Chanyeol didn’t wait to pick up Byul and run into Kyungsoo’s arms once he was sure it was them. There, almost half a year since Kyungsoo and Sehun left on a gloomy overcast morning, they were reunited on a warm sunny day in the field of flowers.

“Welcome home,” Chanyeol heaved, relieved, feeling Kyungsoo in his arms once again after what felt like an eternity.

“I know, I’m home now,” Kyungsoo returned, feeling very much welcome in Chanyeol’s embrace again.

Between them in the hug, Byul constantly called out for Kyungsoo and he was happy to oblige, picking Byul up in his own arms, even if they had to break away from the hug for a while.

“Dada soo,” Byul continued to babble in Kyungsoo’s arms.

“You’ve grown so much,” Kyungsoo smiled, letting Byul touch his face and play with his hair, “-and you can talk now too.”

“I’ve been teaching her,” Chanyeol beamed, “We missed you a lot.”

“You didn’t miss me?” Sehun joked, standing beside them as the wind continued to ruffle his cape.

“Of course not. I missed you too,” Chanyeol laughed, pulling Sehun into a hug.

Sehun too laughed in return, patting Chanyeol on the back, “We missed you too, Chanyeol.”

“I’m glad that you two are fine. Couldn’t you tell me that you were coming home at least?” Chanyeol sighed but out of relief.

“We didn’t really know when we were able to go home either. I thought we would miss Byul’s birthday but we got here on time,” Kyungsoo informed, putting Byul on the ground as she wanted to show him some of the flowers.

“Yeah, things have been hectic since we returned to Kunryun. We thought we’d be away longer actually,” Sehun mentioned, as he took off his cape and draped it over an arm.

When Sehun did so, Chanyeol noticed how Sehun’s Gauean military uniform looked slightly different from before he left almost a half year ago. There were more and distinguished rank insignias on his shoulders and on the cuff of his sleeves.

“How are the two of you?” Chanyeol asked.

Byul was on the ground, plucking a flower and giving it to Kyungsoo, who was busy entertaining their daughter.

“-same old, we’re good. A lot has happened, we’ll tell you later but how have you been too?” Sehun placed a firm hand on Chanyeol’s shoulder.

“Good,” Chanyeol replied, “Byul and I have been well too.”

“Yeah, we’ll talk later. Don’t we have someone’s birthday to celebrate today?” Kyungsoo lifted Byul up, who was still interested in playing with Kyungsoo’s hair.

“Yes we do,” Chanyeol still smiled as the four of them headed back to the house at the end of the flower fields.

When Sehun and Kyungsoo returned to the house, everyone inside who was supposed to be organizing the surprise party for Byul ended up being the ones surprised at the two Gauean’s return. It was a surprise indeed but everyone else was happy and relieved for their return too.

When Kyungsoo took off his cape and put his sword away, Chanyeol also noticed how Kyungsoo’s uniform looked different from when they were last here.

They were home now, healthy and well, but Chanyeol couldn’t help but wonder what it was they had done or been up to while they had been gone. And what had actually happened for them to be able to return to Nue’vuur, all happy and unworried about Kunryun.

Chanyeol was so used to the idea of Kyungsoo and Sehun being on the run from Kunryun, so much that he was uncomfortable that they haven’t even brought it up once now that they were back.

Chanyeol didn’t let that ruin the moment though. He trusted them and he made sure to be as happy and excited for their happy day. Kyungsoo and Sehun were home. Byul was turning one year old and they were all safe and healthy.

After the birthday party and when everyone else had gone home for the day, Sehun offered to watch over Byul as she played with her new toys while Chanyeol and Kyungsoo took the time to catch up with each other.

It was still early in the night, close to Byul’s bedtime but still far for the adults. Although, Chanyeol was feeling more tired than usual because of the emotional rollercoaster day he had.

Chanyeol had begun the day thinking that Kyungsoo wouldn’t even be home for their daughter’s birthday, only for him to end the day with his laid down on Kyungsoo’s lap on the bed that was no longer empty.

Kyungsoo was sitting up with his back against the headboard as he Chanyeol’s hair, running his fingers through the thick locks.

The door to the room was closed and occasionally, they could hear Sehun laughing and playing along with Byul outside in the living room. For now, it was just the both of them alone in tranquility.

“I missed you, Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo expressed, rubbing the pads of his fingers to massage Chanyeol’s scalp.

“I missed you so much too. It hurts so much to not have you here,” Chanyeol responded, holding onto Kyungsoo’s free hand, feeling Kyungsoo caress him. Chanyeol rubbed circles on Kyungsoo’s hand within his own.

“There wasn’t a day that went by where I didn’t think of you or of our daughter. I love you so much,” Kyungsoo bent down forward at his waist to press a kiss on Chanyeol’s head, murmuring against Chanyeol’s ear.

“I know, I love you too. I don’t us to ever be apart again,” Chanyeol muttered, loosening up and all soft and putty in Kyungsoo’s hands, as Kyungsoo breathed warm air against Chanyeol's ear.

“We won’t be separated anymore. From now on, we’ll be together always,” Kyungsoo promised, running his thumb on the back of Chanyeol’s ear and earlobe.

“Won’t Kunryun come to take you back or look for us?” Chanyeol worried.

“Not anymore. We can all go to Kunryun together now. All four of us,” Kyungsoo declared, “Sehun and I made it so that it would be possible.”

“What about your brother and the Chancellor guy?” Chanyeol questioned, gently raking his nails down on Kyungsoo’s palm.

“My brother will leave us alone and I am the Chancellor now. It means I have to return to Kunryun but this time, it will be with all of us,” Kyungsoo revealed.

Chanyeol turned his head slightly to look up at Kyungsoo hovering above him, “You were serious about the whole ‘becoming a Chancellor’ thing? That explains why you and Sehun’s uniforms are different now. What position did Sehun get?”

“He’s my Vice Chancellor now actually. It was the only way I could see fit to make this world a safe place for us and our daughter. I couldn’t think of any other way. At the end of the day, I’m still a Gauean,” Kyungsoo pondered.

“-so you killed the Chancellor and Sehun helped you?” Chanyeol had to ask.

“Are you disappointed in me now?” Kyungsoo averted, asking another question in return.

“No, I’m not,” Chanyeol shook his head a bit, “I’d have probably done the same if I were in your position too. You brought a star back to life just to make me happy. You became the leader of your planet so our daughter could grow up in a safe world. I don’t know how I could ever measure up to you.”

“You don’t have to, Chanyeol. Because if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have known what it’s like to actually have a place I want to return to, where I knew it was safe and where I know I was loved unconditionally.”

“Where is that though?” Chanyeol joked, “We’ve been to so many planets and moons since we first met each other. Whenever we start to settle down, we always end up having to move again. Now we have to move to Kunryun too.”

“It’s right here no matter where in the universe I go to,” Kyungsoo looked into Chanyeol’s eyes as he said that, holding Chanyeol’s face between his hands.

“There is no place better than home isn’t it,” Chanyeol smiled softly, looking back into Kyungsoo’s eyes because he clearly knew what it meant.

~~★★★★★~~

Kyungsoo had left Kunryun on a supposed official business as the Chancellor, to reestablish ties with the Vuurians and resume the indefinitely suspended trade agreements. Although he was attending to personal matters at the moment, Kyungsoo did not forget his responsibility and the duties he had taken on as the leader of Kunryun.

Kyungsoo was never interested to become the leader of Kunryun but he was forced to when Byul was born, especially when he knew that it was something possible for him to do.

Like the responsibility he took on by choosing to have Byul, Kyungsoo too accepted this and came to terms with the fact that his life would change from thereon.

Kyungsoo remained on Nue’vuur for a few more weeks to oversee the flower harvesting season. In the meantime, he made trips to Vuur, which was just a few days by starship from Nue’vuur.

On the home planet of Vuur, Kyungsoo once again established the ties with the current ruler, Chanyeol’s mother. The trade agreement was also resumed and revised to further improve the two planets and benefit both Vuurians and Gaueans.

Everything was easier and more diplomatically carried out this time, whatnot with Kyungsoo being the bridge to connect the two races again with each other. Kyungsoo never planned for that. It just happened and he made the best out of it.

After several more weeks between Vuur and Nue’vuur, Kyungsoo and Sehun left Nue’vuur to return to Kunryun but this time with Chanyeol and Byul with them.

An official Kunryun starship picked them up on Nue’vuur while Umi would be towed back to the home planet of the Gaueans.

Traveling long distances with a young child soon became a new challenge that Kyungsoo and Chanyeol would experience while they were on their way there.

After the 11 days trip, they arrived on Island Two, a floating island on Kunryun that served as the planet’s starship base because of its higher elevation in the sky.

From Island Two, they took a light passenger ship to fly down to Island One, the only inhabited city, and place where all the Gaueans lived in together.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Gaueans co-existed on the planet’s surface with mighty beasts.  The Gaueans and beasts had a long-standing treaty to live together in harmony.

But when one of the beasts broke the treaty by hurting a Gauean, the Chancellor at that time had lifted the cities into the sky with his powers, to protect all the Gaueans from the mighty beasts. The floating islands in the sky were basically cities and settlements that used to be on the planet’s surface.

From then, the Gaueans began honing their strength and trained to fight in order to take on the mighty beasts that were trapped on the planet’s surface.

The weaker Gaueans died and only the strong survived, who would then go on to have strong children of their own too, contributing to a selective population of only strong fighters.

The mighty beasts went extinct in a few thousand years, but the Gaueans were left with a violent, confrontative nature that was made even worse by the stratocracy form of government where strength was favored, and duels to death were designated as the official way to become a leader.

~~★★★★★~~

When Chanyeol first stepped on Kunryun, he was hit by surprise by a sudden gust of wind in his face. Because the island cities the Gaueans lived on were floating in the sky, the wind was stronger and blew constantly although hardly anyone was bothered by it, except for Chanyeol. He just wasn't used to it yet.

Kyungsoo had said that it was currently summer, so it wouldn’t be too cold for Chanyeol, although Chanyeol soon learned how cloudy and cool it was for him even during a Kunryun summer. It was still tolerable though.

Island One only had a population of about 55,000, compromising the entire population of Kunryun, and it was as small as Chanyeol had expected it to be.

Everyone Chanyeol met there had dark hair, dark eyes and wore black clothes or a variation of it. No one seemed to bother him or even paid him a glance and merely minded about their own business. Gaueans didn’t seem to like eye-contact with others, Chanyeol observed.

Unlike on Vuur, the buildings were white and had thatched tiled roofs. None of the buildings were taller than maybe four or five floors high, where most of the buildings only had one or two floors to them. There was no need to build tall buildings when there was so much space and land around to build wider instead.

Everyone lived in large one-floor houses within their own large walled-up yards with large gardens inside. Even the smallest house Chanyeol saw would be considered quite large on Vuur.

Everyone looked rich and Kyungsoo was right that no one was homeless, jobless or went hungry on Kunryun.

Chanyeol also noticed how he basically saw no children or anyone who wasn’t an adult while on Kunryun. Byul was surely the only child on the entire planet at the time.

For the first time, Chanyeol saw himself how Kunryun looked like, how this home to the Gaueans was slowly being unraveled of its mystery in front of his eyes. Chanyeol was honored to be one of the few non-Gaueans to be allowed onto the planet in decades.

Chanyeol was brought to a large house within an equally large yard and garden, where Kyungsoo lived with Sehun.

Byul was excited at almost everything but she quickly fell asleep once they arrived on Kunryun, having exhausted herself at all the new things she was seeing.

When Kyungsoo stepped into the entryway of their house, the doors slid open and a servant bowed to Kyungsoo, who later spoke something in the Gauean language to him.

“He’ll show you to our room,” Kyungsoo informed, “Can you put Byul to bed? I need to follow Sehun and do something first. Some people will come around to send our luggage here soon.”

“Alright,” Chanyeol accepted, still a bit confused and trying to assimilate himself to the place he wasn’t familiar with.

“We’ll be back,” Sehun mentioned, as he made his way out of the house with Kyungsoo.

As Chanyeol was being showed the way to the room, he noticed how the interior of the house and its floor were all made of wood, especially with the way his feet creaked on the floorboards. The house was dark even during the day, with minimal windows being opened and only some lanterns being lit to light up the way.

Chanyeol couldn’t see much because areas and rooms in the house were all partitioned and closed off by large sliding doors.

The servant kept speaking to Chanyeol in the Gauean language, while he only caught maybe a phrase and a few words at most. Chanyeol only nodded and managed to jumble up a “Thanks” in the Gauean language when they arrived at the room he and Kyungsoo would be living in from now on.

The door was slid open by the servant, who then lit a few lanterns and then slid the door shut back again, leaving Chanyeol in the room that had mats covering the floor on top of the floorboards.

“Okay,” Chanyeol muttered to himself, looking around the room to see a low bed with white sheets in the corner. There was a wooden crib beside the bed and Chanyeol gently lowered a sleeping Byul into it.

Chanyeol reached into his pockets for Byul’s toy which he had put there when she dropped it and placed the toy beside her in the crib. As a toddler, Byul’s attention often from jumped one thing to another so it wasn’t a surprise for Chanyeol to have her toy somewhere in his vest or pocket.

Chanyeol looked around the room and then pulled out what he assumed to be a blanket from the shelves, draping it over Byul to cover her while she slept.

With nothing to do and still waiting for their luggage to arrive, Chanyeol sat cross-legged in quiet at the end of the low bed which was only maybe less than half a meter off the floor, watching Byul as she slept. Chanyeol did feel a bit awkward in a foreign place without Sehun and Kyungsoo around.

On the walls opposite from the entrance to the room, Chanyeol found another set of sliding doors which he opened to reveal the courtyard outside. Chanyeol closed the doors again, not wanting the light from outside to wake Byul up.

Chanyeol looked around to see plain pale-colored walls under the illumination of the flickering lantern light. There was no other furniture in the room but a table and chair against the wall, and the row of shelves hidden behind another sliding door.

In a lower shelf, Chanyeol found a sword stand with Kyungsoo’s sheathed sword still on it.

Seeing that, Chanyeol began to wonder again, how Kyungsoo had lived like here before they met each other. Chanyeol had just arrived so he hadn’t gotten used to Kunryun yet, but from the looks of it, Kyungsoo was living very differently than what Chanyeol got to see.

While Chanyeol had heard so much tales and stereotypes about Gaueans and knew some of them to be true, it was still hard for him to associate that with the people he was actually seeing now.

While Sehun and Kyungsoo never denied who they were and never denied the Gauean nature within them, Chanyeol was the one saw them differently, when they never saw themselves that way. Because Chanyeol had seen and experienced for himself, how selfless, loving and compassionate they really were.  

Even though they had a child together now, it was as if Chanyeol was discovering Kyungsoo entirely agai