Sunny couldn’t decide whether to take that pale hand or run away, but ended up standing instead. Her and Luhan both stared, trying to see what one of them will do now. Xiumin arched an eyebrow and looked at the two quizzically.

“Good to see some sort of surprise on your face,” he said in a strangely formal manner. “I hope you can decide quickly. We can’t drag this out.”

 “I’m actually pretty tired of this myself,” Sunny hedged. “But let me think for myself for a change.”

Luhan took a moment to throw a look at his brother and stood up in front of Sunny. He holds out his hand again, staring into her eyes.
 Sunny had decided. She didn’t need further encouragement. Giving Luhan a warning with her eyes she took his hand and waited for something to happen. For a moment nothing was happening and there was only silence. Xiumin stood and seemed to be talking but his voice was barely heard from her. And then she couldn’t hear anything at all. And Sunny realized why. Her vision had become blurry and then, dark. Sunny looked around her surroundings changed drastically. She panicked at the images of stars all around her, and dark colors coming into view.
 Emotions rose so high in Sunny at the fact that she was no longer home.

The strangest thing about flying through space is finding out how airy it is. Bright, vast, full of things humans still haven’t manage to sought out. Sunny happened to be standing in the middle of those wonders, in a place that looked isolated, but surprisingly full of life. She was standing with all of her senses functioning and yet was only a spectator watching from the sidelines. She could move freely in this space, and yet she wasn’t apart of it. It was like watching a movie. The outside world was dim, like it was just getting into the morning. She could hear the wind shaking the window and the sounds of rustling trees. There appeared to be a long table in this impressively golden room. Empty chairs. A missing ceiling. Papers and food strewn across the table, like someone was just done having a hissy fit.
In a flash of a second more things appeared before Sunny’s eyes. Kris was by the table, his hand gripping on one of the chairs and his head down in the other. His irritated posture drew her attention but soon the scene in front of her came with more additions. It’s like they all faded in like a polaroid photograph, one by one. Sunny was happy enough to move a little closer as they all appeared; all of her friends, the kings. The proximity was dizzying. She wanted so much as to reach out and touch them, but she wouldn’t. She couldn’t possibly ruin this perfectly strange picture. Would they even notice her being here? They looked different. Some of their faces she couldn’t see properly, but their shoulders and muscles were taut and tense. She could feel the sense of tension hanging in the room.  
And then even more people popped up. Four men in strange black robes sat across from them, their faces would not show. It was just darkness. Sunny started walking backwards from them, afraid they would actually come to life.

“So sorry,” Sunny jumped and turned to see Luhan looking at her, his body still frozen like a photograph. “Sometimes the power takes a bit more time on humans. Then again, you’re not really human Sunny. Strange.”

“Where am I?” Sunny asked gently.

“Our home,” he replied. He sounded just as calm as she was, but his face seemed distracted and tense, just like the rest of this picture.

“This is a meeting we had before me and Xiumin decided to pay a visit,” he continued. “What I’m trying to show you took place three days ago.”

Sunny gasped as the scene around her started moving in slow motion, finally starting to come to life. She could see some of the kings starting to lift their heads, so she could see. Luhan jerked with the rest of the scene, moving along like she wasn’t there.

“We mustn’t lose heart. They can’t get close to us.”

Sunny turned to look at the source of the voice. The men in robes moved their heads up, looking at Kris. His face was paler than she’d seen it and his brown eyes glowed. His lips were pressed into a hard line. So angry. Just like the night of the dinner. Sunny wanted to reach out and take his hand in hers, to calm him, since she didn’t have a chance to do it the first time.

“How?” Kris asked. He struggled to keep his voice even. “We have no idea what their planning . . . or where to be exact.”

Sunny felt a lump in the back of . They can’t be talking about those girls again. Are they really that much trouble?

Sunny turned back to Luhan. “What does he-” Sunny gasped as Luhan walked right through her, standing near Lay.
Looks like she’s really on her own now.

“Kim is working on it,” Lay said, sounding confident. “He’s good at figuring these things out.”

“Shouldn’t we at least be there with him?” Kris said, raising a brow.

“He knows what to do, what signs to look for.” There was a silence hovering in the air, everyone else watching the two like hawk.

“It’s my fault,” Kris said finally. Saying the words out loud just seemed to make him more fidgety. “I’m leader. I should have seen this coming.” He twiddled with his thumbs. Sunny’s never seen him look nervous.

“No, Kris,” said one of the men in robes. “You were on Earth. You could not have possibly sensed them before hand.

“No, Great,” he said through gritted teeth. “I let myself get carried away. I couldn’t keep an eye out for my brothers.” He took a breath. “Earthly wonders were too much of a distraction.”

“Hey, Earth was our mission in the first place,” Luhan said.

“And one of those Earthly wonders were worth paying attention to,” Kai stepped beside Kris, giving a playful smirk.
Kris squeezed his eyes shut and nodded.

“Kim is back,” said the Great, way before someone actually enters the room. Kris jerked from his chair and seemed to falter forward. Minutes later Kim appeared in front of them. Even though Sunny has seen Kim once before, his appearance still awed her. No matter how old he might be, he walked and talked and looked so much younger.

“Any luck?” asked Kris.

“Well, I thought I found something,” Kim said hesitantly. “It may just be a coincidence though. Burned grass are close to the growing willow trees, scratches on trees, some sign of a struggle.”

“Oh, god.” Kris moaned and sank into the nearest chair.

“You say it’s a coincidence, but you make it seem like you are not so sure,” Luhan said, crossing his arms.

“This world is full of monsters, so I can’t narrow it down to a demon,” Kim said. “The burns are only in one spot, and I found it at a significant distance from the castle. Trust me, they are still far away.”

“Shall we be so sure as to actually check?” There was a rising panic in Chen’s voice. I agree, Sunny thought. Nothing dangerous should happen to them.

“I feel it in my gut, my king's,” Kim stood firm, so sure of his thoughts. “If there was any real danger out there, I would sense it.”
Kris took a breath as if to steady himself. As reassuring as Kim sounded, Kris just kept fiddling.
“It must be safe here,” he muttered.

“Stay calm, Kris.” Kim stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Why are you so nervous? This is entirely new for you.”
Kris chuckled, not really wanting to answer the question. Sunny could his head reeling with ways to sidestep the question. His jaw became a little stiff and his eyes looked fixedly at his brothers, as if waiting for them to step in the conversation. They all seemed to communicate through their eyes, and they did for a few moments. Then suddenly their bodies seemed to shudder with anguish. Sunny’s ghostly self, as if her presence even mattered, shuddered right along with them. They may be thinking something totally different, but Sunny was still on the prospect that demons could actually be living near them.
Everyone was behaving out of character in her absence. Kris did something that Sunny had never seen before. His eyes drooped slightly, his hands dropping to his side.He looked sad, and lost in thought.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” Everyone directed their attention to Tao, standing closer to the men in robes then anyone else. “Sometimes I see her with them.”
Those were words Sunny didn’t expect from him. He was glossing over some truth, as if to bear the information from Sunny herself.

“Which is why this is so concerning,” Suho said. “We have to do something soon. What if trouble happens immediately as Sunny arrives? Those demons haven’t broken through light barriers in decades. Why now? What are they hiding?”

Kim sighed and replied as patiently as he could. “There are processes to these things and really, we have no time for that.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“I think Kim is suggesting that you’re out of time. You’ve failed to get your queen the first time,” the Great said.

“Failed?” said Kris, growing more frustrated at their words. “We came back to check on you and our kingdom. As much as we didn’t want to leave her behind, Sunny had to wait.”

“And now your time is up. Lee Sunny shall come to the EXO Kingdom now,” said the man sternly. The kings and Sunny’s thoughts could not have been more different, thinking mainly of the dangers of demons and Sunny’s safe arrival to this strange kingdom. Sunny could see now that this was where she would fit in their world. No mention of a Protected anymore, but a queen. Her . . . a queen. The thought of it took her breath away. Her own piece of the puzzle was bigger than she thought. Maybe this was the strange attraction that Hyoyeon was talking about. It wasn’t only about feelings, but maybe a little along with status.

“Rest assured, if there’s a way, we will snuff out the problem,” Kim said more encouragingly.

“I fear it won’t be easy,” Kris qualified.

“But not impossible, right?” Kai asked.

“No, never impossible,” Kim said with a small smile.

“I want to help,” said Kris.

“And you can, but right now we need to consider our next move. The queen.”

“Rushing her in without thinking could make things bad,” Lay warned.

“She’ll be having questions. She won’t know what’s coming.” Suho said.

The more she listened to their deliberations the more frustrated Sunny became. She wanted to be apart of their discussion and to ask more about their status, and her status. It was strange being talked about in the third person when you were right there in the room. If she could share with them that she knew more than they knew, that there was no need to tell her themselves. Being both present and utterly useless was maddening. There must be some way to ask more, but she was stuck in this memory, having to wait for it to come to an end.

“Us Greats would like to applaud the way you all made her trust you. It must have been hard to get to know a stranger,” the Greats folded their hands on the table, keeping calm amongst all of the curious questions.

“We made friends with her very easily, thank you,” Kris said, sneering.

“Then there shall be no struggle in her arrival.”

“Do you really think so?”

One of the Greats shrugged. “That was the mission.”

Suddenly Sunny was worried. It was obvious that her being queen was something they always knew. These Greats knew it even before the King’s did. She could see that. But what were the King’s reactions? They all sounded so worried of her safety before, but even they seemed upset at ‘failing the mission’. What if that was what’s going on this whole time? After all, it seemed pretty evident as they could leave Sunny so easily. Those girls had stirred up trouble, making the King’s mission cut short to tend to things more important. And that’s all Sunny was at this point - a mission that they would have to get back to later. Was this the reason why Hyoyeon bothered to even ask about them? Hyoyeon was something else, too, but maybe she was on Sunny’s side after all.
Even if the boys did not think she was entirely just a mission, they did something that Sunny couldn’t really forgive. They made her fall in love with them. Was it all fake? Was she just another girl that happened to have some sort of power? She didn’t want to believe it, but at the same time the backstory turned dark and dull for her. As for the demons, she couldn’t bear the thought of them coming after her, putting everyone she loves at risk. Her family. Her home. The Kings.
No, never them. They didn’t earn her love the right way from the start. Sunny looked at their smooth faces, riddled with concern, but writhing her with more anger inside. She put her hands to her face.

“No,” she cried. “Stop!”

To her surprise, she heard a faint echo of her own words in the room. Everyone in the room snapped their heads towards her direction like dogs following a loud sound. An expression of disbelief crossed their faces, as if distant voices were the strangest thing in this weird kingdom.

“Am I losing it or you guys heard it too?”

The boys looked at Chanyeol, uncertainty on their faces.

“We heard it,” said Kris, his mind whirring with possible explanations.

Behind her, Tao closed his eyes and felt energy in the room, searching for Sunny. But when he reached the place where she hovered, he stopped and Sunny realized that whatever connection he made and disappeared in mere seconds.

“There’s nothing here,” Tao said, but she see that he was still unsettled.

The Greats were unconvinced. “No . . . someone is closer than we thought.”

“Perhaps that is our cue, my King’s,” said Kim.

Tao’s eyes darted around the room, searching the air. Sunny started to get a little unsettled herself and backed away from the crowd. Suddenly the room became diluted. She backed away further as everyone started to freeze again, and blur.
Everyone disappeared, and when everyone disappeared, the room became quiet. So quiet Sunny could hear her heart beat.

“Stop it Sunny, what are you doing?” Sunny jolted as Luhan appeared behind her.

“I didn’t do anything,” she protested.

“You changed something in the memory. No one heard a distant voice speaking before.”

“Are you saying that all of that was true?”

“Yes,” Luhan said. “We all knew it from the start, Sunny. It is your destiny.”

“My destiny?” Sunny could barely breathe.

“To rule by our side has always been your destiny,” Luhan bent down on one knee and lifted his hand to her. “My queen.”

Sunny sighed. “I’d rather not.”

Luhan’s smile erased from his face and he stood. All at once the room went black, and then the blackness cleared. Sunny saw her living room come back into place, Hyoyeon on the couch, still frozen, and Xiumin standing beside her.

Sunny snacthed her hand away from Luhan’s and stood. “Listen, it was nice of you boys to visit me. But I need some time alone. Feel free to take Hyoyeon with you.”

Luhan stood up and Xiumin walked up beside him. “So sorry, Sunny, but we were told to not come back without you. We need you to be with us.”

Sunny shook her head. “Find some other queen to fool around with.”
She tried to push through them, but the King’s were relentless. They pushed her back to her spot.

“It is time, Sunny,” Xiumin said. “Trust me, you will be much safer in the EXO Kingdom then here on Earth. This planet is vulnerable, but our castle stands firm and strong. It will protect you.”

“My family protects me. The family that actually loves me.”

Luhan furrowed his brows. “You think we don’t love you, too?”

Sunny shook her head. “I’m just part of some prophet. Some mission, after all.”

“I never said you were part of a prophet.”

“I don’t want to be part of your stupid world.” Sunny tried to push through them harder, but they pushed her back, with Xiumin holding her by her shoulders.

“Sunny, trust us, this for you own good, and our Kingdom’s.”

Xiumin stepped forward to give her a kiss on the forward, making Sunny’s heart beat a little faster. It made her want to cry. And then, that’s when Xiumin looked her in the eye, a sort of pained expression, before blowing in her face like he did with Hyoyeon. Darkness came quicker than she expected, and she was out like a light.