C h a p t e r   2 6

A  e    S  o  o

My Uncle once told me, not everything you see is true. Sometimes you wanted to see something so much that you mistook it for something else. Humans are quite greedy like that. I think I wanted to see Sehun on Valentine’s so much that I’m seeing him right now. I hold my fingers in my cheek and pinch myself. It hurts.

So he’s real? No. He can’t be real. I step back and I wanted to run but I think my foot will make it hard for me. Damn it. His eyes are starting to widen which meant one thing. This is freaking real. His feet turns to my direction and he’s starting get closer and closer. I’m watching him. When he’s close to me, I reach out to hold his cheek. He’s gotten dark circles under his eyes and he’s gotten thin. His eyes are starting to get wet and tears are falling to my fingers. He holds my hands and kisses it but his eyes doesn’t leave mine. 

“You’re alive.” He whispers. Sehun leans closer and presses his lips on my forehead for a while. “Thank God you’re alive.” I have a lot of things I wanted to say to him but words don’t leave my mouth. I just continued to look at him and touch him as I cry. “I missed you so so much.” I nod as we both cry so hard. He’s caressing my cheek with his thumb. I hold his hand and feel warmth with my cheek. It really is him. 

“I love you. I love you so so much Sehun.” He smiles nodding and pulled me close then he lowers himself to kiss me. He does it slowly like he’s trying to remember what my lips feels like and I do the same. What he taste like. I miss him so much. “You’ve gotten thin. Are you okay? Are you eating well?”

“Do you expect me to be?” I pursed my lips together and hold him.

“I’m so sorry..” I whisper. He gives me a smile of relief and shakes his head. 

“It doesn’t matter. You’re here in front of me and that’s everything that I need.”

I kiss him again and hug him tight but we’re cut off when I heard Luhan’s voice. “Ae Soo.” He calls my name like he’s telling me to go and leave because this is not what we’ve agreed on. Dad told me I can’t see Sehun until we save back our clan and this is the opposite. But this is Sehun coming to me. Does that count? Luhan takes me away from Sehun. 

“Wait, Luhan. Can I just-“

“You know you can’t. If the King sees him now do you know what will happen?” I gasp then turn to Sehun who’s confused.

“I’m here to take her back. I’ll protect her now so-“

“We can’t let you do that because that’s not what her Father, our King, have asked. She is told to remain here until everything settles down. You being here is not part of the plan so we’re going to ask you to leave.”

“Luhan-“ he squeezed my hand but he’s looking at Sehun. “Give me a minute. Just a minute and I’ll go with you.” He turns to me and seemed to contemplate at the thought for a while but releases me. 

“Just a minute.” I nod and walked to Sehun. I grabbed his hand and forced a smile.

“My Dad asked me to not meet you while things are in a mess but I promise...I promise you Sehun, I’ll go and meet you after everything settles down.”

He lowered his forehead with mine and nods. “I’ll go even if you don’t.” 

I smile. “I love you.”

“I love you too. Just..” he releases a sigh. “Just promise me you’ll stay alive until then.”

I nod. “You have to promise me too.” 

“I will.” He gives me a short kiss and steps back. “You should go.”

I nod and feel his fingers slip through mine. Luhan takes it as we walk away and I try not to look back. If I do, I might not be able to say goodbye to him again.

S  e  h  u  n

I watch as Ae Soo disappear from my sight. I don’t know what this is all about but all that I know is that she’s safe and alive. That’s all that matters. 

“You are the heir of the Wolf clan are you not?” I turn to the tall guy in front of me and gave him a nod. “If it’s not much of a bother, I would like to have a talk with you. I will accompany you on our way out.”

“Alright.” 

On our way back, I see Jisoo sitting at the exact spot where we got in earlier. She stands seeing me and I know she’s looking for Ae Soo. “Where is she? I though you smelled her in here! Where the hell is she?!”

“She’s alive.” She stops for a moment and gives me a sigh of relief.

“Then where is she?”

“She can’t go with us, yet.”

“What? Why?”

I turn to Yifan and he nods. “I’m the second general of the Dragon clan. You can call me Yifan and I am here to explain everything.”

“Alright. Let’s go.” We started heading back to the exit when Jisoo grabs me.

“Okay? But shouldn’t we stop and talk first?”

“I’m afraid we don’t have any time to do that. The King will be back any minute and he can’t catch you both in here.”

“King?” She gives Yifan a strange look. 

“Ae Soo’s father. They go by monarchy here.” I say.

“Oh, the tyrant.” She said.

“Just to give you a heads up, they have a better relationship now.” Yifan say and they he began to transform. Before we know it, he’s a huge dragon. “Please get on my back. This will be easier.”

“O...kay. That was surprising.” Jisoo said.

I chuckle and got on Yifan’s back. “Well, these guys have some obsession regarding hospitality.”

A  e    S  o  o

After Sehun left the other day, I was actually surprised that things are now going well. It’s like I was relieved that he now knows that I’m okay. I guess things are starting to fall into place now-

“Everybody hurry up to your places right now!”

Or not. I follow the men running around and saw them assembling at the training. Everybody is here. The generals, Luhan and Yifan, then the King, my Dad. They all look so serious right now.

“Men, as you all know, the truth about our King being alive is kept as a secret and it will remain that way until further notice.” Luhan started talking. “He has been out for a few days for us to be able to move up on our next plan. And now we will be hearing it from him.”

Luhan gives the floor to Dad. “We all know that the Goblins are known to be traitors but we the Dragon clan, do not believe in rumors not until we see it ourselves. What we are about to do will not be in line to that. We will be doing this to be able to avenge my wife’s brother’s death, to save the Fox clan and also, the attempt to kill my daughter. As we have investigated, there seems to be a secret affair going on with the Goblins and the Ox clan. They seem to be on the move to obtain something. What that is, I do not know. Which is why we have to go undercover. They are planning on going to Busan to search for it so we need as many spies as we can get. We’re going to infiltrate the Ox clan’s army and get what we need. I need one-eight of the army to be a spy which is why there will be a selection for the next three days. So I want everyone to be ready for that. Is that understood?”

“Yes Your Highness!” 

“Dismissed!” The soldiers began to disappear one by one. I ran towards Dad and the others to get a clearer explanation. “Ae Soo.”

“Why am I not informed about this?”

“Ae Soo-“

“Why? Because I’m a girl and I can’t do anything about it? Dad, I can do something if I put my heart into it. And right now, what my heart is into the most is saving my clan and to get everything over with!” Dad crosses his arms and gives me a smile which creeped me out. “What? Why are you smiling? You don’t smile.”

“You do realize that you are a member of the Dragon clan.”

“Yes?”

“And every member of this clan is part of the army.”

“Yeah-“ I gasp and a grin grew on my face. “So I’m-!” 

“Wait what?” Luhan steps in. “With all due respect your highness, the Princess is not ready for this kind of things yet-“

“Luhan, I will not let my daughter go through something dangerous. I’m taking her with me.”

“You can’t leave this place without a King your highness! I will go instead! I’ll protect Ae Soo with all my life and I swear I won’t let them touch even a single strand of her hair in there because her being hurt would be the last thing that I want. I wouldn’t want her to be in this anyway because it’s too damn dangerous and people die in things like this and-“ Luhan stops talking when he realizes we are all staring at him. 

“I knew you would say that because you’ve taken a liking to my daughter.” I flush and look at Dad wide-eyed. “I know you better than anyone Luhan which is why I am entrusting my daughter to you.”

Luhan sighs. I can still see that he’s a little bit hesitant of making me in this plan but he doesn’t have any choice because the man that he looks up the most requested it. “I understand.”

“Alright!” I grin.

“But there’s a condition.” Dad says cutting my excitement off. “Ae Soo, I know how good you are in handling the sword and the arrow and also battling using tools. Which is why three days from now, I will have to test your ability to survive.”

“Oh, oka-“

“But you will not be using tools. You will be using your powers. I want you to be able to master your ability to hide your scent by camouflaging too. Am I understood?” I give him a nod. He smiles and pats me on my shoulder. “Just a little heads up, I’m a competitive man.”

₰  ₰  ₰  ₰  ₰  ₰ 

So to start with me improving my powers, I decided to learn what my power is because I definitely have no clue about it. I sigh sitting in my bed and stare into space. If only I have Luhan’s power of being able to control everything using my head, then that will be a great help. I shut my eyes close and sigh. When I sit up and open my eyes, I’m dumbfounded. Everything is floating. I gasp and scoot at the back of my bed in surprise. 

“W..What is this?!” I scan the place hoping that there’s someone else in my room instead of me because that will definitely calm me down even if that person might kill me but, no. I’m alone. I scream in fear and all the things that are floating in front of me crashed to the ground. “W..What?” I chase after my breath when my door slammed open.

“What happened?!” Luhan asked as he chase after his breath. He looks at me then to the mess in my room. He then quickly approached me and touched my cheek in worry. “Ae Soo, are you okay?” 

I point to the mess in my room and I can see my hand shake. “They floated..”

“Huh?”

“T...Those things, they just started to float.. when I opened my eyes they just-“

“Okay. I need you to calm down. Breathe for me.” I did as he told me to. Both of our eyes fell on the mess in front of us then Luhan held my hand and made me look at him. “Now I need you to tell me what happened again.”

I nod and exhaled. “I was just here and I’m lying on my bed then I closed my eyes while thinking. Then when I open them, they are all floating.”

Luhan’s expression changes. “What are you thinking about again?”

“Oh, I was thinking how great would it be to have a power like you-“ I stopped realizing what I’m thinking right now. He seem to get what’s on my head right now so he sighs. He grabs the cup placed on my nightstand and held it in front of me. “What are you..”

“Ae Soo, try to think of wanting to make this cup float.”

“Huh? But I can’t-“

“It’s okay. We’re just going to try. Now on count of three okay?” I nod and he started counting. “1, 2, 3.” I stare at the cup and think about of making it float then after a while, it started to float. When I gasp in surprise, the cup fell and I started to shake again. I just made the cup float? “Ae Soo, look at me.”

“I.. Luhan just now I-“ he touched my cheek and nods. 

“I know. You made it float and it’s okay. Nothing’s wrong with you.” He squeezed my hand lightly. My door opens again and Yifan together with Yixing and Tao came in. 

“Whoa. Did you both fought?” Yixing asked. 

Luhan faces them. “Yixing, come closer.”

“Hm? Okay.” Luhan grabs something from my desk and the next thing he does surprises us all. The next thing I know, he just slashed his hand with the cutter.

 “LUHAN!” We all said in unison.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Yixing asks.

“Ae Soo, I now want you to think of having Yixing’s power to heal people.” Luhan looks at me but his hand is full of blood as it drops on the floor. 

“What are you saying right now? Your hand is bleeding too much! We have to tend to that!”

“Try it or else I’ll bleed to death.” He then turns to Yixing. “Don’t heal me unless she tries.”

“But your-“

“Just do what I asked!” He then shifted his look to me and I’m hell of a nervous girl right now. I think he may even cut himself too much. 

“I..I’ll try..” Luhan nods. I take his hand on mine and stare at the wound that I can’t even see because of the blood gushing out from his hand. I think of healing him while having Yixing’s powers and closed my eyes hoping that it will work. When I open my eyes, there’s still blood. My eyes are getting wet now because I’m too worried what might happen if this wound doesn’t close. “It’s not working..” I say as I cry.

“Luhan hyung, just give me your damn hand and I’ll heal it. This is crazy!”

“I told you to stay put didn’t I?” Luhan glared st Yixing then turns to me again. “Try again Ae Soo. Calm down and think again.” Luhan said but he’s already wincing in pain and it hurts to see him like that. I nod and closed my eyes again. 

Please work.. please.. just please let Luhan be okay again. Let me heal him.. please...

“Ae Soo? Open your eyes.” I hear Luhan’s voice calling me.

I shake my head. “I can’t.. I don’t think I can look now..” 

“Oh god. That’s-“ That’s Yifan. they’re all panicking! I may have even made it worse!! “Open your eyes Princess.”

“But...”

“Oh it’s fine! Just look at hyung’s hand!” Tao said. I finally gave up and opened my eyes slowly then looked at Luhan’s hand. The blood stopped gushing out and it’s healed. Not even a scar is there. My eyes landed to Luhan then to all of them. 

“Ae Soo, you may have the ability to duplicate another demon’s power.”