I could finally see the city again, but on one condition. I had to leave now. I had to leave as soon as D.O. told me the good news. So, I did just that. I didn’t have to pack as my apartment still had everything I had left behind. I simply grabbed the keys from my suitcase, changed into a pair of street clothes, and set out. I had to take this chance while I had it. If I didn’t, when would I be able to in the future? When would the next right time be? That’s why I didn’t falter for a single second.

So, here I was now, Tao leading me forward through the dark streets of the city. And one more Guardian following from behind, sandwiching me between the two of them.

A Guardian that as Tao stopped at another corner, his arm outstretched to keep me backed against the wall of the alleyway, reached up and pulled my hood over my head to shade my face from view. I looked to him, to Chanyeol, finding him looking onward as alertly as Tao.

“Keep your head down.” Chanyeol mumbled beneath his breath to me, only the tip of his nose and his mouth visible from underneath the hood of his ceremonial Guardian robes.

“We’re almost there, your highness.” Tao rounded the corner and I followed. I followed as the three of us made our way to my apartment. Before I had left, Luhan told me about the importance of keeping up the “sick in bed” theory he had invented for me to cover up for all the time I had gone missing; an excuse he said that while it may have been simple, was also the easiest to back up.

But, there was an easier way to get me back home than this. An easier way that Luhan had also known, that all of the Guardians must have known. Within a single second, I could have been home. If only Kai could teleport me there, then Tao and Chanyeol could spare themselves the trouble of taking me there themselves. Of course, when I voiced this to them, they vehemently asserted that it was no trouble at all.

Luhan explained himself without explaining fully himself, his words roundabout as he told me that Kai was busy dealing with Council related matters. What were these matters? I don’t know. Though what followed that statement was one that puzzled me even more. Luhan told me, as he spoke through his signature floating orb, to stay away.

He said, “Stay away from Kai for now, your highness.”

I don’t know why I responded the way I did. Perhaps it was an attempt to lighten Luhan’s mood. Not towards me but towards Kai himself, “That’s kind of impossible, you know?”

There was silence that followed my statement, silence before he spoke in chopped sentences. Something that was quite unlike him.

“I know.” I heard him take a breath, “But,” and another, “try.”

And I left like that, leaving behind a sighing Luhan. I almost didn’t because of that but again, when would another chance like this come? I couldn’t stay behind. But, when I got back, I would sort things out. I was sure of that. I would put an end to the sighs that escaped him.

“We’re here, your highness.” Tao spoke up, drawing me out of my trance. Sure enough, we were. We were standing now right in front of my apartment building. I ascended the steps, Chanyeol following behind. But, only Chanyeol followed behind.

I looked back, noticing that Tao was standing there at the bottom of the steps. Just like the day I first met him, he was refusing to come inside. He was second to Lay when it came to his consideration for me. And, I wasn’t going to force him into it. Because this was who he was. This is what made him comfortable right now. So, while I disliked it, while I much rather he wasn’t so polite, I would let it be.

“Tao.”

He looked up, his lips parting yet no words leaving them. He was trying to explain. Trying to figure out how to refuse me again. I didn’t let him. I didn’t let him say a single word as I continued.

“Stay safe.”

His eyes widened, his jaw going slack. It was a sight I couldn’t help but smile at.

“Okay?” I asked, a hint of a laugh in my voice.

“Okay.” He nodded slowly and I could see it. Even though the shadows of his hood blurred his features, I could see the relief on his face that I had helped him dodge the subject.

I owed him one after all, didn’t I?  I owed him for covering up for me that morning at breakfast that seemed like just yesterday.

“Your highness, let’s go inside.” Chanyeol ushered me, his hand hovering over my back as is eyes surveyed the streets, keeping watch even now. I nodded as I unlocked the door, taking a step inside as his hand extended above me, keeping the door open as I walked in. I glanced back once, only once, to see Tao standing at the bottom of the stone steps, his eyebrows furrowed downwards and his teeth biting down onto his bottom lip.

I’ll miss you.

I think the attachment I feel for them, for the Guardians, is much stronger than I originally thought. Why? Because, at that moment, I wanted to reply. I wanted to say those three words right back.

I wanted to say, “I’ll miss you too, Tao.”

But, I didn’t. I kept the words frozen, hidden at the base of my throat, as the door closed behind me and Tao disappeared from my sight.

“I’ll walk you to your room.” Chanyeol gestured forward for me to lead, he having never been to my apartment before. Then again, the only one who had was Baekhyun.

I ascended the stairs, making my way up because I already knew that the elevator would be broken. In fact, it never worked in the first place. Thankfully, I only lived on the third floor, making the way up for me much easier than those who lived above me. Whilst I was used to it, the seemingly never-ending walk up to my room, the narrow stairway that could only fit one person and maybe a small child up at the same time time, and the dizzying effects that plagued me as the stairs’ incline was closer to a straight line than any set of stairs should be, Chanyeol was not. How did I know?

Well, I heard a sudden crash behind me. It was a sound that once I turned, I knew the origin of. It was Chanyeol, whom had tripped on one of the steps. His hand gripped tightly onto railing of the stairway as he pulled himself up, only then realizing that I was watching his struggle from a few steps above him.

“Are you okay?” I asked, looking him up and down for any visible injuries.

He smiled widely up at me, an embarrassed kind of smile, “Yeah.” His voice cracked. His voice cracked on that one syllable and his face flushed as he turned away from me, coughing as though there were something lodged in his throat.

Dumb long legs.

He cursed in his head as his eyes downcasted, seeming to scold his feet at that point.

“I can go by myself.” I pointed upwards, having to bit my lip to restrain myself from laughing outright.

“No!” He immediately responded, his deep voice reverberating against the walls of the narrow stairway. His eyes widened, he himself not at all aware he would be that loud. I covered my mouth with my palm, hiding my smile from sight. He cleared his throat again before finally being able to speak confidently once more, his eyes shining light brown under the rays of the moon that peeked in at the scene from the small windows that lined the walls of the stairway, “I’ll walk you all the way there.”

And he did. He walked all the way up with me, no matter how many times he tripped on the way there. 

A soft ding resounded throughout the large room, causing the chatter to cease for a moment as the blinking blue sign that hung at the center of the room flashed, the number changing from six hundred and nine to six hundred and ten. Which meant, it was my turn after a long wait of two hours. My turn to what?

My turn at the front counter of this large, marble building. This, the Council's Court, named to counter the now much less politically used People's Court, a base of operations for the Council on Exo planet. Run by the Council with the purpose of keeping records on every Exotian on Exo. Here is where I came to renounce my enrollment at my university. Not the actual university building itself but here at this large building, the reason that despite having an issue that was out of the norm and easy to solve, I had to wait for so long. Though, I did have one more reason for being here. That reason being to hand in the paperwork of my recent release from my night job at the bar.

I had gone there earlier this morning, it having been much closer than to my apartment. Plus, business was little to none when the sun was still out, making it easier for me to talk to management. It turns out they had already replaced me after they received my notice of being sick for so long. Which made me quitting all the more easy to do. I hadn’t worked there long but I had grown used to it and the people there had grown used to me.

This was the reason that as I left, my belongings from my locked stashed safely into a black tinted bag, the bartender stopped me. He asked me where I had been. I told him I was sick. I don’t like lying to people but it was better to lie for the sake of the Guardians and myself.

And for some reason, I had the feeling that lying would have been better for him as well.

For his own safety.  

He didn’t stop the questioning there though as he then asked me why I was quitting. And that question was a little harder to answer. So, I told the truth. I told him it was a long story, one not worth telling. And he let it go as I walked out, never to return again.

And here I was, setting in stone my retraction from all I had done up to this point. So willingly. Honestly, I cried earlier in the bathroom as I waited for my number to be called. I teared just a little bit. Yet, I was okay with it. There was something temporary about these two years I’ve lived on my own, a kind of impermanence that I only realized as I spent day after day in the Hall of the Guardians.

Now, as I walked through the front doors of the Council's Court, having finished what I came to do, having given them notice and paperwork that recorded me down as a Rank 3 looking for work with only a year of university under my belt, I took a deep breath. I would most likely be receiving a phone call today about being unemployed, something that happened often I heard whenever an Exotian would lose their job. It was the Council’s representatives who would call, wanting to aid me in finding another job. No one went long being unemployed on Exo planet to the point where being “unemployed” seemed a backwards term to use. But, Luhan told me not to worry about it. That he’d take care of it. He’s been taking care of a lot of things, hasn’t he?

Does he get tired? Do the Guardians get tired?

They must. They must just as Exotians do. Just as those who I passed by on the street ranged from content to impassive, the guardians must go through those changing moods. Yet, they must also protect the Exotians. Not just them anymore either.

I had to as well. As Chen had told me, we’re all scared, the Exotians just don’t know it yet. They just don’t acknowledge it. And even though I was scared, even though I would have my ups and downs, I would have to be there to quell their own fears through their own ups and downs.

I don’t know when it happened, when my legs started taking me to this place, I just know that I was here now. I was here, sitting on a bench in the park, watching. Watching the children holding the hands of their parents, swinging their hands back and forth as they looked on at the dull green shrubbery. A magnificence I had thought of as sufficient in the past, as normal, before I laid sight on that garden that lay beneath the People’s Court, tended to by the guardians without a single outside force staining it’s spectrum, it’s life.

I watched as people passed through, the difference between Rank 3 and Rank 1 clear as day to see between the common earth tones adorning Rank 3s and the rare bright yellows and blues adorning Rank 1s. I watched as in a faraway shop window, a holovision screen blurred with the images of a recent movie that had been released. One in which Exo planet was displayed as a land of blue skies and green grass. But all I saw here was gray. All I saw was complacency. All of the things I saw as I watched, I watched and watched and watched, caused my heart to wring tightly in my chest.

The sound of an explosion caught my attention then. Across from me, sitting on a bench in the park in the same way I was, was a young man using his phone to watch holovision. To watch a news report. A report that replayed images of the fire that happened on Main street a week ago. The fire that erupted from the explosion that almost fatally wounded Xiumin. And I saw it, the faces of those passing by. The faces of those who glanced at it and across their eyes flashed an emotion.

Discomfort.

Weariness.

And Fear.

And what was worse was that as I read the minds of the people who looked on, who held on their faces such powerful emotions they must have had no idea they were producing, there was nothing. Not a one of them thought a single thought about it.

Isn’t that what we do when we’re scared of something?

We choose not to think about it?

I returned home no worse for wear, most likely all thanks to Luhan, right? Even now, I expected him to be here, waiting for me when I came home, that translucent orb hanging in midair. Of course, it wasn’t there. It was just me again, like it was for the past two years before I stumbled into a dark figure on my subway train ride home. Before I stumbled into Kai and he brought me to the place I would have been all along.

The place I should have been all along.

Would that have been better though? Would having been with them from the very beginning, with the Guardians as soon as I learned to walk and talk, would that really have been better? The question plagued my mind. That question plus another.

Why wasn’t I with them since the beginning?

I wrote it off as being because the hope for a Seeress to appear had long since thought to be hopeless. At that point in time, I could think of no other reason. No other reason other than the light flickering at the forefront of my mind an image of that white room. That white room and those shadowy figures that I dreamt of only once.

As I left the bathroom, having taken a shower in a cramped bathtub for the first time in what seemed like forever, a slight rapping on my window gave me pause, delaying both my thoughts and my walk forward towards my bed. I stared at it, wondering if I was hearing things. But, just as I was about to take another step forward, there it was again. The soft knocking sound again.

Rather than say I was frightened by it, I somehow knew. I somehow knew that what would follow that knock was the appearance of golden blonde hair and a face with long, sharp features past the glass of the window.

That Kris would be there, his lips moving as he mouthed the words, “Your Highness, open the window.”

I approached the window and pointed at the lock that sealed it shut. He nodded in response and I, feeling a little too excited that I wasn’t alone on this night as I thought I would be, shook my head in rejection of the idea.

His eyebrows furrowed downwards, his confliction apparent on his face.

What do you mean “no?”

The tone of the voice that entered my head was one of irritation. One that made me have to stifle a laugh as I held up my index finger to him before unlocking the window. He was the one who gripped onto it and lifted it upwards before he floated inside, his feet gingerly landing onto the floor. This first real display of his power in front of me, something I only noticed after remembering then that I lived on the third floor of the building.

“You think you’re funny, your highness?” He asked as soon as he got inside, causing the laugh I held back to go spilling from my lips.

 “Maybe I do?” I mused as I closed the window behind him, locking it again. As I turned back around, I found Kris not looking at me but around my small apartment.

He wasn’t moving at all, just standing still in place where he had landed when he first entered, his eyes scanning over the dark gray walls, the florescent light blue lights in the kitchen and by my bedside, and the lighter gray flooring of my one room, one bathroom apartment. Everything, everything was stained in gray. Much like the city itself.

I didn’t live in a bad apartment, not at all. All apartments in Exo looked like this, at least the ones I had seen that were for Rank 3. Yet, he looked around in disdain, seemingly unsatisfied with it. I don’t blame him. I understand his reaction completely. It was nothing like the room Lay had been keeping so diligently for me back in the Hall of the Guardians.

“Would you like something to drink?” I moved past his statue-like state and approached the kitchen. He didn’t reply. Instead, I heard a rough whisper echo in my mind.

Your highness.

I pivoted on my heel, leaning back against the kitchen counter, “Yes?”

“When are you coming home?”

Home? This is my home. Or, at least it was. Yet, when he said that word, that word “home,” I didn’t think of this small gray apartment. But, I didn’t think about the gold and purple room waiting for me back at the Hall of the Guardians either. I thought of that table. That rectangular table that was lined with thirteen chairs. I thought of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

So then, what was my home?

The answered caused a smile to adorn my face, much to the dismay of Kris. And thinking about that rectangular table reminded me that I had something to do tomorrow, “Soon.” I replied vaguely and the result was an immediate look of irritation on Kris’s face.

“How soon?” He retorted, apparently not a fan of ambiguous answers.

I turned back around, deciding myself that he would like something to drink after all. I held back a laugh as I said again, my tone unchanging, “Soon.”

There was a brief pause, a short period of silence, as I pulled from the cabinet a glass cup. As I took a step to my left, my fingers grazing the handle of the refrigerator, he found words with which to reply back to me.

“You really think you’re funny, your highness?”

I turned my head, glancing back at him who had now taken an empowering stance in the middle of the apartment, his arms crossed tightly against his chest. And, I smiled, “Maybe I do.”

Kris left soon after he had that drink I was preparing for him. We talked for a long while though, mostly about what I had seen in my brief walk through the city. What I felt about it. And what he felt about it. He emphasized change. Yet, what kind of change? Both he and I still had no idea. What could I do to help? What could he do to help? What could the Guardians to do help? The answer was one that Kris didn’t like, filled to the brim with uncertainty.

Still, he never explained why he came over in the first place. And for some reason, I felt like he didn’t want me to. Like he didn’t want me to question why because he didn’t want to answer such a question. So, I didn’t. I didn’t say a word about it even as he was leaving.

Even as I was now alone once more, I decided not to think about it. As I lay in bed, facing the window he entered through as the moonlight poured in, not a single star in the night sky, I didn’t think about it.

All I could think about was what I would do from here. What I would do now that I had seen the city. Now that I had seen it again through a different lens, where would I go from here?

And the suffocating feeling returned. The feeling of helplessness, of uselessness. Coupled with those feelings, the moon’s comforting light turned a dull gray, sending monochrome hues lighting flowing through the window.

And slowly, I began to sink. To sink downwards into my bed’s mattress that threatened to engulf me whole. The blanket wrapped tightly around my body, draining from me the strength to resist and leaving only the ability to give in. To give into its tight embrace.

A shadow stood over me. Watching as I descended down. Watching as I disappeared into the folds of the mattress.

And I was scared.

And in this state, in this state of fright and of panic, I reached out towards the shadow. I reached out and gripped tightly onto it, pulling it to me. Keeping myself anchored to it. I wasn’t going to drown. I refused to.

“Your highness.”

A voice called out to me, the tone pleasant as it echoed against my eardrums. I spread my fingers out, looking for it, for that voice. And, I found it. I found it and held it securely in between my fingers. In return, I felt a pair of arms tighten around me. Pulling me. Yanking me out of the quicksand that almost caught me in its stifling grip.

I held fast, my strength returning as the world turned blue again, the gray hues fading into the background. I held fast as a pair of arms did the same to me. Holding me up tightly as though I would break if they didn’t. And again, the voice spoke, calling out to me to return. To come back to reality. To come back to him.

To him who as I felt it, that feeling of limitless possibilities, I knew his identity. I knew exactly who it was that kept me from fading away this late night.

Kai.

A/N:

This chapter took me a long time and lots of deliberation to finish.

Not a lot happened in it, but I made up for it in the ending of it right?

I think I did. I think I did a lot. 

Cliffhanger anyone?