The name slipped from the recesses of her mind, as she tried but failed to retain anything of the familiar name that jogged a little of the dim recesses of her old memory. Jiyong felt Taeyeon tense in his arms, her hands flying to her head as she struggled to search for a memory that he had intended for to be sealed away, permanently.

“Out!” He roared at Tiffany as Taeyeon collapsed on the table, passing out with beads of cold sweat on her forehead, mumbling incoherently to herself. “Who told you that you could return to see Taeyeon?”

“I did.” Jessica stepped up to his side, pressing a firm arm in his shoulder as her eyes flickered momentarily, the serpentine shadow of a dragon spiralling in her brown depths as she growled, trying to suppress her anger at Jiyong. “Both Taeyeon and Tiffany are friends. Best friends at that, something you shouldn't feel that you have the liberty to take away. If you're insecured about your relationship with Taeyeon, then don't try making one with her.” She snarled. “Don't you even see what your imposement is doing to her? Your fiancee is in an epileptic fit because she's trying to recall Tiffany, but can't because you're stopping it!” Hyoyeon’s eyes widened as the pale pinkish hair that Taeyeon had receded further, the pink edges turning darker, a lilac tinge to the ends of her hair, mixed with the original lighter pinkish tinge that she currently had. A few strands of blonde hair turned as black as night, and the young fairy whipped her face up towards Jiyong.

“You did this, didn't you?” She demanded, grabbing a fistful of Taeyeon's changing hair lightly. “You sealed away part of her memories! So when she turned she would never remember Tiffany, and that's why she's having a second colour change in her hair!” The fairy screamed at him, burning with absolute fury at the desecration that Jiyong had done to one of their race. Fairies prided their purity in the tinge of their hair, the strength of their own memories, flavoured with different colours that made them who they truly were. In a sense, their hair colour was a defining derivative of their personality, their true character. For one of their kind to undergo a second change meant instability in their memories---and that meant that she was turning into a danger for both herself and others. Most instable fairies were put down, regardless of their status, because of the threats they posed when they were inclined to lose themselves, trying to find back who they were.

“You just sentenced her to death, you selfish bastard.” Hyoyeon hissed, lunging forward to grip Jiyong's collar angrily. “She appeared in front of the elders with lightened hair---to appear before then another time, this time with a hair colour that is different, means she's unstable, and the fairy community with not rest until you put her to death!”

“I don't really care.” The petulant scorn in Jiyong's voice made Hyoyeon twitch violently in anger. “She can only be mine. Let them try to take Taeyeon from me, and I’ll make them regret it.” He snapped. Yells of surprise and shock filtered through the room as Hyoyeon's fist found contact with Jiyong's face, the strong fairy driving her fist deep into the cheek of her king, decking him violently as her punch sent him careening back into the wall.

“Taeyeon needs to be far away from you. Tiffany was right. You're poisoning her instead of helping her!” Yuri gripped her best friend’s arms tightly, patting her back soothingly. Taeyeon was a relative to Hyoyeon's own fairy family, a cousin, by blood, to the strong fairy that cared dearly for her loved ones. “Let go of me! Yuri!” The fairy thrashed violently in her arms, fairy dust scattering all over the floor as she twisted, cracks of air bursting from around her as she tried to propel herself out of their grip into the air.

“You're just gonna attack Jiyong like this. You know that can't happen.” Yuri replied back calmly. “I'm not letting go until you've calmed down. To be honest, I think most of us have realised this---I think Taeyeon has another set of untriggered genes within her. It explains her strange scent to both lycanthropes and dragons alike. She smells like a fairy, and a human, but yet not like either too. I'm sure that would be a satisfactory explanation to the elders.”

“A Tribid? Triesters haven't been seen in ages!” Jessica's head snapped towards her girlfriend's, eyes flashing in surprise. “They were too powerful, and their Tribid Genes concealed them so well that we've never found any because they smelled so human!”

“I think Taeyeon is a bit..different.” Tiffany spoke up softly from her corner. “Back then when I performed a spell on her to save her life, I think I triggered something that uncovered the part that was concealing her as a human. That's why she started spiralling downwards after that, seeing fairies, dragons everywhere, her eyes could occasionally see through the veil that was separating us, and look into our realm, hence the mental instability.” A smile twitched the corners of her lips. “But if I hadn't saved her,” Tiffany swallowed, “Hayeon would have been the only one left that survived the crash.”

~~~~~

Flashback:

The loud thumping beats of the club music filled Tiffany’s ears as her drink sloshed in its container, her high heel shoes thumping against the wooden ground in the beat to the music that pulsated in myriads of colours around her.

“Told you its good!” She giggled uncomprehendingly at the male who slung his arm around her shoulder, nodding as her vision swam before her, bursting into thousands of ecstasy before her eyes, adrenaline pumping through her veins alongside the drug within her system.

“Wanna smoke?” The unknown male took a long draft through the cigarette, a white cloud of smoke drafting through the air from his lips. He offered the joint to her, a dazed but pleasant look on his face as Tiffany giggled, accepting the joint with her lips and a sip from the alcoholic drink in her hand. “This is how we party here!” The slurred words fell from his mouth. Tiffany agreed with him. The drug that he had introduced to her was something altogether new but euphoric to her system---and it helped her sense magic all that much better. She hummed, twirling her fingers as the magical particles she saw through her enhanced vision swirled in the air.

“I feel really good.” Her words slurred violently from , smoke hanging from her lips, her eyelids drooping lazily as she reclined back on the sofa. Magic had always been a problem for her despite her age and the insistence by BoA that she was simply a late bloomer. She’d never felt those tingling things that most of the witches described to have had when they reached the age of ten, and when her eighteenth birthday reached, her patron never surfaced, despite the rituals that they did to awaken it. The disappointment in her father’s eyes had been too much to take---after all, he did expect her to follow her mother’s footsteps in becoming a great witch. Tiffany grunted, crushing the joint with her hands.

And where did that land her?

With nothing but a bitter, separated family and a hole in the ground. Tiffany fought back the tears that strained in her eyes, reaching for the other joint offered to her. That was why she had ran away, twice in her lifetime. She still had the pendant her mother had given her before her death, which connected fragments of her soul to Tiffany’s own immature magic, allowing for them to have seances to talk to each other. And that was how her mother had come to know about Taeyeon, even after her death when she was six.

A fond smile crossed her face at the thought of her tomboyish, dorky friend, with wild unruly dark curls all over her head at the young age of six when perms for children were all the rage in the human realm. Taeyeon had ran away from home for a simple reason---she didn’t want a perm, but her parents had gotten it for her because it was a trend. She’d ran away while the perm was getting done, and hence the dismal, unruly hair that came as a result of that.

….

They’d bumped right smack into each other, Tiffany having run straight from the portal through the forest right into Taeyeon with her curly hair and tiny overalls, sending both of them sprawling straight into the muddy ground. She’d burst into tears right then, and Tiffany chuckled as she recalled the first words that Taeyeon and boisterously said towards her after picking herself up from the ground, dusting her muddy hands against her clean blue overalls.

“Its only falling down, why are you such a crybaby?” Tiffany had wailed even louder at her words, sending the young Taeyeon into an absolute frenzy.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Here.” She stooped down to blow lightly on Tiffany’s injured knee, before scrunching her nose at Tiffany’s pink ensemble wear. “Ew, pink.” Tiffany wiped off the snot and tears on her face and scowled. Anyone could insult anything about her, but no one should ever insult the loveliness of pink! The tiny six year old balled up her fists in the mud and hurled a sluggish mud ball right in the other girl’s chubby face.

...

Tiffany grabbed a bottle of beer, chugging it down like a champ as her thoughts turned back to her best friend.

What was she doing now?

In agreeing with her father's suggestion to send her abroad for an indefinite period of time, it also meant that she had agreed in being separated from her best friend indefinitely.

Which she truly hadn't want to do especially when Taeyeon herself was going through a rather hard time.

She scrolled through the contacts on her phone, thumb hovering over the contact that was named Taetae, with a huge pink heart pounding at the right, and a wonky emoticon at the end, sticking out it's tongue mischievously.

A giggle escaped . Three weeks of not contacting her bestie, would Taeyeon think of her any differently? A wane smile flitted across her pale,drunken face, and her thumb clicked resolutely against the call button.

The phone rang once...twice...thrice…

“Hello? Fany?”

Tiffany's thumb mashed back against the hang up button viciously, her face flushed, and her heart beating her chest. She wasn't ready for Taeyeon to hear her being so unraveled either.

Suddenly her stomach lurched, her senses tingling dangerously as her world swirled in a bout of vertigo as she staggered to her feet.

Tiffany….

A whisper filtered through the air as her world melted around her. A burning smell of asphalt seared into her nose, watering her eyes as Tiffany fell to her hands and knees and vomited onto the ground. She vaguely registered the mocking calls around her as she crawled out of the club, finding some respit