“Atalanta, my dearest,” a soft, breathy, ragged voice echoed throughout the dim room, as a pair of arms stretched on to the air.

 

Nurses surrounding the bed all gestured for Ada to come closer to what was left of her mother, all weak and weary.

Ada wearily walked into the room, as her legs were about to give themselves up to the gravity, yet stood still as she watched her mother smiling towards her, caressing her black, untameable wavy locks which had fell down to her waist.

“Yes, mother,” she replied. Her mother, the queen, smiled wider, despite every strain of muscles showed beneath her paper-thin skin.

“How beautiful you look today,” she breathed, “And very, very strong indeed... I am so proud of you.” Beads of tears softly fell to her cheeks, yet she still managed to smile.

 

Right then, a heavy arm lingered on Ada’s shoulders all of the sudden, brought her closer to a tough figure next to her. Everyone else in the room bowed in respect for the man next to her.

“Fu Hao, do not strain yourself too much. Rest assured, Ada would pass the last tests today, and she would be the strongest woman in history, next to you,” a heavy, deep voice echoed throughout the room.

“Father,” Ada bowed to the Kaiser, and her father, Ugaine Mor. Fu Hao smiled, as Mor reached for his Queen’s hands.

“Don’t worry, mother,” Ada whispered. “I will survive anything for you.”

“Be at peace, my dear Atalanta.. Tomorrow is your birthday, and you should let yourself enjoy the day,” the queen smiled, still caressing Ada’s hands. “Eighteen years-old...”

“And that eighteen years old of your life will be celebrated as the ultimate breakthrough of history,” the Kaiser said proudly. “Were you to succeed the last tests, you will be the first in line. Super-soldiers,” he proudly stood up. “A mixture of magic inherited from my wife, and the science invented by me.. The world will soon see the power of our kingdom.”

 

Ada exhaled a long, ragged breath, as fear faintly crawled towards her heart.

The queen sighed.

“My Kaiser, please do remember that she is our daughter, our only one..”

“And she should be proud to be the subject of my research,” he ended firmly.

“You will survive,” the queen pulled Ada’s hand softly. “You see? I’m defeated by sickness, by a vessel that has started to rot its way off, but no... I’m not defeated by death yet,” she said, encouraging Ada. She nodded. “And you, you have the same seed of power inside you,” the queen continued. “Once the time comes... I would gladly pass on my immortality to you.”

“But, mother--!”

“That is my decision, once and for all. For my beautiful warrior...”

There it came, the smile Ada always treasured.

Yet, to Ada’s disappointment, today it brought zero solace to her heart.

 

 

 

“Princess,” a soft, alluring voice of a man softly reached Ada, waking her up from her thoughts, despite the sounds of wind gushing on the hilltop. Ada quickly wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeves of her white, long dress. She quickly turned around, and saw the man who has always stood by her father’s side bowed in respect towards her.

 

His jet-black wavy hair danced with the wind as he walked towards her. His tall, broad figure accentuated with pearl-like pale skin that glimmered in the light of the setting sun, and his pointy, guarded eyes looked straight into Ada’s.

He always had a cold aura about him, but Ada never understand why being near this person always made her felt so... safe.

 

“Leo,” Ada nodded at him, as he quietly sat next to her on the green grass.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he calmly said, as he laid on his back with his arms folded beneath his head. “Should the Kaiser found out, guess who would be in trouble.”

Ada grumbled.

“Don’t act like that. Remember who you’re talking to.”

“The princess? My childhood friend? Daughter of the man who saved me?” he cozily replied.

Ada scoffed, lied next to Leo. “There’s more to me than just those.”

“What, a spoiled brat?” it was Leo’s turn to scoff. “Look, you need to be perfectly fit for the last procedure tomorrow. I don’t want to get into trouble because of you, princess,” Leo rised up.

“Fit or not, there’ll be no difference. Father would still inject those... concoctions into me anyway, and nobody would even dare to stop him.. nobody knows how much it hurts...” She fell at the loss of words.

 

“You know very well I would’ve stopped it if I could,” Leo said coldly, all of the sudden. “You think it’s easy, to just stand right next to him while watching you writhe in pain all alone? To be honest, I hate every single moment he did that to you.”

 

Ada felt a faint jab through her heart, as she turned her sight at Leo’s stiffened figure under the orange sky.

This man, who never talked much, who always kept his guard on, turned out to.. care about her.

 

“Why.. do you care so much about me?” she asked, hesitantly.

Leo turned his sight to the helpless princess lying next to him on the prairie.

 

Those three words hung on to his tongue, so desperately trying to find their way to be spoken...

..yet because he thought it was unwise to state what was really on his mind...

 

“Because...” Because you’re the only reason he saved me from those streets. The reason I’m alive.

“Hmm?” Ada sat up in curiosity. “Come on, is it that hard to answer?” She smiled.

 

Leo subconsciously stretched his hand to play with the black, wavy locks that fell to Ada’s sides, taking note in every second of how fragrant it smelled, how soft it was..

 

“Because you’re such a pain in the ,” he suddenly jerked off his own thoughts, and abruptly stood up, fixing his all-black uniform. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

“What?! Just that?” Ada pouted. “Oh, you’re no fun at all.”

“Come on! Night is coming. It’s not safe!” Leo already ran ahead, as Ada followed behind.

“Okay, wait for me!”

 

Ada happily ran to Leo’s side while laughing, teasing him as she entwined her arm to his.

 

Despite all the happenings that day, both of them smiled in relieve, as they came to a realization that they still had each other.

 

 

 

 

“Don’t stiffen your arm, it will hurt more,” one of the doctors said, as Ada nervously lied down on the examination bed, letting them did God know what to her body.

 

She nodded. Her eyes didn’t even looked at the countless needles stabbing her body. She looked straight ahead, where the Kaiser, also the head scientist of the group of the research, had been standing since a couple hours ago, with Leo beside him, standing on guard.

It hurts was the only words echoed throughout her mind during the last hours she was in. She kept on whispering to herself, if I succeed in this, there will be no more test.. I’ll never be a test subject anymore... I’ll be free.

 

But as the last needle went in, a gush of unbearable form of pain hit her, burnt her head from inside out.

Everything went into a blur as she screamed for help...

...Everything hurt more when she saw the Kaiser’s satisfied expression as she felt like fire and some sort of prickly electricity came out of every hole on her body...

 

“Noooooo!!!!” Ada screamed. “Father, please... I can’t do this.. Help... Stop it!!”

 

But the Kaiser stood still.

... and into her focus, came Leo, whose hands had been pressing the glass window that separates him from the test room.

 

Leo, who had screamed inaudible things...

 

“Don’t stop the procedure! She can make it!”

“But, My Lord,” Leo startled, his body trembled. He couldn’t just stood still watching Ada writhe in pain.

The Kaiser shot him a look to shut him up, but Leo couldn’t take it anymore.

“My Lord! Your own daughter!” he squealed.

“What do you care about it?!” the Kaiser slammed him towards the glass window. “I had already told you to never intervere!!!”

“Ugh!”

 

I’m sorry you have to go through this, Ada... I’m sorry that I’m helpless...

 

 

“NO!!!” with the last dripping amount of power that she had, something sparked the anger inside her as she watched the Kaiser slammed Leo to the window, and fell to the floor.

“No, don’t hurt him too.. FATHER!” Ada screamed.

 

A foreign heat, another wave of pain hit throughout Ada’s body, yet this one gave her power.

She subconsciously waved her hands away from the cables and pipes surrounding her until two of the scientists handling her were swept against the wall with incredible amount of power.

She sat up, much to the Kaiser’s disbelief, and stood up from the bed.

 

“That’s... impossible..” the Kaiser exclaimed. “It worked!!!”

 

Completely unaware of what was actually happening, as he opened his eyes, Leo stood up to face... a completely different form of human in front of him.

His jaw dropped.

 

Ada float off the floor, her whole body was engulfed in fire as if she was fire herself.

It was her, he could see her eyes through the fire that had started to melt the glass barrier.

It was her.

 

“Ada...” he whispered.

Ada lift one hand, aimed it towards the air, and all of the sudden, the whole room blast with fire, explosions blew out here and there until nothing was left, along with screams from the scientists that eventually died due to the explosion.

The Kaiser was swept away and hit the walls due to the power of the explosions, fell unconscious to the floor.

 

Leo couldn’t even cover his eyes and ears as he was still fixated towards Ada’s flaming eyes. He stretched one hand towards what was Ada’s face, and much to his disbelief, she was not hot, at all, to touch.

He caressed her flaming cheek, and a comfortable touch of warmth came to his right cheek, letting him know that Ada had reach out to caress his face.

 

“Leo,” a gurgling, husky voice, came out softly throughout the burning sounds in the background.

Leo nodded, still amazed with the new, flaming form of the woman he treasured.

But he knew that it was still Ada.

“You’re safe, nobody is going to hurt you now..” he whispered.

Ada’s flaming figure shook its head.

 

“Come with me,” she said.

Leo frowned. “Where...?”

But the flaming figure started to distance itself from Leo, and all of the sudden, it flashes away out of his sight.

“A-Ada? ADA!!!” Leo exclaimed, calling her out, yet he couldn’t find her anywhere.

 

He limped, ran around the rubbles of the building, calling out for her... yet he was only greeted by a hard downpour of rain in the middle of the night..

 

 

“Ada..”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She stirred on her cranky, stiff bed, trying to figure out what that dream was about, after so much struggle to crack open her eyes from what she assumed to be a long, satisfying sleep. The annoying rays of sunlight peeked into the room from the gaps of the window curtains right in front of her, indicating that the night had turned into day.

 

“What the hell...” she grumbled, her voice was just as husky as how a blender sound, she thought.

 

What was that dream...

 

For over a year the same dream had been haunting her each night, yet there was no continuity to it. It was almost like it’s not a dream.

The pain, the anger, the sadness of that girl in her dream was almost real, like it was she herself who became the fiery damsel who flew out and escaped.

 

“Ugh.”

 

She sat up, stretched her aching back while yawning loudly, cursing the old bed that had started to bent on the middle causing her body to ache so much. She couldn’t even understand why she woke up to such a foul mood like this.

She stood up and reached for her phone on top of the dresser, and instead of checking her phone, she studied her own reflection in the mirror.

“What the hell... So ugly,” she muttered, trying to brush her jet black hair that had always hung loose and untameable down to her hips, yet finally gave up when the brush’s handle broke.

 

She walked towards her small, comfy kitchen right across her bedroom area, and started to manually brew coffee on the pot while yawning. The perks of finally living alone, she thought to herself.

 

Yes, she had just started living alone and this was her sixth month into working on a hotel in Bali, far far away from where her family was. But she couldn’t be happier, living away from her adoptive family. Just like how she always taught herself; they were nice, very loving, but they were also very... overly protective, that it was almost ludicrous to continue living with them at her age.

 

Her job was nice, she was a secretary in the hotel. And the hotel accomodated her with this, a small room free of rent, almost like an apartment, only across the street from the hotel itself, which actually faced the beach directly. The room had everything she ever needed. Bedroom, tub, air conditioning, kitchenettes, and even a plasma TV, which was rumored to be a second-hand from one of the hotel rooms. But she couldn’t be happier than that. At least the job pays nicely.. and she got to stay away from her overly-nice-and-caring step father, whose affection had grew uncomfortable for her.

 

She poured the coffee into the nearest cup she could grab, and groggily sip it in.

 

Oh, she would never be able to get used to Bali’s all-time-bright-and-hot atmosphere, like today. It was Friday, not even seven in the morning, yet it already seemed like it was midday.

Suddenly, her forgotten phone which lied next to her buzzed. A certain ringtone blast. She groggily picked up the call.

“Hmm, what.”

“TURN ON YOUR DAMN TV NOW, DANA!!” a certain excited shout from another girl blast Dana’s mind away.

“CALM DOWN. Dammit.”

“Channel M. QUICK.”

She lazily reached for the remote controller and turned the channel on.

What she saw almost made her accidentally threw her cup away.

 

“OH. MY. GOD.” 

“YOU BETTER THANK ME LATER.”

 

Dana’s favourite group was on. Oh, yes. She was dragged by Sol to like K-Pop, yet she never really liked any of them, except for one.

 

The group that was performing so fiercely on her monitor until she sighed in happiness was VIXX.

 

Not all of them, though, Dana thought. She figured it was their sub-unit. Dana was still learning so much about this group, as she herself was never a K-Pop fan before. In fact, VIXX was the first K-Pop group she liked.

 

“Remind me to buy you ice cream later, Sol-ah.”

“You’re welcome. Hihihi.”

The call ended.

 

Not long after, Dana was already so fixated on the screen, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the guy wearing all black, with wavy, jet black hair and pointy, guarded eyes whose cold and stoic presence always melt her.

 

Her heart almost stopped as the guy in black shot a direct stare into the camera.

But weirdly, that stare never brought her to squeal like a giddy fangirl. In fact, VIXX never made her felt that way. They made her felt like... they remind her of a group of very close friends. People she couldn’t remember.

Yet, of course, she never state any of her thoughts regarding the group to anyone, and when being around Sol, her Korean friend from work.. well, she just acted all giddy to avoid being mentioned as ‘weird’.

 

But amidst the six members of the group, only one person attract her the most.

 

 

“Why...” she whispered, kneeled in front of the monitor to ran her fingers through the outline of his face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SORRY FOR THE DELAY!! So many errors happened from last night until now. What's wrong with AFF's editor? I can't copy my storyboard from MS Word to this editing area since yesterday so I did double editing TT____TT Gosh it was frustrating.

 

ANYHOW, whaddya think? Comment and subscribe away!!