Playlist for the chapter: Ma City - BTS, Lost and Found - Nu'est

It was already the last period of the day and we were running in every directions like crazy animals that wanted to run away from a predator. The teacher had a lot of fun putting us in “real situation” activities. Because of the snow that had cover our city during the weekend, he decided to create a small city inside the gym. I knew the school wanted us to fear the creatures, but our teacher had decided to push that to another level. I ran between those houses made out of mattresses, hearing the voices of the girls screaming not far away from me. The teacher’s goal was to catch us and the students’ was to stay as far from him as possible. He explained that he wanted us to feel the fear when a vampire is running after you. We all looked at each other and all thought the teacher had gone crazy. Yet, we were all trying our best to survive this game. Actually, playing this game made me realized that I had lived these situations too many times already. Running in every directions like that, hearing the students’ screams echoing in the gym and me trying to catch my breath kept on making me remember the humans attack on the werewolves. My pounding heart was now used to it but I couldn’t erase the anxiousness. Every time I would see or hear other students, I would run on the opposite way.

-”Hyemi!” A voice came from behind.

I took a glance behind me and saw Joshua trying to keep up with me. I slowed down the pace for him to catch up.

-”Keep it down. We need to get away from the voices.” I explained to him my plan.

-”You are really into this.” He laughed out of breath.

He was right. Those playful screams and loud noises came to my ears had painful and horrible memories.

-”Wait…” He said slowing down. “Let me catch my breath.” He sat next to the gym wall, hidden by one of the little house.

I sat next to him. Both of us were tired and breathless. We couldn’t even say a word. We were doing this activity for thirty minutes already and some of the students already had given up.

-”I can’t stand running like this every time we have gym class…”

I could see that Joshua was not enjoying the gym class and it made me laugh.

-”Yeah right? It’s tiring…”

-”But at least you are good at this.” He said glancing at me. “It looks like you are used to get away from creatures.”

I frowned, Looking back at him, wondering what it was supposed to mean.

-”Sorry, it was very direct…” He said looking around us. “I mean, with your friends, the werewolves…” He ended up in a whisper.

-”How do you know?” I replied.

-”At the café. We had a short talk…” He said with dark eyes.

-”Well,...” I said getting up. “It’s true that I had many experiences like this before, however it was mostly because of humans’ behavior.”

Joshua stood up with me and smiled.

-”It’s nice to see that the school didn’t corrupt everyone with that ’anti creatures’ thinking.” He started running again as I just stayed there, looking at him getting further from me.

****

After class, I returned home while feeling the cold wind blowing over my face. It hadn’t been a month yet, and I was missing summer already. Walking next to the snowy wall made me think about the past. It already have been a year since my mother’s death, since Mingyu was in my life and since I had discovered which world I was really part of. So many things had happened and I felt like it was not the end.

I finally reached the end of the path, seeing my house a few steps away from me. I stopped, staring at the tall silhouette sitting in front of my door. I smiled and ran to him.

-”Minghao!” I screamed making him look into my direction.

He stood up and smiled shyly.

-”How was school?” He asked with his usual soft voice.

-”It was great. I ran a lot actually.”

-”Oh…” He replied shortly, still looking into my eyes.

-”So, what are you doing here? How did you find my house?”

-”I followed the smell.” He laughed.

-”Oh right, a werewolf thing.”

He nodded and continued.

-”I wanted to apologize, for last time…”

I tried to recall the last time we encountered.

-”Haaa, you mean before the festival?” I asked, remembering the weird behavior he had at that time.

-”Yes… Because of the moon, I was acting strange and I felt like I didn’t behave well toward you so I wanted to apologize. I’m really sorry…”

-”There was no harm so don’t worry. But, what is it with the moon?”

-”Don’t you know about the harvest moon?” He asked.

-”Well yes because of the festival but I didn’t know it was affecting the wolves…”

-”Oh… I thought you knew because of the festival…”

-”There’s barely anyone who knows why we are doing this festival. We are just enjoying it.” I smiled.

-”I guess there is not a lot of humans who know about it…And even if they knew, they would keep it for themselves, not to make people worry...The harvest moon is actually the only moment in the year that we can turn a human into one of us. That’s why I wanted to get away from you as soon as possible. The moon affect us later in the day, but I wanted to be as careful as possible around you and everyone in the city.”

-”I’m thankful you worry about us like that.”

-”It’s the least we could do. We don’t want people to know about us and we don’t want ourselves to fall under our impulse because of the moon.”

-”How can the moon force you to bite humans?” I asked, starting to shiver because of the wind blowing on us.

-”Once the sun is down, werewolves turn into animals until the sun rise the next day. Because of that, we start to turn more animal-like, making us worry about our own species’ survivance. All of us trapped ourselves in the caves in the mountain so that we won’t start attacking the humans, who are a big enemies.”

-”So if you were to attack the humans, even if people were to survive a bite,  they would turned into werewolves? It’s even more ridiculous that we are organizing a huge festival at the same time...”

-”This is why I think there is not a lot of people who know about the harvest moon.” I shivered once again, feeling my cheeks freezing. “Get inside. If you have other questions I will answer them later.” He smiled softly, passing his hand over my cheek. “I only wanted to apologize but I ended up make you freeze here. I guess I have to apologize once more.” His gaze was warm, just like his hand was on my cheek. “Sorry, and take care of yourself.” He smiled once more and left under the falling snowflakes, moving slowly with the wind.

The night was rough. The wind howled all night long between the houses as the snowy ice collided with the windows to add even more noises. The snowstorm had hit most of the country, leaving it under a white coat. In the morning, they send the soldiers to let us know that school was cancelled for the day. From the kitchen, I could see the frozen street lamp struggling to light up the dark streets. The snow was so heavy that it was hard to see the houses across the streets. I decided to jump in the shower to fight the cold before dressing up. After doing so, I started a fire in the chimney and laid on the nearest couch, a book in hand. It had been a while since we had a day free and I was going to take this one to relax. Unlike usual, the ticking clock was practically silent because of the strong wind outside along with the burning wood. I turned the page of my book and looked at the fire. I stood up to throw another log in it when someone knocked repeatedly at the door. I walked slowly toward it, wondering who it could be. The person knocked once again, for a longer time. I slightly open the door to see to poor boy, arms crossed on his chest to heat him up, his hood up over his eyes as the snow kept falling onto his head.

-”Joshua!” I exclaimed, surprised to see him outside in the storm. “Get in.” I said, opening the door.

-”Thank you. Sorry for barging like this without telling you.”

-”Yes I wasn’t expecting you to come at this temperature.”

-”Right? But it’s probably the best occasion we have to finish out history project.”

-”Oh right! I totally forgot about that!”

-”That’s what I thought.” He teased me. “Is it okay for you? You don’t have any plans?”

-”With this weather? I don’t have anything planned!”

We moved to my bedroom, where my books and papers were, and started to work. We finished the first part of the work where we had to describe the different creatures. We both thought it would have been easier as we knew a lot about creatures, but we always had to make sure that what we would write in our work was what the teacher was teaching. Now, we had a page and a half done and we had to explain what the humans did to keep the creatures away. Joshua was really well informed about this because, as he told me, he moved many times before deciding to stay in this city with the boys. He explained what other cities did that this city couldn’t afford to do. We wrote an other page, following the path Joshua had took before finally staying in this city.

-”Joshua.” I said looking at him as he was finishing writing.

-”Yes?” He said, facing me.

Looking at him like that just made everything even more unreal. How could he be an angel who had lived here for more than 80 years? He looked just like any teenagers.

-”The first time I went to your house, you told me about how you met the boys. Was that real?”

The boy put down his pen and stared blankly at the window.

-”Some of it was true, some of it was false…”

I kept staring at him, wanting to know more, but unaware of how I was supposed to ask. I guess he saw curiosity in my eyes because he continued after a quick glance.

-”Two years ago, I met Jeonghan and Seungkwan who were struggling with money. I don’t know a lot of things about their past story, the only thing I know is that they could only rely on each other. Being born as an angel is not the easiest thing actually. You don’t have any family, neither do you have money or a house. Sins are no help either… Because of Jeonghan’s greed, they couldn’t even stole a small bite of food. He was too afraid to disappear from this world. Seungkwan on the other hand fall under the sin of envy. In order for him to keep a place up there, he should not envy what others have, which leaded him to think that he shouldn’t want more than what he actually had. They were both quite young at that time so they didn’t know a lot about what their sins were about. To return to the actual story, I met them in this city and bought us a house. We lived like that ever since as I wanted them to know what angels’ real purpose on earth is.” He explained very patiently as I listened to him, forgetting our homework. “Dokyeom was already living with them before I met them. This kid was not having a lot of struggles with his sin and enjoyed his life as a student.” I wanted to ask him about Dokyeom’s sin but he just continued his story. “It’s only last winter that I met Woozi wandering around in a city near here after one of my concert that finished quite late. He was only wearing a shirt and looked so young that I mistook him as a lost child.” He laughed at himself. “It’s when I saw his blue eyes that I understood that he was just like us. I offered him to stay at our house for as long as he would want and he never left since.”

-”I sure wouldn’t have believed this story if I didn’t know about you being an angel. But what was Woozi doing outside dressed like that in the middle of winter?”

His eyes got darker as he stared down at the paper on the desk.

-”Did I tell you about Woozi being born from a human mother and angel dad?” He said looking at me from the corner of his eyes.

I nodded.

-”Well… I will spare the details, but basically his dad felt under his sin and completely lost his mind to it… His mother died in front of his eyes,  trying to protect him from his dad. Woozi flee home and never saw him again. I think he went to the abyss…”

-”That’s horrible…” I said getting goosebumps.

-”It’s the way the sky want his angels to live…” He added getting up with a deep sigh. “Excuse me, I’ll go get myself a glass of water.”

He left before I could even add something.

Joshua’s POV

I was stucked in the middle of the stairs, my sight blurred because of the headache that had started a few seconds ago. I wanted Hyemi to know more about us, to be interested about what we were, but these stories only made me remember bad memories. I sighed, passing my hand over my sweaty forehead. I walked toward the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I got up and looked at my reflexion. Once again, it was as if the person on the mirror was not me. I didn’t want it to be me. I closed my eyes, tightening my hands in a fist, unable to unsee those blue eyes. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. Even in this normal state, I wished I was someone else.

I returned back to the kitchen and looked around trying to find a glass when someone erupted from the door. I took a glance at the tall man who was removing his snowy coat, grumbling because of the strong wind.

-”Hyemi?” The boy screamed, a wide smile on his face as he faced the living room to remove his boots.

-”Mingyu!?” Hyemi replied nervously upstairs.

The man finished removing his boots and finally realised that I was there, in the kitchen, staring at him. Both of us were just facing each other, not quite understanding the situation while Hyemi ran down the stairs.