"D-Dark Angels...can...can what?" Dara says, aghast. She stands up and stares at Minzy with pained eyes. Minzy gulps, really not liking the ordeal she's stuck in. She guesses this must be what it feels like when a doctor tells a patient that they're going to die. She hates it.

       "Chaerin seems to have had a Barrier put on her that is designed against Dark Angels. A Barrier can be against any Creature, and essentially that specific type of Creature cannot touch the person, or to be more accurate, their Barrier. If they do, it causes intense pain and burns, and each touch will take some time off the Creature's lifespan," Minzy explains quietly, reluctantly.

       Chaerin's eyes grow increasingly wide until they start to get too dry. And then tears form and now her eyes feel too wet. None of this makes any sense, it can't make any sense.

       "W-what do you mean it takes off some of the lifespan?" she asks, petrified. Minzy inhales tightly.

       "Every living thing has a set lifespan, whether it's a human, a Creature, a plant, or anything else. Shinigami Creatures can see these lifespans, you might be aware." Dara and Chaerin nod warily, waiting with bated breath for Minzy's further explanation.

       "Depending on how much contact is made with a Barrier and for how long, different amounts of time can be subtracted from the lifespan. This can range from milliseconds to decades. From what you've told me, I'm guessing that tiny touch probably deducted a couple of minutes, definitely less than ten, off of Dara's lifespan. Not a big deal at all, but in big amounts, touching a Barrier can have dire consequences...obviously." Minzy swallows, about to cry herself because she's just looking at these two girls in front of her and they both look like they want to kill themselves right here and right now.

       Chaerin takes a very, very deep breath, closing her eyes and trying hard to contain her emotions. Dara looks ing devastated and she glances at Chaerin for support of any kind. Dara needs something to stay rooted right now and Chaerin is the only anchor in sight.

       Why is this happening to them?

       "Okay, so...my dad put a Barrier on me? How does that work?" Chaerin asks slowly, stopping herself from just screaming and destroying everything in the room. Minzy sighs a little, relieved that she can talk about more technical things now.

       "A Barrier is a rather complex spell that all Creatures are capable of performing, but that doesn't mean everyone knows how. The complexity of the spell and the strength of that Creature's magic will determine how harsh the Barrier is. It's hard to control though, but your dad is a good magician. I'm sure his Barrier on you is of at least moderate complexity and strength."

       "How do we get it off?" Dara demands, clearly sounding stressed and tense. Minzy blinks a few times; she didn't expect Dara to be so...angry, since she just looked so strained and far away.

       "The only way to get a Barrier off is to find the person who cast it in the first place and ask them to take it off. Which...will be a challenge, to say the least," she says grimly. Chaerin swears under her breath. Her father? No way.

       Dara runs a hand through her hair like she did when she first confronted Chaerin in the restaurant kitchen. She exhales shakily, her hands trembling.

       "I...I'm gonna...I have to go," she chokes out, stumbling past the couch and hastily putting her shoes on. Chaerin and Minzy watch, stunned, as Dara is gone in an instant and the door is left swinging open.

       "Chaerin? Go talk to her," Minzy says softly. "I'll try and figure something out on my end." Chaerin blinks, snapping out of it. Suddenly everything dawns on her. Dara just ran out and she's probably going to black out and collapse in the middle of the road or something because Dara is a lot frailer than she looks.

       "Thanks a lot Minzy, I have to go now!" Chaerin shouts quickly as she bolts out the door to follow the love of her life. She is going to fix this problem. For Dara.

       Damn right she is.

       Contact with Dark Angels can kill them...

       Subtracted from the lifespan...

       Dire consequences...

       A challenge, to say the least...

       Contact can kill...Contact can...Contact...

       The words are rushing through Dara's head as she blindly pushes past people in the street, tears silently streaming down her cheeks in despair.

       More words that are painfully familiar to her start to pop up everywhere and her mind starts conjuring up horrible images and she wants it all to get out.

       "Dara, you cannot touch him," her mother says harshly, yanking Dara's arm back. Dara feels pain in her wrist but ignores it, looking hopelessly at the bloody body of her father in the bathtub.

       "D-Dad!" she shouts desperately, trying to get her voice past all of the medical workers in the bathroom, who are all murmuring to each other with calmness, calmness that Dara can't understand. "Daddy, I love you! Come back! Dad!" She struggles against her mother's firm grip but the medical workers just keep on murmuring and her father just keeps on bleeding.

       Her mother growls a little, dragging Dara into the corner of the room, but Dara's eyes are still locked on the bathroom with emptiness. Her mother grabs Dara's chin, forcing her to look away.

       "Sandara, I know you are hurt and I am too. But you cannot go near him anymore, okay?" she demands with frustration. Dara can hear the hidden sadness in her mother's voice and suddenly understands that she needs to be stronger. She swallows her tears and gives a reluctant nod.

       You cannot touch him...you cannot go near him anymore...

       Dara keeps on running and running until she arrives at the entrance of her house. Bom is behind this door. But before she can control her body enough to find her keys and open the door, she collapses on the ground, more images taking over everything.

       Dara shuffles through the school hallways, hugging her textbooks and avoiding everyone's gaze, her wings twitching with fear. Suddenly her black feathers brush the back of a Vampire who is loudly chatting with other Creatures.

       The Vampire turns around indignantly, and when he sees that it was Dara's wing his anger flares even more.

       "Don't touch me, you !" he complains, brushing off his back as effectively as he can while looking at Dara with disgust. The Creatures he's talking to all groan with him.

       "Yeah, you !"

       "Ew, get out of here!"

       "Go out and kill someone else!"

       Dara blocks it all out, her wings folding uncomfortably. She hurries to her next class suppressing hot tears.

       Don't touch me...you ......kill someone...

       The memories are too much. Dara doesn't know where she is anymore. She just wants it all to leave. She needs help, she needs support, she needs someone to pinch her and wake her up from this horrible nightmare.

       She needs Chaerin.

       Chaerin rushes out of the house, whirling her head back and forth and looking for any sign of Dara. Her breath starts speeding up, stress and worry dictating her every action.

       "Dara! Sandara Park! Where are you?!" Chaerin cups her hands around , yelling into the cold air. People are staring at her suspiciously but she doesn't care.

       "Dammit, where would she go? Where would she be...?" Chaerin mutters to herself, briskly pacing down the sidewalk, her eyes racing from side to side desperately trying to find Dara. She hits her head with both hands, racking her brain for an answer. Then her eyes light up as she remembers.

       "Bom became my own pillar of strength in Korea."

       Chaerin immediately jumps up, sprinting toward Bom and Dara's house with long, desperate strides.

       When she finally arrives after what feels like too long, her heart breaks into a million pieces at the sight she is greeted with.

       Dara is sitting on the corner of the steps, her knees brought up to her chest and her head buried in them. Her elbows are by her knees and her hands are shakily clutching her hair and covering her ears. She's rocking back and forth, her breath escaping her in quick gasps and chokes.

       "D-Daddy, I love...please come back, I...I'm not a ...I won't..." she continually mutters to herself, lost in her own world of trauma and pain. Chaerin instantly feels tears well up behind her eyelids, threatening to block out her vision. Her legs feel weak as she slowly steps toward Dara's crumbling form.

       "Dara...Dara are you okay?" she asks timidly before mentally slapping herself. Of course she's not ing okay, look at her. "," she murmurs, her arms twitching to hug Dara and her hands only able to carefully touch her shoulder where a t-shirt covers the skin, nothing more that will comfort h. She wants Dara to stop, just stop looking so vulnerable and broken like this. Because Dara going through pain makes Chaerin go through ten times that pain and Chaerin has never felt this guilty or this responsible or this horrible after seeing somebody so in pain and so fragile.

       She curls her hands into fists, watching helplessly. She gets that familiar feeling of being useless and she hates it, she hates it so ing much.

       Chaerin grits her teeth and closes her eyes, trying to ignore the feeling of knives in her heart every time Dara chants something to herself. She makes her way up the stone stairs and knocks on the door weakly. Almost immediately, the door opens and Bom peeks out.

       "Chaerin! What's up? Did your friend tell you anything?" she asks curiously, her eyes innocent and wide. Chaerin gulps, her tears finally spilling over her eyelids.

       "D-Dara...she..." she sputters nervously. She exhales, calming herself. "Bommie, could you come out and help me?" she says, glancing at Dara and feeling more knives pierce her heart. Bom seems to hear the apprehension in Chaerin's voice so she quickly steps outside and gasps at Dara, who is still rocking back and forth on the ground.

       "What the happened?!" Bom yells indignantly, but she doesn't wait for an answer as she scurries down the steps and takes Dara in her embrace. Dara automatically buries her head deep into Bom's chest and Bom begins to whisper words of comfort in Dara's ear.

       Chaerin's tears start coming down like waterfalls because she feels so hopeless and she has no idea what's happening or what's going to happen. And she hates that Bom is always there to comfort Dara so well even though Chaerin is the girlfriend that is supposed to be helping through every damn thing that's going on right now.

       Dara finally stops chanting things and just stays silent in Bom's arms, occasionally letting out a "please" or a "Daddy", and each one hacks away at Chaerin, destroying her little by little. Eventually Dara falls asleep and Chaerin heaves a sigh of relief because at least Dara is settled enough to go to sleep now, even if her nose is red and her cheeks are tear-stained.

       Bom picks up Dara's small body in her arms and stands up, turning to Chaerin with worried eyes.

       "Chaerin, can you open the door? I'll take her to her room," she whispers. Chaerin instantly complies, holding the door open and following Bom into the apartment. Bom gently sets Dara on her bed, covering her shaking body with the blankets and giving her a light kiss on the forehead.

       Then she turns to Chaerin and her eyes harden. She points a finger at Chaerin, hovering it a couple of inches away from the tip of her nose.

       "You. Explain. Out there. Now." And with that, Bom casts a last remorseful glance at Dara before hurrying out of the room. Chaerin's tears still haven't stopped but she wipes them away with a soaked shirt-sleeve anyway, swallowing hard and following Bom out of the room. But not before she turns around and looks at Dara's peaceful sleeping form, trying to shake out the images of a frail, weak Dara trembling and muttering on the ground.

       She swallows again even though is unnaturally dry. She wants to just collapse on the ground in tears and shout and scream to the world but Bom wants an explanation and Chaerin knows that she deserves one. So she quietly closes Dara's door behind her and sits down next to Bom on the couch, a volcano about to erupt inside her but she suppresses it.

       "What the hell did you find out? This hasn't happened in years," Bom asks angrily. Chaerin furrows her eyebrows in confusion.

       "What hasn't happened in years?"

       Bom sighs exasperatedly. "I've only seen it happen twice before. Dara can have these weird attacks and she starts talking to herself, and it's always about her dad and the bullying, and I just..." She trails off and folds her hands in her lap before glancing at Chaerin. "But when she wakes up, she's fine," she reassures after seeing Chaerin's tortured face.

       Chaerin can't breathe. To think that she triggered a trauma attack in Dara that releases memories that are of unimaginable pain to her. Chaerin feels like her lungs are being squeezed between two brick walls. She chokes out a sob, covering with one hand.

       Bom exhales worriedly, adjusting herself on the couch. She leans forward and fixes Chaerin with a determined, almost mad gaze.

       "So can you tell me what happened? I need to know why Dara came home like that instead of brightly smiling because you found a solution," she says, sharply gesturing to Dara's room. Chaerin takes a deep breath and just tries to let out all of her feelings in one breath so the agony won't last as long.

       "I feel like it's a big nightmare and my dad hates Dark Angels and he put a Barrier on me which means Dark Angels can't touch me which means Dara can't touch me or else her lifespan will be shorter and Dara ran away and I found her here and now she's in the other room having nightmares of her own and I feel really goddamn useless and really sad and can't we just be ing happy?" she blurts all at once. Her world collapses around her and she covers her face with trembling hands, sobbing almost uncontrollably into them. She doesn't care to even try to control it anymore.

       Bom immediately gets up, sitting next to Chaerin and wrapping her arms around her. Chaerin feels the comforting warmth from her embrace and she might also feel a little bit of Siren work going on. But no matter what Bom is doing, Chaerin wants her to keep on doing it because it makes her feel safer.

       Not safe, but safer. And for this moment that's all Chaerin cares about.

       Sitting on the edge of the bed, Chaerin rubs her palms together for the thousandth time as she fidgets slightly and her knee bounces up and down with stress.

       She glances at Dara for the millionth time as she holds her breath and hopes that Dara has woken up but also hopes she hasn't woken up because Dara hasn't looked this peaceful in what feels like a long while.

       She's been thinking for a couple of hours and the sight of Dara shaking and crying has stuck with her for a couple of hours and she can't bear the agony anymore. Bom told Chaerin that Dara barely has any memory of the trauma attack after she wakes up except that it happened, so Chaerin isn't going to bring it up. She tries to think of what to answer if Dara asks what happened.

       But there's no room for that because suddenly Dara is squeezing her eyes shut like she has a big headache and then she blinks a little, her eyes adjusting to the lighting of the room. Chaerin gasps quietly, keeping her distance while also leaning forward and very carefully wiping Dara's forehead with a damp cloth. Don't touch her skin or her hair, she constantly has to remind herself.

       Dara looks to the nightstand where she somehow knows there is a cup of water. She drinks the entire thing in one gulp, swallowing and exhaling, sounding somewhat content. She shifts her gaze to Chaerin now, blinking nervously.

       "How a–"

       "I'm gonna go visit him," Chaerin cuts her off, her voice shaking and sounding tired. She can't prolong Dara's pain anymore; she has to do it as soon as possible. Dara sits up a little and Chaerin wants to gentlty push her back down but she can't touch her so recklessly like that (not when her hair is splayed across her shoulders) and it bothers the hell out of her.

       "Visit who?"

       Chaerin takes a big breath. "I'll visit my dad tomorrow. I'll set everything straight, I'll make him remove the Barrier, and we can be happy." It sounds a lot easier than it is, Chaerin knows. But she has to try.

       Dara blinks, not at all believing that it's that simple. But she refrains from criticizing at this obviously very weakening moment so instead she says, "Tell me about that. Your father, the Dark Angel thing, everything. Why the hell do you have a Barrier on you and why were you so scared of me before?"

       Chaerin knows that Dara needs to know because Dara has revealed her entire past to her and she hasn't revealed anything to Dara. So she takes a deep breath and tries to calm her heart before she blurts out her entire story with Hyori and her mom and the funeral and the dirty yellow eyes. Dara looks hollowed out and so, so guilty when she's finished.

       But then, before the dam in Dara's eyes can be broken, Chaerin ends by telling Dara that she had the recurring nightmare but Dara showed up in the last one and that's when Chaerin knew that Dara had changed her life for the better. Dara had saved her. And she doesn't know how but she's sure that it's the last nightmare she'll ever have of her mother's death.

       And when she says that, Dara gives a small smile and whispers, "I love you," with the most sincere of eyes and the most tearful of gazes and the most touched of hearts, and then she says, "You changed my life," and it makes those wings on Chaerin's heart take flight again, both with happiness and with hope.

       She'll fix this, no matter how hard it is. She will let Dara be happy.

       Chaerin taps her feet on the ground, breathing into her bare hands to warm them up. Impatiently, she raps on the door again because the longer she stays out here alone the more anxious she gets.

       She tries to suppress the anxiety by thinking of Dara. Thinking of how Dara smirks and how Dara spins on her heel and how every time Dara has an eating contest with Bom she always loses. How Dara giggles and blushes and how Dara smiles and laughs.

       And imagining. Imagining how Dara's embrace feels, how Dara's hand feels in hers, how Dara's kisses feel.

       Memories of that first tingling electricity Chaerin felt when they touched begin to grow stronger but they disperse like sand in the wind when the door finally clicks and opens.

       Chaerin's father peeks out from behind the old-fashioned red oak door. When he sees his daughter, his eyes light up significantly and he immediately opens the door all the way, holding his arms out and bringing Chaerin into a hug that Chaerin gladly accepts. She hasn't seen her father in a long time.

       They settle on the couch together and talk about a whole lot of stuff, catching up on things that Chaerin really doesn't think are worth catching up on. But she does it anyway because she knows that she should cherish the time with her father since her girlfriend just woke up from an agonizing nightmare about her own father yesterday (Chaerin never forgets anymore to remind herself nowadays that she lived and still lives a fortunate life).

       Finally, Chaerin's dad asks the question that has probably been bothering him since Chaerin knocked on his door and he saw her.

       "So what brought you here today, Chaerin? You're not the type to show up for a simple visit," he asks gently, curiously. Chaerin gulps because she knows he won't be happy. She builds up the courage and spits it out like it's poison.

       "Dad, I know you put a Dark Angel Barrier on me." His eyes widen and he looks like he wants to say something but he can't get it out. "I want you to take it off," Chaerin says seriously. And immediately she backs away. She has never been scared of her father.

       But now, the comfort of thoughts of Dara immediately fades and Chaerin is filled with pure fear.