"Jae Ren. As we both know, I'm not really a teacher who can teach you anything about your magic." Mr Kim, her training instructor, pulled her out of her group to talk to her.

During training, they were separated by their type of magic. GD, of course, belonged to the tamers group. But for Jae Ren's special case of Time Magic, she was too different even though she was put in the Universal Forces group. She was sure they had just made that up recently.

Though she had group mates who used gravity, mass teleportation and molecule rearrangement magic, Time was still a different matter.

"I wouldn't say that." Jae Ren truthfully replied. Among her group mates, she still had similarities with them. A little.

"Even so, I want you to meet your new teacher for the rest of the semester." He looked over at the other end of the Open Area.

It was difficult to know who he meant at first, until Jae Ren felt who it was.

"Who... What is he?" Jae Ren asked, her eyes fixated at the man walking towards them. He looked ordinary, but it didn't feel that way for her.

"When you're unused to meeting magic of the same calibre as yours, it makes your body react differently. Look at where you're standing, Jae Ren."

She did as she was told and stared at her feet. The grass surrounding her kept waning to and fro from decaying and being reborn as bright-green little hairs on the ground.

"Am I doing that?" She had never unconsciously done anything with her magic before. Usually, it took a large amount of effort to even warm-up.

"It's you! Hi! Hello!" The stranger was already grabbing her hand in a warm hand shake. "I'm Lee Taemin! Onew hyung's brother and I am a Time user too! You're the one, right? You're Jae Ren, right? It's so nice to meet you! You know, I knew Jaekyu-Oh, excuse me." He suddenly let go and straightened his suit. "If you may excuse us, Kim Myungjoo-ssi." He bowed respectfully.

“Oh, what? Yes. Please look for an area suitable for your choice.” Mr Kim blinked.

Jae Ren was surprised by the strangers sudden change of behaviour.

" Jae Ren is now in your care."

Before she could react, Taemin was already pulling her by the hand to another unoccupied space in the Open Area. Several times she caught other students staring at them and whispering- just like the first day of school. It made her uneasy.

"We need a lot of space, you see. We need to talk and I don't think it's safe to let anyone hear us." He said, briefly glancing behind him to smile at her.

It was then she noticed they were staring at them because of how odd they looked together.

Him, with his gloved hands and tailored suit. And his hair. It kept regrowing white hair then disappearing to black hair again.

It wasn't me who was doing that to the grass, she realized. It was him. He can't control it.

"Here should be fine." He said, stopping to look around. They were at least 10 feet from the nearest group which was coincidently GD's group of Tamers. "The first thing we're going to do is talk and get better acquainted." He smiled.

"O...kay." Jae Ren unsurely said. She sat cross-legged on the grass, only to earn a queer look from him. "... What's wrong?"

"Jae Ren, if you don't mind me dropping honorific’s," He added, though she didn't think she had much of a choice. "-but can't you materialize objects out of other objects around you yet?"

"No... not really." She stood up, embarrassed. She didn't know that was possible. Wasn't that up to another type of magic?

"I'll explain then." Taemin shrugged. Jae Ren was at least grateful he was patient. He crouched down to the floor, examining the grass. "The earth has a lot of minerals embedded in it. Even at the topsoil, you don't know what you'll find. Most of the time, you just can't see it. Other than minerals, of course, there are plant seeds. They’ve either been through years of being stepped on or turned to powder or they're freshly dropped from trees, it'll work. It's a matter of understanding that there could be different possibilities of the time passage. Are you following me?"

A little. But really, no. "... I think so." After weeks of doing nothing but the usual exercises, the sudden lesson about time paradoxes caught her unprepared. "Please, go on."

"Here. I found a tiny, crushed up, almost impossible to detect part of a seed of a tree. Probably from the trees around here. Probably mango? I'm not sure..." He said, holding up something that looked like just another pebble. Well, it was a fraction of the size of a regular pebble. "If I turn this back to its original state, it would be a seed. If I grow that seed, it can be a tree. The tricky part is making that tree shape into a bench."

"A bench?" She almost choked at the word. "Is that even possible?"

Taemin laughed. "Time is an intangible thing that delves in all things that make up life itself. You used time to grow a tree, didn't you? We just simply apply a method called Tree Shaping." He buried the seed he had made into the ground. "Quite similar to topiaries, but we're making use of a tree and we won't be using metal wires to shape it."

"So... it's like training the tree to be a bench?" Jae Ren simplified. "Okay. I understand."

"Would you like to try or would you like to watch?" He asked.

She couldn't help but feel relieved he wasn't pressuring her. "Watch, please."

"Okay." He nodded. He stood up and stepped back with one hand over where he planted the seed. Jae Ren was thoroughly impressed he could do something as complicated as changing the shape of a tree while ageing it without even touching it.

It didn't even take long. After a second, the seed was already growing into a bud. Slowly, as it grew thick, it grew bent as well. It was growing in loops, quickly. It wasn't even a minute until it stopped growing.

"Neat." The word slipped out of . The 'bench' was made of wires of thin tree branches, shaping into a bench with a back-rest and leaves as a shade on top.

"Since it kept growing thickly, I had to elongate the growing process while it wasn't an adult. Right now, it's a premature tree."

Jae Ren couldn't believe this as 'premature'. "It's really... amazing. The last I did that was closer to this was turning someone into a baby."

"I heard about that." He said, sitting down. "Sit with me. That will be the first thing we talk about."

She did as she was told. She noticed he conveniently made the bench face away from other students. "About Seomin?"

"You shouldn't speak her name so lightly." He said in slight warning. "Those who are considered outlaws and oath breakers are taboo around here. It's why I apologized for naming your... eighth? Great grandmother." He said, sighing.

"She was an outlaw?" Jae Ren asked, though she wasn't surprised. Jaekyun had a reason for hiding, and she knew it had to be a grave and serious reason.

"She used to be." Taemin answered. "Before Sanctuary got in contact with her and invited her here, she was a wanted fugitive. She had done... a lot. And I mean, a lot." He shook his head, though Jae Ren wondered why he seemed happy.

No. He's nostalgic. She thought.

"She took a vow to never do those crimes again. That was around when she was 5 or 6 centuries old already. Me and your- let's call her your grandmother-" He laughed. "We were real close. It kind of makes me happy just talking to you." He admitted, smiling at a distance. "Even more since we're the same type. It's almost like fate."

"Was she special to you?" Jae Ren couldn't help but ask.

"Special?" He chuckled. "Jaekyun and I dated."

That shocked her.

"Don't act so surprised!" He laughed even harder. "Jaekyun was a few decades older than me, sure, but we really clicked! But it didn't work out after a while..." He settled down, though he was still smiling. "She saw me as more of a little brother. We dated for like, a week, at most. Who she really loved, now that, was the shocker."

"Who?" She had a feeling it really was a shocker.

Taemin's smile widened. "She loved Onew hyung."

"Oh my God... That is so weird..." She blurted. "No offence, though."

"None taken." He shook his head, amused. "I'm the youngest in Onew hyung's brotherhood. I wouldn't be surprised if he never told you about me. Since, well, you can see I'm unstable."

She felt it. Being close to him made her feel like sitting next to a whirlpool of power.

"I wear these special gloves that one of the Councilmen in Sanctuary that suppresses my magic to help." He explained. "But I could still teach you, if you don't mind."

"Of course I don't." She said without missing a beat. "For the first time since I got here, I feel like I actually belong." She admitted.

VIXX was always in other classes. Yes, being with G-Dragon helped, but she still felt like he was hiding something from her.

"I understand." He said. "Even though I have my brothers, it's not actually the same of being with someone with the same... aura. The same scent and everything. It's why I take on lone Scouting missions that the Sanctuary Board members post. I work for the higher-ups, you see. It helps me see the world. What about you? What are you studying for college?"

She couldn't remember how they ended up talking about likes and dislikes. Or about dreams and goals. But she felt comfortable.

"I really just wanted to stay with my Guardians. They're... important to me."

"So Leo is the one leaving, huh? I don't think I know this Seohae. I lost contact with Jaekyun after she left Sanctuary." Taemin said. "Frankly, I didn't know she even created guardians. She always had a different opinion about them."

"Me too, actually. I don't like how they're tied down to their masters forever..." She said. Hesitantly, she managed to tell him her plan.

"Don't tell anyone, Taemin-ssi... but I'm looking for a way to disconnect myself from my guardians without hurting them. I want them to be free from me."

Taemin blinked. "Jae Ren... what if they don't want to be 'free'? Though I can understand your reasoning. You sounded just like Jaekyun."

"I want them to stay with me, actually..." She admitted. "I just don't want the burden of killing them with my death. After all..."

Taemin understood. "I guess immortality always comes with a price, right?" He lightly joked.

He knew what she was telling him with her silence. The price they unwillingly paid for such a strong magic as Time.

It made them prone to disease. It made their bodies weak.

"You know, I drink up to 8 tonics a day." He said. "One for my blood, one for my heart, another for my bones, and another for my joints, with another one for my vital organs, the others are vitamins." He chuckled. "Though I'm guessing Jaekyun found a way around that."

Jae Ren realized. "One of my guardians... he's really amazing with making healing compounds." Hongbin.

"That's great! See? No matter what other people say, just remember that Jaekyun... is a good person." He nodded. "Coming from me: someone who has known her for a long time."

She nodded in return.

"Shouldn't I get back to class?" She noticed other students starting to head to their respective classes. She even had brief eye contact with GD.

"No. Not really. I'll just say I had to teach you a lot for the schools shortcomings. They won't complain. Stay a while and keep me company. I want to see how much of Jaekyun is in you." He smiled.

Yes, Taemin is in the fic, though not as prominent as a character as Onew is.