The raven-haired boy looked across the window. Snow was falling down the sky, white against white, the usual. His eyes followed suit as a bird, crow he was sure, flew past his sight, encircling the air weighlessly. He fixed his gaze to the bird, which seemed to looked at him as it was flying. Jaehyeon blinked, he had a sudden urge to touch that bird.

“Jaehyeon!”

He was abruptly snapped from his trance as hissing pain was beating on his backhead. He turned around, ready to scowl whoever did it to him, only to be muted when he saw his mistress looking at him with such stern face.

“Mi... Mistress....”

“Twice in a day that you didn’t pay attention to me, young man, and you know exactly that it is what I hate the most. Get out of the class, bring me three big buckets of fire from Jal Hwajae. No magic! Now!”

Jaehyeon was just about to heave a deep, desperate sigh, but he bit his tongue in progress. Mistress Yuri was not to be protested when she was crossed. He nodded and scurried out of the room.

“Gee! What a viper!” he cursed under his breath.

BAM!

“Ouch!”

Jaehyeon rubbed his just coldly hit backhead.

I can hear your saying. If you curse me again, I will turn you into a frog for a night!

A shiver ran down Jaehyeon’s spine. He just remembered that Mistress Yuri was very aware of every verbal communication that happened inside the line of her power range. He quickly dashed outside the bigh house and went to the storeroom on the back of the house, taking the bronze bucket which weighed more than he did with a grunt. Had he not been taught some martial art by his adopted father, he would have failed even in pushing the metal several inches ahead.

Jaehyeon gave another grunt as he successfully put the bucket on the top of his head. He quickly ran through the forest, up to the direction of the well. He discreetly held the curse, ready to spill it once he was out of the reach of the house. It was hard though, the bucket was heavy and the snow was biting cold on his body. He huffed a sigh as he started walking off, feeling exhausted already before his punishment really began.

Jal Hwajae was a well that was stated on the top of hill, bursting fire once in a while as it was actually a hole connected to the center of earth. Everything falling into it would meet the gleaming magma beneath and ressurected the fire to the ground. The well was the embodiment of coolness and scariness at the same time.

Talking at the coolness and scariness, Mistress Yuri was one. That snow witch was surely one to fear in this region. Her natural ice related power has rendered her eyes and hair gray in process. She was blessed with snow, whenever she walked it would be snowing three hundred meters surrounding her. If the icy skill was not enough, she was one of the most powerful witches in the world. Though she was cool and cold in the all the ways outside, inside, she was rather soft and caring. She was nice enough to take some of the talented kids in the country and nurture their potential powers. She, however, couldn’t stand on being ignored. She would beat the ignorer off with such merciless punishment.

Just like how she punished Jaehyeon.

The hill was still within the reach of her power. It wasn’t as intensely cold as it was around the house, but he was still frozen from head to toe. Jaehyeon didn’t wear too many layers of clothing when he quickly escaped from Mistress Yuri’s house. In his attempt to dodge the reach of her acute hearing sense and blurt the curse instantly, he had forgotten to wear at least a simple coat to cover his body. With just two layers of not so thick clothes, Jaehyeon needed really hard to hold his chattering teeth.

And now he needed to wait for the Jal Hwajae to spit its fire to the surface.

How cool.

SHWOOSH!

Jaehyeon jumped backward as a of giant flame surged from inside the well. After a second of being stunned, he quickly lifted the bucket and put it on a spot on the well fence, where the bucket was put to contain the fiery drop from the well. The bucket was casted with a spell, it wouldn’t burn though made of wood. It would also  hold the heat inside the bucket, the fire wouldn’t die as it was kept by magic. After that, Jaehyeon ran a bit far from that spot, watching as the fire fell back to earth like rain, filling up the bucket. The drops that didn’t go to the bucket would go back to the well or the snow, hissing as the heat mixed with cold and released water steam into the air.

The fiery rain finally stopped and Jaehyeon returned by the well. He was lucky enough, a third quarter of the bucket was filled with fire. He smiled at his luck and sighed at the fact that it hadn’t finished yet at the same time.

“Still two more to go, Jaehyeon....”

 

§ §§ § §§§ § §§ §

 

“Alright, the last one to bring it back and then I could go home.”

After his second attempt to deliver the bucket back to the house, Mistress Yuri approached her and flicked his right ear. It was not painful, but the freezing effect due to direct contact with her skin made Jaehyeon’s ear was frozen for a moment.

“Class is over so. You can also go home but I want you to finish your punishment. If I see you daydreaming in my class again, I won’t go easy on you. You are bright, but I won’t hesitate to kick you out of my school later. Still, no magic!”

That was all the Ice Witch said before she turned his body and returned to his house, robe flailing gracefully in the air. Jaehyeon shuddered, feeling a bit down after the rather harsh words. Mistress Yuri was never a person to play with words, she meant every bit of it. Getting kicked out of his education was absolutely not the good voice. Imagine how his father would react to that.

 The punished boy moved closer to the bucket to lift it.

Zap.

Jaehyeon jerked back. In the spot where he was standing on before were three daggers.

“My, my.... What a poor boy....”

A young boy, with red hair cut covering his forehead smiled naughtily at Jaehyeon as he was floating down the branch on his top.

“You are cute, but you are doing slave’s work. You know, it is purely a shameful thing to do for the child of a tribe chief.”

Jaehyeon scoffed, spitting to the ground. “Just shut your ing mouth, Minhyung.”

Minhyung landed on the branch, soft and weighless like feather. He chuckled when he saw the irritated face of Jaehyeon.

“You are just lucky actually. A person with no specialties like you belongs to a family with a great power. You are never a match for their glory. You are pathetic, sad, weak.”

Jaehyeon glared at the young boy.

“Mistress Yuri asked me not to use magic when I brought this bucket, but she didn’t mention that I shouldn’t hit a brat until his blood smeared the snow in red.”

“As if you could do that to me.”

Jaehyeon clenched his jaws. His conscience was still preventing him to do something bad.

“You’re just a waste of time. Get lost!”

Just as he was about to turn his body around, he heard another friction in the air and quickly jumped to his side. Other three daggers stood on where he was standing before. His conscience gave up now. He balled his fist and fire bursted in his hand.

“Alright, you ask for this, jerk!”

 “Bring it on, Chief’s boy.”

Jaehyeon growled and in a second he jumped to the branch, aiming his fiery fist to the snarky boy. However, the boy was too fast. He had zapped to his side, wings stretched on his back.

“Too slow, as usual.”

Minhyung smirked as his hand let small daggers out of his hands. He spread them in his finger, like feathers, before slaying them to Jaehyeon’s skin.

“Ahh!!” Jaehyeon hissed as he felt the sharp pain on his arm. Glancing at his right, he noticed a clean cut wound that was starting to bleed already. Anger boiled in his mind.

“You’ll die, !”

Jeahyeon chased Minhyung again, but the little one was always too fast for him. His attack was easily dodged and it just angered Daehyeon more.

“You cannot catch me.... You cannot catch me....”

Jaehyeon panted, feeling more and more frustrated by the passing time. Minhyung was now floating in the air, chuckling and singing that silly song. He looked around, thinking.

And a smile formed in his lips.

He continued hitting that kid who became crazier each second. His hands grabbed something from the ground and he quickly ignited them and threw them to the boy.

“AAAAGGGGHHHH!!”

Minhyung covered his face and he fell down from the air. He kept screaming in agony as Jaehyeon came closer to him.

“My, my.... Look who is screaming now....”

The scream didn’t stop there. Minhyung was still screaming and it began to make Jaehyeon worry. He squatted to see how his enemy looked like, to check how fatal his attack resulted.

“Stop!”

Jaehyeon let a gush of air painfully from his lungs. He was pulled backward and his back hit tree trunk apparently. As he opened his eyes, Minhyung was holding another dagger on his hand but his body was tied by a series of roots that came from inside the ground, immobilizing him.

“You are such a big coward, Minhyung.”

A kid with hair and eyes as green as leaves jumped from a tree to Jaehyeon’s side. He did it very gracefully, like  a ballerine jumping in the air.

“I would be very ashamed to do that even to my enemy.”

Minhyung tried to break free, face contorted with rage as he was defying the newcomer. Jaehyeon could see scratches as deep as the ones on his arm appearing on Minhyung’s face.

“Stay away from my problem, Jeno!”

“I won’t! I won’t stay put if you do this kind of thing to him.”

Minhyung’s face was as red as tomato when he chewed his own lips. He yanked hard and finally was able to free himself. He stretched his wings widely and dashed to the sky like a jet, losing from the sight. Both of them watched his disappearance in sigh.

“I’m sorry for what my brother did, Jaehyeon-ssi. He is really mean sometimes.”

“Indeed!” Jaehyeon hissed. “What did I ever do to your twin that he seems to be very akin to make a mess with me all the time?”

 “I’m sorry about that,” Jeno took a seat by Jaehyeon side, “He is just too absorbed sometimes in his envy. He never likes it if people have something more than he does.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not my capacity to answer. He is still my brother, I won’t spill his darkest secret.”

“You just did.”

“It is just a preview. Consider it is an apology for his rude and childish behaviour.”

Jeno smiled as he looked at Jaehyeon. His eyes moved to the wound on Jaehyeon’s arm.

“It is kinda bad, isn’t it? Let me cure you for a while. It would make your wound heal faster than before.”

Jeno waved his hand and a sprout came from the ground before them. As the sprout grew fast into a young herb just in three second, Jeno took the herb and chew it in his mouth. He spat the herb out to his hand and put it to Jaehyeon’s arm.

“Issshhh...,” Jaehyeon hissed. Jeno smiled and took a cloth from his robe, tying it on the wounds.

“It stings a bit but it will get better. I am not good at healing magic. I cannot heal your wound in a matter of second, only Yixing could do that. But at least your wound would be healed in some minutes and trust me, there won’t be any scar.”

Jaehyeon nodded, smiling.

“Thanks, Jeno. Sometimes I wonder are you really twins afterall? You are so different, to the core.”

 “You have no idea how much I think of that too. But I guess, one should be the mature one while the other one is just a troublemaker.”

“Yeah. Demon twin, him and angel twin, you.”

Jeno laughed heartily. “An angel that has to clean up his demon twin’s mess. That’s not too bad.”

 

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---

April 20, 2015

 

This is like the weirdest story I have ever made. The plot keeps appearing and disappearing as I am writing this. Anyway, the first update after being a husband. Not so bad, haha.

 

Schandelierre