;; — III. heart of the tree

Nakasekai Mikoto woke up in the middle of the night, a normal routine for her as far as she could remember. Dreaming about strange, certainly weird dreams are very common among humans, but hers were no ordinary dreams. The colors were absolutely vivid; the sensations so real that it felt as if she wasn’t dreaming but experiencing reality wide awake. The ravenette yawned, reaching for a notebook and a pen that was under her pillow.

Across the room, her roommate was snoring the night away, and while it was somewhat disturbing the clarity of her thoughts, Marianne didn’t mind. Instead, she opened the notebook to the first empty page she could find that was directly after her last entry. The glow from the full moon outside that was shining through the window near her headboard gave her ample light, eliminating the need to use her cellphone as a flashlight.

As a child, Marianne often dreamt about one thing: a broad and majestic tree that stood in a paradise of bronze. Sometimes it would be a vision of the tree being absolutely beautiful beyond comparison – the leaves sparkling in different colors as if they were precious gems and a sapphire-like body of water beneath the tree so full of life. Other nights, it would be a dreadful nightmare – the tree engulfed in looming shadows of absolute black, drying it from the inside. Nightmares usually left one out of breath and shaken, maybe even scared, but her nightmares often caused irremediable terror and pain. It always felt like she was dying.

When she grew up, she would then hear voices in her dreams, but they were clear whispers, like someone calling her from her consciousness. They called to her, enticing her to come to them, but the fear of the unknown pulled her back to reality even before she could take the next step.

Now, however, when she had started college, her dreams about that certain tree and those voices were replaced by things that were so… unlike normal dreams. No, they felt as if they were memories. Things that went on with her life, but then again, they didn’t feel like they were here own.

January 29th.

Dreamt that I was pulling someone up to his feet. I was talking to “Luhan” and the person I was pulling “Kris”. I said something too… “Yeah, we’re short of one member!” was what I said. The person I was pulling up looked tall and had a handsome face, like the ones you would see on magazines, his face enticing women of all ages with a cool, confident expression. But laughing suited him too, like how he looked like in my dream. “Luhan” and I tricked him so we could finally pull him up. Someone told us that we were very tricky. I think he was “Yixing”. There was also those two other guys… one was trying not to laugh. I think that was “Chen”, and the one who was standing with an amused smile was “Tao”. So… this time, I’m “Xiumin”, I guess.

Anyway, we played soccer. “Luhan” and “Yixing” were my teammates. “Luhan” was kicking the ball when “Tao” intercepted him and passed it to “Kris”. Man, that dude has some seriously long legs. Anyway, he tried to pass it to “Chen” but I got the ball first. We were just passing it around, trying to score a goal, before “Chen” scored first. Ah, I’ll beat him in the next round!

“Wait, what the hell am I saying?” the girl whispered, scratching out the last sentence. Confusion was the first thing that came to her as to why she just naturally thought of beating “Chen” when he was just a figment of her dreams. Yeah, dreams, no matter how memory-like they were. Why her subconscious would dream of something like that, she didn’t know and probably didn’t want to know.

After she had jotted down every bit of her memory-like dream, Marianne skimmed through her previous entries. There would be times when she wondered why her dreams would always be about these twelve boys, and only those twelve. With every dream, she would always be one of them, like sometimes she would be “Suho” or “Chanyeol” or “Yixing” or “Kris”. And what she dreamt about had a chronological sense – one time she had something about that group where “Kai” belonged (she had been “Kai” that time) were doing a performance-slash-class-project in the school field while the sun was about to set, and the next time she had dreamt of their group, when she was “Sehun”, they were being graded with their showcase of abilities.

Even though she barely listened in class, much less the electives that were inserted in between her majors as per requirements are concerned, she did, however, remember from her Psychology class that dreams were usually subconscious thoughts and wishes of a person, involving people whom that person has met in their lives, whether it be a short glance in the middle of a busy street or a lifetime of acquaintanceship. But there was nothing in there that matched her current dreams. Well, sure, maybe she’s seen them somewhere even if she really doesn’t remember, but there was no way in hell that she even remotely thought of being one of them, because really, the twelve boys were virtually unknown to her.

“Ah, all this thinking is keeping me wide awake!” Marianne whispered to herself, almost exasperated by the overanalyzing that she’s been doing. It was the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake.

The morning after, she had woken up feeling dead tired and groggy; last night felt like it was just a second ago. With a half-asleep brain, she trudged through the dorm room, sluggish and disheveled. Cold showers didn’t really wake her up — well, actually they did, but only during the shower itself, as she usually fell back to being half-awake after stepping out of the bathroom. Stuffing her phone in her backpack, Marianne yawned as she got out of her dorm room, making her way towards the downstairs common kitchen to grab some toast and headed out to the campus that was literally a just some meters away from her dorm.

Her school days fell in a routine — and not the kind of routine one would usually think of. No, her daily routine was that she would almost always be distracted, daydreaming or even asleep in class. Her professors have long since learned to deal with this behavior of hers after she had once presented a medical certificate about mild narcolepsy after being sent to the Dean for sleeping in class. Her Physical Educations and Art Appreciations electives, as well as her major courses, were the only few ones that she could hold her attention out for long, but it wasn’t usually without some sort of struggle for her not to send her mind flying away. Again.

As with her dreams at night, all her “zoning-out”, as she personally coined it, was still centered on those twelve mysterious, if not fictional, boys, just like how she usually had that beautiful tree or those voices before she had become a college student. Frankly, it annoyed her how they were always on her mind, even though she had a myriad of classmates whom she dealt with on a regular basis.

Sometimes, though, she can take a hold of her mild narcoleptic episodes. Well, more like they didn’t come as frequently as they would on some days. But really, it was a bit funny, if not a tad ironic, that she gets out of her episodes out of class, like her mind was targeted to when she is the most vulnerable as opposed to being concentrated while walking, doing everyday stuff, or something as potentially dangerous as P.E. Times when she wasn’t sitting in a classroom, waiting to be bored for hours on end, usually was the counter for her little dilemma.

“Ya! Look out!”

Engrossed with her own thoughts, Marianne failed to hear the warning until it was too late — a soccer ball flied right smack on her face, sending her tumbling back until she landed on the soft grassy ground in a daze.

“You okay?”

“Ohmygod I think you hit her too hard!”

“Miss, do you wanna go to the nurse’s office?”

“Hey, Kyung Myeon! This is your fault, so take her to the nurse’s office!”

“Aah, no, I’m fine, really.” Her gentle voice declared, laced with a soft chuckle. Truthfully, her face, which she was pretty sure was so absolutely red by now, hurt like a , but she’s learned to endure a lot of things, this included.

“Miss, you sure?”

“Y-Yeah, no harm done.” She lied, standing back on her own feet and dusting off the grass and dirt from the seat of her jet-black pants. Seriously speaking, though, it really wasn’t that painful for her, as if her pain was curbed slightly to lessen what she would feel. Ah, maybe she was going numb from all that pain from P.E. Or maybe she’s developed a thick skull already? Well whatever the reason for that was, somehow, Marianne was actually glad that the pain was subsiding faster than she anticipated it, because she’d really rather not walk around with random facial wincing.

“Aah, I’d better go. Sorry for interrupting your game.” She bowed lightly before skittering off to her next class, where she probably would spend an hour or two with her mind in a faraway place, with one of those twelve weird boys.

What Marianne couldn’t know was, while for the normal human logic, it would be impossible, she actually “received” memories from the twelve boys. Well, so to speak.

“She certainly is a weird one, isn’t she?” mused Luna, a playful smile on her face as she watched Marianne in the orb that reflected the dimension that Sol guarded, observing the girl as she walked towards her class in the orb of the dimension that she herself kept watch on.

Sol responded with a small nod, the cause of the bearer of the Heart’s “oddness” already solved in his mind. It had to be the fact that, as the Heart, she was connected to the Twelve Forces. The ones that have guarded her — or the Heart in her — a thousand years ago. Separated to keep the darkness from ever reaching them and her.

A confident, almost smug, smirk formed itself on the Legend’s face, only to be replaced by confusion when the other Legend had turned to him with a troubled look.

She had seen it through the eyes that could tear through the cosmos itself, through the eyes that could pry the very secrets of the universe. And what she saw was largely unsettling. It can't be.

“The Darkness has woken up. They’re all in danger.”

_{Because the same person that bugged me about Chapter 2 bugged me about Chapter 3 a few days ago. Aaaahhhh half-assed chapter i'm sorry ; u ;}