Momo was waiting in the forest. She knew she probably shouldn’t have, but she’d heard Dahyun say she wasn’t going to the party. That meant she was leaving even earlier. It was Tuesday. Would she leave Friday morning? Before then? There were still six of them left. If Dahyun still did two per day, she’d leave on Thursday. If she did more, maybe she’d already leave tomorrow. Momo’s chest hurt just thinking about it. None of them were ready. Not the others, not Dahyun, not Momo, and definitely not Sana. 

She heard a few footfalls then. Dahyun had already been hiding them. She realised then how easy it would be for the fairy to just disappear. Momo hoped she wouldn’t. It would hurt more than not even getting to say goodbye. 

“Momo?” she heard her call. 

She looked over to where the call had come from to see her standing just a few meters away. The fairy had worn normal clothes for the occasion. Momo found herself wishing everything could be normal—their type of normal. She wished that Dahyun wasn’t fleeing from something, that Dahyun wasn’t trying to protect them from that something, and that she could stay. Even if that meant she had to figure a lot out about her own feelings, she’d rather face those than watch Dahyun leave. 

“Hey,” she smiled, “you’re not coming to the party?” Might as well admit that she'd used her enhanced sense. Normal. 

Dahyun only nodded, her eyes falling to the floor. “Is that why your sadness has permeated through the forest?” She held up a hand and Momo watched as spindles of dark blue appeared in them. 

“So your net is working?” She walked over and pinched one between her fingers. Dahyun didn’t stop her. 

It was cool to the touch. She felt it respond to the emotions in her own heart, as if it was drawn to her. She didn’t get in like with the shard of love, but the ache in her chest got more pronounced. It made her want to throw caution to the wind and just ask Dahyun to stay right then and there.

She let go. “Can we leave it in the forest? Or is that bad for it?”

Dahyun shook her head. “We can leave it.” The blue threads disappeared. “Why are you so sad?” she asked. “Is it because of what you heard, because I am leaving, or something else?” Her eyes scanned Momo’s. Then they fell. “I may not understand very much, but I know sadness better than I do myself,” she said. “Partially because it makes up a great part of me, but also because I,” she trailed off. 

Momo chuckled. “Studied it?” She had a good feeling she knew what Dahyun was addressing. Once again, she decided that the fairy not knowing what exactly that was would be better for all of them. 

“Yes. And I know that there’s a different sort of sadness accumulating in you,” she said. “It’s directed at me.” Searching her eyes, “What have I done wrong?”

That was not the right thought process. “Nothing, nothing wrong,” she replied, taking Dahyun’s hand with both of hers. “It’s a dumb reason.” 

“Are you sure?”

“Why are you asking me that?” 

“That emotion doesn’t have dumb causes. Disappointment might, but not sadness.” 

Momo looked away. Then a hand gently tapped her chin.

“How am I expected to know what you’re feeling if I can’t look into your eyes?” 

She looked up to see Dahyun searching her eyes again. Her face warmed. Even if she never meant to do it, that look still made Momo feel like she was a physics question the fairy wanted to figure out. 

“So you’re not reading my emotions?” Momo asked, letting a teasing edge come into her voice. 

“I’m not looking now. If you can, and want to, help me understand, then do.” 

She wanted to. She wanted to explain to Dahyun that whatever she was feeling had to be figured out first—but for all she knew, that might just encourage her to leave sooner. It would definitely confuse her more. She couldn’t do that now. 

“I need to make sure you know what you’re leaving behind. Who.” 

Dahyun's mouth opened, then closed again. The distant look came back. 

Momo regretted being the reason for that, but she had to say the rest. “You already know the rest. None of us want you to go. If you stayed, we’d be over the moon.” She paused. It wasn't hard to continue, but she wanted to give Dahyun time to process what she was hearing. “But there’s someone in that house whose heart will be broken, and she won’t really know why it hurts so much.” 

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t,” she began, “I don’t understand.” A pause. “Well, I do. I’ve seen how heartbreak looks, but,” her bottom lip was pulled between her teeth, “people recover, do they not?” 

In her eyes, Momo saw the confusion, the conflict. She had to be careful with how she addressed this. It wasn’t fair to assume Dahyun knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe the pain that the girls and Momo would feel looked the same to the one Sana would feel. She didn’t know how Dahyun would see it, but they definitely weren't the same. Even if they looked like it. 

“You can get back from heartbreak,” she nodded. “But that’s not my point. It’s about what comes before.”

“You’re going to tell me to acknowledge my emotions, aren’t you?” A pause. “I assume you’ve heard why I don’t want to.” 

Momo nodded. “And that shouldn’t be the reason why you turn away.” 

“Pain is pain,” Dahyun replied. “What is wrong with wanting to keep it from strengthening?” 

She fought a sigh. Dahyun didn’t know what that kind of love felt like. She did. She also knew the pain that came after that. “I lost someone a century ago,” Momo said. “I never stopped feeling that grief, but I also never stopped loving them. You can see both of those things, can’t you? Look, if you haven’t already.” She was bearing her emotions again. The thought didn’t scare her like it used to. 

But Dahyun’s gaze didn’t glaze over, they remained focused. She remained silent, listening, but her eyes held a silent reassurance. Momo could stop at any moment. She didn't need to continue. Dahyun would let her stop. 

She couldn't say it then. Wouldn't say it, but that fact alone made her love the fairy even more. She closed her eyes and pushed the feelings down. 

“He died for reasons outside of both our control, but I wasn’t there when it happened. Only afterwards.” The familiar emptiness settled itself in her chest. This was all she’d say about it today. “But there’s one thing I know for sure. And it’s that if I had the chance to relive the years we had with each other again, even if I knew I’d lose him the same way, I would go through it again.” 

Her brow furrowed then. “Why?” 

“Because some of the happiest moments of my life happened then,” Momo said. “Dahyun, something that I don’t think you know yet, is what love actually means to a person.” 

"You're right." The response surprised her, but then it also didn't. Dahyun knew what she did and didn't know. She was curious and open, but she also knew when to stop asking questions and when she was supposed to just listen. 

If Momo was going to tell her to truly pursue her feelings, she had to use terms that Dahyun knew like the back of her hand. “What are the connections between purple and other emotions?” 

“It tugs on others. Pink, when it is romantic love, though any form of love will be interlaced with green.”

“Happiness,” she opened her eyes to see Dahyun’s now glazed over ones, “do you lose those emotions when you get hurt?”

A moment passed. Then another. She could hear the fairy’s slow heartbeat. It had gotten a bit faster in the past weeks. She wasn’t sure why that would be. Did it have something to do with getting back love and happiness in the past weeks? Had that given her, for lack of a better word, back some of the life she'd lost?

“No.” Then her gaze refocused. “Why are you telling me this now?” Dahyun blinked once. Twice. “Is this related to the sadness I see in you?” 

Yes. “Not exactly,” Momo said. “But I do know you’re hurting Sana more by what you’re doing right now.” 

She looked pained then. “I don’t mean to hurt any of you more than I have to.”

More than I have to. The phrasing already hurt. 

“I know,” Momo said. “So don’t.” She turned away. Had to. Or else she'd really say something she couldn't—shouldn't. “Race you to the house?” Shooting her a smile, she readied her stance to that of a runner. 

A small chuckle. One Momo wished she could hear more of. “I’ll try.” 

Then they were off. 

______

“I’m aiming for four today,” Dahyun said. Some of them were at the table, flying through a school assignment, others were doing other things on their computers, while Mina was at the TV with Chaeyoung. A video game, apparently. 

“At once?” Momo asked. The sadness directed at Dahyun, not the strange one, rose. 

She smiled and shook her head. “In pairs still, but I’ll go through dinner to do so.”

“You’re not hungry?” Jihyo asked. 

“Ate today. I needed to talk to Joohyun and the others. I didn’t want to leave without warning.” 

“Who’s Joohyun?” Chaeyoung asked, before cheering. “Gotcha," she chimed as Mina grumbled.

Dahyun glanced at the rest, almost expecting someone to know the answer to that. None did. Did they not know what her real name was? “Irene.” 

Someone’s disappointment flared. In the same moment, she saw Sana’s face fall. 

“You really made some good friends there.” Nayeon smiled. “Anyone else in the school you’d tell?”

“Other than you, no.” She paused. “Why haven’t you got any close friends within the school?” It was something that she’d wondered about. Why they did not have any other green threads to other people. The only interactions she’d ever seen were those dating things. 

“Ouch,” Jeongyeon grinned, “us hermits being outed.” Then she shrugged. “It’d make the not-ageing thing pretty complicated. That works until you’re supposed to be in your thirties. Then people start wondering.” 

“And plastic surgery didn’t exist when we were wanting to actually keep up relationships,” Nayeon added. “Or social media. So one thing that could’ve made stuff easier didn't exist, and the other which makes it even harder exists now as well.” 

The social media thing had been a confusing thing for her. The girls had spent a full weekend explaining that to her, but she’d hardly spared any thought for it outside of that. She much preferred the potential of Google and the information stored there. 

There were also a series of precautions and other modifications Jeongyeon and Jihyo were in charge of in the digital world. She hadn’t felt inclined to know exactly what that entailed and she didn’t ask about it now. 

“So there is no possibility that you get to know others in the school?” Dahyun asked. “There are a large amount of people I’d say have truly good,” the words caught in , “though this is not quite the right word, they have good souls. Some are even beautiful.” 

“Beautiful?” Sana repeated. A combination of emotions flowed to the forefront, but they quickly faded, pushed down by some sort of rejection. Then shame and embarrassment followed. 

“I mean regarding the emotions most prevalent in them. Sooyoung, Joy, is most attuned to happiness, Wendy to calm, and Irene also has calm and humour, though there were swathes of pink.”

“Pink.” Another set of emotions rose. She recognised it, but had not felt in some time. Jealousy. 

“Does everyone have a core emotion?” Nayeon asked. Her eyes went between Dahyun and Sana, and there was curiosity, as well as a degree of worry. 

Dahyun shook her head. “Only emotional fae do. At least in the sense that we are built upon those emotions. Other creatures, humans, elves, or vampires, each feel emotions just as we do, but no emotions to which their being is tied. At least not generally. You have pieces that are linked to your souls, but these are not comprised of emotions.”

“But yours is?” Tzuyu asked. “Of light and dark blue?” 

“Yes and no?” She smiled slightly. “The core emotions are difficult to describe. I began with calm, and only this, but as I grew older, sadness joined itself with me, or had lain dormant until later in my life.” She saw their confusion growing. “They are as fundamental to us as the nucleus is to an atom. If I look at someone from my clan in the emotional world, I will see their core emotion first. It makes them up as skin and bone does in the physical world.” 

The confusion had lessened slightly, but it still wasn’t enough. 

She raised her hands, drawing out a shard of her core emotions. Light blue and dark mixed with one another, forming a block on the table. The movement was like cream mixing slowly into coffee. “You would see this if you looked at me. Other emotions that I feel would look like this.” 

Several different colours pierced through the blue. She made them flash or flow across the surface. There was a small ache in her then. 

Then she took another set of emotions and compressed them into a separate piece beside the model of ‘her’. The movement was slightly faster, like a muted whirlpool. She placed some light blue into the centre, but only a small portion of it. The other emotions flowed around it. She let purple pass through blue, as though the light blue were a fog and the purple a bird of some sort. The ache was stronger now. Had she made the pieces too big? 

“This is someone not from my clan. It could be any of you or another fae. Emotions come to the forefront or bury themselves within you.” She made dark blue flow within the core, sometimes coming to the outside before going back in. “An immortal would likely look like this, that sadness sometimes joined by happiness or love, but also grief.” 

Threads of black migrated to the core of the object, coming to a lazy spiral. Green coils danced around the dark blue, while purple swam around it all in a cloud. Her fingertips were beginning to cool, a numbness had settled over her skin. It was an echo of being completely empty. She felt a panic start to settle in her stomach. 

“It changes from person to person, naturally. And thing