"Are you sure this is the correct planet?"

".... As sure as I know that my mouth is shaped like a tonton's beak."

"SEHUN I'M SERIOUS."

While the two young men were quarreling over petty topics at the back of the cockpit, the other two who were piloting the small cruiser was ridden by puzzles themselves.

"Where do you think we should land Kai? Seems like this is an island planet. Too many... Islands to choose from..."

"What about that one right there?" Kai pointed at a cluster of emerald islands spread unevenly across the middle of the planet, glistening in between light blue ocean like a green belt of unevenly cut semi-precious stone. His suggestion was only reciprocated by a quick disapproval from his captain. "Why not?"

"I don't know, seems to be a bit too unorganized for me." He then spent a bit of time inspecting the bigger spots of land at the northern side of the globe and was drawn to a certain peninsula.

"What about that one?" Chanyeol looked at Kai with an excited flicker in his eyes while he enthusiastically jabbed his fingers at the direction of the transparent aluminum window.

"And why should we go with your choice but not mine?"

"Because I'm the pilot! SEHUN! BAEKHYUN! Get ready for landing, we're in for a ride."

Even before the two had processed his sudden command, Chanyeol drifted the cruiser and swiftly entered the planet’s atmosphere. It successfully caused Sehun and Baekhyun to tumble around the cockpit like how younglings would tumble inside a rocking slide-pit. The only difference was this one wasn’t fun at all.

"C... CHANYEOL STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!" Baekhyun screamed loudly as he tried to hold on to his designated passenger seat. Right beside him, Sehun was using every bit of his arm muscles to climb up the chair.

"I can't! The air is much thicker than anything we've encountered! I have to move quick!" Chanyeol yelled back on top of the blaring beeps of machineries.

"Um... Captain?" Kai softly patted him on his arm to bring him out from the mixture of concentration and exhilarating excitement, "I think the left wing is on fire..."

And it was true. What began as a light flicker of embers suddenly burst into a full-fledged fireball under the live observation of the two pilots.

Kai looked back at Chanyeol with an expression of pure horror. It only turned into even further terror when he saw a wide grin on Chanyeol's face.

"COOL!" He exclaimed before he took a sharp turn that brought the ship down tens of kilometers in just a matter of seconds.

"We're dead," Baekhyun frantically muttered when he finally could latch onto his seat and activated the emergency seat belt configuration.

His frustration was amplified when Sehun was not helping in any way and instead joined the hootings as he threw his arms high to the air when Chanyeol made the ship do a quick 360 degrees somersault.

"We're so dead."

- - - - -
 

It was a chilly Wednesday night and the dim pathway was occupied by two less than sober young ladies. They walked around with little to no care in their outward appearance and even less on their balances.

"I think... I drank a bit too much..." The girl with wavy shoulder-length hair mumbled out a regretful whisper as they kept stumbling along the street.

"Aigoo Sohee, I did tell you to stop," the other girl, visibly much more in contact with reality compared to the previous example gave a few encouraging squeezes as a mean to help her cope with the mounting waves of nausea.

"Yes, thanks so much Hee-Jin... Three glasses too late though." She clamped shut with an open palm when she felt a bubble rising up through her intestines. What she feared would lead to a watery slush of piss colored vomit turned out to just be a terrifyingly loud belch. "Sorry..."

Before Hee-Jin could give her friend shoulder a firm push as a reprimand for causing her to lose all her post-drinking munchies (she’d been thinking of the hidden bag of consommé flavoured potato chips throughout their night walk), a bonfire suddenly erupted to the side of them. Igniting the empty lot into festivities of yellow and red burning confetti.

She quickly shook her head, trying to will the drowsiness of alcohol away. She needed the sharpness of her mind now, like, right now. Because that was not a bonfire. Crack junkies can’t make a bonfire that big, it can’t be just a bonfire.

But human metabolism couldn’t be commanded that easily, and in the hazy daze of wrong judgments and thoughtless action, Hee-Jin took some short steps in the direction of the growing fire.

“GET OUT GET OUT!!”

A foreign sounding shouts rang through the night, casually cut in uneven manner by Sohee’s annoyed moan and how she couldn’t keep herself upright any longer than 5 seconds if Hee-Jin wasn’t there to hold her up.

“FOR GOODNESS SAKE, LEAVE THAT BOX BEHIND.”

‘Ah, his voice is deep,’ Hee-Jin thought. With those bellowing yell, she wouldn’t even dare to defy his order. But that was the opinion of her personally, because it seemed a second person on the location of the accident was upset enough to scream back at that deep voiced man.

“But that’s my journal records! I CAN’T LOSE IT!”

Grating rustles of metal against metal was accompanied by worried protests of two other males.

Baekhyun, you stupid…

Hee-Jin couldn’t catch the ending of that sentence, but she kind of got the overall gist of it. You stupid idiot.

“Excuse me, do you need help?” Her voice came out without being filtered by her common sense. Should she do that? Offering help to a clearly apparent peculiar bunch of men that looked much, much more physically capable than her? She prided herself as being tall, but those men are no joke.

“Do you… need help?” Her whispering proposal came to deaf ears, as two of the men were busy pulling ‘Baekhyun’ out from the just-beginning-to-melt semi circular doorway.

Her attention was so occupied by the odd scene unfolding before her that she instantly jumped when she felt Sohee’s fingers grasping tightly around her shoulder.

“I think we should go,” her slurry, alcohol laced mumbles became the most sane thing to come out from the briefly passing minute. She began to tug on Heejin’s sleeves, like an upset child that just KNEW of the bad heebie-jeebies that were hanging low in the air, “Hee-Jin… Let’s go… Please.”

But Hee-Jin was drawn. Simply put, like a moth would be drawn by clear bags of water heavily lathered by glue. It didn’t even occur to her the high chances that all these commotion was set up to trap young gullible little women who would wake up with one or less kidney sitting inside their abdomen. No, she thought. Human organ traffickers are not as theatrical as this.

In her hazed state, Hee-Jin didn’t look at where she was stepping and stomped down on a skinny twig. It was surprising how that tiny of an item could snap so loudly, even in between chaos astronomical in nature. All of a sudden the night became so silent, and all eyes were fixated on her.

“Shice.” Someone cursed underneath their breath, and Hee-Jin found herself looking dead straight with the only person left standing. When everyone else was knocked down with soot coloring their skin in streaks of grey, his clean and upright state was alarming.

“There are natives,” he looked away to address his panting friends, specifically to one who had a thousand yards stare on his eyes, sitting motionlessly while the one who was clutching a coppery box sat propped on his shoulder. Hee-Jin just realized that she was holding her breath when his dark eyes were no longer pointed at her. The way the reddish embers danced against it…

“He’s dangerous.” Sohee was the one to present her thought into physical word. Her even more disconnected mind acting as a proxy for Hee-Jin.

“Yes. Yes they are.”

Finally, after it was so long overdue, common sense kicked in through the alcoholic cloud when Hee-Jin returned Sohee’s concern and began to cling to her as she took a few careful steps back. But her retreat was a little bit too late when she saw the lone standing guy began to tap the back of the last of the bunch, the one with wild disheveled hair and an even wilder eyes that darted around the place until once again, they were locked against Hee-Jin’s.

“Afternoon, ladies.” His voice was so calm, so composed, such a contrast to how seemingly lost he looked. He began to rise, first on one knee, then on two slender feet that were covered in khaki colored trousers. “Would you care to listen to this poor man’s woe?”

In one part of Hee-Jin and Sohee’s brain, the word RUN flashed brightly in neon orange, blinking every second or so and telling them to well… run. But in the other part…

“I would care to listen to this poor man’s woe.”

Their mouths uttered those words in eerily accurate unison. It was as if their mouths and vocal chords were not controlled by their will, but by the hypnotic waving of the approaching man’s hand.

With each step he took, they took another one backwards, two huddling girls against one weirdly dressed erratic gentleman.

“Would you care to hel- AW SHICE!!” His dark and brooding demeanor took a complete turn when he found himself stepping on a freshly made dog poo. A literal . Even his traveling partners couldn’t help but flinch when his flimsy sandal made contact with the slightly warm log, that wet squelching sound it made when the material was pushed down to a perfect circular pancake.

And at that brief moment of respite, the two girls broke into a sprint. Not a run, but an Olympic grade sprint that headed straight to their apartment complex.

They didn’t even care when they ran past the security guy. Not like he could care, he probably was sleeping anyway… Or when they dashed through the corridor like mad cows, pounding on their apartment door before Sohee realized that she was the one holding the key.

“QUICK QUICK OPEN IT!” Hee-Jin screamed bloody murder. She might get into trouble with their land lady but it was 2 AM, she must be asleep, and even if she wasn’t Hee-Jin couldn’t care less about anything silly until she heard the assuring clicks and the rattling of the chain lock that signified their safety.

“Who the hell are they?!” Sohee yelled while she pranced around their tiny front corridor in circles, seemingly loosing all effects of alcohol through the beads of sweat running down her forehead.

In retaliation to her friend’s outwardly panic, Hee-Jin could only answer back in whispers, “I don’t know…?”

A loud gasp followed suit. And after that, silence.

It took Sohee a few good minutes before she caught up on the situational anomaly and asked, “… what’s wrong?”

Hee-Jin slowly looked up to her, one arm innocently outstretched like how children would react when they were caught red handed after stealing candy before dinnertime. Lying there on her open palm was her purse. Or what was left of it. Sohee trailed her eyes down the dangling lower chain only to find nothing underneath. No purse. No wallet. No phone. No keys.

Keys.

That’s why it took them so long to open the apartment earlier.

Hee-Jin was the one who always opened it for them.

- - - - -

Chanyeol kicked the shiny red… thing. Not really a box but not much of a rectangle either. It was bordered in gold and a huge placate of an animalistic deity was placed in the middle of the partially open latch and covered in carefully inlaid gemstones. He deduced that the item was crafted from an exotic lizard, probably a distant relative to their native volcanic salamander. They usually retained their self-heating properties even after being turned into fancy loafers, so he was particularly careful as to not causing unnecessary addition to the already abundant burns on his hands.

“What is it?” Sehun asked from afar, himself afraid that the brightly shining pouch would suddenly detonate in fiery sparkles. ‘It’s SO RED. Nothing in nature should be SO RED and not be dangerous!’ Was his argument.

“I think it’s just an ornately decorated bag…” Chanyeol used the twig lying near his feet to pick the pouch up by its still functional side loop. “I think one of the girls dropped it.”

With the mention of girls, Baekhyun gave Kai a firm kick on his slumped back. “Yeah, nice job handling THAT, kiddo. So much for being the ‘best’ mind bender...”

“Blame it on that thing that I stepped on,” he only mumbled back, the memory of him having to frantically scrape the brownish discharge off his sandals caused him to shudder in horror.

“What should we do?” Now knowing that the pouch was not rigged with explosives, Sehun began to walk toward Chanyeol. Trying to maybe provide a mental support to their pilot who must’ve been devastated with his failed attempt of landing their star cruiser on an unidentified planet. Sehun surely didn’t expect to see him grinning widely like he just won the Union’s Lottery.

On his hand laid the key to their safety, bed, and warm diner. Literally, a key that would lead them to salvation that was connected to a green ribbon with the name ‘Song Hee-Jin’ sewed carefully on it.

A/N: Soheejin is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack. Sorry if my exo characterization is off... And other things... Or if it's too short... Is the chapter too short? This is my standard length so get used to it xP