The sun was mercilessly shining upon the world - specifically, upon an endless field of corn and other kinds of plants she was supposed to reap or pick up or check or burn or- whatever, she hated it. All of it.

 

She took a deep breath, contemplating whether to make that step that was keeping her from slumping underneath a tree, safe in its shade, or to just go and end her suffering right then and there. She didn’t know exactly how, but she’d find a way to kill herself with corn and finally be free of everything.

 

The tree was a blessing she didn’t hope she’d receive (and she would’ve preferred getting, like, a perfectly cooked steak fall on her from the sky or something like that), since corn fields usually didn’t have those, but then again, today was a special day. She was specially pissed at this guy who’d accidentally burned a perfectly healthy crop that she was going to reap and then claim an amazing award for herself. She’d hoped she was going to find out what milk tasted like. Or at least apple juice.

 

After punching him in the face and having him scream at her that he was most certainly gonna get you freaking thrown outta here, you stupid blonde, she’d decided to just screw it all and let matters go from bad to worse while she enjoyed life for a while. Even though she didn’t know what she’d enjoy in a corn field - she couldn’t turn back and go home, if the excuse of a room that they referred to as the storage hole could be called that, and she didn’t have any friends to bother with her nagging or any entertainment to chase.

 

It was just the endless corn field and her.

 

She hadn’t really even noticed when she’d crossed the border of the land she was assigned to, or if she’d even crossed it; though she’d lived here basically her whole life, she’d never gone far enough in the fields to know where the border was. Everyone always just said that there was one, and that it definitely couldn’t be missed or mistakenly crossed.

 

She shrugged her shoulders and let herself sit down on the grass, her head immediately leaning onto the tree. She sighed in relief, quickly taking the stupid hat off her head. It did nothing but make sweat pool on her forehead, making her hair feel sticky and accumulating even more heat on her skin.

 

Borders? Laws? She snorted. She didn’t give a damn about any of that. Actually, she wished she’d crossed the line, because she knew she’d already be in one big trouble. What was one more rule violation? Whether she’d get 50 or 100 whip blows, didn’t matter that much. She always passed away after 15 or so anyway, and it’s not like her back could get any more scarred than they already were.

 

She took a deep breath, glancing at the tree’s branches as they started swaying in the wind. The leaves rustled, and she tried to remember when was the last time she’d seen anything like this. It was a long, long time ago, in another life, when she wasn’t this…

 

Her mother was holding her up, and she squinted, because the leaves weren’t blocking the sunlight as they should and it got into her eyes, but mom was laughing so she didn’t complain-

 

She blinked. No, she wasn’t gonna go there. Not now, or ever again. To hell with the leaves and the tree and the punishment and everything. Some things were meant to stay where they belonged - in the ashtray of the past, along with freedom and religion and all other stupid, pointless hopes for the fools. She sure wasn’t one of them. Not anymore.

 

Just as her mind stopped reminding her of how amazing it felt to finally let her fist connect with that slime’s excuse of a face, she realized that something was wrong, or perhaps just odd. The leaves were still rustling, and the sound was intensifying. Where was that wind coming from?

 

Again, a forbidden thought striked her mind - she’d only felt such wind back when…

 

The wind lifted her hat up from the ground, and it flew into the distance. She made a distressed sound, because she would not get another one, they were precious and it took a long time to make one, but her brain would get fried if she didn’t wear it when she went to work in the field so she had to go retrieve it even though it was high up in the air and would end up God knew where before that damned wind stopped-

 

A hiss stopped her in her tracks, in a position between crouching and standing, her arm lifted up towards the place where the hat was floating away in the field, as if she could somehow grab it if only she stretched it a couple of millimeters further.

 

That hiss, though. It made chills run down her spine, her heartbeat quicken and start drumming in her ears, and she felt as if she’d forgotten how to breathe, because suddenly, she was gasping for air.

She’d never heard anything like it before in her whole life.

 

Yet somehow, it reminded her of something, of sometime from some messed-up place of her brain, and a voice spoke loud and clearly to her instincts from that dark place she had no idea even existed until then. Run.

 

She tried. She was going to start running like a madwoman until she was back in the mansion, back where it was safe, where the only pain came from the whip, which she was used to, and the monsters whose faces and real intentions she knew very, very well.

 

This was unknown. Moreover, it was known, which freaked her out even more.

 

Before she’d made a single step or even blinked, she felt something cold and sticky wrap around her waist, pulling her back towards the tree she should’ve stayed the hell away from, away from the safety of sunlight and the closeness of the mansion. She made a gurgling sound, her limbs flailing, and she tried to push whatever was wrapped around her away, but it wouldn’t budge. It felt like a sticky rope made of stone was around her, and she thought over and over again what the hell what the hell, but was unable of forming words and only a keening sound came out of it, no matter how hard she tried.

 

Then she saw it. The source of hissing was a giant snake colored like ashes, and her head was at eye-level with her own. It was staring at her as if it was a human, its tongue creating a menacing sound that was the last thing she would ever hear, because her back was now touching the tree and there was no retreat. No running away.

She did not know how she knew that the animal - or whatever this thing was - was called a snake, or how she knew that it would kill her. She did not know anything for sure at that moment, because the wind was blowing her hair into her face but still she couldn’t find any air. Was it because of fear, or because of the snake’s tight grip on her waist that was preventing her from breathing?

 

It will be alright, my child, she heard a familiar voice. She could not see anymore - her eyes were rolling at the back of her head because she’d run out of air . Still she gasped, still her body trashed, but it was of no use. She was going to die today.

 

You will remember someday. Now, just let go.

 

Why was the sound of the wind so strong? Why was the hissing seemingly right in her ear? Why couldn’t she even die in peace? She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live, run away from this place once, cross the border and reach freedom, reach…

 

The snake bit into her neck.

 

The rustling, the hissing, the wind stopped.

 

Drip.

 

1,507 water drops since his eyes had opened. He had no idea for how long he’d slept - perhaps he’d lost consciousness a couple of hours ago. Perhaps it was mere minutes since he’d stopped counting. At what number had he stopped counting, anyway? Was it 27,246 drops? Or 207,246? Not like it mattered or made a difference.

 

Drip.

 

76 days. Or 77. Not exactly days, since he had no idea when the day started or ended. It would be more precise to say, 76 waking-ups. Or 77 going-to-sleeps. He hadn’t dreamed of anything again. Did that mean his nap was too short, or had they drugged him again?

 

He couldn’t know anything for sure. He didn’t even know who they were or what in the world they wanted with him. Had they been just kidnappers, he would’ve been free ages ago. The Sir would’ve paid the ransom in the first hour. Or he would’ve had them all murdered.

 

No, this was different. He felt as if they were torturing him, but what kind of torture was that? Just leaving someone out there, giving him food and water only while he was out of it, so that he wouldn’t encounter anyone for 76 or 77 days? They should’ve come at least a couple times, demanding whatever answers they wanted from him.

 

Not that they’d ever get an honest answer from him. But back when he was strong, back when things were fresh and he still wasn’t used to the dripping sound and darkness…

 

Drip.

 

They also weren’t trying to kill him slowly - or at all. They just kept him here, as if they wanted him away from something, and that thought made him very uneasy. Would they be okay without him? Would they know how to act, would they be able to hide the truth?

 

Or was he only one of the captured? Were his comrades in another room, being tortured in much the same way - or were they trying different things on them? Would they be able to find their weak spot? Perhaps darkness was the method they were using on him, and others suffered in other ways.

 

He hoped he was wrong, but his gut told him that was the most likely scenario. In order to not venture deeper into those thoughts, he started feeling the floor with his hands in hopes of finding anything that would help him understand the position he was in, or that would help him escape.

 

Drip.

 

The room he was in was very small - he could lie on his back and stretch his limbs, and if he leaned just a couple of centimeters, he could touch the walls. The door was on one side, and it was made of steel, with no handles or any openings whatsoever. No keyhole. No handle. No opening between the door and the floor. Nothing.

 

The walls were clean and polished, so at least he knew he wasn’t in some kind of cave or natural opening, which meant he was in some kind of building, but that didn’t mean much. Without any touch with the outside world, he couldn’t possibly gain any useful information like this.

 

Unless…

 

Drip.

 

Unless he did it. But that was probably why they’d been holding him here for such a long time - they were waiting. They wanted to see him use his abilities and walk through the walls. Through the door without handles, which could not be opened from the inside in any way. There were probably thermal cameras everywhere, just waiting for him to make that move.

 

Waiting for him to break under the pressure and betray them all. Because he was selfish and valued his own life over their secrets - though he had sworn it would never be the case. Because he wanted to be free more than anything.

 

Drip.

 

But. That would never happen. He had his purpose, he had his nobility, he had sworn the oath, he just had to wait together with them and once they gave up, once they realized he wouldn’t start walking through the walls, and set him free, he would make sure that they never got the chance to do it again by slitting their throats-

 

“Little bro, you understand that you must never let anyone see this, right?” Jongin’s voice was lighthearted even when he was serious like this.

 

He just nodded, still trying to wrap his mind around the concept of being able to become a neutron. He had no idea what that word meant, but brother said it had something to do with elementary particles and the particle that seems useless but can actually cause the movement of the other particles into a different dimension for a short span of time, which is how they can walk through walls…

 

A neutron does not betray its own. It does not move away from them, even when they call him useless. Instead, it helps them with its powers, though they can’t comprehend or understand it.

 

Drip.

 

A neutron does not forget.

 

A neutron does not forgive.

 

And as soon as a neutron gets the chance to avenge his fallen and destroy his enemies, it will take it. Hell will break loose on that day.

 

And that day, Taemin knew, would come soon. Very, very soon.

 

Drip.

 

She felt… nauseous. Sick, as if she was going to throw up. Her stomach hurt, her arms and legs and everything. As if she’d been whipped, but not just on the back. But something inside was wrong too - she felt as if she was going to get the cold soon, as if her body was still strong enough to make everything seem normal while it was battling the viruses inside.

 

That was most definitely not something she wanted or needed right now. If she didn’t collect enough corn, she would get thrown out of the hole and into the room where the lower-ranks resided. That place was a complete mess, literally, but what else could anyone expect from at least 20 people residing in a room big enough for 5 beds? She was not going there. Not ever again.

 

But first, she needed to snap back to her senses and remember where she was. Had she fallen asleep in the silos again? If that jerk Minho tried that stunt with the opening again, she would murder him for sure this t-

 

Hissing. Lots of it. All around her, close and far, like a cold shower that shook her eyes open and she gasped, remembering how she’d been bitten by that huge snake-

 

But in front of her face wasn’t a giant snake. Instead, it was a face colored like marble stone. White. Unnaturally pale. Beautiful.

 

The only problem was, he was above her. He was levitating. And his eyes were closed, as if he was sleeping. Even without the nest of hissing snakes that would poison her to death in a couple of seconds, that would’ve been enough to freak her out. But his calmness, the way his hair was combed neatly, it looked as if he was going on some dinner with the royalty.

 

Oh, he most definitely was royalty. If he even existed, that was. But this was all most likely just a figment of her poor imagination that was trying to give her a peace-out because it was aware she was going to die for the second time that day. How had she even survived that monstrous snake’s attack? Or had that been just a hallucination, too?

 

“Well, at least my hallucination is pretty this time,” she mumbled, and then proceeded to shriek as a snake wrapped its body around one of her arms. She wouldn’t look at anything but the levitating marble man. She would not glance right, or left, or anywhere because the freaking snakes were all around them and-

 

His eyes suddenly opened, and all the hissing stopped. The snake wrapped around her arm stopped moving too. It was as if the whole world took a moment to appreciate the movie of this… whatever he was.

 

She could do nothing but stare at him with parted. Those eyes, that color, she… she’d seen it before somewhere…

 

“Ah?” he questioned, tilting his head to one side and still levitating as if it was the most normal thing in the whole world. “The drug must’ve worn off, I suppose. Perhaps they hadn’t dozed it right this time…”

 

Drug? It didn’t strike her as that unusual that her hallucination was able to talk, but that it’d talk about drugs? He most definitely was royalty if he had access to drugs, and she had no idea why she’d imagine a stuck-up jerk like this guy. Definitely not her type.

 

Then he smiled at her, and her heart skipped a beat, that treacherous thing. She would not fall for a nobleman, he would not use his charms to put a spell on her and make her end up like all those other girls in the dumpsters-

 

“So.” He kept smiling and looking at her expectantly, as if that word should’ve meant something to her. She had no access to drugs, of course, she had no idea how to even take drugs, but now she seriously started wondering if she’d managed to drug herself somehow. Was this how suicide with corn worked? Had she found some way to make herself go crazy and dream of snakes and… half-functional hallucinations that would keep this up until she died?

 

“So?” She questioned, not knowing if it was a good thing to talk with the hallucination, because only crazy people did it, but it wasn't like she had a choice. It was him or the snakes, anyway. She raised her eyebrow for good measure, just in case the hallucination responded only to visual stimuli.

 

“So, what news do you have for me, soldier?” His smile widened, as if he was holding back a fit of laughter, and that made her scrunch her nose. What the hell was this about? Was the hallucination crazy, too?

 

She would’ve wondered if this man was real, but that theory was even crazier than the drug-one. She had a friend who’d said he’d tried drugs, anyway, and it looked believable so he could’ve done something…

 

“Are you not going to respond to your superior?” The marble man kept talking to her, and she wondered if she could will him away. But she kinda didn’t want to. If only his words made a little bit more sense…

 

“Uhm, I have no idea what your game is, but you’re definitely not my superior,” she managed to say, more interested in his reaction than his words. None of it would make sense anyway.

 

At that moment, he spun away from her and started laughing, as if he’d heard a joke - which wouldn’t be too out-of-character for this madman - but more than the fact that he was moving around in the air as if it was completely freaking normal, she was striked by the sound of his laughter.

 

It sounded… familiar somehow. And it was more beautiful than anything she’d ever heard before. Anything but- but the sound of her-

 

“Come on, Lamiya, stop playing around,” he said in a light voice, heading straight for her once again, this time hanging in the air upside down. She felt nausea approaching again, and suddenly it got harder to breathe. But she was thankful for not having to remember anything she didn’t want to… “I know you like all of this, but really, we have a situation to solve.”

 

His whole demeanor changed in a second - he stopped laughing, turned in air until he was standing above her, and she finally dared to look at herself and around, just to see that everything was exactly the way she’d thought - a million snakes were around her, one wrapped around her arm and a couple of them frozen while heading for her legs, all of them in some frozen state that was triggered by the waking up of the man.

 

She’d play it nice for now, because if he disappeared or fell asleep, these snakes would start moving again, and she did not want for that to happen.

 

He seemed to see everything for the first time too. His eyebrows were now knitted together and he waved a finger around, making all the snakes respond. They immediately followed the path of his finger, moving away from them and leaving them in the room that was now empty.

 

She’d never seen such a big room. Such clean walls. And such utter emptiness. There was nothing there, absolutely nothing but a steel door. And the door were so strange - no handles, no keyhole, nothing. Had they not been made out of a different material, she wouldn’t have been able to notice them at all.

 

He kneeled down, next to her, who was still lying down on the floor. She didn’t feel alright. The snake from the dream, it must’ve been real because her insides felt crushed, and she really felt as if she’d been poisoned. No matter how much she tried to breathe air in, she could do so only in short gasps.

 

She was cold. She was hot. She was sweating, and she couldn’t get up. The last thing she needed right now was this psycho that could fly around like a madman.

 

“There’s something wrong with you,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he was now a doctor. Duh, as if he needed a degree in Medicine for that observation. “What happened? Why didn’t you tell the snakes to go away? You know they won’t hurt you - they know you, and you remember how…” He trailed off, and as his hand settled on her forehead, she released a pained gasp.

 

“How are you here?” he asked slowly, his eyes boring into her own. She tried to pull herself together.

 

“Where?” she asked, because she couldn’t understand a thing that he was saying. “I don’t know where this room is. I have never seen it in my life. I swear I never set foot into the attic - if this room is located there, I swear I haven’t come here on my own.”

 

His hand was on her cheek now, wiping the sweat away. “Okay. Now tell me one thing. Do you know who I am, Lamiya?”

 

His face told her everything - she was supposed to know. She was supposed to understand everything that he was saying, and this was some kind of meeting that she had no idea about. They’d just taken the wrong person, this is what it was - she just looked like some princess (though she highly doubted she could ever be mistaken for one) and they kidnapped her and brought her here, thinking she would know what all of this was about.

 

Instead, they got themselves just your regular corn picker. Lucky her. Now they’d kill her for having seen and heard too much.

 

Or she was completely crazy, which was a valid point, too.

 

She didn’t need to say a thing, because he knew the answer already, but she waved her head in declination anyway. For a moment, he did seem familiar in some way, but that was most likely just resemblance to someone from the mansion.

 

She’d remember having seen this man, even from afar. She definitely would.

 

“Oh my God,” he whispered, hugging her tightly to himself suddenly, “What have they done to you while I was gone?”

 

How long have I been gone?

 

This was what he was fearing the most. No, actually, this was beyond that - never would he have thought that they would do anything harmful to her… that they would try anything like this…

 

What would he do now? This was just a dream, and if she was dying in here, that meant she was dying in the real world too. He could do nothing for her here. He didn’t even know what exactly was wrong with her.

 

No.

 

He knew exactly what was wrong with her. He just refused to admit it, because he didn’t want to even remotely think that she might die. That he could do nothing about her, not while he was trapped in this room, which he was seeing for the first time now.

 

He didn’t have time to think about why he’d managed to fall asleep for real and slip out of his real form. He didn’t have time to wonder how she’d found him with this amnesia, or why she had been bitten by a poisonous snake.

 

He needed her to survive.

 

“Baby, I…” Damn it, why couldn’t he form a single coherent sentence? But the poison, he had no idea how much it’d advanced already, and if it what what he thought it was, she had a couple of hours to live like this - at most. “I need you to tell me exactly where you were before you lost consciousness.”

 

She blinked with difficulty, her breathing still shallow. Damnit. “What do you mean, where was I? I was in the corn field, of course. Picking corn like always, waging fights with my coworkers, running away, into the field and over the border…”

 

The blood in his veins froze. Picking corn? They freaking turned her into a corn-picker?

 

He should’ve fled this place ages ago. To hell with everything, he shouldn’t have let them do this, but they were supposed to guard her with their lives-

 

She closed her eyes, as if she was going to doze off, so he shook her to prevent her from going back to her body. Not just yet. He had to know her exact location so that he could find her and get the poison out of her blood system before it killed her.

 

“Tell me more, baby. What was the scenery like? Was it just an endless field of corn, or were you near a silos, or the mansion maybe? Who is the owner of the mansion anyway?”

 

It took a couple of moments for her to open her eyes again. Her face was blushing, her neck was red and her eyes bloodshot. Her breathing was shallow and he knew her heart was beating too fast for his liking, but when he moved her hair from her neck to try to find her pulse, no doubt was left for the cause of her sickness.

 

The bite on her neck… it looked horrible. It was unnatural, the teeth marks were too big, and he knew there was only one possible cause of the wound.

 

Mino would pay for this.

 

He would pay for hurting her with his life.

 

“I… I don’t remember…” she whispered, and he knew he would lose her soon. She was already beginning to disappear, but though his fingers went halfway through her skin as he tried to touch her, he resumed with his caress anyway.

 

It has been far too long since they’d seen each other. And to see her like this, so unexpectedly and in such bad shape…

 

“Please try to remember, baby. Give me anything - just a small pointer to be able to make it out. Before the snake bit you, where were you?” He knew he was risking it by mentioning the snake bite, because she was obviously still in a shock so she most likely didn’t remember that part of the story, but he had to know.

 

In order to get there as fast as possible, he couldn’t make a single mistake. Her life was at stake, so as much as it pained him to see her shake like this, to have her gasp in fear and start shying away from him, slowly melting into nothingness, he had to do it.

 

“A tree… there was a tree, I think beyond the border… I have never seen a tree in a corn field before…”

 

She disappeared, leaving him alone in the room.

 

She hadn’t told him who was the owner of the mansion in which she was working as a slave, but she didn’t have to.

 

He knew all about the tree in the corn field, the place where Rico liked to play.

 

She was working as a slave for Mino, that bastard. He watched her pick corn every day, and let her small, gentle hands work as if she wasn’t royalty.

 

As if she wasn’t his, as if that meant nothing.

 

He bumped his fist on the floor, letting out a carnal cry. He would rip him apart, limb for limb, and make sure he stayed dead forever.

 

But first he needed to save her from Rico’s poison. Thankfully, he knew that snake well, so even if it was still around, it wouldn’t harm him. And he could take some of his poison directly in order to make a dose of antidote before it was too late.

 

He needed to wake up, get back into his body. He needed to get away from that cell and out of the building - hopefully it was either very close to Mino’s mansion, or in it.

 

He did not know what he’d do if it was in an unknown, faraway place.

 

He bit the inside of his cheek, drawing blood, and closed his eyes, feeling himself snap back to his senses. Once he opened his eyes, the whole world was dark again.

 

He was awake.

 

There was only a split second of thinking before he got up and started running towards the door of the room. Only for a second did his oath come to mind.

 

He would protect the others, and never use the neutron powers for personal gain if it meant compromising everyone. He would not let the enemies learn a single thing about them, and he would not use his powers while being observed.

 

Screw all that.

 

She was more important than everything. She was more important than everyone.

 

And God help him, he would get there in time and give her that antidote.

 

Then all hell would break loose.