1

A couple decided to get rid of their daughter. They might have given her a name that got lost as time went by.

9

Another couple decided to get rid of their daughter. They had given her the name Sohee.

"What the hell are you trying to say? Sohee is our daughter," the mother yelled and the father shushed her.
"I'm saying that you need to open your eyes, dear. She's just a child but she already killed her cat. How do you think we could hide that from everyone else? She needs to be taken away," he said in an urgent voice.
"I won't allow her to be brought to a Special District. She's a girl and you know exactly what that means. Can you honestly send her there without any second thought?" she asked accusingly. "I get it, I also wished that orphanage hadn't given us a girl from such a place but honestly, chances were low that she wasn't normal. Her powers came without warning. Just imagine what her birth parents must have risked to get her out. I won't allow her to go back because she's unlucky enough."
"So what?" he snapped.  "Do you want her to stay? Until we're all caught by the police? Would that make you happy? Would that help her in any way?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"Maybe we can send her somewhere else," she then said. "I heard the laws abroad are less strict."

The girl had heard of 'Special Districts' before. They were like huge enclosures for monsters who had 'powers' and who hated little girls like her.

10

A family took in a slave girl from a foreign country. They called her Xiumin and hid her in their big house to play with their son.

17

The mother told the slave girl that her role would be to give birth to the family's future heir.

"How can you be fine with that?" the son asked and shook his head in disgust. "They're just sick. First they tell you to be my sister, now they want you to be, what, not even my wife but a concubine-to-be? What are you, a birth machine to ensure that the future generation will be less weak?"
She shrugged. "That way I at least wouldn't have these powers for nothing."

22

The son ran away with the slave girl the day when the date of his arranged wedding was to be announced. His fiancée was beautiful, kind and powerless.

"Oh, honestly, Xiumin, I never said that I hate her. I don't. And that's the issue. It's not fair towards any of us, not her, not you, not me. And if none of you stop this madness, I will. So either you come with me now or you'll stay behind."

The son and the slave girl were taken in by a 'thug'.  It was meant to be temporary.

23

The slave girl finally found something she seemed destined to do. She caught monsters.

"I mean, it's not their fault they're trapped in those places. You and I both would have been there if things were a little different," Luhan said after their first job.
"The difference is that they lost all their morals there," she said. "So maybe it's not their fault, maybe it was wrong to trap them inside the districts, but by now they're too dangerous to be free."
He gave her a compassionate, almost belittling look and she decided to end the conversation.

26

The slave girl had to take care of a monster. And before she understood what was happening to her, she found herself in love.

She never thought that she would hurt anyone with her lie. To disguise herself as a boy had practical reasons, it made things easier and to her it never actually made a difference. As a child she was told that her life as she knew it would end, that she was going to become someone else's property. She was legally owned by Luhan's family and he never really treated her like a girl to begin with, so she saw herself as just a thing.
She made sure that Luhan was safe and did whatever she could to help his friend's business. No matter how much freedom she gained, how much she liked to be around the others, she was always aware that at the end of the day she still was just a slave, cast out by two families.
A family of monsters threw her away for being female, a normal family for being the child of monsters and another family took her in for her sullied blood. She had no right to be normal and no matter where she went, her powers, her gender and her nationality would always make her stick out unless she hid at least one of them.

To know that Luhan was forced to meet his family after those years of avoidance calmed her down a little because their world was still the one that suited him best. There were so many things he was good at, none of which were of any importance where they had gone. He could play the piano and could tell genuine antique furniture from the fake kind. He knew how to make small talk on parties and was so smart, his Korean had improved faster than her Chinese although he had to learn it in secret. But in a world where it was important to get one's hands dirty, to understand other people's physical strengths and weaknesses, to make bargains and to coerce disgusting people into accepting a deal, he was lost. He did manage do adapt to a certain degree. He had improved his powers and sometimes found hidden gems when they were looking for cultured slaves or those with interesting powers. He also managed to talk like Kris, as if it was normal to him to earn money through illegal and inhuman means.
But Luhan never fully conformed and around her he often voiced his doubts. Especially after Chanyeol's arrival he became more and more interested into the lives of Special Citizens and questioned her and her ideas more openly. She understood that part of her opinions on Special Citizens were indoctrinations but she didn't really see the point of arguing, especially not since they had managed to survive without his family's financial aid exactly because they ignored basic human rights. She was confused enough without his constant scrutinzing.

She had forgotten what it was like to 'feel' or to 'want', so she had been too unprepared when she suddenly got hit with desires.
One of the things Luhan's family had taught her was to become invisible. Her powers only mattered for the children she would have to bear eventually and her ethnicity was in the way, so she learned how to avoid getting anyone's attention. It of course wasn't always possible but the people she met were either not to remember her at all or in a vaguely positive way, and even as she scouted slaves and was part of Kris' tiny business, she managed to follow that line. Luhan was the only one she ever confessed some of her fears to.
But Park Chanyeol wasn't easy to shake off. She should have minded, unlike her he didn't grow up normally, but he made it hard to dislike him. And when he was constantly around her, always talking, always full of life, and when she began to really enjoy being the person he depended on, it came to her as a shock when she realized how much she cared. It was as if he touched part of her self she wasn't even sure existed and suddenly she wished she had never thought of lying.

She thought she could hold back, because it just couldn't work if she didn't, but she probably was exactly what Tao always called her: out of control.

Kris didn't get angry. He had showed her papers as if it was no big deal and had cut off Chanyeol who had started to ramble in agitation. Chanyeol demanded to know what the hell she was thinking but Kris forced them all into awkward silence.
He mentioned that Luhan was with his family and that she and Chanyeol should better rest. It was the end. They would throw her out. If she was lucky she would be able to go back to Luhan's family to become the borrowed womb she was meant to be.
Her 'feelings' had caused the whole misery. Someone like her probably shouldn't have had as much 'freedom' or as many 'opinions' as she had gained over the last few years.

She stood on the flat roof when the sun went down, partly to say goodbye to the familiar scenery, partly because it made her too nervous to be inside because she didnt know what would happen to her. She wasn't so oblivious of her own powers that she wouldn't notice those moments when ice started to crawl over everything around her. Sometimes it felt as if there was something strange inside her that wanted to mock her. So when the ice was beginning to reach the door, she got outside.
It was maybe because she didn't actually expect anyone to look for her, but when she heard a noise behind her, she got startled so much, she almost broke off part of the fence she was leaning against.

"Ah, sorry, it's just me" Chanyeol said and paused when their eyes met for split seconds, as if he wasn't really sure himself any longer why he had come.
She really wanted to avoid any issue connected to him. Everyone else she could have explained her decision to lie to, but he... He was just... Different. He made her feel regret.

"You know, it's Tao again," he suddenly said and walked to the edge of the roof a few metres away from her. "I'm not sure if I really understood him right but I think he was trying to throw me out. He was sweating quite a lot and I think that was my mistake, so I thought it would be better to get some fresh air but I don't know, I think I'm traumatized or something, because the streets outside suddenly look even scarier. I mean, you never know, I might get caught again and I've had enough encounters with the police for a lifetime, really." He lightly kicked the fence and leaned forward to look at the wide grey cityscape in front of them. "And anyway," he continued his rants. "Without you around I barely understand a word they're saying, so it probably doesn't matter if I'm not there."

It was probaly the right moment to apologize but she didn't know what to say. He had trusted her, she knew that, but the truth had been too incovenient.
"I'm sorry I snapped at you," he said when she kept quiet and she looked at him in bafflement.
"What? No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..." she blurted out. "I lied."

"Does Luhan know?" It didn't really sound like a question, so she only slowly nodded. "Are you two...?" he asked.

"Are we what?" And then she realized what he was trying to get at. "No," she quickly said. "He's like a brother. We grew up together."

"Right," he said and pulled a face. Endless seconds of silence followed, during which she just wanted to run away. She really shouldn't have come back. They should have kept her in captivity.

"You know, I don't think I told you," he suddenly said. "But I always wanted to be like my father. He's pretty awesome but he's not the type who likes to stick out so much, so most people just assume that he's weak. I mean, even where I grew up, they have different ideas of what a man can be like, but my father is neither the stereotype of a succesful guy, nor a loser. I thought that's fine but for a Special Citizen I'm probably a bit half-assed."

It didn't sound as though he was talking to her in particular, but as if he just needed to voice his thoughts in general. To get along with him she had always tried to ignore that he was a Special Citizen. If not, she would have seen him as a social construct, rather than a person. There were times when she unwillingly hurt him that way, and she barely knew anything about his family or his dreams, but to her it was the only way to make their coexistence possible. At least at first. After a while it was a good excuse to ignore everything standing between them. He grew up in a society where women weren't seen as average people and he thought that she was, like him, male. She didn't want to lose the affection she only received because of her lie.
She couldn't interrupt him now, because she needed to listen. She needed to know how hopeless it was. She was female and she would have been a Special Citizen, had her real parents not thrown her away. And to him she had probably stopped being desirable in any way.

"Honestly, you had me all confused," he continued with a sigh. "I thought I was going crazy because I just didn't get it. Suddenly you tell me what I don't want, although I definitely never talked to you about it, because even I didn't know any longer. I mean, seriously, I thought you were a guy, and I still..." He made a fist and pressed his lips together for a moment.
"I mean, how would that sound? 'Oh, yes, I'd really like to make out with you, but first let me tell you that my dream always was to have a wife and some children. Did I talk to you about my first crush? She almost broke my nose but she reminded me of my mother. Oh, and do you know how much it freaked me out to realize how many women just walk around the streets in China? Without anyone guarding them? In high heels and short skirts? Although I funnily still always preferred to sit at home with you and listen to your boring Chinese lessons. By the way, can you imagine it? A few years ago a boy from my neighbourhood tried to kill me when I told him that I wasn't into guys. And now I just...' I mean, I couldn't really say all that, could I? Not when I was about to rethink everything I believed in, just because I really wanted to be with you. And then you tell me that you're not what I want? Just because you probably think that every guy born in a Special District is gay? What the hell? What's wrong with you?"
The air around him was flaring and when she instinctively took a step away from him, he seemed to realize how much he had talked himself into rage.
"Sorry, I," he said helplessly. "It's just... You could have said something."

And suddenly she felt as if her whole world was crumbling in front of her eyes, leaving only her and her ridiculous ideas.
Why didn't she say anything? Because she was female. Because her family told her that people like Chanyeol would hate her, the same family who put her on a ship to a foreign country by herself when they found out that she wasn't 'normal'.
So maybe she had seen dozens of pregnant women and men with children whenever she was in a Special District, it never convinced her that they, too, were just as normal as people without powers. There always was something wrong with her. She was either too foreign, too female or too powerful and that there could be someone who was fine with it all, seemed impossible.
"I didn't know," she quietly said and it sounded stupid even to her ears.

He pulled a face. "I guess that confirms my prejudice that Koreans outside a district need everything spelled out," he muttered. "I bet you were raised by normal people after all."

"Very normal," she said. "My father sold life insurances in downtown Seoul."

"Was your mother born in a Special District?"

He seemed genuinely curious, so she said, "No. She was a beautician. I don't think they could have their own children, so they adopted me. I probably didn't get tested when I got smuggled out and my powers didn't show for years."
It was the first time she explained it to anyone apart from Luhan and that lady in the immigration office. Every fugitive had their own story and hers probably wasn't even that unusual, but what she knew bonded Special Citizens outside, always disgusted her. She probably was a hypocrite who still liked to think that she was actually normal.

"So you don't know who your real parents are?" he asked and she shook her head. "Do you want to meet them? I don't think it would be hard to find out if there was anyone controlling ice who gave away their daughter. In my neighbourhood there's a whole family of people like you. I think most ice people like to stick together."

"I'm not..." she began and stopped. She meant to say that she wasn't a Special Citizen, but that wasn't it. "I'm not sure I want to find them, actually."

"Why, I'm sure they would be happy to see you. You have no idea how thrilled most families are when they have a daughter with powers," he said optimistically. "It's like winning the lottery, because they're guaranteed to gain a good son-in-law and many grandchildren and someone who will look out for them when they're old. Everyone likes powerful girls."

"Sounds like daughters are some kind of future investment," she snorted and suppressed the urge to ask why she was brought away then. It wasn't really the moment to question Special Citizens any further, not when her prejudices had already caused a big misunderstanding.

He shrugged. "I guess," he said and looked almost embarrassed. "So, to be honest, I'm glad this isn't home. I don't think I'd stand a chance there."

"Why?" she asked and impassively watched him bridge the gap between them. He was warm and she was cold. They had always warned her that she would intimidate others with her coldness, but he never appeared to mind.

"Back home I don't really count as decent son-in-law material," he said and took her hand.

"Maybe I should try to find my family then," she snorted and felt odd. "You know, to find a decent husband." She was taught to suppress her emotion, because it was too deeply connected to her powers. It was maybe for that reason that she always felt weak and out of control around him.

He pulled a grimace as he said, "Do that and I'll introduce myself as the guy who almost burnt down a building when you got hurt. I'm sure they'd love me."

"Really? Who would want a habitual arsonist in their family though?" she muttered and he didn't answer. There had only that one time when they were so close, she didn't think she could hold back any longer. Then she had run, now she felt as if it was fine.
They were like opposites. Their gender, their powers, their breeding, their childhood, everything was different. But maybe it could work exactly because there was so much that seemed to stand between them. Because she was cold, he couldn't burn her. Because he was warm, she couldn't freeze him. Despite having the same ethnicity, they only met because they had to leave their families at different times. He was too open and she too closed off, and they both were too imperfect, though in different ways.

"Seriously, though, just how many layers are you wearing? You're like an onion," he muttered when he realized that she had another jacket under her jacket.
"Well, what a nice comparison," she said and focussed her energy on her hand on his back, feeling some twisted form of satisfaction when he cringed in surprise.

Maybe they, who knew nothing about simple affection, boundless togetherness and spontaneous feelings, were meant to be.

Finally! I reached the conclusion! This whole story gave me immense headaches... 

Also, although this concludes this arc, the general story will definitely go on eventually. I'm not sure yet about the when and how, but I quite like this universe, so...yeah.. Next time I'll definitely start with a proper plan though. I wasted at least 20k words because I deleted and rewrote like half the chapters..

Anyway! Thanks to everyone who followed this until the bitter end!