“So,” Haseon asked me. “Are you dating Jongin or not?”

I hated having her at the locker beside me. She asked too much questions and we didn’t even know each other. I wanted the last lockermate back—he didn’t say anything to me and neither did I to him. It was mutual respect.

“We’re just friends—” I started (I said that sentence so many times that I was beginning to think that if I sleep talked, it was the one thing I would say).

“Hey,” someone called from behind me, and I saw Jongin’s familiar brown hair come into view. “Are you coming to lunch or not?”

Haseon frowned at me. “Hey, you can’t just—”

“Bye!” I shrieked at her, then all but bolted.

Chapter 33

I woke up feeling like I had ate three bowls of Jinyoung’s noodle soup, which, lightly put, was not pleasant at all.

The headache wasn’t even the worse part. My whole mouth tasted like a mixture of sawdust and metal, which was a bit of a warning in itself (and something else that I couldn’t put my finger down on). Someone had apparently infused my body with lead, because even just blinking felt like it was too much effort.

My vision, miraculously, managed to clear a couple seconds later and the room spotted into view again. The ceiling looked kind of familiar, and I blinked twice before moving my head so I could take in my surroundings.

It was familiar, because it was my room in the Seoul safehouse. Blinking again and trying to shake my head to clear it, I tried to think back. The last thing I remembered definitely wasn’t tucked nicely into bed—in fact, the last thing I remembered was far from nice.

Or, in better words, it was shocking, to say the least—frightfully so—because if I remembered correctly, Kai had somehow woken up despite the fact that he was very clearly pronounced as dead. Maybe it was one huge nightmare. Or a dream. Maybe none of that had happened and I was just waking up—the next clear thing I could recall was my gold aura, Kai sitting up with that same color having replaced his eyes before I passed out.

Through all of the pain and heaviness of my limbs, I managed to shoot upwards. It wasn’t the best idea, but the moment I did, Kai’s figure came into my vision.

He glanced upwards too, eyes wide with surprised. The action in itself set off a trigger of pain, and for a long couple of moments, I sat in the same spot, clutching at my chest and gasping for breath, the whole room doubling and then merging together a couple of times before my vision finally returned to normal. Kai had stood up in alarm, but he didn’t move until I finished wheezing for breath and relaxed slightly. Then, as if life had been breathed back into him, he scrambled over to sit next to me on the bed, patting my back slightly awkwardly.

I stared at him. Either the Darkling never happened or my last memory before I passed out did. Neither seemed very likely. Maybe Yixing did something with his power, or maybe I had made up some sort of strange dream. In fact, maybe I was still dreaming. That seemed to be the most realistic of all the options.

Before I could pinch myself, Kai answered the question for me. “I did die,” he clarified helpfully.

I gaped at him, then snapped my mouth shut. He waited, as if giving me time for his three words to process, which they didn’t, at least not fast. It was a full twenty seconds later when I finally found my voice, and, throat raspy, got out, “Is this a dream?”

He shook his head no.

“So meeting the Darkling did happen and the golem exploded and you died from that and now you’re alive again?”

The sudden onslaught of words seem to take back Kai too. He blinked with owlish eyes, before saying, “Yes?”

“Oh my God.” I pulled my knees up to my chest, despite the energy that just moving took, and stared at my hands, still too shocked to comprehend. I could remember more clearly now: Yixing showing me the infirmary at the other safehouse, Kai, then finally, using my power on him, somehow. I couldn’t exactly remember what I had done, but whatever it was, one thing was for sure—it had brought him back. I tried to focus on one spot in the room, hoping that concentrating on one point would help at least calm myself down a bit, even though all I succeeded in was focussing even more on just what I couldn’t understand.

“Right.” Kai glanced at his hands too. I went with looking at him instead, taking him in properly for the first time since waking up. He had washed up, and the blood was completely cleaned from him. He looked completely fine in a fresh set of clothing, color back in his features, no sign left of the battered, bloodied boy who I had cried over in the alley just what felt like hours ago. “I…” He trailed off, then gave a slightly awkward laugh. “You know what this means, right?”

“I… don’t.”

“Life,” he replied. His voice trembled slightly. “You know the myths as well as we all do. You’re the reincarnation. That’s why the Darkling… this whole time, he probably knew. But I still don’t know what he plans to do.”

That wasn’t exactly unexpected. I had an inkling the moment I brought Kai back, but it was, in addition to everything else, so overwhelming that I preferred not to think of it for the moment. “Let’s talk about something else,” I managed weakly. “Not now. If I don’t think of it it doesn’t exist.”

Kai laughed quietly, eyes crinkling. “Idiot,” he muttered, then met my gaze.

Maybe my power had done something to him. Not only had the color replaced the ashy color of his skin when he’d been in that infirmary, but it had infused something else; a new vitality that I couldn’t place a finger on. I shook my head. It could’ve been my vision messing with me.

“Thanks,” he murmured quietly. “I don’t know if there’s anything—” He was gnawing on his bottom lip, obviously searching for words he couldn’t quite find. “Just…”

“You’re thanking me?” I demanded. He broke off, eyebrows drawing together. “Jongin, you’re the one who saved my life. You got killed because of me. Not the other way around. There’s literally nothing to thank me for.”

He was still frowning when I finished, and stared at him, trying to figure out if I’d said something wrong, though it was all true. All I had done was used my power when I’d panicked. Kai had made the decision of pushing me out of danger and taking the brunt of the blow in the process. It was two very different things.

“You called me Jongin,” he finally said.

I blinked, surprised. “Kai,” I corrected, feeling a bit sheepish. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he mumbled, so quietly that I barely heard it, then looked up at me again before offering a smile. “If you’re up, we should probably go downstairs. Everyone’s worried.”

Getting up didn’t exactly seem like the best first choice, since even sitting up felt like a chore for me, but I managed to nod. The fact that everyone was worried made a very selfish part of me happy, but the other wondered, still, if I deserved that worry. First Kai, now this. I’d always managed to cause it, and it didn’t feel fair to everyone whom I’d managed to make worried. There was just so many things I had to think about, much more I had to say—to Kai, to Kyungsoo, Yixing, even Jimin—and even more than I had to sit on my own and think about until I had finally come to terms with it. On the other hand, maybe at that moment, I needed some sort of distraction, be it come in the form of Kai or anything else, so I wouldn’t overwhelm myself. Not yet, at least.

I took a deep breath. “We’re at our safehouse, right? Not the other one?”

Kai didn’t say anything else as he nodded then helped me swing my legs over the side of the bed. “Can you walk?” he asked.

Not wanting to look like more of liability than I already felt I was, I nodded at him before pushing myself forward and putting the rest of my weight onto my feet.

I didn’t even manage one second before I toppled forward, completely unbalanced, yet again.

It wasn’t surprising. What was, however, was the fact that Kai let out a snort, obviously amused, when I fell back onto the mattress. Indignant and everything else forgotten, I whirled around to glare at him, and he tried, without much success, to mask his expression with a poker face.

“Are you laughing at me?” I demanded. “As if you’d be graceful on your feet after being unconscious for—”

“Thirty hours,” he filled in helpfully. “And actually, I was. I could walk perfectly fine even though I was dead thirty seconds before.”

I pondered that. “I’m not you,” I finally said pointedly.

Kai patted my back. “Noted,” he replied, then knelt down at the bedside. “I’ll piggyback you down since you can’t seem to walk.”

I stared at the back of his head, not too sure if I’d heard him right. I should’ve been, because he was obviously waiting for me to get onto his back, but the offer was something that I never saw from… Kai that I couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying. Come to think of it, he was a lot more cheerful than normal, and he was actually beginning to joke slightly.

“Well?” he asked. “Unless you’d like to roll down the stairs, since that’s all you’re capable of right now.”

I stared at him like he’d grown a second head for a couple more seconds before deciding that the world was obviously coming to an end that day. I managed to wrap my arms around his neck gingerly before he stood up, then nearly toppled off again. Kai steadied me right before I fell back onto the bed, then hoist