To his surprise, Junho didn’t die. Instead of falling straight to the ground, they drifted in thin air, Chansung’s strong arm holding him up, uncomfortably squishing his stomach. Everything happened quickly, and dazed Junho watched the ground go buy as they floated over his grandfather’s garden.  It felt like he was dreaming, and quite possibly he was still curled up in his grandfather’s arm chair and all of this nonsense was only happening in his head. But the morning breeze felt too cold, far too real for this only to be a dream. But maybe the chemicals in the cleaning agents had gone to his head and were making him hallucinate.

Junho’s attempt at rationalizing the weirdness he was experiencing was interrupted when they started to lose height, and the ground started to approach frighteningly fast. Unable to land on his feet when Chansung let go of him, Junho rolled along the sidewalk, the harsh asphalt bruising his thighs and elbows. Barely given time to curse, Junho was roughly pulled up on his wrist.

“We need to go. Now.”

Unable to think, Junho just let himself be dragged along. Luckily the streets were clean, because he didn’t even have his shoes on.

“Where are we going?” he eventually stuttered up.

“We have to get as far as possible, they are coming for us.”

“Those girls?”

“Yes, the girls.”

Starting to feel frightened, Junho was very sure he did not want to meet those women again. Thinking fast, he noticed they were very close to the subway entrance.

“We should catch the subway, it will quickly get us far away.”

“Subway?” Chansung stopped for a moment, looking at him, “The big moving metal boxes?”

“Yes, exactly those, BMMB like we usually call them.”

The sarcasm in Junho’s voice went completely unnoticed, and Chansung smiled briefly and told him to lead the way.

Within minutes they were there, and only then Junho realized he didn’t have anything with him, no wallet and no money. The only thing he had was his grandfather’s journal that he still hadn’t let go of.

“Do you have any money?” he asked desperately.

“You mean the emperor’s bills? No, I don’t need those.”

“Well, we do if we want to get on the subway.”

Completely blank, Chansung stared at him and Junho cursed. This dude sure wasn’t going to be any help.

It was still very early on a Sunday morning, so there were very few people around and no guards visible, so Junho quickly jumped over the gate designed for disabled people and told Chansung to do the same. They got a few evil glances from the other passenger, but Junho couldn’t be worried about that at the moment. As they ran down the stairs he could hear the train approaching so he hurried even more, telling Chansung to do the same.

As soon as they jumped into the subway train, the door was closed behind them, and exhausted they sat down. Slowly the train started moving, and as they were moving away from the station, Junho noticed a blue haired girl running down the stairs.

“ they are here! The crazy assassin girls, I think they are right behind us!”

“Did they spot us?” Chansung asked intensely.

“I don’t know, I’m not sure, maybe… She came down just as the train was leaving so I’m not sure if she saw us. How did they even know where to find us?”

“They can track me” Chansung answered quickly, “…I also think they hit me with a tracer, which should make their job a whole lot easier.”

“A What?”

Without explaining Chansung turned his back at him, and only then Junho noticed that his T-shirt was completely torn up in the back, into shreds, and there was a big red stain on his right shoulder, presumably blood.

“D-Did they hit you?” he asked hesitantly, the sight of blood making him uncomfortable.

“You need to get the tracer out. Quick.”

Looking carefully at the wound, Junho noticed a small arrow head sticking into it. With all his might, he grabbed his fingers around it tightly and tried to pull it out, but the arrowhead was already deep inside Chansung’s flesh.

“I-I can’t get it out, it’s too deep.”

“Then pull harder.”

“It’s going to hurt so bad…”

“If it hurts it hurts, just do it quickly.”

Nervously, Junho did as he was told, and pulled as hard as he possibly could. Eventually something started to give, and he managed to pull the entire thing out. The bleeding immediately increased, and Chansung screamed out in pain, causing the only woman sharing their subway cabin to stand up and flee to the next one. Honestly it was a bit surprising she had stayed there to begin with, because both of them probably looked like a couple of lunatics.

Carefully, Junho examined the arrow. It was covered in blood, but underneath it was neat and black, and didn’t look like anything special.

“Y-You called this a tracer?”

“Hmm, it’s enchanted” Chansung replied shortly, “As long as we have this, we are sitting ducks, easy targets. They will find us without any problems.”

Right at that moment, the train stopped at the next station, and out of incredible luck, the subway train on the other side, going in the opposite direction was still open.

“Wait here!” Junho said quickly. As fast as he could, he ran over to the other side, and threw the arrow into the other train. When he turned back, Chansung had stumbled out of the cabin, his forehead very sweaty and he looked terrible from all the blood loss. Pushing him back in, Junho complained angrily:

“I told you to wait, you can’t afford to spend your energy pointlessly.”

“It’s not for nothing” he explained, “…as I move I leave trace amount of pixie dust behind me, they can sense that, it will help sell the lie if they can sense I went out here.”

“Oh, I see, that’s clever…” Junho had to admit.

Right then, the cabin doors were closed behind them, and the subway drove ahead, but hopefully, they would be safe for now.