Orbis.

Baekhyun scrolled past his instagram timeline, past selfies and inspirational quotes and food pictures, all the while humming the newest song from his favorite singer. He was lying on his friend’s exceptionally comfortable and soft king-sized bed, feeling relaxed and totally at peace.

As he scrolled up after liking one of his colleagues’ decent selfie, he found himself looking at a picture of a beautifully captured scenery. It was a scenery of a mountain, covered in snow from top to bottom, with dots in the foot of it, that he concluded are houses, forming a tiny white village. It is so extraodinary that he finds his eyes captured by the beauty, his heart somehow longing to go to the place. Somewhere around the time when he’s looking at the picture, he had stopped humming the newly released song of his favorite singer.

Minutes passed with him just looking at the picture, his mouth slightly agape and his thoughts racing. Looking at the picture brought him the feeling of…. nostalgia?

“You do know that you’re being really quite and I weirdly think that it’s creepy?” the question snapped him out of his trance.

Baekhyun’s eyes flitted to the username of the person who posted the photo briefly, before he looked up to see his friend sitting on his chair, still doing whatever he’s been doing for the past hour.

“What?” was all that came out of his mouth.

“You never stay silent for probably even a minute in your life, and several minutes has passed since you stopped humming to that goddamn catchy song. And you stopped abruptly, which means something is wrong.”

Sometimes he thinks that his friend there can actually be a brilliant detective, leading him to always wonder why he didn’t become one, instead having himself stuck in the boring department of health and medicine. Well, then again his friend there is quite the health freak, who drinks vitamin regularly and pays attention to every little thing concerning health, so on a second thought, no, he doesn’t really wonder why.

“What are you working on, hyung?” Baekhyun asked instead.

His friend sighed, “it’s the deadly group project. I’m lucky I didn’t get teamed up with some unreliable teammates this time. You? Don’t you have any assignment? The mid-test is just in a week Baek.”

“Um… well… you know what, I got it under control hyung. Everything’s fine,” Baekhyun answered with a reassuring tone.

“Sure,” the older turned around from facing Baekhyun, back to working on his assignment.

“By the way, now that I remember, is it going to rain tomorrow?”

The older once again sighed, “Baek, I can’t tell, I might be able to feel the humidity and the clouds flowing through but I’m not a paranormal. I don’t know what’s going to be tomorrow’s humidity or cloud formation.”

Baekhyun grinned cheekily, before he realized that the other can’t see him, because he’s basically backfacing Baekhyun, his eyes still glued to his so-called deadly group project. But before Baekhyun can give any comeback, the man spoke up again.

“It’s like how you can’t tell on what exact hour the sun is going to set tomorrow Baek. You can only do it today. Not for tomorrow, nor the day after tomorrow and so on. I thought you know this already.”

Baekhyun’s grin turned into a grimace.

“Right, sorry.”

Gosh, he hates it when Joonmyun is being so sensitive. It must be because of the ‘deadly’ group project. Well, not like he can say anything. He knows that the path to being a doctor is harsh.

If anyone happens to hear their conversation, they might as well think that they are mad, or on some kind of drugs or something. But no, because in truth, they are not mad nor are they on drugs.

They are just… different.

Baekhyun was just walking home at that time. He has just finished cram school, because he just had to be on his third year In high school, and will be graduating in a few months, so his mom fuss about it a lot and signed him up for four crappy hours of the best cram school in the town. It’s not like his grades are bad, instead, it is the exact opposite of bad, he can proudly say that he’s one of the top students in his school. But his mom still think that the cram school will help him lots, and he knows that his mom only wants the best for him, so he went anyway.

As always, he was humming a song, a habit that he does mostly all of the time. Aside from it being his habit, actually he also hums the song to ease himself from his fear. Because, apparently, Baekhyun is afraid of the dark. And it’s the beginning of spring, and the night is extremely cold.

Baekhyun hates the cold.

The dark and cold night is his nightmare.

Luckily there’s the street light, and the lights on the houses in the complex are mostly still on, so he can stop himself from running home as fast as he can, cowering in fear as he reached the safe haven.

He won’t exactly call it a phobia, it’s not like he will broke into cold weat and then faint at some point after finding himself engulfed in the darkness. It’s just that he finds it… uncomfortable to be in the dark. It irked him how he can’t see anything and how anything can happen without him knowing about it. And that also results in him loving bright and shiny spaces. He can find himself in comfort everytime he feels the sunlight touching his face, or his skin, or basically being able to see the giant ball of fire in the sky.

He likes the idea that the sun is always there.

The sun will always be there in fact. Just, not visible in his part of the world sometimes, which is, at nighttime.

But then at night there’s the moon and the stars, so then again he doesn’t completely hate the night too. It’s just that… well, the moon is not a giant ball of fire that can light the world at night.

He was so deep in his thoughts and so concentrated in his humming that he didn’t really realize his surroundings. Which is good, because that means he had succeded in trying to ignore the chilly and dark night.

And then the street lights died.

The lights from the houses died.

Baekhyun soon founds himself running in the speed of light towards his house.

He skidded to a stop right in front of his house, make turn towards the steps leading to it, and continue on running again. He yanked open the door, and ran inside even without saying his greetings. He only managed to take off his shoes before he latched himself onto the walls, and reached around desperately to lead him to the stairs.

Once he found it he immediately rushed upstairs again, his feet moving on its own as he remember the steps by heart.

He can’t be more than grateful at the time that his room is first after going up the stairs. He went inside in record speed and stumbled towards his bed. There, on the head of his bed is a snow globe, that glows in the darkness, illuminating everything in his room.

But as he pants and sigh in relief after landing safely on top of his bed and being face-to-face with the tiny source of light, he recognize something weird by the corner of his eyes.

He looked to the left, where there’s a mirror hanging on the wall just on top of his drawer, and saw another source of light.

Himself.

Seventeen years old Baekhyun found himself glowing from head to toe with a quite blinding white colored light.

After several months of trying to calm himself down after finding out that he can ‘glow’, even once considering to go to the doctor, before finding out that it is a bad idea, Baekhyun finally comes to his senses. He somehow comes to accept that, yes, he’s different from everyone else. Besides, after watching the movie Sky High, he thinks that hey, maybe he’s a superhero too. Well, a sidekick at least.

Anyway, he managed to find the motivation to find others that are like him. He doesn’t exactly know how he’s going to find them, it’s not like he can just go and ask strangers around whether they have weird powers. But he’s still determined in searching, and after years, his effort (well, not really an effort) finally bears result.

Baekhyun moved to Seoul for college, after getting himself a scholarship from a prestigious college in the big city. Being the social person that he is, Baekhyun joins a club, to gain more friends and also expand his hobby, singing. He joins a music club, instead of a choir, because he also likes to play the piano, and there, he met Joonmyun.

Joonmyun is his senior by a year, and in the music club he plays the piano, like him. He wants to be a doctor, so he majors in health and medicine. Well, or whatever major that is that leads to be a doctor.

They were eating out to celebrate the end of the mid-test, in a barbeque restaurant near the campus, and Baekhyun and Joonmyun just happened to be sitting next to each other. Of course, with the celebratory mood and the nice party atmosphere, the two of them started to chat. It begins with a small talk, before the subject somehow changes into interesting things, and then they found themselves indulged in talking with each other. They chatted non-stop, joked, laughed.

Baekhyun knew that at the time, the two of them just clicked.

Then one day, after being friends with Joonmyun for about five months, Baekhyun just so happened to catch Joonmyun to be perfectly dry and comfortable under the rain as he ran from his car to the campus building. It was supposed to be a holiday, and nobody was there, and nobody saw, but Baekhyun did. Baekhyun saw with his own two eyes that Joonmyun ran from his car to the building without any umbrella. And the rain was quite heavy, he knows Joonmyun would be drenched. As he entered the building, he stopped running and straightened himself. And then he saw Baekhyun and he paused. His eyes grew wide and his mouth became slightly agaped. He stuttered some incoherent words, before Baekhyun cut him off with his own.

“If you really have just ran in the rain without being drenched and it’s because of the reason that you have the supernatural ability involving not being able to be drenched or something, we need to talk because I have a supernatural ability of being able to glow and oh my God I didn’t just say that,” it mostly came out in one breath, which ends them both sitting in the club room, sharing about how they first found out about their ‘supernatural abilities’.

“Do you think there’s more people like us?”

“You’ve been asking that same question thousands of time,” Joonmyun still has his eyes buried into his project paper.

“Well, I can’t help it hyung, I’m thirsty for answers. I need explanations. I mean, don’t I at least have the right to know what exactly is happening with me? Or… or maybe what exactly I am,” his voice faltered at the end.

Joonmyun put his pen down, frowning. He then swirled and see his friend still lying on his bed. Baekhyun was twirling his fingers, balls of light dancing on the tips. It’s a habit that Baekhyun always do whenever he’s nervous. The tips of his fingers would light up. Sometimes when he’s very nervous it might even go off without him being able to control it, which results in him having to hide it either at the back of his body or the pockets of his pants. Sometimes he even shove it down his bag.

“I know, Baek. I feel that way too. But there’s nothing we can really do you know? I was scared when I first discovered this too, but at least we have each other for now.”

Baekhyun’s eyes are on his fingers the entire time, his mind seeming to have run thousands of thoughts. Joonmyun then watch how Baekhyun flicks his wrist and the little balls of light jumped from his fingers, just about to fall before Baekhyun’s fingers straightened up again, catching the lights back to perch on the tips.

“Hey, cheer up Baek, I know you’re frustrated, I can’t say I’m not, but I thought being gloomy is not in your vocabulary?” Joonmyun smiled.

Baekhyun clasped his hands together and the lights went out. Then, he looked up at his friend.

“Yeah, I guess so,” a smile broke out.

“Good,” Joonmyun nodded, content that his friend is no longer mulling about their… special gifts.

“By the way! Now that I remembered, there’s a new trick that I learned to do hyung.”

Joonmyun’s smile then falter a bit.

Not that he doesn’t like his friend’s ‘tricks’, it’s just that, he had been nearly blinded several times by it, so he supposed he doesn’t really look forward to seeing them again. Of course, Baekhyun’s ability is actually quite beautiful. Why, his friend can produce light, and bend it to his will. He can shape it, and even play with the shades of colors sometimes, something that he’s still learning about. He can adjust the intensity of the light on his computer screen without having to go to settings, and he can also adjust the intensity of the sunlight that touches his skin.

But, well, his friend is a bit too excited sometimes, that he sometimes forgets that other people doesn’t have the capability of looking straight at the sun without having to wear shades, like him, and Joonmyun is one of them. And Baekhyun’s lights are usually as bright as the sun itself, if he gets too excited and forgot to adjust the intensity.

Joonmyun was just about to open his mouth and warns Baekhyun about not wanting to be blind, before Baekhyun snapped his fingers, and suddenly it’s lights out. It’s daytime now, and eventhough a curtain can cover the window, the sunlight would still be able to light up the whole room. But with Baekhyun, even in daylight he can make you see darkness.

Several minutes passed by and nothing happened, so Joonmyun was about to make sure that Baekhyun is still there, before, once again, Baekhyun did something to cut him from even speaking a word. Lights shimmered to life, in the form of little floating balls, one by one, until all Joonmyun sees is the flickering of what seems like fireflies, floating around in the darkness. The little balls of light illuminated the room, and although it’s still quite dark, he can make out a grinning Baekhyun, sitting cross-legged on his bed.

Joonmyun smiled, because out of all of the tricks that Baekhyun had pulled, this has to be one of the most beautiful ones. He can feel warmth throughout his body, and then there’s the feeling of contentment. It’s beautiful, how Baekhyun can affect moods by bringing his lights to life.

After some minutes of basking in contentment and admiring the view though, he caught something in his peripheral view. A flash of light, and he was sure for a moment he saw clear blue sky, before it died down again, like nothing had happened. Baekhyun also seemed to have noticed this, as he looked at the source of the glimpse of light, and frowned.

The source was Joonmyun’s mirror, which probably have just been knocked by one of Baekhyun’s little ball of light. Baekhyun swiftly held up his hand, and shot light into the mirror. Weirdly, the mirror absorbed it, instead of bouncing it back and probably blinding Baekhyun, before Suho realized that Baekhyun can’t get blinded by light. As the mirror absorbed the remaining light that Baekhyun shot, both men looked at the mirror expectantly.

Then, the mirror no longer shows them their reflection. Instead, Joonmyun found himself looking at the most beautiful person he has ever seen.

.....

Whoops. Cliffhanger?

Can you guys guess who the 'beautiful person' is? Haha, it might be a little unexpected.

Anywaay, some of you might realize this already, but the world in this chapter is based on our world. Basically Baek and Suho lives in the same world as us, on earth. Just clarifying, so you guys wouldn't be confused, since, well the other worlds are quite different...

Now, this chapter comes out faster than expected! XD and I hope you like it haha do comment and subscribe! (and upvote and I'll send lots and lots of love <3)