Distracted waiting for Chorong's message, Bomi closed the chat. Hyunsik was nagging her to leave her seat after the train ride. She followed hurriedly with her bag in her arms and exited onto the train platform.

The salty scent and view of the seaside greeted them through the open windows of the station. Wow. Though it was still bright outside, clouds covered the sky with the crashes of ocean waves. 

"Come on, come on! It's best to get there before sundown!" Hyunsik ushered her along.

"Whoa, why the hurry...? We're gonna get there anyway. Can I just enjoy it here for a moment? I've never travelled around here."

Hyunsik frowned. Bomi was getting carried away with the sights of human places again, already lifting her phone up to take photos.

"Bomi, please, now's not the time! They're expecting me to be back by now and I don't want them to have to come looking if we take too long," he scolded.

She turned around to see his hands on his hips but before Bomi could , an odd sense struck her.

It was nothing she could see or hear, yet something felt inexplicably off. A gut feeling. A sense of change in nature. Bomi had never been so good at reading energies but this one was too big not to notice.

Perhaps it added to the extra furrow in Hyunsik's brow the moment they stepped off the train… Something changed in the air, like the air current blew another direction.

As that silence hit them the same way, Hyunsik hurriedly brought an arm behind her shoulders to usher her again.

"What–"

"I don't know," he said quickly, worriedly. "Let's go."

Behind the station and into the wilds, they cut across a grassy plain to reach the nearest cover of trees. But is this right? Is this the way to the camp? She didn't have a chance to ask. Taking glances behind them, she couldn't throw off the feeling that they were running from something, as Hyunsik's tugging grasp on her jacket kept her from falling behind.

But there it was again. There… Oh, no, this is– Bomi struggled to breathe in.

The air of the trees got mixed with a sizzling mist. It was just like the sense from that day. Bomi panicked. Her feet tripped over themselves. She lost sight of Hyunsik. The clouds got darker, and she covered her nose and mouth.

She remembered the rumbling, the earth shaking. She remembered the confusion as dancing nymphs were suddenly told by their elders to run and all she could think of was that the forest smelled…of ashes.

"Thereeee!"

~ ★ ~

"Unnies! You have to see this. I'm going to change this to a video call."

"Huh?"

Across the phone line, Naeun and Hayoung noticed an unusual view happening on the street. In the video feed they took, the lights of the city and the backing of the setting sun were enough to show the huge scale of dark clouds that were swirling, swirling near their area. When the rest of the women in the house rushed to the windows, they saw it was true.

"But how? What's happening? Bomi's missing and now these strange weather patterns. It can't be a coincidence," Eunji was first to say.

"I think you might be right," Namjoo admitted, her chin. And things were just getting weirder and weirder.

When Bomi was faced with going home, Chorong held to the belief that Bomi would come back. It gave her the greatest strength in knowing that. Normally a step like this might've frightened her, but instead it brought her comfort knowing and trusting Bomi that much. They were so open with their feelings and fears.

But just like her trauma years ago, the control and comfort she thought she had on the situation could slip from her grasp when she least expected it.

When Namjoo said she heard her own version of the situation from Hyunsik, thus confirming it, Chorong just felt like her whole world had tilted in slow motion, everything suspended and not right at all. She couldn't even blame her own delirium for a second.

The phone went scratchy dead after that terrifying announcement. And everything moved fast, but also not fast enough.

The girls were trying to stay with Chorong until they could figure out what to do; Eunji had called her moments after to make sure she stayed where she was. Namjoo had come flying down the stairs and was leading the situation. Naeun had been out to meet with Hayoung and the two were still on their way back.

The summoning spell hadn't worked either.

It was only hours apart on the same day they parted, and Bomi hadn't replied to the last message she sent to her. She was never able to. They never got to their destination. She was… She was… Hyunsik said…

Kidnapped. Taken by some unknown.

And Bomi's phone was left behind with Hyunsik with a location that apparently didn't matter anymore. Emergency services weren't going to be able to do anything if Bomi was taken by something from another world. The sky was already beginning to darken too, and her heart sank even more.

How could things change so fast?

Chorong felt weak. She felt useless. And she couldn't hold onto the present moment–the discussions the girls were having–when her mind kept drifting into the shock of the recent past: Their last moments, touches, connection… Bomi waving goodbye from the taxi… Everything that they promised wouldn't be their last… How could it be their last?

Her head snapped up at Namjoo's murmuring. She hadn't been able to take the details of their frantic discussions, but hearing Namjoo's confusion seemed to spark attention in her. "What did you say? Say that again."

It must have been the first thing she managed to say in a while.

"I just said I can't believe that Bomi unnie would be in Seoul? I thought I did the tracking charm right but evidently there was a problem with that too."

"Where exactly in Seoul?"

Namjoo's face scrunched up, inspecting her map drawn in the air. "Um... Bukhansan National Park, where I first found her..."

"She could be there," Chorong blubbered quickly, like grasping at straws. "She lost her phone; she could be anywhere."

She knew it sounded ridiculous coming from her own mouth but if the world was filled with hidden worlds and societies and all sorts of magic that would even lead to Bomi being taken from her, anything was possible.

"I see what you're saying… Yeah, we should check there." Namjoo was nodding. Chorong almost hadn't expected her suggestion to be that easily accepted. She didn't know what she was trying to say after all, and any option to go out and search sounded good. Namjoo was quickly snapping her fingers with sparks and closing the panels she was looking at, including one on an abrupt end to a call with her boss. They heard a tiny "hey!"

Eunji was next in confusion. "But Joo, you just said it's impossible Bomi could've gotten there in that time, even for you."

"I have to admit there's things even I don't know. Besides, in summoning, teleportation, it takes less than a minute to zip back here so it's all plausible," Namjoo said. "If the charm says Bomi unnie's in the park, there's a chance she's actually back in the other world. She told me that's how she got here; that there's a hidden jump from Lowes."

"But you've never been to Lowes."

"Right. But we don't have much choice. I think the tracking could still lead us to where it is."

"Then we're going to have to follow it."

~ ★ ~

Namjoo redirected the girls to meet up outside of the nature reserve, where Hayoung and Naeun finally arrived. If this concerned their beloved housemate Bomi, they needed them all together.

According to Namjoo's tracking charm, Bomi had indeed last turned up in the nature reserve before disappearing. Namjoo had been sceptical about why and how Bomi could be in Seoul so suddenly, especially after that call from Hyunsik across the country.

This park, however, was the same place Namjoo first found Bomi and brought her in many months ago. That and the strange weather circling about the place were giving ominous signs.

"Shouldn't we get help for this?"

"I have! But it'll still be a while. Can we really stand still until then? We can go searching for Bomi in the meantime, and just don't engage in any dangerous acts…"

It was a risky move, but as Namjoo raised the question, the girls went silent. No one really wanted to stay behind. That's why they were all here instead of at home.

Namjoo pulled up sparks in front of them and drew out the map again of their current location. They were going to Lowes, Bomi's mysterious hometown in the other world that no one seemed to have gone back to, but only relocated. Did this have something to do with it? Was this what people like Hyunsik had feared? The thing that happened to their town?

Can we really do this?

"Now, we're not going there to fight. We're only going to search for Bomi," Namjoo reminded them. "If it all goes well, there will be backup before anything risky happens. Fairy Protection are sending people down, and the Satyr Union or something should be on the case, but because they'll be going to confirm with Hyunsik first, I'm betting they'll only get here within the hour. We just have to make sure we know where they're hiding Bomi and get ready to get her out of there. Does that sound good?" Namjoo finished, opening the discussion back up.

"I think that's a fair plan… A rescue mission." Naeun looked around at them all and rubbed her hands, feeling the pressure. "Sure, we can do that. No big deal."

"But it's within the hour? What if it goes bad? What if we do have to fight?" Hayoung asked.

"Let's just really hope it doesn't come to that."

"Rong unnie. Will you be okay?"

Chorong jumped at her name, now aware of all the worrying glances at her. "Y-Yeah? Um. We should get going. Can we go now?"

Namjoo seemed concerned but cleared . "Right. We'll have to get to Lowes first, but I think I know just the thing. We can figure out the rest there."

Chorong breathed out a little as they finally began moving again. She needed to move. She had to move. Pretending to be strong, for a little longer. Where pretending makes it real.

~ ★ ~

Bomi went pale with worries. Hyunsik. Chorong. Everyone.

Her mind went to Hyunsik first, where was he? With the way he was wary and just as scared as her, he couldn't be in on this, no. But he wasn't with her now. What did they do with him?

"Ah, the satyr. I had my forces deal with him. He must be lying in a ditch somewhere."

went dry, painfully aware of the beating of her own heart jumping around in . "Are you going to do that to me, too? Kill me?"

"Not in those words."

~ ★ ~

Namjoo recounted her steps the way she first met Bomi in this very park. The way to Lowes had got to be in here somewhere; that was for certain. It was only odd how they always walked past this park locally and Bomi had never once tried to go back through it.

All they had to do was look for a hidden doorway in these trees and that would lead them to the place Bomi had stumbled to get here. Oh, and they had to find it as soon as possible. Easy enough, right?

Since, as it turns out, Namjoo was not well versed with