She shouted as she moved her hands forward, trying to blast away the person that was threatening her. If she didn't, he'd make her pay, he had said seriously, and judging by his impatient foot-tapping and the frown on his face, he wasn't kidding.

She was so very tired, having given up on wiping the sweat from her forehead, and it was now streaming down her face and seeping into her slick hair. They'd been at this place for hours, melting underneath the hot June sun, but she wouldn't give up. The only way she'd leave this field would be if she succeeded or if she collapsed.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the latter was going to happen, because she wasn't advancing. Back when they'd first begun, things seemed to come incredibly easy to her as she made the leaves rustle, or the wind got caught in his hair, but as soon as he demanded for more, she got stuck.

When she kept standing there like a lunatic, waving her hands around and around and making sounds similar to Bruce Lee's screams as he attacked his opponents in his movies, he laughed and gave her commands which were supposed to help her so much but he was so shocked that they didn't. She was beyond shocked too.

"Just feel it with your soul," he had said. That was so incredibly exact and impossible not to understand or do the same way, that he'd gotten angry when it did nothing to help her, crossing his arms over his chest and tsking at her as if she was some child failing to follow even simple orders.

And now he was even threatening her. Lamiya was gradually getting angrier herself, but she was too focused on doing some kind of a freaking rain dance to argue with him.

"Come on, Lamiya!" he now had the audacity to shout, and she just ignored him, screaming as she tried her best to make the wind take his breath away so that he wouldn't be able to pester her anymore.

And it didn't work. Of course.

She looked around herself and fixed her eyes on her closest target - a large stone. She screamed again and again as she kicked it around, not understanding why it was so hard when Sehun claimed it came a lot easier to her than it did to him. Yeah, like hell it did! Being able to clean leaves off her lawn would be so useful.

She barely noticed when he approached her from behind, rubbing her arms gently as he started laughing at her. She wasn’t going to think about the way their skin touching felt - they were just friends. She didn’t know why she had to keep reminding herself of that fact so often lately.
 

“Calm down,” Sehun said as he led her over to the tree and made her sit down on the ground. “You won’t accomplish anything if you aren’t focused and collected. Yeah, maybe you’d cause a tornado in your rage but it’d be pointless because you wouldn’t know how to reproduce it. So calm down.”

 

She growled once, not appreciating his lame techniques but deciding to try anyway. What kind of a teacher was he anyway? He’d done nothing useful ever since they’ve come here - he just kept making fun of her and bothering her as if this was his private show or something. Not appreciated.

 

Meanwhile, he sat down next to her and casually put an arm around her shoulders. Calm? Yeah, sure, she was very calm.

 

“Lamiya, it took years for me to be able to be able to do anything, and you can already do so much,” he said as she tried - and failed - to not look at him from the corner of her eyes. “You’re a natural. Perhaps it’ll take days, perhaps weeks, but definitely not years. I felt the power build up inside of you - you know how to reach it, but you don’t know how to let it go.”

 

Then he suddenly got up again and started pulling her up by the arms. “And that’s what we’ll focus on from now - letting things go. Don’t think, just do things instinctively, okay?”

 

She nodded at him, still a little bit angry but biting her lower lip to prevent any stupid comment from getting out.

 

Sehun grinned at her - it was an innocent, beautiful grin of a child with sand-colored hair she could still not get used to.

 

Then he threw a ball of wind at her, and she screamed again.

 

She didn’t have time to brace herself for the impact, but as she stood there, her eyes tightly shut and her whole form waiting to be knocked out by the fierce attack, it never came.

 

Lamiya squinted, just to see the smirking Asian raising his eyebrows.

 

She started sobbing tearlessly, going back to her place near the tree as she clasped her shaking hands. It wasn’t just her hands - her whole body was shaking and she couldn’t breathe properly, the sobs slowly turning into small whimpers as she fought for a gasp of air.

 

“Lamiya?” he said from somewhere above her, his voice still light, while she focused on surviving, now hugging herself to try and stop the shaking. She could still not take a breath, instead starting to cough wildly.

 

“Hey, what’s wrong?” His voice was now gentle as he kneeled next to her, curiosity and worry b in his eyes along with something she deciphered as pride. She started shaking even more violently, moving as far away from him as possible, which was, unfortunately, only a couple of inches because the tree was blocking her exit.

 

“How could you do that, you lunatic?” She couldn’t help herself - she was still panting and in shock, but she’d put him on his place. “You could’ve killed me with that! I know you’re so good at controlling your powers, but what if you hadn't stopped it on time? I could’ve died!”

 

The psychopath actually had the audacity to laugh at her. His whole expression was soft and light, as if he was explaining something to a child. She was slowly beginning to regret her decision of giving it a try with this… E.T. or whatever.

 

“But I didn’t do it,” he said softly as he leaned over to where she was protecting herself from another attack of this maniac. “I didn’t stop anything, Lamiya. It was you.”

 

She frowned. “But I didn’t… do anything.” She didn’t feel any current running through her body or some liberating feeling - all she’d wanted was to not get hit by that blast-

 

She got up immediately, thinking she was onto something. She walked until she was at a safe distance from the trees, standing in the summer grass that was reaching her waist, and raised one of her hands slowly.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sehun getting up too and leaning on the tree as he crossed his arms over his chest once again.

 

Move, she thought to herself, feeling silly but deciding to try it anyways.

 

The grass beneath her fingers only swayed a little bit - it was the standard amount of power she’d already demonstrated, which was totally pathetic.

 

Move! she ordered in her mind, angry that she was failing this badly, that the one thing that was special about her was something she could not reach or get familiar with. Was she really this useless? Would she stay this way forever while he laughed at her like that, showing off with all those blasts?

 

Then the grass started swaying more intensively, as if she was directing a fan at it.

 

She bit her lips as she found her next target - a bird flying through the field, oblivious to her intentions. Sehun may have been a psychopath who enjoyed torturing her, but he wouldn’t let her hurt anything, so she decided to try it.

 

Her hands raised, seemingly on their own accord, as she thought, Bring her to me.

 

The bird began flapping wildly with its wings, trying to defy the wind that was now pushing her towards Lamiya, and she waved her hands around, as if trying to embrace the bird in order to be able to catch her.

 

“Not like that,” a voice suddenly murmured behind her. “You’re just scaring her, so it’s bound to become ugly if you keep pushing her violently.”

 

His hands were suddenly underneath her own, guiding her as she tried to control the wind, waving it down underneath its wings and seemingly giving the bird gentle directions which it followed without any complaints.

 

A couple of seconds later, their cupped hands became the bird’s destination, which she gladly landed on, watching them with her small, frightened eyes.

 

He gently brought their hands closer to her face. “You see?” he murmured again, his voice dangerously close to her ear, but that was just her imagination - he seemed to be immersed in interacting with the bird, as if she wasn’t there. “Like this. Guide her gently, and she will obey. If you try to force her, she’ll just run away and be afraid of you.”

 

His finger on the bird’s delicate head as he petted it made a strange feeling bubble inside of her. She wanted to giggle, but she was afraid that the moment would end and the bird would fly away, so she settled for smiling as she held the bird and a part of her told her he was holding her.

 

A minute later, he stopped petting the bird, which was moving around her hands unsurely, her small legs wobbling as they explored the uneven surface, and he laughed. “We’d tortured the poor creature long enough. You can let it go now.”

 

She didn’t want to, because this soft side of him was something unknown and secret and she wanted to get to know it, but when he moved away from her she raised her hands quickly and the bird flew away into freedom.

 

A part of her wondered what it would be like to be able to fly, free and careless like that. Did he ever feel that way in his life? Somehow, she doubted it, because the things he’d told her implied that his life was one of hunting and being hunted, never knowing which position they were in and when the evil would strike.

 

Would she be able to live such a life? She hadn’t agreed to her recruitment, not exactly, but he must’ve expected her to become one of them because he’d told her many times how valuable her power would be once she was able to control it.

 

Yeah. They’d go around and blast people away, because it seemed to be his number one favorite activity.

 

She blinked and started to turn around, but caught him staring at her as he now stood by her side. His gaze immediately moved away as he cleared his throat. “Good job,” he said while nodding. “You see, you can do it, you just need to stop thinking about the mechanics so much.”

 

The thing was, she did not want to think about the man she had met around only a month earlier. She did not want to think about the things he’d told her, about her being special and perhaps the only one who would be able to save them. She did not want to think about the look she sometimes saw in his eyes as he watched her, seemingly nostalgic and for some reason, so very and truly sad.

 

She didn’t want to disappoint him, but at the same time, she was not going to let herself fall in love with him, because he was strict on her so very often and she didn’t want to get hurt.

 

But she couldn’t help herself in that moment - she was very tired, but very happy that she’d managed to do something that earned her praises from him. He wasn’t always playful like today - sometimes, he’d just keep frowning as he shook his head at her while she kept on doing her rain dance and not accomplishing anything. Sometimes he’d stare into the distance, his mind in God knows what world as she took her chance and looked at him for a long time, trying to memorize the strange, sandy color of his eyes, his equally strange hair and wondering how she’d ended up entangled in a weird story with this alien who looked anything but.

 

So she raised her hand once again and began humming a song in her mind as she tried to envelop the wind and guide it gently, just like he’d taught her.

 

The wind followed the melody with swift accuracy, dancing just like she imagined in her mind, going over to his awkward posture and making a spiral around his frame, getting caught in his hair and then trailing a path down his face and around his frame again, just to go up and up into the distance, following the path of the bird that was more free than she’d ever be.

 

He did not say a thing as she let the wind go, now realizing that she wasn’t humming just in her mind but that he’d heard the sound, too. She felt embarrassed for a second, but then she remembered who he was and she relaxed, knowing that he most likely understood what she’d meant to do and what kind of message it was supposed to send.

 

A second later, a similar spiral was spinning around her, as gentle as a warm feather on her skin, taking her breath away - but not because he was controlling it. It followed the identical path she’d set for the wind, touching her cheek in the most gentle of ways that seemed to speak of things that were not real, that could not be real because she knew better.

 

She only found the courage to look at him after a couple of long moments. She could feel her face burning up, and she felt guilty for even wondering what his movements, mimicking hers, were supposed to mean.

 

But when she looked up, she was welcomed by the warm desert sand that she had the urge to fall into and get lost in, only the wind knowing where she was hidden. They were bright and gentle, just like the breeze that had touched her moments ago.

 

Be happy, she had wished and the wind had complied. And he was. She had never seen something so purely beautiful - she pondered too often whether he was a couple of decades or hundreds of years older than her, but in that moment, with the sun behind him on the horizon, the light too bright for her eyes, he looked like a boy as equally young and displaced as she felt.

 

A couple of hours later, the two of them were still practicing in the dark - or well, it was her practicing and him surprisingly approving of everything she was doing. She did not know how to act or what to expect from this new Sehun that did not growl and shout at her whenever she did something wrong. Would it last? Would she tomorrow wake up to the sight of this supportive version of him that seemed to have put down a couple of his walls, or would the frown be back on his face?

 

He was like that from the very beginning - as if he wanted to take a step inside but he felt safer outside the door. She’d accepted the whole ordeal only because he proved to her she did have powers and she wanted to explore things further, so the guy with the same powers seemed like the logical choice.

 

But he was always so wary of her, as if she was going to pull a knife outside of her sleeves and try to stab him any moment, so she tried to keep things as light as possible, not understanding why he’d think that. He was the one who’d approached her first - why did he think she was the one hiding things? Did he think she knew how to control her powers and that she was only acting?

 

She scoffed to herself as she tried to make the wind raise the water from the lake. So far, she’d only managed to scoop up a little bit, but she was the one who wasn’t nearly satisfied.

 

She’d started getting spasms in her arms a long time ago, so she had to admit that it wasn’t that she wasn’t happy with her progress - today she’d done more than in the whole month they were practicing, and she would’ve been the happiest if she could just go and close her eyes somewhere for a long, long moment.

 

But today, she couldn’t seem to let him go. She didn’t want the day to end, even though sun had bid them goodbye temporarily and went to sleep, too.

 

She didn’t know where he was - he’d went over to sit in the grass a while ago, having realized she wasn’t going to make things work anytime soon. Thankfully, the lake was illuminated by moonlight, so she could see the water clearly as she tried over and over again to violate the harmony of its calm, shiny surface and not managing to do more than a simple plunge that looked as if she’d thrown a stone into the water.

 

Another spasm shook her right arm, but she balled it into a fist and persisted. Plunge, she ordered the wind as she maneuvered it high into the air, wanting to get as strong an impact as she could, but her right arm gave out after a second and it dispersed before it hit the surface.

 

But as she tried to regain control of it, she leaned forward too much and ended up losing her balance. She was standing very close to the water, her feet unstable on slippery stones, so she found herself falling head-first into the lake’s shiny water.

 

Two arms sneaked around her waist as she was pulled back in time not to end up all wet, which was the only thing left to happen to make it a day. She blinked a couple of times, still not understanding how he’d managed to come over so quickly - had he been standing behind her this whole time?

 

She realized she’d put her hands on his, which were still at her waist, though he’d saved her from disaster and it wasn’t necessary anymore. She quickly raised them and tried to move to a safe distance from him, but he didn’t let her go.

 

“I think it’s enough for today,” he said as she turned so that she could see him. “You’ve done more than enough, Lamiya. You’re too tired to make any further advancements.”

 

She shook her head as her whole body began to pulse from being so close to him - the moonlight was shining upon him, now making him seem like a being not from this Earth - someone that handsome couldn’t possibly be her species. “I… I need to keep practicing…” she said weakly, still trying to push herself away and him still keeping a strong hold on her. Why was she so confused?

 

Then her right arm began spasming again, and his face turned somber. He let her go but didn’t let her breathe for a second as his hands settled on her arm and started massaging it.

 

“See what I’m telling you?” he murmured, focused on her arm while her heart was in . She was sure her whole face was burning from some kind of embarrassment she did not understand, but thankfully, he was intent on her arm as he kept talking. “I bet you’ve been having spasms for ages, but of course you’d never complain, or, God forbid, stop doing the thing that caused these spasms in the first place.”

 

He smiled to himself as he shook his head, while she could do nothing but stare at him, at his moonlight-white skin and smiling eyes and the proximity of them that she usually ran away from because she didn’t want to feel the things it made her feel, because she was feeling those things right now.

 

She was unresponsive as he made them both sit right next to the lake, in front of the place where the ground met water. Without her causing a ruckus, the water was calm once again, its pearly surface speaking of secrets she seemed to be able to hear tonight.

 

She tried not to think about the person that was sitting behind her, seemingly letting her lean on his chest as he embraced her frame once again, but she was made of stone that could not bend, that was too intent on panicking because he kept touching her and he had never did that before unless it was necessary.

 

“For the longest time, I thought…” he said in a calm, nostalgic voice as she fought the urge to close her eyes and just do what her heart wanted, “I thought this was a trap.”

 

She rolled her eyes and started to protest, but his arms tightened on her waist. “I thought you were deliberately put here by SM as some kind of diversion, to catch us.”

 

He then let her turn around to watch him - she could not believe what he was saying, though she’d expected something similar. She wanted him to look her in the eyes as he told her she was some kind of spy or whatever his crazy mind had managed to come up with. Was he going to tell her they wouldn’t be able to train anymore? Would they try to get rid of her, now that he was sure she was their enemy?

 

She did not know what was going to happen, but she was angry - she never once gave him a reason to think whatever nonsense he believed in. Any other girl would’ve run away immediately after having a maniac approach them, claiming they were an alien who possessed the same power as her and wanting to train her. Seriously? What kind of drugs was she one, accepting this whole ordeal?

 

She never let herself forget how dangerous he was, but she often forgot that he could be dangerous for her. Would he finally show her his full powers, using them to hurt her?

 

Meanwhile, he was in a world of his own, having the audacity to smile at her as if everything was okay.

 

He trailed a finger around the corner of her lips. “But today… you are either too good of an actor, or I have been harsh on you without a rightful excuse.”

 

Lamiya was about to start protesting, to start angrily accusing him of things that he was concluding without any kind of evidence, but then she realized what he had said and she froze. What?

 

If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t say anything, because he smiled to himself again, still lost in thought. “Today I realized that you really don’t know how to control your power,” he murmured. “And you’ve been trying so hard… I guess I only realized today how hard you’ve been trying during this whole month, not just today. And I’ve never once showed you kindness.”

 

Why was his hand still on her face? Her whole cheek was burning from his touch. She didn’t understand why he was suddenly like this, why he’d just suddenly realize she wasn’t a master spy or some other enemy that would stab him in the back the first chance they got to do it.

 

She couldn’t stop the next words that went out of . “You know what? I don’t need your kindness, Sehun. In fact, I don’t need you approval or anything. If you were so sure that I was your enemy, then you should’ve immediately put things at their rightful place. I can’t- I don’t want to-” She didn’t want what? For him to train her anymore? For him to stay with her? She knew that was a complete lie, so she found she couldn’t finish her sentence.

 

She sighed and started to turn away, because she couldn’t handle herself right now, let alone him and his enlightenment, but once again, he wouldn’t let her go. The hand at the small of her back was firm as he shook his head again, his eyes still light and illuminated by the moonlight. This was so not the time for this conversation. Or any conversation at all.

 

“Lamiya, I am… sorry for being harsh on you. But you need to understand that my - our cause is too important to be ruined like that. If I’d confronted you immediately and you turned out to be a real SM spy, what would it have accomplished? I would’ve been severely injured or perhaps even dead.” His face was still light-hearted as he said his words, but she found herself shuddering from the sole thought of him being hurt.

 

“So they… SM… they are stronger than you are?” she asked in a small voice, not daring to look up and instead staring at a strange-looking stone close to the water that seemed to be moving in the darkness.

 

Sehun pushed a lock of her hair outside of her face as he nodded. “Yes. They might be stronger than the twelve of us together, but if you learn how to control your powers, we just may have a chance.”

 

Now she frowned again, not believing him for a second. “Come on, Sehun, we both know that’s not true,” she said as he sneaked a peek at him, who still seemed awfully calm. “What difference would it make if we had two wind guardians? You could handle things on your own and I wouldn’t be able to help a bit.”

 

He then smiled at her, and again, she didn’t understand. Was this how he was always going to act from now on? Was he always going to laugh like that, making her heart flutter, threatening to fly away out of her chest? Because if he was, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She was barely handling things as they were right now, with this strange person that was beside her, seemingly getting closer to her just because she could help him and his brothers fight a battle she knew nothing about.

 

It was beautiful. She couldn’t breathe again.

 

“What?” she asked, annoyed, after a couple of seconds of his laughter. Was he making fun of her again? She didn’t know whether to put her guard up or down or somewhere in the middle - what did he want from her?

 

“You said we,” he said gently as his hand found its place at her cheek again. “So that means you accept.”

 

It wasn’t a question - it was a firm statement said in a gentle voice that she would’ve always said yes to. But what was she agreeing to? He’d never asked her anything-

 

“When the time comes,” he had said with his arms crossed on his chest, “I will ask you to join us and become another guardian that will fight alongside us. Don’t think that it’ll be easy - I wouldn’t hope to pass a single test of mine if I were you.

 

But when that day comes…

 

If that day comes…

 

I hope you accept.”

 

She remembered the words he’d told her almost immediately after she met him in that field she went to during school trips. He seemed extremely dangerous and messed-up back then, speaking some nonsense about demanding to know how she could control the wind and where some secret organization was or something. She thought he was some kind of a prankster from their school, like the new guy that couldn’t find any friends so he thought he’d gain popularity by pulling pranks on others, but after a while it became clear that he was just plain crazy and she wanted to run away as fast and as far away as she could from him.

 

And now that same person was shyly and silently asking for her approval for something she hadn’t even begun sorting out, and she didn’t know what to say. He watched her intently, but not as a menacing presence that would hurt her if she said no.

 

She knew that deep down, he was scared he’d be left alone, fighting a battle he obviously had no chance of winning and for some reason, he hoped she would be able to help. Perhaps it wasn’t based on facts - perhaps he just needed something to keep the hope alive.

 

But it was not the idea of helping aliens help other, seemingly evil aliens that drove her towards her next move. It wasn’t the idea of learning how to control her newly-acquired powers that she’d been using for years without ever noticing it. It wasn’t even the urge to be understood or to find out more about this soft, approving Sehun that was waiting for an answer in front of her.

 

It was because the stone next to them wasn’t really a stone, and it was because it chose him, so her heart chose him, too.

 

“Under one condition,” she breathed as her soul danced near his shoulder. She struggled not to look at his intense gaze that seemed to be holding all the secrets of the universe.

 

“Anything,” he breathed back, just like she’d expected. She could’ve asked for money, favors, even his heart. She knew he would’ve given her anything she asked of him, even if such a thing was impossible.

 

But as she saw a part of herself landing on his shoulder and slowly moving towards his neck, she knew what she’d ask for, and it was more valuable than anything else in the world.

 

She finally found the courage to look directly into his eyes, knowing it wouldn’t easy to break the connection once it was made. “Your powers,” she whispered. “I want to see the full extent of your powers.”

 

He did not react in any visible way while she waited. Would he accept? All he’d shown her so far were small displays of power, the most impressive being the mini-tornado he’d caused when she’d demanded for him to really do the things he claimed he could if he wasn’t a lunatic - which she was so very sure he was.

 

But she could feel that it was only a small bit of what he could do. She did not know how old he was, but she was sure he’d had a lot more time than she did to practice his powers, and she needed to know. If she was about to become a guardian, she needed to see what kind of level she needed to reach in order to be worthy of that name.

 

His hand was on her eyes, his fingers slowly shutting her eyelids. She started shivering, because she didn’t know what he’d do next, but she trusted him, or at least the him that was in front of her right now. He wouldn’t hurt her - he’d either show her, or he’d tell her he wasn’t willing to show his secrets to a spy.

 

She needed to know that he trusted her, too.

 

And then she felt the ground move beneath her feet as the hand at the small of her back wound around her waist.

 

She squealed, opening her eyes to look beneath her, not understanding what was happening, just to see his still-smiling face intently watching her as he shushed her and whispered, “Close your eyes, beautiful.”

 

She felt goosebumps all over her arms as the word echoed in her head. Beautiful. She felt like they were moving, but it was a different kind she’d never felt before. All around them was the wind - it hummed to her veins and she ached to be able to touch it, to sing to it and learn how to control her newest friend.

 

What was he doing? She’d expected him to cause some super-storm that would threaten her life or something, but not this - whatever this was. Instead of running for her life, she was pressed closely together to him as he did something she couldn’t understand while she counted the beats of her heart. She hoped she could count his, too, because he was so very close to her, but she didn’t dare move.

 

Then the movements stopped and he said, “You can open them now.” There was something different about his voice, but it was so very different from the growl she was used to that she couldn’t identify it.

 

She opened her eyes to the sight of sand, sand everywhere as she danced around it, getting lost somewhere in his hair and she was lost, too.

 

But that was not what took her breath away, though Sehun was an unearthly being there to test her, making her feel as if she was about to burst from emotions she didn’t and couldn’t think about. What took her breath away was the sight of the moon watching over them when she looked sideways, and it was closer than she’d ever seen it.

 

Then she looked down and gasped, his hand finding hers as he squeezed, calming her down.

 

Below them was the surface of the lake, endless and white and terrifyingly beautiful.

 

The water was not calm - it was caught in some kind of a hurricane that had propelled them upwards. She now realized that was the wind that she’d felt all around them, but how could he do this so professionally, without her feeling a thing-

 

She looked up at him again and blinked a couple of times, now admiring this unreal person she’d had the luck to meet. He’d literally lifted them into the air using the raw force of the wind but instead of hitting them directly, it was all around them, creating a safe bubble for them to float in safely.

 

“Sehun,” she said strangely, not knowing whether she was mesmerized or terrified. She trusted him, but they were up so high and what if-

 

“Beautiful,” he whispered, still smiling. The image would be forever etched into her mind - from now on, he would never do anything but smile at her.

 

Where was it, though? She couldn’t find it, not in his hair or at his neck, no matter how hard she looked for it. Had she imagined it?

 

“Do you accept?” he continued as her eyes found his again. His hand squeezed her more tightly as he brought her closer to him, and now she could feel his breath on her face.

 

She was thinking about too many things at once - the wind hummed to her and she wanted to try and do something with it, he was asking her whether she accepted and she did not know, and she couldn’t find her soul that had gotten caught in his hair - where was it?

 

She blinked, and her body started moving at its own accord.

 

She’d fall into the center of the lake, letting the water swallow her up, and she’d sink down, onto the very bottom where no moonlight would ever be able to reach her.

 

But before that, she’d do the one thing her heart had wanted. She’d not leave any regrets behind as she got lost forever and the wind took her away.

 

Now she’d control it - she’d let it envelop them both as she closed the distance between them and put her lips on his.

 

Everything seemed to have righted itself in that one moment - she was not worried or scared anymore. She did not wonder how old he was or whether he trusted her or not.

 

All she could feel and think about was him, the him who was responding to the kiss as he brought her even closer to him and making all her worries edge away.

 

All she could hear was beautiful, beautiful over and over again as she touched his face, his hair and finally his neck, where she found it and now everything in the world was titled back to its rightful position.

 

She’d once read about a queen of a forgotten lake, struggling to bring peace to the world full of cold, grey people that could not find color in the world.

 

She’d once read about those same grey people being saved - was that what was happening right now, as their lips parted and she felt him shuddering?

 

Who was it that was being saved?

 

But as he leaned to kiss her again, she knew the answer wasn’t her or him, it was both of them. They’d both been saved by the queen of the forgotten lake tonight - she’d washed away the grey color of their skins and entangled them in each other’s colors.

 

Now it was sand, the sand of his eyes and hair all over her, and the blue of the water’s surface in her eyes all over him.

 

And the witness between them, there to remember the promise, but it was a lot more than just the guardianship.

 

When she’d kissed him, she’d accepted a lot more, and when he’d kissed her, he’d acknowledged it, therefore the promise was sealed.

 

As they finally parted, but still remained close, she could see the butterfly swirling around them, as if humming its own melody, praising their union.

 

When she fell into the deep, dark lake, she would forever remember this moment.

 

When the moonlight was gone, she would not forget that she’d accepted.

 

Many, many years later, he hoped she didn’t.

 

He hoped Lu had erased him from her mind - though he knew she still remembered him, he hoped it was a vague, distant memory that didn’t cause her any pain.

 

He hoped he was only the cause of her happiness, or at least nothing at all.

 

He would take the pain with himself, carry it with pride and forever remember everything, gladly taking the price while she forgot.

 

He would get lost with the her from his memories at the bottom of that lake while she went up, up, higher into the sky and giggled while kissing him in the sunlight.

 

And he would not blame Kris for being able to do that to her, with her. She deserved love and happiness and the beautiful girl that was hugging Sehun goodbye while he watched them.

 

It was their field once. It was him making them float while they kissed and promised, while he asked and she accepted.

 

Now it was her and Kris, and he would never be able to lift her up that high into the air.

 

But as they made their own promises and Sehun took all the pain for himself, he realized that one thing remained.

 

No matter how much time passed, it would carry their promise and reveal their hearts with each flap of its wings, telling the story that he’d never forget, that she’d already forgotten.

 

Even when he was gone, it would still sing of their love.

 

And it would forever remain theirs, even if there was no one else to listen to the song.

 

The witness would fly on, even after he came back and met his destiny, carving out hers in the process.

 

He would meet his destiny with pride and bravery, no matter how much knowing she would eventually fall in love with another man hurt.

 

The witness would remember.