Luhan stepped back from the mirror, giving it a kiss goodbye, imagining it to be Sehun.

It was sweet, really. Sehun would do the cutest things, be adorably oblivious and not even know it.

Luhan chuckled to himself. Then braced himself for the hell.

‘LUHAN! YOU LITTLE…. COME HERE!’ Heechul screamed.

As Luhan dance-walked over there, Heechul appeared, looking like a ghost. As in, partially see-through.

What is it, O Master?

Heechul shivered. Luhan was detestably hard to hate. His voice screamed bunnies and fluffy things, and he spoke with a hushed, soft tone as if he was trying not to ruffle the world’s smallest feather.

Soon, Master, soon. Luhan smiled sweetly and repeated the same phrase he had for the last 3 years.

“What?” Heechul grinned to himself, mission accomplished. His mission being, make Luhan break out of his so-sweet-will-rot-your-teeth voice. He didn’t really know why Luhan was so reluctant to meet the love of his life, something about having more control, preparing himself, and not being rejected. Heechul expected they were excuses so that Luhan could spare Sehun from the torture of being in this place. It was how they had always done it, one in the human world, so they knew how to deal with humans, and one in the demon world. For obvious reasons.

I mean, why so soon?

And I have to get him ready by then? But… I thought you were leaving it for next year. It’s too soon! Hee- I mean, Master, you can’t do this to him!

< I can and I am.> Heechul punctuated his point by stepping on Luhan’s head and pushing it below the nothingness, sending Luhan reeling towards the ground.

Kris looked above the heads of people, searching for… well, even he didn’t know what he was searching for, but in the back of his mind he was sure it was important.

Sure, it had come for a shock to him when Hankyung had said Heechul was getting stressy about some Luhan situation, so Kris had better go and look for.

And that was all he caught before Hankyung had helpfully pushed him.

He hadn’t hit the ground hard, or softly, as he was flying. Seeing as he was in the middle of Seoul, he found it difficult to understand why or how no-one had seen a tall Chinese guy flying in the middle of the day.

Maybe Heechul or Hankyung had something to do with it. He wasn’t entirely sure what they were there for anyway, everyone had just learnt that if you anger Heechul, a hell of an earful comes your way.

He hoped Heechul’s bark was worse than his bite because if not Heechul was … he didn’t want to think of how scared he would be of Heechul.  And Kris was not an easily scared person.

Getting out of his thoughts and back into the real world, Kris scanned the streets, looking for anything that triggered emotion. About three hours later he was still scanning but had walked in a full circle since he didn’t have a clue how to navigate around Seoul. He realised he had gone full circle when the same ice-cream seller he passed 10 minutes ago raised a comical eyebrow at him. He stopped when he heard a screech. In the middle of the road there was a boy the same age as Kris yelling his head off because he had dropped his ice-cream. The girl beside him rolled her eyes and dragged him to the side of the road, shading her face with her hand in embarrassment. Curious, Kris walked over. The man was sitting on the pavement sobbing while the girl tried to coax him to look up and smile.

“So, what’s going on then?” Kris hoped his social skills weren’t drastically different from nowadays, he hadn’t done his homework on the date and forgot to check. He hoped, at least that he was in the right time period of language.

The girl looked even more embarrassed and blushed terribly when she looked up at Kris. What a handsome face does to you, Kris thought vainly to himself then laughed inwardly for being so childish. “Nothing.” She was definitely fiddling with her hair and swivelling her leg a bit too much to be normal, “It’s my brother, he’s a bit…” She leaned forward and whispered loudly “special. By which I mean mentally retarded.” Kris didn’t really like this girl. The whisper was so loud that people down the street could probably hear it. He crouched down next the man with his elbows on his knees. “Hey pal, what’s the problem then?” The man looked up, his sharp features and short black hair contrasting completely with his behaviour “I lost my ice cream. I like cold things. Hey, your voice is deeeep” The man’s voice also didn’t fit with his features as it came out unexpectedly high. He punctuated the last word by pronouncing it in a very deep voice, making a funny face, and randomly reaching his hand out and touching Kris’ neck, more precisely Adam’s Apple. “What’s your name?”   Kris asked, smiling when the man giggled childishly at the vibrations traveling up his finger. “My name’s…” the man momentarily seemed to forget “Tao.”

Sooyin, as Kris got to know his sister was called, seemed relieved Tao had stopped crying, and said to Kris “Well, it’s good that he stopped crying.” She blabbered on for the 4^th time that evening, they had already been walking for 10 minutes “because you know, he’s not a pain, but sort of a bother, and he’s not even my real brother, so I don’t hate him, but I don’t want to be taking care of him, you know, not my whole life, and he’s really really really embarrassing when he starts crying and I don’t really know what to do and-”

Kris interrupted her because he was getting tired, and the moment he saw Tao’s face he realised what he had been looking for. “I can take care of him for today.”

Sooyin did a double take “You would do that? But… you’re kind of a stranger, no offense, and…”

Kris smiled amiably lying straight off the bat saying “I’m not going to do any harm. You see I’m interested because I am a social worker and…”

Sooyin looked like she was about to decline but then her phone beeped and she took it out “! My friends are in the area and they’re asking… you know what? It would be nice if you took care of him for today… thanks! You look like a good guy anyway.”

Then Sooyin ran off, texting while doing so.

Kris smiled to himself as he got Tao in a princess hold “Never judge a book by its cover.” He then went to a particularly secluded alleyway and flew upwards.

When he arrived Hankyung was sitting there looking into the sky(… well, further) and jumped up in surprise when Kris appeared. “Well, you only took… 40 minutes doing that… I expected it to take days. None of the others have come back yet” Kris shrugged but when he found he had difficulty doing that realised that he still had Tao in his arms and lay him carefully and properly down. “Well, it seems my partner may not be fit to fight.”