“He’s not in his room, Luhan.”

Luhan’s upper lip curled, his irritation reaching it’s peak. He had gone through many pains to keep Kai under his watch, a difficult thing to do to say the least. Yet he slipped away in the middle of the night, leaving Luhan to only be able to hypothesize where he had gone. He hoped, he prayed to the Tree of Life that Kai wasn’t with their Seeress.

What was the one and only reason Luhan had warned the Seeress not to go near Kai? Kai’s statement the day Baekhyun laid bleeding out caused a change in him. A change in his morals. Luhan could see it. All of the other Guardians could see it. But Kai couldn’t. He couldn’t feel that way for her. 

He had tried to give Kai time to tear the roots of the seeds which had sowed themselves in him. Kai was rarely at lunch. Rarely at breakfast. For a brief period of time, Luhan felt like he was improving--that the natural adoration in his eyes was returning in its original untwisted form.

And now, Luhan felt like a fool for thinking it was working. For allowing Kai leniency now of all times--when their Seeress was alone.

“Luhan.” He turned away from the lucent orbs that hung in midair. Kris had come as soon as he heard the news of Kai’s disappearance from Sehun. Kris could see what Luhan feared the most. “He’s not at the Seeress’s home, he wasn’t there when I left,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he had gone, but it also wasn't something to shout from the rooftops. 

“And you can be sure of that?” Luhan questioned, “You can be sure he’s not there?”

“You can never be sure with Kai,” D.O.’s answered. He had come in Suho’s stead; both he and Lay were out tonight, dealing with one of the numerous Council related issues. One that if all went according to plan, than Luhan’s next order of business would bear pleasant fruit. Although Luhan's idealogy was no pleasant fruit could come from an already tainted tree.

“I’ll go back. I’ll check to see if he’s there or not,” Kris voiced, about to do just that when he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder: Chen.

“Kai won’t do anything. Trust me,” he assured them.

"How do you know?" D.O. asked. Chen threw him a glance coupled with a smile. Kai's infatuation wasn't directed not at her highness. Not in the least.

"Trust me, there's nothing to worry about," Chen concluded, leaving behind a slightly confused Kris and a conflicted Luhan who decided to do just that. Kai wouldn't do anything--would he?

I think I’m going crazy. I need to be institutionalized for everything I’m doing now. For doing such a thing to Kai when he didn’t even ask for it. Despite it not being in my nature to actively go out of my way to force anything on anyone for no reason, here I am spilling everything on him. 

He was sitting there, on the edge of my bed, listening to my ramblings of my insecurities. Namely, my dreams. My dreams of my own self-loathing uselessness. My dreams in which the other me appears, much calmer than me, much more effective than me, much more like the Seeress of Exo than me. A title I can feel slipping through my grasp with each word that leaves my lips and each tear I can feel swelling up. But I won’t cry. I won’t do that to him. 

What should I do, Kai? When I finished, when I finished giving him the details of my dreams and my fears, I voiced this question to him. And, in that moment, I felt like he knew me better than I knew myself.

“Why are you asking me, your highness?”

I already know that this is a problem that if solved by anyone else, won’t really be fully solved at all.

Kai’s voice echoed across the room again. At least, I thought it had. Only when he was halfway through his statement had I realized that his lips weren’t moving and he merely stared on at me, the moonlight casting a shadow down onto the left side of his face and setting the right side aglow in blue light.

I guess you figured it out just now, judging from the look on your face.

A sigh escaped me on reflex--he was doing it again. I called his name. I called his name because he would know what I was referring to.

“Kai.”

His eyelashes blinked once slowly before opening, his lips still unmoving as I let his voice seep into my mind once more.

If I talk to you like this though, then only you can hear it right? She can’t hear it. Only you.

“She” can’t hear it.

Not “me,” but “she.”

He was differentiating between the two of us--something I hadn’t be doing. "She" wasn’t “me” at all. The thought comforted me. The fear of being taken over and not a single person noticing disappered. He didn’t stop there though, and this time I didn’t have the urge to protest against his idea.

So, don’t say you don’t like hearing my voice in your head anymore, okay?

I nodded and, looking back on it, the fact that he had changed my mind, my personal preferences, so easily, still amazes me.

I’ll stay here. I’ll stay here until you fall asleep.

“Kai, you don’t--” I started, only to have a him reverberate against the walls of my skull for one last time that night.

I will.

“Excuse me," I called out, getting the attention of the sales person who was monitoring the floor of the store. The older man turned towards me, approaching me quickly.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I would like this table here.” I pointed down, my fingertip resting on translucent glass that in the faint light of the store shone a brilliant jade hue, as though reflecting the pale blue of the moon. At a certain angle, where the yellow light beaming in from the windows casted down onto it, it was shining brightly like the sun. The sun and the moon: that’s what this table with no edges, a perfect circle, reminded me of. 

“Are you sure? There are much more intricate ones you can choose from.”

I shook my head. “No, this one is fine.”

The rectangular table the Guardians and I ate at together may not have bothered them, but it bothered me. It bothered me a lot. I didn’t like sitting at the head of the table. I didn’t like having Tao and Sehun and Kai and Chen so far away from me. So distant. That's why I bought that table.

"Time to go home," I said with a clap, bags packed--apartment barren. It’s funny, saying that. Thinking of the Hall of the Guardians as “home” seems like a dream. An illusion. But this was reality. Home wasn’t just the Hall of the Guardians. Home was with the Guardians anywhere on Exo planet.

With Kris, Xiumin, Luhan, Lay, Tao, Chen, Suho, Baekhyun, Chanyeol, D.O. Sehun, and Kai. Kai, who I would have to thank properly when I got back “home.”

Kai was currently being scolded. He had stepped out of bonds. As Suho finished lecturing him about what happened in the past to those who came before them, repeating to him information he must have heard over one hundred times ever since the twelve of them gathered together as children, he didn’t protest. He owned up to it.

He owned up to his mistake.

“I’m sorry for my behavior. It won’t happen again.” Despite apologizing for it, however, he didn't regret it. Not in the least. 

Suho sighed deeply, his hands limp against his sides--how could he deal with this situation? “I trust you not to. I do. But if you’ve done it once already, how can I be sure you won’t do it again? Kai, the consequences of your actions affect not only you but us as well. It affects her highness. It affects all of Exo planet.”

“I know,” Kai replied, his lips forming a tight line, “and I also know it won’t happen again.”

Before a single guardian could question how on Exo planet he could be so sure of himself, Chen spoke up first, “Her highness wasn’t her, was she? She wasn’t the one you went to see, was she?”

That’s right. Kai didn’t express these affirmative statements out loud but, with a nod of his head, the revelation of what had been going on with him became clear. Her highness wasn’t “her.” She wasn’t the one he had gone to see last night. And when he found her highness instead of “her,” he was disappointed. But upon hearing of her fears, her doubts, her weaknesses she chose to reveal so spontaneously, he stowed away the desire to see the charismatic “her” again--to see her highness’s other side.

He dug up the root before it dug deeper into him. He wouldn’t see “her” again. He wouldn’t desire to see “her” again. A lie that stained him to the core, the seed’s roots so deep it would take more than uprooting to kill the sprouting bud. 

His train of thought was broken as Luhan, whom had said not a single word along with the other Guardians this entire time, walked away from his “Calling Stone” in the Main Hall of the Guardians, approaching the exit of the room.

“Her highness is here,” he announced, his voice echoing across the dusted, gray walls.

Dragging my suitcase, he only provided the vague answer of, “You’ll see.”

“You won’t even give me a hint, Baekhyun?” I asked as I slowed my stride, no longer following him as closely as I was before. And while I could just read his mind, I only heard such things as, Stop trying to cheat, your highness and If you do that you won’t be surprised and that will be no fun, right?

"You’ll see," he said again. Rather than be perturbed by his unwillingness to explain his excitement, I let him pull me into the Main Hall of the Guardians. The elated expressions of Chanyeol, Tao, and Lay, the faint smiles on the faces of Suho, D.O, Xiumin, Chen, Kris, and -- even -- Sehun greeted me. It may have taken a moment, but Kai smiled, too--thank the Tree of Life.

Kai faltered as Luhan's voice echoed off the floating glass orb between us--his words holding in them the promise of an unclear future ahead of us: “Your highness, tomorrow we will announce to all of Exo Planet that we have found you. That we have found the Seeress of Exo.”

Two feelings overwhelmed me then. A similar excitement held by the Guardians, and a nervous trepidation as I felt something itching the back of my throat. An itch that was too far out of reach for me to even scratch the surface. 

A/N: To understand what is happening, you probably had to read closely during this chapter. So, here's a short (maybe?) explanation to clarify things for you all. In chapter 15, Luhan explains the concept of the Seeress's innate "Seeress Persona" that took over when Baekhyun got injured. This is the other "me" she refers to multiple times afterward and is also the "her" that Kai went to see the night he dragged her out of her nightmare. Kai grew a sort of infatuation for this "Seeress Persona" of the Seeress and out of shame for desiring to see "her"/the "Seeress Persona again, he says he won't desire to see "her"/the "Seeress Persona" again in the future.