~*~

“What are we doing? We were supposed to find my brothers.” I said, frowning at Hendery who was pigging out on his flaming fire flakes, he said.

He insisted that I had to eat because I’d lost a lot of blood. He bought me a small bag of the spicy Fire Nation’s traditional snack, flaming fire flakes.

But the problem is, I don’t eat spicy food.

“Try this.” We stopped at another food tent and Hendery paid for another weird looking snack. “These are called fire gummies.”

Hendery stood in front of me and fed me what looked like a Daifuku, but tasted like gummy bears. 

I tried to avoid his eyes, 

I just can’t look at him right now. With the city being lit by beautiful variety of coloured Chinese lanterns, pink cherry blossom petals falling down slowly from the tree covering the street until it was like a pink colored street, and Hendery kept smiling to me while saying stupid stuff that made me feel like I could combust into ashes and then feeding me?

It was too good to be true, and my head hurt.

“I told you they are fine. They are probably eating dinner with their new foster family right now.”

“New foster family?” I furrowed my eyebrows.

Hendery took another bite full of fire flakes, “oh I forgot to tell you they are adopted by human now. They have a home. So you don’t have to worry while you go to school—“

“Hendery.” I said, my eyes felt hot. “I need to see them now.” 

He stared at me and blinked as if he was surprised that I seemed so sad. He stopped chewing and put down his fire flakes.

I felt sorry for ruining his time with his snack, but I needed to see the boys more than anything right now.

Hendery took my bag of fire flakes and put them down on the food tent table, then he took my wrist. “Come on.”

Why did he do that? Why is he holding my hand?

“We are gonna pass the heart of the festival. Everyone is there, so there’s a possibility Jaemin and Renjun are there.” Hendery said while we were trying to squish between the crowd to pass.

“You can let go of me I can see where you are going.” I said.

He chuckled lightly. “Well, I can’t afford to lose you.” He said, looking like he just realised that it sounded wrong. “I don’t want Victor to banish me.” He said.

I rolled my eyes, feeling slightly disappointed. 

We finally got out of the crowd only to be stopped by the Dragon Dance performance, Hendery said.

Everyone was circling around the performers. They had a band playing their music while two men were dancing to it.

We had to go around the performance area, so we got into the crowd again.

Then I suddenly heard my name being called from somewhere I couldn’t make out.

“Juli!!” 

It sounded like Renjun.

I pulled back my wrist to make us stop.

“Renjun is here.” I said while scanning the crowd and tiptoeing.

“Where?”

“Well if I knew I would go to him now wouldn’t I?” I said.

“Lili!” 

“Jaemin!” I yelled back.

I squished to where I thought his voice was from. I walked until we were out of the crowd again, back to the street shop.

But I couldn’t see the boys anywhere.

“Juli,” Hendery tapped my shoulder and pointed at the crowd behind us.

Jaemin was looking around for me and Renjun was just coming out of the crowd.

I quickly ran to their direction. They saw me and ran to me. We three clashed to each other’s arms and weren’t planning on letting go for a while.

“We were so worried about you.” Renjun trembled.

“They didn’t want to tell us where you were! So we had been looking all over the city—“ 

“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter anymore, I’m here now.” I cut Jaemin’s sentence and continued to squish them.

I smiled with my eyes closed in between their heads that were pressing against mine. I knew they would be worried and go looking for me. That’s why I needed to make sure that I see them, even if everyone had told me that they were safe.

Renjun broke free from our hug, “where have you been? Why are they trying to separate us? Are we safe here?”

After Renjun asked those question, my eyes just naturally wandered to Hendery who was now behind the boys.

We are. I feel like we are safe here, with him.

“Remember what Mai said?” I glanced at them consecutively. “We can’t trust anyone so fast so quickly,”

“But you do.” Renjun squinted his eyes at me.

My eyes, again, landed on Hendery who dropped a figurine from a shop.

“And I don’t want us to make that mistake—again.”

“You mean you?”

“God damn it Renjun why are you being like this?” I sighed. “Anyway, for now I see no threats, but we can’t let our guards down anymore. From now on we have to be extra careful. We don’t even know what this place is, how are the people, what are the laws here.”

Both of them just nodded in a serious matter like they were agreeing to whatever I was saying.

“How ‘bout your new boyfriend?” Renjun asked. “Should we trust him, considering after everything that has happened?”

“What did you say??” My voice just went an octave higher like how he usually sounded like.

“Uhm… Should we trust him?” Renjun said.

“Lili’s got a new boyfriend~” Jaemin sang and grinned widely.

“He is not-“

“Honestly, you two are acting like babies. Just cut the crap and get a ro