“Good morning,” Lei greets everyone, causing Wendy to look up from her scrambled eggs and Baekhyun to pause sipping at his tea. “What?” She inquires, raising a brow. But she knows exactly what. She came down for breakfast and greeted them—something she never does. “Am I a ghost?”

“Did something happen?” Wendy places her fork down.

“Of course not.”

“Are you sure?”

Lei rolls her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Wendy squints her eyes, obviously disbelieving Lei’s words, but she continues eating anyways. “Good morning to you too then.” Baekhyun follows her lead, drinking his tea and averting eye contact.

“What did my brother have to say last night?” When Lei asks this, both Wendy and Baekhyun stop with whatever they were doing and look at each other before looking at her. “Hello?” Lei’s tone becomes more forceful. “What are you guys doing staring at me? Did he even have anything to say last night or was that some sort of ploy?”

“Um,” Baekhyun casts Wendy a look while the latter shakes her head ever so slightly, “you might want to ask your brother in person.”

“Just tell me.” Lei tries to meet Baekhyun’s eyes with hers, but it’s no easy feat considering how good he is at averting them.

“It’s not ours to tell,” Wendy interjects. “You should really ask prince Kai himself.”

“And I’m sure it’s not that important.” Lei shakes her head and scoffs. “As much as possible, I’d like to not talk to him.”

“Then you won’t be knowing any time soon.” Baekhyun, for an odd reason, sounds forceful today. At this, Lei turns her attention back to him and finds that he’s finally gathered the courage to make eye contact with her. (His eyes are some of the prettiest thing she’s seen.) “Please talk to your brother.”

Lei wants to make a snarky remark, but she remembers that would be a contra to her plan. Instead, she presses her lips into a line and picks at the salad in front of her. The lettuce leaves are the greenest that she’s ever seen, and the strawberry tomatoes let out a soft stream of juice when she slices one in half. Suddenly intrigued by how fresh her breakfast looks, she stabs her fork through several vegetables and puts them in , careful not to have her cheeks balloon.

This is the best salad she’s ever had.

“You like it?” At Baekhyun’s question, Lei shrugs in a motion to say it’s not bad when is still full. “I’m glad,” he says with a gleaming smile. “I picked the vegetables myself.”

Lei wishes she could throw up on command, but it’s too late; she swallowed the bite of salad.

“Are you okay?” Wendy’s brows furrow inward as Lei starts downing a glassful of water. “You’re acting really weird today.” She leans forward and places the back of her hand on Lei’s forehead. “Well, you don’t seem sick. You’re as warm as day.”

“I’m just thirsty.” Lei shrugs, casting a short glance at Baekhyun who has stopped smiling. She pours her another glassful of water, coughing as she hides her shuddering. Baekhyun—picking vegetables that happened to be served to her and her only? Anyone can tell that there’s something wrong with that picture. Unfortunately, she’ll find out soon enough if the salad was tainted. “So,” she asks no one in particular after she finishes the second glass, “today, what’s happening?”

“Nothing.” Wendy eyes her up and down. “You’re still not allowed to go off the property.”

“Well, are there any events happening on our property?” Lei rolls her eyes. “So I won’t die of boredom?”

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Wendy warns. She frowns, appearing to think. “And no, I don’t think there’s anything going on. Just the usual.”

At the sound of that, Lei rolls her eyes yet again. “Just the usual” refers to tourists taking tours around the gardens and some in the main castle. Lei hates it, but her mother says it’s important in assisting the spread of Helian culture—something that has a hard time happening because Helian culture referred to an island thousands of miles away from anywhere. Perhaps that’s a good argument—and reason—as to why Lei shouldn’t be mad at the tourists, but she hates them when they point and gasp at her. However, she does remember a time where she enjoyed their company. It was a time where she set a fire to a bush, and they applauded it as it were CGI but in real life.

“You can’t terrorize them.” Wendy must have read her mind. “No setting fire to trees, bushes, grass, anything.”

“Please,” Lei murmurs, “they love it.”

“I’m not sure if the woman you accidentally burned last year would say the same thing.”

“What?” Lei exclaims and glares at Wendy who nonchalantly chews. “I did not burn anyone. Even if I did, you can’t please everybody.” She scoffs and crosses her arms. “Obviously, you’re a perfect example of that.”

“Can we stop with the bickering?” Baekhyun speaks up, drawing Lei’s eyes towards him. She can’t believe he has the nerve to say that, but at the same time, she’s interested. “Lei, today your brother suggested that you do things that calm you. So, what calms you?”

Lei stares at him for a second before bursting in a forced laughter. “He said that?” She pretends to wipe tears. “Wow, my brother needs to a psychiatrist. He’s on some strong—”

“Lei!” Wendy tries to hush her.

“—narcotics. Probably ecstasy.” Lei finishes her statement anyways. “He’s honestly crazy. Insane.” She spins circles by her head with a finger. “And you know what? I don’t think we finished discussing our deal.” She throws Baekhyun a smirk. “So what about this? You leave me alone and I leave you alone? We don’t even have to talk, and you can just tell Dr. Suh that I’m doing well.”

The night before, Lei was about to—about to meaning almost—immerse herself with the torture of having someone “watch” (she still shivers at the thought of this) over her, but she was drunk on anger, and it seems like a terrible idea considering how Baekhyun tried to poison her. With salad.

“I can’t do that.” Even with her amazing deal, Baekhyun refuses by shaking his head. “Your brother gave me specific orders, and I promised.”

“Oh please, it’s not like anyone still keeps promises.” Lei glances up at the prince of Yosul up and down, wondering where he found the audacity to bring up the word. It’s not like Yosul itself has kept its treaties and promises to other countries. “You should know, prince.”

“That’s enough, Lei.” Wendy slaps the table, gathering Lei’s attention—but not for long.

“Baekhyun, I’m giving you the opportunity to be yourself.” A smirk can’t help but to appear on Lei’s lips. “I know how hard it must be to keep promises, so I’m telling you: you don’t have to do anything my brother says.”

“What if I’m doing it because I want to?” Baekhyun wipes the smirk off Lei’s face, and she frowns in disgust.

“Fine.” She straightens her back and crosses her arms. “You can follow me around.”

“I never asked for permission.”

Lei stares at him, unable to comprehend why this layer of smugness is now just coming out. In his first day at Helios, Baekhyun was quiet to the point Lei believed his personality to be so came from the fact he was Yosulian—or a prisoner of his home. It’s this same quiet, gentle persona that captured the nation’s attention (and unfortunately, the children too). However, it appears that things are changing faster than what she expected.

“Why did my brother even ask you?” Lei redirects the topic when Baekhyun starts to form a little smirk of his own. “You’re the guest. You shouldn’t really be obligated to do work.”

“Are you calling yourself ‘work’?” Baekhyun leans back in his chair with that stupid look of enjoyment on his face, infuriating Lei even more. “You’re not work, Lei.”

“Shut up and answer my question.” Lei snaps her fingers and points at him—only to have Wendy push her hand back down. “My brother asked you to ‘look’ over me. Now, I know my brother, and because you’re from Yosul, I basically know you too. So, why would he ask you?”

“You should finish your food. I know you haven’t eaten anything substantial in a while.” Once more, Baekhyun dodges the question, and Wendy has to retract her hand from touching Lei’s arm. “What do you plan on doing today, Lei?”

“You’ll have to see.” Lei narrows her eyes at Baekhyun. She knows that Yosulians aren’t exactly clean people—they’re shrewd, cunning, and violent—but she didn’t expect this level of evasiveness from him. “If you won’t share simple information with me, then I guess you’ll have to find out yourself too.”

“Sure.”

“Sure?” The word tastes awful on Lei’s tongue, but she hates his response almost as much as she hates the speaker.

“Sure,” Baekhyun repeats with a shrug. “Who said you’d find out why your brother asked me? Who said I cared that much about what’d you do today? You’re really not that special.” Baekhyun scoffs, Wendy coughs, and Lei stares at the girl, her fire growing to the point where flickers of red-orange flames dance across her fingertips. She then looks back at Baekhyun who eats his food with complete nonchalance—as if he didn’t just say what he said. “What?” He grins at her once he’s wiped his mouth. “You really didn’t know that? Your nose is always in your phone, but it seems like you don’t follow the news often.”

Lei keeps quiet, too stunned to say anything else and too angry to move, but she melts the porcelain of her plate. If she combusts, she can’t raise hell and make Baekhyun regret his words.

- - - - -

With every step she takes, Lei leaves a trail of black, smoking grass. Baekhyun, however, leaves flowers of all colors with every step. When Lei turns around to see how far they’ve walked from the castle, her eyes draw themselves to how mismatched their trail is. Beside the patches of black grass are colorful dots. She has to admit that the prismatic strips of color look better on the lawn than the black ones, but both still contrast and hurt the clean look of the otherwise perfect lawn.

“Do you usually do that?” Baekhyun asks, and Lei turns forward again.

“Only when I want to.” It’s a lie, but of course, she’s not going to admit the fact that she’s not entirely in control of her powers. She looks at his calm face, wondering how he isn’t already gasping at how fast they’ve been walking. “Do you? Leave a trail of flowers, I mean.”

“Only when I want to,” he parrots. “Just kidding. I have to suppress it if I want to stop.”

“Cool,” Lei adds. After their scrimmage at breakfast, she ended up melting half of her plate and a fork. She knows that Baekhyun knows exactly why, but he doesn’t bring it up—causing them both to drown under a wave of awkwardness. Unfortunately for Lei, she doesn’t have the right state of mind to talk about it in fear she might combust. “Must be nice. Everyone likes flowers.”

“Not anyone from Yosul.”

“Really?”