"Thank you for letting me experience being on my own for a while. It was an experience and I think I've finally gotten used to it. Sort of. But I'm ready to get back to being with other people again."

Jongdae doesn't know what to say, really. But he's caught unexpected. He'd been expecting the empty hotel room that he's been returning to the past month, not a lazy figure sprawled out onto his bed smiling at him with a languid smile. "Yixing? You can't be here. You don't have anything to do with the spirit world anymore."

"Who says that?" Yixing sits up and grins. "The gods of dramatic, cliché tragedy fiction? Is it a scientific fact that if one should cleanse the chonrian of the spirits of earlier chonrian then he should suddenly cease to be chonrian?"

"But...I thought..."

"No, you presumed." Yixing tuts – he sounds more intelligent. Just a little. Even if his gaze seems to be too faraway to convey any kind of intelligence. "You presumed that I was a normal person who was picked because I was a compatible vessel infused with the souls of past chonrian. It's what they say. But wouldn't it make more sense to realize that this means that all those chosen as the chonrian would have their own abilities of their own, and that the great powers come only from the addition of those powers altogether? I may not be the chonrian anymore, Jongdae, but I still am a chonrian."

"That's not what Onew-seonsaengnim told me."

"Well, Onew 'seonsaengnim' just didn't want everyone he knew to be happy before he was." Yixing snorts. "The voice who was the one before me told me that he's that sort of twisted."

Jongdae sighs. "That sounds about right."

"But there's no need to worry about that anymore." Yixing smiles, his eyes glazing just that bit. "He has a boy with him now. The boy's name is Taemin."

"Taemin." Jongdae repeats. "Isn't that the name of the ghost that he exorcised? The one that made him famous?"

"Yes, the one he fell in love with." Yixing confirms. He pushes himself up from his position on the bed, rising in one smooth motion.

"Great. My teacher is a e." Jongdae groans, rubbing his face.

"But what do you care?" Yixing asks as he wraps his arms around Jongdae's neck, "You will be far too busy kissing me."

And even if he doesn't have the power of all the chosen chonrian of the past anymore, it's a prediction that Yixing makes with absolute certainty.

~*~

He is entirely right.