Wow, a new chapter and it's even proofread! Yeah, you can thank my sister for that, she was threatening to unsubscribe if I didn't post a new chap...

“When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?”

Chuck Palahniuk

Days past but nothing really happened. Jessica made me hide in our nest when it was day, and she taught me how to control my swimming at night. And frankly it was so easy that I got everything after the second night. So I was bored and often watched the people on the circus grounds at night. There were always people that I hadn’t seen before and because Jessica was sleeping, I couldn’t really ask her who they were. But most of the time my attention was on the stage across our tank. Hyukjae’s stage…

I knew that most of his performances were at night because the fire would be the most beautiful at that time. I always secretly peeked through the seaweed because there were still citizens walking the circus grounds at night. I knew that it was risky but I couldn’t keep myself from it. His performance was hypnotizing.

The fire grew, slinked, went to its right and to its left. The fire liked his skin, caressed his face, resided in his lungs and yet it didn’t hurt him. Hyukjae seemed to be the fire’s friend. He even brought fire out of his lungs without the use of any fire outside of his body.

Jessica and I could hear every sound that came from the circus ground – we suspected that there were some kind of speakers inside our tank but we weren’t sure – so I listened to every word Hyukjae told. His performance actually consisted of telling a story. A story of two people that were in love, yet they couldn’t be with each other because he was a prince and she was lowly servant-girl. It was a classical story and it would’ve been boring if Hyukjae wouldn’t bend the fire in such a way that it made the story more real. When he talked about the prince’s phoenix, he made a bird with his fire that soared through the sky and when he talked about the little kitten of the servant-girl, everyone had to watch out that the fire didn’t reach them as the cat began to race through the legs. It was such a breathtaking performance and with such sadness in it that I began to wonder how it could be that Hyukjae approved of all the things that the ringmaster did to the others.

“Donghae, are you coming?” I looked behind me and saw Jessica swimming towards me, her eyelids were half-closed as if she could fall asleep any minute.

“Almost, I just want to wait for just a tiny bit more.”

“Wait for what?” She asked me but I couldn’t really answer that because I didn’t know for what. Hyukjae had gone to sleep earlier tonight and I was bored but I didn’t want to go to bed either.

Suddenly the ringmaster walked past our cage. Jessica and I gave a few jerks with our tails to get away from the glass but still followed all his movements and the movements of the people behind him.

“Who are they?” I whispered to Jessica and turned my head quickly to watch her expression. She was actually scared and didn’t seem to know how to answer me for a long time. But when the people past she found her voice back.

“Those people were the tamers…” She answered and I felt a shiver going through my spine which actually meant that it went from my back all the way down to my tail.

“The tamers?” I fearfully asked and she nodded grimly.

“Yes, the tamers. They are the ringmaster’s men and if it’s possible, they’re actually more frightening than the clowns. The clowns are actually not all that smart but the tamers are and they know to tame even the most rebellious ‘animals’.” She looked into the direction that tamers went and bit her lip.

“You mean that they can even tame Siwon?” I actually liked asking things about the ‘animals’ that I knew and as long as I asked things about the ‘animals’, Jessica answered me gladly.

“Yes, even Siwon. If they’re actually performing in the ring, they let Siwon be a bit rebellious because the crowd loves that but in the end, they always manage to get him to do what they want.”

“How?” It became a bit curious to me how it was possible that Jessica knew all these things. Even if we could hear everything that happened outside of our tank, Jessica could not have known all the info just from there, it was too detailed.

“They threaten him.” Jessica took a deep breath before continuing. “There are two people who Siwon loves the most in that cage. One of them is his brother, Minho. And the other is his mate, Tiffany. And the tamers and the ringmaster threaten to hurt them if Siwon doesn’t comply. And in the end, he always complies.”

I remembered my little encounter with Siwon before and indeed the ringmaster had threatened him back then. Siwon had tried to resist but eventually still backed out. It had to be a horrible feeling, to see your loved ones being threatened every time.

Jessica looked away from the side in which the tamers and the ringmaster had disappeared and instead swam into the other direction towards the tank that was placed next to us. The one with the seals. She actually did that a lot. Just looking with an apologetic face at that tank while we almost never saw any of the seals looking this way.

“Jessica, how is it that Siwon’s brother is here too?” I tried to get her mind of things but it didn’t work as her face turned even more solemn and she let herself sink down on the sandy ground and hugged her tail as if it were her knees.

“Though most of us were kidnapped alone, not all of us were. Siwon got kidnapped together with Minho and I believe that there is a feline that was kidnapped together with