THREE

“The world is ending,” Cheery read out from her phone with a frown almost like she was believing the nonsense she was reading. “Apparently there have been several… and I mean several instances of supernatural stuff happening all over.”

But Baekhyun yawned, “The world doesn’t just end, Cheery.”

“Like you have any idea what could happen…” She yawned in response to him, “And with the times getting worse and worse… the end might just happen.”

“Hmm?” He shakes his head and rubbed his arms to keep himself warm.

It was six O’clock in the ing morning and they were traveling to a museum for an exposure trip. Apparently, the museum had actual manuscripts from ancient days and could aid in learning the said languages.

Of course, Baekhyun thought this was a complete waste of time but Cheery begged to differ. She had been strangely ecstatic to visit this museum and had been dressing up for this day since a week back.

Their bus was relatively warm but because autumn was settling in, the mornings were cold and for many reasons, the heater was turned off. Cheapskates. Besides this year’s autumn was much colder than the last.

“Cold?” She noticed him as he sighed again, “I told you to pack your jacket since last night but you did not listen to me. You’re only wearing a sweater so of course, you’ll be cold. Geez. Why are you so annoying?”

But the whole time she is nagging, she was already rummaging through her huge tote bag and pulling out a long scarf.

“Here,” She huffs and dunked his head down to wrap the scarf around him. “Next time you don’t listen to me, you just suffer. I don’t care if you die anymore.”

But he was smiling and nodding his head loving the way the scarf made him feel. It was soft and billowy making him sigh into it. It also had a light perfume of hers in it giving him a weird sensation in the stomach. Why did it feel as though some things were trying to crawl out of his belly… but why was that sensation not so bad?

“So anyway I met a bunch of people like… three days back? And they told me that the world was ending and that I should prepare. Like they gave me some good to back up their story. Apparently in Heilongjiang right now… like right now… even right now, snow is just… heavy and I mean heavy. Remember how it was in the news that even during summer it was snowing? Man… I do really feel like the world is about to end with all this .”

Baekhyun did not know if it was because she remembered them from her childhood but she was superstitious in many things.

She also believes in all these supernatural things like ghosts and evil spirits and guardian angels but doesn’t talk about them often as though she knew about them but wouldn’t talk about it because it is her secret.

They stop to take a break because the museum was at a rather outskirts of the town in another city and they had to go for another hour before they reach.

“Ah~ the sun feels nice…” She stretches her body as they walk out of the store after buying an unimaginable amount of junk. Of course, he was holding everything while she freely pranced around. The things he does for this woman.

“B… Take good pictures of me okay? I have to upload it on Instagram. I need to maintain that feed if I want to keep getting all those free stuff.”

Of course. She was a for free stuff so she decided to be an influencer as well and he was almost always the photographer.

“Are you sure you can survive in heels the whole day? I am not giving you my shoes this time around.” Baekhyun balanced the bags of food in his hands as he give her a desperate look. “Please tell me you bought an extra.”

“Nah…” She laughs making a thud in his heart. “I thought ahead this time. It’s just comfortable block-heeled boots so no problem at all. See…”

As though to demonstrate, she strutted around a little and gave him a pose. “Mama got it all under control.”

She gives him a flying kiss at that and sashayed her way towards the bus as he rolled his eyes where he stood.

It was unfair that she looked gorgeous every single moment of her life… even during middle school when she had her breakouts and dark eye bags. He chuckled a little thinking back to those times and how much she had changed.

Right now she looked and acted like some famous internet celebrity which she was kind of and she liked designer stuff.

Baekhyun’s train of thoughts was suddenly put on hold when a random guy suddenly bumped into her and began to talk with her.

He wasn’t Sese, the demon of Envy, and yet every single time a human approaches her intending to court her romantically, the ugly feeling grows inside his chest and grabs his neck making it hard to breathe.

He knew well that Cheery never responds to this sort of flirting but it still made him uneasy so he stomped forward to where they stood.

“Babe,” He calls out and joins them giving a mean glare to the guy. “Our bus’s moving. Let’s go.”

The guy was annoyingly taller than him and looked as though he permanently had something up his arse.

“Ah…” She giggled softly. “My darling’s here. Don’t worry about the accident. It happens a lot. Bye.”

Why does lying come easy to this human? She's always using him to get out of these situations so much so that it has become a regularity. 

At that, without even a pause, Baekhyun led her to the bus ignoring the way she had slipped her hands around his arms. God. Why was it that she was always warm and that his belly always feels the strange tingle when with her?

Whatever this was… it was so foreign and… alien to him.

But there was one thing he knows for sure- whatever he felt for her, stronger as the years go by was not lust. It wasn’t the normal reaction he gets. There was never any feeling of wanting to make her sin or draw her into sin… in fact, it was the opposite. He may have laughed at himself many years ago at this concept.

Which demon takes humans away from sin? That was absurd!

He thinks that this feeling had somehow always been inside of him but it made itself known when they were in their second year of high school. At that time since it was all new and alarming, he had confronted her about how he was… feeling.

“Is it weird that I get like stomach… ache… whenever I am around you? I feel funny… like in my bones. Did you add something weird to my soup?”

She had given him a stink eye, certain that he was playing with her.

But he wasn’t and he suddenly wanted all her attention making him feel like Kai.

This was probably why he started flirting around, feeding his sin so that maybe this weirdness would go away, and yet… it persisted and here they were… those feelings getting worse by the minute.

Was this perhaps a curse that Xiumin put on him to ensure that he doesn’t run away from his duty? So that he craved for her company all the dang time?

Currently, this was the only explanation proper enough to logically answer that.

Speaking of Xiumin… He recalled the freezing of the window pane and wondered how everything was going on down the path of Sheol. If everything goes right, Xiumin will resume his powers and most probably be joined by legions of demons once again.

There was extremely little chance though, for them to return to this timeline because the last time he heard of the Time Runemaster Tao, was almost 5000 years back. The time master had disappeared into time itself unable to set it right to come back.

Messing with time was never right. It was one of the first creations of the Creator. These basic things in the universe were always tricky to handle. He was just grateful that he had light. Light, apart from Time, matter, and space… was secondary.

Coincidentally it was around this time that Lucifer shared his powers amongst his daughters and sons and went… missing.

Demons and overlords came up with various stories but the children of Lucifer neither confirmed nor denied anything eventually making Lucifer’s absence just another aspect of hell.

Since Lucifer wasn’t there, wouldn’t it be really easy for Xiumin to gain back his position as one of the greatest rulers, just a step below Lucifer?

Those sons and daughters were powerful… and they were more than 30 of them but they were extremely divided which meant fewer chances for them to come together even if Xiumin was creating havoc down there.

Were they okay?

“B… Wake up… We’ve reached.” Amidst the ugly images of hell in his mind, a soothing voice flooded in making him wake to see a serenely beautiful being smiling at him.

Why does it seem like there’s a glow within her at this moment and why does waking up next to her sound so… right?

Throughout their days together, it had been mostly him who had to