was imagine an impenetrable room in my mind?” She accused.

“Because we didn’t even know that was a thing,” Luhan replied, his face scrunched in confusion.

“That’s what you did?” Luhan asked. “Huh…that’s unconventional.”

“How do you guys do it, then?” She questioned.

Luhan shrugged, “We just do it.”

“Is that how you managed to block me out?” Suho asked. “You imagined yourself locked away?”

Dahlia nodded. “Really it was just a stab in the dark; I didn’t actually think something so simple could work, but Occam’s Raz