In a momentary flash of brilliant white light, Kyungsoo was gone. For a moment Kai thought he'd simply let go of his hand, but no: this was different: he could no longer feel his presence. "Kyungsoo hyung?" No answer. "Kyungie~? Oppa~?" Still no reply.

He saw the witch smirk. "What? Are you a girl? I thought you looked a bit feminine."

"Shut up!" Kai growled; he was in no mood to be teased. "What have you done with him?"

The witch actually looked shocked, and for a horrifying second, Kai thought the spell had gone horribly wrong. "You're serious? I expected you to be smarter than that, human." Kai stared at her in disbelief. "The resurrection doesn't work instantly. He'll be back in a few hours." She ran her fingers through her hair, waiting for a response.

He didn't come up with a response for a few minutes. Eventually, he settled for a mental breakdown. Collapsing on the ground in front of Kyungsoo's gravestone, Kai hid his face in his trembling hands as he sobbed shamelessly. Everything hurt: his body, his heart, his mind, his soul. He'd gotten too used to the warmth of Kyungsoo's presence.

When he looked up, he found that the witch had already left, presumably unamused by Kai's reaction. He eventually fell asleep with his head resting on the gravestone, weeping and sobbing Kyungsoo's name repeatedly.

The last thing he remembered was falling asleep on Kyungsoo's grave, so it took him a while to remember how he'd ended up in bed. He'd woken up in the early hours of the morning and crept back into the house.

Kyungsoo wasn't there. Not like he usually was. Kai missed the sensation of waking up with a pair of arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and sometimes a head would be resting on his chest. The feeling was gone; it had vanished at the same time as Kyungsoo. There was no telling when or if it would come back.

He didn't want to go to school that day. In fact, he didn't want to wake up at all, but of course his butler entered the room at his appointed time and snapped Kai out of his sleepy trance.

Kai didn't bother to eat breakfast; he didn't bother to tuck his shirt in or fasten up the buttons on his blazer. Ignoring the maids that tried to fuss over him every morning, he left and got in the limousine without uttering a word to anyone.

He ignored the other students' rabbles about the new kid that was supposedly going to join their homeroom class... until he saw him, that is. After that, he strained to hear every word.

The new kid was standing at the front of the classroom (just as Kai had done on his first day, only this guy looked a lot more nervous) staring at him with innocent, yet longing eyes. It was that pair of eyes that captured Kai's interest: they were as big and as round as saucers, making him look as if he'd been hypnostised, entranced by Kai's presence.

Perhaps he had been.

Kai felt guilty for staring at this stranger who was not his soulmate, but then he remembered the witch's words: "caught in the headlights." That described the stranger perfectly.

"My name is Do Kyungsoo."