“Don’t you have any other friends apart from me?”

Jongin scrunched his nose up delicately, an almost childish action that was unusual for him. “Yeah, a couple.”

“Why don’t you talk to them or talk about them?”

“They’re not in this school.”

“Then where…?”

His eyes seemed to sparkle a bit, but I was never able to tell when it came to Jongin. “Maybe you’ll meet them sometime.”

Chapter 12

“Who’s the Darkling?”

Luhan blinked, the violet aura around him slowly fading. It had been a while of fruitless training, and I was still unable to command my aura the way I wanted it to. Luhan, on the other hand, seemed so at ease -- he was able to form his aura in the ways he wanted it to, and spellcasting seemed to be a snap of the fingers for him. Granted, it was what he was skilled at, but he made it seem so easy that it just made me even more frustrated when I failed.

I had found out what Kai had meant by ‘damage proof’ yesterday when he had informed me I would be training with Luhan -- the walls seemed to absorb everything thrown at them. The one time I had semi-successfully cast a spell, it had blown up. Luhan had been quick enough to throw up a shield around himself, though the moment the blast hit the wall, it seemed to disappear. That was a good thing, but the place was also echoey and it proved to be extremely loud.

“The Darkling? Don’t you know anything about him?”

I shook my head, then remembered that I did know a bit of the history about him. “He was… Death,” I poked at tentatively, “and he died over five hundred years ago. And everyone seems to hate him a lot.”

“Well, you’re right that he was Death and that everyone hates him,” Luhan replied, “but he may not be dead.”

That would’ve been the answer that made the most logical sense -- there’d be no other reason that he’d be so hated if the horrible things he’d done was just from the span of time I had assumed he was alive. But even then… the thought of someone being close to a millennia old was something I couldn’t  quite digest. “He’s not dead?” I finally asked. “I was reading the scrolls Kai gave me, and it said that he disappeared after killing a lot of Athanatoi, and when Life died. How can he not be dead? Even if he lived a completely full lifespan… he’d still be dead for over six hundred years.”

Luhan cast me an unreadable look, and for some reason, it felt like he knew something that I didn’t; something important. “No one really knows how. But he’s been spotted quite a few times, and there was no record of his passing. No one knows how Life died either, but she was the most recent Life as the Darkling was the most recent Death. And… Mrs. Lee said that his existence is a reason that there’s been no other Life and Death. It’s like… nature can’t run it’s course because he’s in the way.”

“But how do you know that he’s still alive? And what’s he doing that’s so horrible? Kai seemed to really hate him.”

Luhan looked confused now, and he frowned at me. “Kai? I don’t know why he’d hate the Darkling. All of us are taught that he’s a villain, and he’s done some pretty horrible things, but there’s no reason that Kai’d specifically hate him. But as for the Darkling…there’s things happening the past couple years that shouldn’t have happened. He’s raising creatures of the dead that shouldn’t be allowed in the human world, and it’s like history’s repeating itself since it was what he did right before he disappeared. He has a certain disliking to Athanatoi, and Mrs. Lee said that it’s possible that he’s back for revenge, or whatever it is that he wants. No one’s gone face to face with him and survived, at least that we know of. He’s killed so many of us, no doubt family of many people -- but Kai? I don’t think Kai would have a legitimate reason to hate the Darkling apart from what we’ve been taught.”

“How do you know it was the Darkling doing all those things?”

“Only Death would be capable of doing those things.”

“And Life?”

Looking a little taken back, Luhan stared at me. I hadn’t meant to ask him in the first place, but he seemed to have been avoiding the topic of Life and concentrating on the Darkling. The scrolls hadn’t said much on them both, but most of the information had been about Death. “Life?” he echoed. “She’s… she’s dead. They found her body.”

“Couldn’t there be another Death? Another Life? Could the Darkling be dead?”

Luhan gave me a slight smile. “Having another Death that’s running around causing as much havoc as the Darkling would is on some degree even worse. But no -- the Darkling is skilled. If he’s found a way to remain alive after so long, there’s barely a doubt that it’s him. Mrs. Lee said that it’s possible that he can’t be killed… by us, at least. If he’s gained immortality, then it’s going to take a lot more than a simple wound to kill him.”

“I mean, it’d still be hard to revive oneself if they were decapitated,” I blurted, and Luhan let out a shaky laugh.

“We’re assuming the Darkling has enough skill to protect himself from being decapitated,” he replied, “he’s dangerous. He’s powerful. He’s managed to evade the Athanatoi for so long, and he’s certainly capable of doing it longer. And the fact that you have a gold aura… well, he may view you as a threat. Or a tool. So we have to be careful when it’s regarding your safety.”

Me, a threat? I couldn’t connect the dots. I’d almost gotten run over by a car (a pretty lame way to go, for someone who had powers) yesterday because I hadn’t looked twice when I was crossing the street, and then completely disregarded the obvious noise of the car coming closer -- even with heightened hearing. I couldn’t be taught how to hold a sword. Nothing seemed to make me very… threat-worthy. Apart from the fact that I had a gold aura which I still had no idea what to do with, I was equivalent to a gun without ammunition. An empty threat that everyone knew was empty. “I’m not a threat,” I told Luhan. I raised my hand, and tried to do what he had taught me about summoning my aura. Nothing happened. “See? I can’t even control my aura. Not a threat.”

Luhan’s purple aura flared to life, and he reached over and laid his hand on my forearm. Immediately, the room turned gold again, and I looked at him with a mixture of surprise and disbelief. “We’ll make you a threat,” he replied, voice a lot lighter than it was before. There was something behind it I couldn’t quite pin. “If it’s one person who can take down the Darkling, then it’s possible it’s you.”

***

When I finally returned home, Jinyoung had taken off his earphones, turned his gaze from his laptop for a moment and smiled easily at me. “You’re back?” He seemed to be writing something.

I knew that Luhan had cast some kind of spell, and Jinyoung wouldn’t find anything wrong with the fact that I had disappeared in the middle of the night, but nevertheless, he looked so calm that I jolted. “Uh, I’m back.” From where does he even think I’m back from? I wondered inwardly, what did Luhan make it look like?

“Well, it’s almost dinner. Jongin said he’d deliver the new school uniform of Hanseong school for you sometime later.”

“Kai did?”

Jinyoung frowned at me. “Kai?” he echoed, confusion obviously written over his face. “Who’s Kai? Jongin’s delivering it, not Kai. That name’s not even Korean.”

My mind blanked for a moment, before the thought hit me that Jinyoung knew Kai as Jongin. It was odd saying his name, as I was corrected by him every single time I called him ‘Jongin.’ Hearing Jinyoung say it so easily simply unconventional. That, and my mind had been plagued of thoughts about the Darkling ever since Luhan had debriefed me on the information about him (moreover, how I was supposed to take him down?). I couldn’t even solve the problems on the math test at hand. How was I supposed to deal with someone as powerful as the Darkling? Someone who’d been alive for a thousand years, who’d slaughtered God-knew-how-many people in cold blood, and was still doing the same now?

“Kai…is the name of a book character I had been reading about,” I tried, though the coverup sounded pathetic the moment it left my mouth. “Sorry, I was thinking about it. Jongin is coming. Jongin.”

Jinyoung cast me a strange look and I tried my best to meet his gaze. It was hard.

“Well,” he finally replied, turning back to the laptop. “I ordered food for dinner, since I need to work and I don’t have time to cook. Jongin’s going to be here at any time with your uniform, so maybe you’d like to ask him to eat with us?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, unsure if I should nod or shake my head. In the end, I resorted to fleeing to my room. I could almost see Jinyoung’s confusion.

***

Hanseong school wasn’t very different from the old highschool, except bigger. The uniform was more convenient, too -- the skirt was black and at a comfortable length, and the top warmer than the one we had before. Apart from that, school was just… school.

Jinyoung was a little shocked when Kai appeared at the door to walk me to school, and he’d lifted an eyebrow susp