Finally, it was Saturday.

 

A year ago, had someone told her she’d be looking forward to staying at school for the whole day on Saturdays, she would’ve laughed and told them they were crazy.

 

Now, Saturday was the only day she could do her schoolwork in peace, without being interrupted or insulted. Apparently, the vampires, as she liked to call the boys who were making hell out of her life, had more important things to do during the weekends, and she was definitely not going to complain. They were probably out drinking, and as far as she was concerned, they could knock themselves out - she would enjoy the brief freedom and act as if they didn’t exist at all.

 

It wasn’t easy to do that, since she kept being reminded of them by the presence of other, manageable Asians in school. Her friend Kyungsoo was wearing large glasses and hugging a throng of books, bowing at her as he passed by her. She still didn’t understand the weird custom, but Soo had once explained it meant showing respect to people - the deeper the bow, the deeper the respect for the person.

 

She bowed as deeply as she could. “Sorry, Aya, I’d mingle but I need to take these to my History teacher,” Soo said, sounding apologetic.

 

Aya waved him over. “Go, go, it’s not like we won’t see each other on Monday.”

 

She couldn’t say she wished the Asians - now she knew most of them were Korean, though some were Chinese, too - had never come to their school in the first place. Even though it sounded impossible, some of them were actually pretty nice people.

 

For example, the friend who’d just passed by her, Kyungsoo. He was such a pleasant person to hang out with - a polite, honest, precious guy whom she could talk to about almost everything. She and Lamiya were always around him, helping him learn some Bosnian words, for he seemed interested in their language. He also tried very hard at school, even going to some of the Curriculum B classes. She had only words of praise for him and she cared for him deeply.

 

“Hey, Aya,” a voice piped up behind her, sounding exhausted. That was a regular thing for him - he never got enough rest because he was always stressing about something. “Did you happen to see Kai around here somewhere? I’ve been searching for him to tell him-”

 

“Ah waeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” a voice that was definitely not from this Earth shouted in the distance. “What do you mean I can’t be a part of the school choir if my grades are not good enough, Lidiya? But that has nothing to do with my singing skills! Look, here, I’ll show you - even though I got an F in Math, I can still reach the high notes in Tears!”

And then he started to literally scream like he’d promised. Suho and Aya quickly fled from the main hall before they ended up with some serious brain damage. She was very worried about their Music teacher, though - she had to endure that almost every day and at a much smaller distance.

 

“Uhm, no, I haven’t seen him around, Suho,” Aya said quickly, when she remembered Suho’s question from earlier. She furrowed her eyebrows. “Is everything okay with him? Did he get an F in that Math test, too? Does he need help with his studies?”

 

Suho sighed loudly. “You’re seriously too kind for your own good, Aya.” Then he smiled, like a proud mom. “I was actually going to tell him that he’d gotten a B, which is the most he’d ever managed! Guess all that explaining of trigonometry wasn’t that useless in the end after all! He was still down at the gym, playing basketball with Xiumin and Lay, when I went up to see the teacher and ask her about the grades. I asked him to wait for me, but do they ever listen to what I say?”

 

Aya giggled and patted her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t let it get to you, Junmyeon. They don’t mean anything bad by it, they’re just irresponsible. The important thing is that he got that B, so congratulate him from me, too, when you find him!” She nodded at him, planning to go to the library, like Soo, to return the books she needed to get back, since today she didn’t have to hide.

 

She’d taken two steps when Suho called out for her. “Wait, uh, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

 

He looked over his shoulders, as if worried someone might hear what he was going to ask as she waited. Suho was sometimes a bit clumsy, but he was good to his core - always taking care of the rest of the guys, paying attention to everything and trying to understand everyone. He was one of the oldest members and certainly the most responsible one, so he took care of the chores like paying the tuition, cleaning their lockers, tracking their timetables and taking note of upcoming tests.

 

That’s why him looking worried as he said his next words didn’t strike her as unusual. “Is… is everything okay with Lamiya? Regarding Kris, I mean, though I hope she’s okay in general too-”

 

Aya cut him off to ease his embarrassment. “Don’t worry - it is, as far as I know. He doesn’t seem to be acting any more erted than usual, but he is not losing interest in her either. They’re actually out right now - I think she told me he’d be taking her to see a movie or something like that? That’s why she didn’t come to the Physics club.”

 

It was like this between her and Suho - they had this unspoken agreement to keep an eye on Kris and Lamiya in order to try and keep things as calm as possible. He’d ask her whether she’d noticed anything out of order every once in a while, and it felt nice, not being alone in this quest to keep her best friend from being hurt.

 

Suho knew Kris much better than she did, and his concern only confirmed her suspicions about Kris being not as nice as Lamiya thought he was, or rather, as she tried to convince herself.

 

Aya had no idea how much Suho truly knew about their relationship, but what she knew for sure was that it was not a healthy one, no matter how hard she tried to make it seem and no matter how much she acted. In the end, it was all still an act.

 

Now she just felt bad for her friend all over again - why had she done that in the first place? She told her she’d been experiencing something very weird - she kept having very out-of-place dreams including a guy she’d had only a few encounters with, none of which were even remotely similar to what she’d been seeing in her dreams. The dreams were vivid, long, and she remembered most of them clearly after waking up, which was not usually the case. In the dreams, they were lovers, and they were using some kind of superpowers together to bring peace and harmony to the world.

 

It was good material for an awesome fic, but it had nothing to do with reality. Sehun kept being mean to her - almost as mean as him and Baekhyun were to Aya, yet the dreams persisted. Aya told her it was probably her subconsciousness’ fault, turning the guy who didn’t like her at all into a hero in her dreams. It would pass as time went by and she got used to his harshness.

 

But getting used to it was not easy at all - she knew well from her own experience. Thankfully, she didn’t have any weird dreams including Baekhyun, but reality was awful enough that somehow she thought she was trapped inside a giant nightmare which she was bound to wake up from someday.

 

Lamiya didn’t hate Sehun - she was a little bit scared of him, like she was of Kris, her rebound guy. She really was senseless sometimes. Not only did she come up with the idea of getting together with the ert who kept smelling her and acting as if they were together already, but she came up with that idea in order to stop dreaming about the psycho who was always staring at her from a distance away, with what she interpreted as loathing in his eyes.

 

She interpreted it as infatuation, but it wasn’t like Lamiya ever listened to what Aya said - just like Suho had said before. The two of them had so much in common, so they were like the self-appointed worry-heads of the team.

 

Her brother-in-arms nodded at her before he left her standing at the stairs alone, a little bit of worry disappearing from his face, but the majority of it remained in the corners of his eyes.

 

She stood at the stairs as Suho moved away, deep in thought. She hoped his friends appreciated him, because he defended even the worst of them - even Kris, who was a sadist, even Chanyeol, who kept making fun of everyone… even Baekhyun, whom she hated from the depths of her soul.

 

She did not want to understand why he was acting the way he was, especially since his hatred seem to be a VIP benefit only she got the honor of receiving. Baekhyun would laugh in the main hall, chasing Jongin and Sehun around. He would hug Kyungsoo and joke with him. He would say Hi to the school students, bowing at them. He even liked her best friend and sometimes went out with her and Kris. He was capable of being nice to people.

 

It was as if he was doing it all on purpose - trying to provoke her, steal everything that she held close to her heart and make her crumble just to be able to walk all over the bits and pieces of her. But she would not give him that satisfaction. No matter how many times he told her she was bald or a boy or a stinking wench, she never once gave him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, except for that one time when he embarrassed her in front of everyone.

 

She shook her head, half of her already reliving the memory, but she managed to pull out of it. Then she took a deep breath and went over to her locker to try to sort through the mess its contents were - two days before, someone had broken into her locker and burned all of her books and notebooks, but thankfully, the job wasn’t done well, so some of the notebooks were still half-usable, and she needed her notes badly, so she was going to assess the damage and see how she could make it alright without making a fuss. If she failed, she could always take someone else’s notes, so there was no reason to get worked up over it. Or anything else.

 

Her locker was full of nasty graffiti with bad English grammar, so it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and realize it was the Koreans who’d done it, but somehow, all of the school cameras seemed to be malfunctioning and the culprits could not be found. They always got away with everything.

 

She emptied her mind as she opened her locker, took out the burned possessions and slowly categorized the items as either completely unusable or potentially useful. The latter were put in a bag, whereas the other ended up in the trash. What a waste. He went really, really far in trying to make her suffer, she’d admit that.

 

After going to the Math club and playing some volleyball at the gym with her friends, she took some of their notebooks to the main hall for copying. She went to the farthest corner of it, where a table and a chair were set, and concealed by the panel of the recent project the third-graders were doing for their Biology class and a vase of flowers, she braced herself and started writing. She would stay there all day, she knew.

 

She did not know how much time had passed, but when she groggily opened her eyes and realized she’d fallen asleep at some moment, the main hall was shrouded in darkness. She’d finished copying two notebooks, and she had been halfway through the third one, so she’d given herself a moment to slack off and close her eyes for a second. Just for a second, and then she’d go back to her work.

 

And now she was awake again, and the reason for it was the music coming from the music room. She would’ve worried about being locked inside of the school because nobody saw her at her secluded space, but the music was too distracting. Too beautiful.

 

She slowly got up, somehow knowing that the person at the piano wasn’t hear Music teacher Lidiya, who couldn’t play for five seconds without making a mistake. This was different - the melody was nostalgic, formed by the skilled hands of a professional, not the amateurs that were the school students she knew, who were piano players.

 

She approached the half-open door of the music room, not sure whether she should peek into it and possibly get herself into trouble, because who would be there, playing a piano in the dark, on a Saturday? Was it one of the teachers, possessing secret piano-playing skills the students knew nothing about? Or was it someone more important, like the school principal?

 

Still, she could not resist the urge to solve this puzzle. The only light at the whole place was the damped light of the lamp in the corner of the music room, so she could always just go back into the dark if the piano player sensed her presence.

 

On the other side, she could just go back to her hiding place, pick up the notebooks and make her retreat, too, since it didn’t matter who the piano player was anyway - why would it? She was one to appreciate music, but she did not care much about who was making it. All that mattered was that the melody was beautiful, and it would sure stay with her for a couple of days. It was probably only a cover of some famous song, anyway, so she could later look it up and listen to the real thing.

 

But she would wonder about the piano player for a long while, she knew. She closed her eyes and drowned out all of her doubts.

 

And then she peeked her head through the door.

 

The lamp was shining a light on the piano and the person sitting at its front, playing his soul away at it. It was as if he was at the center of a stage and this was his main performance.

 

The player was immersed in his playing, his eyes closed and his head moving rhythmically to the sound of the song that came from the piano, the sound his fingers were skillfully producing. Every once in a while, he’d tap the piano pedal with his left foot. He was passionate and one with the melody; even if she were standing next to him, she would’ve remained unnoticed.

 

Aya was entranced - she could not take her eyes off the movements of his head, his body, his mouth silently forming the lyrics of a wordless song, his lean fingers never missing a note and continuing to create a perfect harmony. His blonde hair was messy and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, the drops slowly sliding down his temples and cheeks, pooling at his neck.

 

She gulped - it was the most attractive scene she’d ever had the chance to see.

 

But she hated him; how could he look so handsome to her eyes? Why did she have the urge to run her hands through the silky hair, to wipe the drops of sweat from his face and trail their path to his neck? And why was he wearing such - absurd clothes, that clearly revealed that his form was muscly and well-taken care of, the opposite of what she usually believed and used as the source for her worst insults?

 

Why was he wearing skinny leather pants while he was playing the piano? And why was his whole form moving, as if this was what he had been doing his whole life, what he was made for?

 

Her eyes were bad. That was the only explanation. Or perhaps she was still sleeping and having a dream similar to those Lamiya kept having, where their worst nightmares turned into reality in which they embraced and loved those they loathed?

 

Well, Lamiya could do what she wanted, but Aya would not play along with this. It was hard to do so, but she somehow managed to take her eyes off his music-immersed and unearthly-y form and started to move away. Why was it suddenly scalding hot? She began to fan herself as she went for her notebooks and bag, wanting desperately to run away from this - this thing she didn’t understand.

 

But then he began to sing, and she almost keened right then and there.

 

She was crazy. Totally, absolutely crazy, for she turned around once again and went back to her place at the door, as if in a trance.

 

The moves his body was making as he was playing were the spell that he was using on her, torturing her in some new way she’d never experienced before. He was menacing, for his whole form was sweaty and his black shirt was sticking to his back now, revealing even more of what she did not want to know but wished his shirt would somehow roll up so she got to see skin.

 

He was a siren and she was his prey; he would chop her into pieces and then devour them all, and she would enjoy being destroyed by him. He was her worst enemy and there she was, wishing he was hers to touch, wishing she could go over there and sit in his lap as he kissed her over and over again, as her back pressed the piano keys and it made the sweetest sound ever-

 

Then he began to sing again, and she was gone.

 

“The answer is you,” he sang his heart out, “My answer is you…”

 

She stood there, not able to blink or breathe or exist, even. He was singing in a foreign language, seemingly singing to the piano itself, whispering some lost promises and telling the story of loves long buried by time, loves she wanted to know of, regrets he seemed to feel for mistakes she knew nothing about.

 

Time stopped. He played and played, and her infatuation with him grew bigger with every key his hand pressed. The world was spinning in an endless memory; they were both entranced, but neither could get tired of this madness - him, only executing the orders of an unknown force with his fingers, and her, unable to take her eyes off the fingers which were so familiar to her, since she’d seen them yield the knife that had stabbed her so many times before.

 

She wished he’d never stop.

 

But he did, too soon, now panting with his head turned towards the ceiling, the sweat still rolling down his face and neck, into depths she now wished she was familiar with. His hands were clutching the edges of the piano strongly, his knuckles white. He was a statue, a masterpiece, an angel - no, he was the devil sent to the Earth himself, there to take her soul and finally announce she was in hell this whole time, and it would only get worse from now on, since now she felt attracted to the most disgusting thing in the whole world.

 

She would suffer later. For now, she would pretend it was anyone but him, that he was a lover and not a foe, and that she would not despise herself for ever having let herself see him this way and think the thoughts she was thinking.

 

She quickly realized the sweat rolling down his face was not sweat alone - it was mixed with hot tears sliding outside of the corners of his eyes. His pants turned into sobs, yet he didn’t move - she didn’t dare make a move either. She was intruding on something she had no knowledge of, she did not want to have knowledge of, and her whole presence was a blasphemy and a betrayal. But still she could not move.

 

The whole world was the piano the lamp was shining light onto and the sinfully-handsome boy shedding tears at its center. She wanted to wipe the tears away. She wanted to kiss them away and whisper over and over again it would be okay, whatever was bothering him.

 

So she finally moved.

 

There was not a trace of sanity left in her; her feet were moving at their own accord and approached him silently, who was at another world and could not feel her presence there. They led her behind him, who was now too close and the only thing she could hear was the sound of her loudly beating heart. She was a flickering light and he was a black hole that was going to swallow it as soon as he opened his eyes. He would take her soul; there she was, offering it to him with a smile on her face.

 

But he was still crying, and to hell with her soul. She did not care anymore.

 

Her hand was shaking like never before as she reached out to him. This was the moment when everything changed. After she did this, they could never go back - he would be oblivious and go on with his life, but she would be changed forever. Irreversibly.

 

But she could not watch him suffer. At this moment, she would love him, even if he never knew about the sacrifice she was making - especially if he did not know, and he wouldn’t. Nobody ever did.

 

Her body was acting on its own and she was merely a prisoner of her impulsive desires. A finger settled at his neck and he gasped - when the rest of her left hand’s fingers joined, his face turned towards the ceiling again, his mouth parting.

 

He was at a place she had never seen before - it was a vast wasteland filled with darkness, and he desperately tried to light it up, but he could not do anything. He extended his arms and screamed, but no light came out of it. He was frustrated and lost and useless, and he was alone in the dark, curling into a ball and putting his arms over his head.

 

He sobbed loudly, new tears rolling down his already too-salty face, so she reached out and dove in. “Relax,” she said as she searched, petting his hair.

 

Where was it? She could not find it anywhere close. All she could see was darkness - a dark alley through which he was running, a dark room he was sitting in, his arms and legs in chains as he tried to find the light but failed-

 

Ah, there it is.

 

“Follow me,” she whispered as she came closer to him and let his head rest against her chest. “I’ll lead you home.” And then she pulled him into it - he gasped again as her grasp on his neck tightened.

 

He was now running through a forest, laughing as the child he was. He quickly reached the place he loved the most in the world - the only place he loved more was where The Tree of Life stood, but it was all around him anyways. It was with him, its power and essence running through his veins and echoing in his heartbeat.

 

He’d never felt more alive or happy. This was his first day of life, the life of a guardian he’d become, along with the boys who were somewhere behind him, also laughing and thanking The Tree for giving them this form.

 

He began to sing, and in the distance, he heard others follow his example. Then he started running - into the water, jumping with it and becoming a waterfall himself, light all around him, inside of him, pulsing through his hands and releasing into the distance, lighting up the whole planet.

 

He was free and alive and a bird only learning how to fly. He would use his power for good, he would find those who wanted to destroy this beautiful world. He would protect the Exoplanet and its inhabitants. He would light up the darkness and be the end of the tunnel for those who were struggling.

 

He would spend his life loving and cherishing. He would chase away all of the darkness and not stop until not a trace of it was left in this world.

 

His mouth were still parted, his eyeballs moving rapidly behind his closed lids. He was in the arms of his worst enemy, who was hugging him from behind, rocking him gently and whispering how everything would be fine over and over again as her fingers lay at the back of his neck, immovable, while her other hand was going through his hair in gestures of care.

 

He could not feel the tears sliding down her cheeks and onto his forehead.

 

He could not hear her desperate sobs, as she went through the torture she’d saved him from. As she was beaten and experimented on, and taken a part of her essence from, never to be returned again.

 

She would never be the same again.

 

She would never be able to hate him again.

 

His sleeping form, oblivious to its surroundings, finally relaxed as she brought out the happiest memory he possessed and took the worst from him.

 

He would not know her, but she could never not know him again.

 

Everything will be fine, Baekhyunnie…

 

The voice of home sang, and as he dove into the water, he believed it.