And on... and on... and on...

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“Omo… is he even human?” “He looks just like a maiden… even prettier than all of us here.” “How do you get such flawless skin?” “How unfair! He looks too good to be true!” Mumblings coming from the room nearest to the end of the hallway caught a tall form off guard, as he stops ascending the steps and pauses for a moment.

Edging towards the room, his long shadow loomed from outside the corridor as the hushed murmurs continued, unaware of his presence. Inside the room, beside a spacious, well crafted bed made of sweet-smelling pine, a group of females were fawning over a certain creature. Sighing in relief after seeing a group of harmless females instead of intruders, the person stayed silent, retreating into the shadows.

They are rubbing their fingers against the creature’s velvety, lustrous skin, as the feature gleams under the morning sunlight, as the ray glisten the luster of satin for a surface. Hoping the skin is just a mask of sorts; gasps can be heard as the group exchange looks, wondering why it's undetachable. Their itchy hands were also pawing at its long ebony hair, combing their fingers through the lush tangled locks with awe. Some of them were even narrowing their eye as they look under its cream coloured top.

“So. Ladies. Find anything particularly pecuiliar?” The figure hidden within the shadows finally announces his presence. Clapping his hands together once, indicating that the party is over, the person’s ‘sudden’ emergence caused the group of chattering females to quieten down and bow their heads as they shuffle out of the room in a single file.

“Sir Yunho. Do you have any orders for us?” The leader of the group spoke up timidly. The man, Yunho, shook his head once, placing a finger on his lips. The woman bolted for the door as it is shutting, barely slipping through the thin gap.

Alone at last, the advisor strolled over to the person, lying still as death on his bed, pulled his chair over and sat down wearily. Grabbing the towel from the bronze basin nearby, the man dipped a piece of clothe into the cool water inside and rinsed it, before bringing it across the other’s face and neck.

Chuckling to himself, the advisor recalled how the group of women around his age could not even match up to a man. He cannot fathom why he just can’t seem to bring himself to praise anyone for their appearance, ever since meeting this person lying on the bed. “It’s a shame that you are male… but this oppa here wouldn’t mind.” Yunho joked, with flat humour.

“Hmmm… they are right. You are not human.” Yunho whispered as he took the opportunity to ‘molest’ the person’s face, peering at the shapely nose bridge and long lashes.

Yunho had just arrived back in the central plains with Jaejoong in tow, early in the morning. The day is just getting started, and though Yunho is well rested enough, Jaejoong still remains unconscious. The advisor is beginning to get a feel of the word ‘impatient’.

The physicians say that the other will wake up soon, so Yunho is waiting.

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POV from Jaejoong

Dark, biting cold… accompanied with numbness and a hollow feeling. The overwhelming pressure of impending doom… I have never felt worse.

Choking on the water constantly lapping into my mouth, I can’t even spit them out. Coughing isn’t of any use either. I just can’t expectorate whatever is in the back of my throat, sliding down my trachea. It was suffocating me, yet my epiglottis is powerless against the forces of nature. My nasal cavities were flooded… my pharynx burnt with excessive attempts to expel what felt like gallons of icy water.

The horrid pitch black universe I was into continued its endless torment on me. I am not sure if it’s just my tactile illusion or that I am actually frozen and trembling without any motor control. The twinges due to the coldness seeping under my skin were piercing into my bones, making them ache so terribly.

Yet, the next thing I remember is waking up to a soft tinkling, which sounds like pieces of crystal crossing path with one another. Wind chimes… The familiar sounds, so sharp but pleasant… so distinct but serene, is amplified as my five senses returning to me so gradually. I can even feel my fingers now. My toes… and my previously flooded ear canals are now able to detect sounds clearly.

The last sense is my sight. I can feel my lids struggling to lift themselves as the feeling of fatigue continues sitting on them, sealing them shut. My throat hurt, but the urge to let out all the bottled up agony I felt earlier was too much for me to remain silent any longer. I can even hear myself groaning… not too loudly… just enough to drown out the soft sound of what are probably small bells.

I wanted to curse… the moment the tug at my arm became too nagging for me to disregard. The hot squeezing sensation… and the soreness at the anatomy surrounding the entire region is causing me a hell lot of misery. I am in distress! I can’t! The intensity of it!!

Just kill me already!! I can’t!! It’s like a dog has gotten a chunk of my arm and is currently trying to get a bigger piece of me. The bone underneath hurts so much too!!

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“UHHHHH!!!” With a moderately loud moan, the glazed pair of eyes, raven black, were revealed as the pale eyelids flutters open. Eyebrows twisted, the forehead dimpled because of the unbearable pain radiating from his arm. The now fully opened eyes, unfocused and moist with tears, immediately checked out the place that is hurting, and narrowed down on the thick wade of cotton and clothe wrapped around the thin arm.

Vision doubling as his head throbs, pounding as the dizziness increases with the arcing of his neck towards the injured hand; it felt as if someone were hitting the back of his skull with a mallet. The man’s face contorted even more with the additonal symptoms, causing him to bowl over in bewilderment, crying real tears of anguish.

The manifestation of his ailments wouldn’t subside no matter how he positions himself. Finally, reeling from the nausea secondary to the vertigo his is experiencing, the man sat up and threw up all over himself. Not particulates of food, just mouthful after mouthful of transparent liquid. Mostly water he has ingested while drowning, water that were trapped in his lungs, literally depressing the respiratory system.

Sobbing loudly, the man collapsed onto the soaked linen and buried his head in the dampened sheets, willing the pain and suffering away. His arm is hurting him so badly that he wished he could simply amputate them. It’s as if a fresh laceration is just being reopened on his old ones and someone is sticking needles into where it hurts the most. The pumping headache at the occipital and temporal regions caused the world to whirl around him as his reddened eyes blinks uncontrollably, long lashes flicking away tears and channeling them down his cheeks.

“Oh my god!! Shoots!!” A sudden exclamation startled the tormented man, but not enough to distract him from whatever he is going through. A pair of big hands then grabbed him by the shoulders as they work to sit him up, holding him in position. He throws up again.

“Bring me a new set of everything!” The voice hollered urgently as a hand reaches up to wipe the vomiting man’s lips.

The pair of glassy black orbs worked their way behind their owner’s head and zeroes down on a certain object, a hint of displeasure amounting to contempt then surfaces, after finally seeing the ‘kind samaritan’ behind him. Lips parting slightly, twisting downwards, the feeble man immediately raised the unaffected hand and issued the other a tight slap on the cheeks. The sound bounced off the walls as the assaulted other reels in shock from the sudden attack.

Rubbing his own mouth against his sleeves, the now sickly yet angered man spins his body around fully, upper part vacillating as he raises his hand to issue another blow. His thin wrist is clasped onto tightly as the person recovering from his earlier attack hooks his arm around the ill man’s, pinning it down onto the bed forcefully.

“WHERE IS HE?!!” The ill man glowered menacingly, pallid face flushing a bland pink as he hisses. His sweet airy voice displayed signs of extreme tetchiness and little tolerance for humor. The bigger man, amused at first, decides it not the best idea for him to be frivolling or teasing.

“I lost him.” With a quiet voice, the tall man insinuated losing the infant to the rapids. The sickly man threw fit almost instantaneously, slamming his good hand weakly onto the other’s broad muscular chest, hitting him with all his might, kneading a fist listlessly into the other’s abdomen, as if the man’s skin is dough.

The assaulted man remained still as a block of wood as his assailant continued his futile attacks. With a straight face, the tall man remained as forbearing as ever, unmovable.

“JUNG YUNHO!!” “I HATE YOU SO MUCH!!” The exhausted man clamored one last time before crumpling onto the dirtied bed linen once again, catching his breath as he nurses the constricting pain, pulsating within his skull. The said man kept his silence, maintaining his ‘innocence’.

“I only wanted to keep us alive. The baby is gone before I could do anything.” Yunho replied.

“I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU DID!!” “JUST GET DOWN ON THE FLOOR AND ROLL TO HELL ALREADY!!” The man managed again, punching Yunho once in the chest again.

Before long, Yunho could hear soft sounds of snivels coming from the face buried within the sheets. The weak sniffling concerned him as he hears the person with such an icy personality crying for the first time. “Jaejoong sshi. Don’t cry. At least he is in heaven now. We tried our best. He probably didn’t feel a thing.” The man tried to sound the other out, speaking to make sense. He does not, not to Jaejoong.

“Damn you.” “And I’m not crying, so shut the hell up.” After a long awkward pause, the other, Jaejoong finally replies.

“Now now… we want to play nice don’t we?” Yunho decided to regain control of the situation. The advisor hates it when the scenario he pictures prior deviates too much from what really happens. He expected that Jaejoong will be impervious to being affected by the baby’s ‘demise’, but the man is obviously taking the bad news very personally.

“I’m going back.” “I have to find him.”

Yunho felt that by lying about the baby’s ending, Jaejoong will not pursue the matter, but he is mistaken. “He is gone. What good would it do for you to be so obstinate?” Yunho replied coolly. He does not need any more ‘revolutionary movement’ from the other.

After all, he hadn’t even broken the news to Jaejoong. He hadn’t told Jaejoong that returning to the river is impossible for the time being, because they are currently a few towns and way more than a thousand yards away from where the healer will call home.

Jaejoong does not know he is no longer situated north.

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Meanwhile… Back in the northern plains…

“Has anyone seen him anywhere!?” A man initially seated in front the fire, casting and ‘upgrading’ his weapons, asks as he stands up immediately, looking at the comrade that approached him wistfully. He does not hold high hopes.

The other shook his head and frowned. The tall, well built man in the shadows sighed and went back to where he was seated earlier, staring blankly at the flames. “General. I don’t get it! He wouldn’t just disappear without leaving behind any message for us.” “Why don’t we try looking for him elsewhere?”

The sullen face of the sizeable man lit up upon that suggestion. “We will head over to his teacher’s house then!” “He will be there for sure! He did tell me about moving there for some reason.” The man babbled on cheerily, smiling for the first time in days, hope reignited. “I helped him relocate just the other day!!”

With that, the duo gathered their sacks and left their hideout without heading for the stables where their horses were resting in. On foot, both man made their way up the mountainside, where they believe they will find the person they are looking for. Recalling the way, the taller man searched the dense thickets and finally found a well concealed path, leading to the hut just across the rock strewn slopes.

Making their way over hurriedly, anticipative and optimistic, the two saw from a distance that the hut is dilapidated and in ruins, condition far from how they have expected it to be, since the person they are looking for is a clean freak. Closing in, the two goggled at the sight of hacked up furniture and the extinguished but blackened fire place. The main door is left dangling on a hinge while blood spatters covers the shriveled up herbaceous plants in their pots and chipped walls.

Cussing, the tall man marched right in first and barged into every single room in the house, searching every nook and cranny, shouting the person’s name. The other followed and scouted the house for secret passages, just to single out a cluttered cellar underground, but with nobody in it. Dejected, the duo even flipped open all the pieces of shredded bed sheets and carpets, ignoring that it is only remotely possible for them to find any signs of life beneath, but even with faith, there is really nothing.

“He is not here.” “What happened here?”

“DAMN IT!!” “I swear I will peel their skin off and boil their bones for my dinner if they ever hurt him!!” The taller one bellowed and kicked the broken beam beside him, causing it to crumble.

“Calm down, Junho. Stop breaking anymore things!! He will kill you if you demolish this house any more than it already is!” The shorter one grabbed his comrade by the knee and held the leg firmly. “This is his teacher’s house! Don’t!!” The man shouted hysterically as the leg flies up again.

“AIGOOO!!!” “KIM JAEJOONG!! WHERE ARE YOU!!?!” Junho roared and crushed the single piece of porcelain pottery in his hand, adopting use his bulging muscles in the process. “Oops!!”