“I’ve never seen someone get knocked over by a dodgeball.” Jongin looked, annoyingly, amused. “You fell over like a bowling pin.”

I tried to give him my best glare. “It was Cho Seunghwan who threw it. You know how hard that guy throws! It hit me in the stomach, too. I’m light. It hurt. I fell over. End of story. Besides, Seunghwan was good enough to get you out for dodgeball. He’s athletic.”

“I throw harder than Cho Seunghwan,” Jongin replied, looking a little offended. “And I have a good aim. Also, I’d never purposely aim for your stomach.”

“Thank God, then, because that’d hurt. I can count on you.”

“I’d go for the neck. If you go for the windpipe, it’s the most effective.”

“...and on second thought, I’ll take back my comment.”

Chapter 11

Disaster started the moment I realized that I couldn’t even hold up my sword in a proper way.

That shouldn’t have been a very surprising fact, because I was more scared of the weapon than willing to hold it -- even then, Kai had to run me through the basic steps of how to hold it properly. When he finally finished explaining the reasons why the dominant hand had to be on top near the pommel, I had forgotten the proper way to grip it. We went through that again, too, and then I accidentally put my non-dominant hand on top.

With infinite patience and maybe a bit of sarcasm, he grabbed my left hand, grabbed the sword, and slowly switched my hands around. “Dominant hand on top,” Kai repeated for what was probably the fifth time, talking slowly like explaining instructions to a confused child (which I supposed I wasn’t far from). “With your left hand, grip it tightly with your middle and pinky finger, and semi tight with the others.”

I tried to follow that, but whenever I tried, I either applied too much strength on all my fingers or not enough. I wasn’t sure how Kai could tell my failures so well, but he seemed to be able to tell whether or not I was following his instructions correctly. Which, sadly, I wasn’t capable of doing. Simply holding a sword was too much for me. How was I supposed to learn how to fight with one?

“Okay, next step.” Were we moving on because he couldn’t waste so much time on teaching my how to grip a sword, or because I had finally gotten it right? I doubted the latter. “When you’re swinging, remember -- your right hand acts like the axis of the sword, the pivot. Your left hand is used to set force on the blade. Do not swing without keeping your right hand stable; it will interrupt your balance and you could fall over. When you’re in ready stance, hold it so the pommel is a little bit above your stomach.”

I followed his instructions, though there was no doubt that something was wrong with the way I was standing. Kai, next to me, had his own sword. He was in the same position I was in, though somehow, he made it look professional and somewhat threatening. I looked comical trying to copy him.

“Don’t copy me.” He voiced my thoughts. “You’re not going to get it right if you copy me. Just follow the instructions.”

That, admittedly, did no better than me mimicking his movements, so Kai moved on also. “I’ll teach your basic footwork for now, but when we move into hand-to-hand combat, it’ll be a lot more complicated. You have to know the right way to move, the right way to stand, and to attack. It’s… a complicated process.”

“I can tell.”

Another (excruciating) long period of time passed, before Kai finally called for a water break, so we had to retreat upstairs to the kitchen to get water.

I never got time to properly wrap my mind around how big the Seoul safehouse (or, apparently, one of the Seoul safehouses -- there were three) was, compared to its shabby appearance when I first saw it. After getting through the wards that Luhan had set up, what came into view was an old fashioned brick house -- a large one, to be exact, designed to look like the buildings that lined the streets of Ignis. Possibly even bigger than those houses -- but even so, not to the size where it’d fit an arena.

Then Kai had led me downstairs, which was fully equipped with weapons and a decent sized training room. It was a little too much for me to wrap my head around, and it was only the beginning. There was another training room, which had ‘damage-proof’ (“You won’t understand what I mean by that until you actually cast spells in there.”), and apparently where I’d be training with Luhan when it came to basic spellcasting and learning how to control my aura and the heightened senses.

If the fact that I’d be using powers didn’t sound so intimidating, I might’ve actually looked forward to it.

The kitchen was dark when we entered, though I was able to see the surface of all the objects rather well. It was almost like an outline against the dark, telling me where objects were. That, and there was an outline of… someone.

There was a moment of blindness when Kai flicked the lights on, and then a yelp of surprise, followed by a crash. And the shattering of glass, which not only was agony to my ears, but it interrupted the silence of the house in the most uncomfortable manner possible. My eardrums seemed to be bleeding.

Once the black spots across my vision cleared and I could see without squinting, I zeroed in on the intruder. Near one of the island counters, an almost impossibly tall boy stood, eyes like a deer’s caught in headlights, looking like he had done something horribly wrong. His hair was the first thing I took notice too: it was dyed a greyish silver colour, and it looked really nice. If I were to try and pull it off, I’d probably do nothing but succeed in making myself look old. The second thing I noticed was that his pajamas were adorned with aliens and tiny UFOs, and the pajamas somehow made him look impossibly lanky and tall. The third thing were his ears: they stuck out, and somehow, it made him resemble Yoda.

On the ground, the shattered remains of the cup and it’s contents slowly seeped outwards. The boy slowly set down the water jug onto the counter.

“Kai,” he gasped, voice a surprisingly deep baritone, “Why are you here? And hey, Kai’s girlfriend.”

That was the sentence I used to respond best and quickest to at school. “I am not his girlfriend.”

“Okay, Kai’s not-girlfriend. Why are you wearing sport clothing? It’s one thirty in the morning.”

Kai rolled his eyes, like the presence of this boy annoyed the hell out of him. “One forty five,” he corrected, as if that made all the difference. “We’re training.”

“I love the dedication, but--”

“Mira, meet Chanyeol. Chanyeol, meet Mira.”

Chanyeol’s eyes crinkled, and he smiled cheerily at me, opening his mouth to speak. A yawn interrupted him, and he withdrew his outstretched hand to cover his mouth. Kai waited patiently, with his arms crossed, looking at Chanyeol like one would look at an interesting kind of animal. All of a sudden, I remembered Baekhyun bringing Chanyeol up -- was he one of the twelve people who came back to Seoul?

Sticking his hand out again, Chanyeol gave me another smile. I barely got to shake it for more than two seconds when he pulled away. “Well, nice to meet you. I’ll be going to bed now. See you soon!”

With that note, he dashed out of the room before either of us could react.

Kai was the first to come to his senses, and he started in the direction of Chanyeol violently. Two steps later, he stopped, uttering a string of profanities under his breath, and something along the lines of catching Chanyeol. I stared wide eyed, unsure of what had just happened and why Kai was currently swearing and Chanyeol had run off snickering like he had won the lottery or something along those lines.

“What happened…?” I finally asked ten