“Gillian wants to meet you.”

  Andrea gasped and spun around, bow raised. “God!”

  “No, it's just me, Sehun.” Sehun rolled his eyes. “Put your bow down, girly. It’s so frightening I feel threatened.”

  Slowly putting her weapon down and exhaling, Andrea studied the boy before her in the Woods, his outfit green instead of brown like last time. “You don’t look… merry.”

  “I am never merry,” he scoffed. “That is such a naïve emotion.”

  “But – “

  “Expressing emotions is something I am not skilled at, okay?” Sehun sighed. “Now after I have finished answering your question, can we finally set off?”

  Andrea hesitated. “But Luke is waiting for me at my cottage – “

  “He’ll understand.”

  “That brain as small as a pea of his would throw him into a state of panic if I disappear.”

  Sehun chuckled for the first time that day. “You won’t disappear, girly. Just… be gone for a while. Gillian just got back, but he said he has business to finish again so he cannot stay for long.”

  “But – “

  “Do you want answers, Andrea? Or do you want to just pretend you didn’t see me and make me hate you forever because Gillian said he won’t answer my questions until he sees you?”

  After glancing behind her back and heaving an apologetic sigh, Andrea slung her bow around her right shoulder and took a deep breath. “Answers. I want answers, Sehun.”

***

  Andrea heard the voices immediately stop when Sehun opened the door of Hazel’s cottage. It somehow reminded her of the way everything in her surroundings turned mute last night, when she had lost herself in Baekhyun’s clear, brown eyes; how she could neither hear nor see anything else when he had leaned in to kiss her.

  Baekhyun had kissed her.

  The night was considered chilly for a normal autumn night, but Andrea didn’t feel cold. To be more exact, she felt as if she were burning, burning with a comfortable heat.

  His lips on hers were so soft it startled her. They felt like feathers, gentle but firm, spreading tingles of tenderness down her whole body as she unconsciously closed her eyes and lost herself in Baekhyun’s touch.

  Wherever he touched her, her hand, her arm, her cheek… they felt like they were being lit on an imaginary fire, leaving nothing on her skin but trails of the lingering feeling of his warm hand.

  Andrea may have not known many things, that being a result of living in an isolated place faraway from people, faraway from understanding the various interactions between men and women; but she knew what a kiss was. She’d seen it before, in the shack, on the streets, in the shadows of a dark alley; she’d seen the tenderness in the kisses Bob and Bethany shared, the flirtatious smiles after the kisses between the friends of Lucas’, even the violence along with the strange sounds women would make during kisses in hidden corners where they thought they wouldn’t be seen. She understood that kisses could be different.

  But she didn’t know that kisses could make her heart flutter in a way she had never felt before, like a newborn bird spreading its wings for the first time.

  Baekhyun was kissing her firmly but not roughly, and gently as if he dared not putmore pressure onto her lips as fragile and soft as rose petals. Andrea didn't  respond, but neither did she pull away, because… because she didn’t feel weird, or awkward, or anywhere near uncomfortable. As if their lips pushing together completed a part of her, a part she never knew was incomplete until then. As if what they were sharing, on the prince’s bedroom balcony under the starry night, was the most natural yet wonderful thing ever existing.

  Andrea enjoyed and loved the gentle but not short kiss Baekhyun had given her. It was her first kiss, it was enchanting, and it haunted her dreams through the whole night, after she had run back to her cottage, but not before letting Baekhyun capture the blush on her cheeks and the smile they shared.

  Without noticing it, Andrea raised her hands to touch her lips, a movement she had done at least a million times ever since last night. She felt that she could still feel the lingering heat of Baekhyun's lips on them, and the mere thought made her heartbeat accelerate again –

  Until she locked gaze with a pair of wise, grey eyes.

  The man standing in the middle of Hazel’s living room was tall for someone who looked in his sixties, his silver-white beard and hair exaggerating the wrinkles on his face. Just by looking into his eyes, Andrea swore she could see every knowledge of this universe flash through them and wink at her, which urged a feeling of respect toward him from her even though he hadn’t introduced himself yet.

  There was no need. She knew exactly who he was the instant she laid eyes on him.

  The man gently gasped. “M-Andrea.” She didn’t notice his slight slip, but Sehun did. He raised an eyebrow.

  What was he going to call her?

  “I am Gillian,” Gillian said as he started walking toward Andrea. “I – “

  “I know who you are,” Andrea said as she held out her hands to tell him to stop walking. She thought it better to have some… distance.

  “Y-you do?”

  “Yes. You are the Stargazer that will give Sehun and me the answers we seek.”

  “Ah.” A sigh of relief escaped his lips. “Yes… I assume you seek many?”

  Andrea gripped tighter on her bow. “Yes – “

  “But before that,” Gillian interrupted and raised his hand, “there is something I must… check.”

  “Check?”

  “Your mark.”

  She took a step backward. “I don't have a mark.” She held out her left hand for Gillian, Sehun and Hazel to see. “So I am not a Stargazer – “

  “Oh, no.” Gillian chuckled. “Marks do not just appear in only one place.”

  A cold shiver ran down Andrea’s spine. “P-pardon?”

  “The differences of where the marks appear associate with your hierarchy,” Gillian explained. “If a normal human was Turned, his or her mark appears on the back of their left hand. Born Stargazers,” he nodded to Hazel who gave Andrea a reassuring smile, “have their marks on the inner side of their left wrist. Stargazers who are no matter closely or faraway related to the royal family, like Sehun, or a member of the royal court, like me, we have our marks with one additional spiral, on our left shoulders.”

  When Andrea glanced at Sehun, he showed her his mark that she didn’t remember seeing before – “We learn to use glamours to hide them, girly,” Sehun explained in her head – and nodded.

  Gillian continued. “And as for royals…” he paused although she had no idea why. “Their marks have two more additional spirals, and they are located on the place inches above their heart.”

  As a lump formed in Andrea’s throat, she ignored the familiar tingling sensation on the skin under her left collarbone. “A-and what do you assume I am? Surely not a royal,” she choked out a dry laugh. “Everyone in the Park family had died – “

  “Not all of them.”

  The air seemed to crystalize, even as Andrea turned her head to Sehun. “W-what did you say?”

  “This is one of the parts where the prince told you wrong,” he replied. “Two of the royal Stargazer family, the Parks, managed to escape the Fire, but one is missing and one is… one is – “

  “Allow us to show you, Andrea.” Gillian raised his hand and gestured to a door she didn’t notice last time, a door that blended so well into the wall with flowers surrounding the cracks. Andrea wouldn’t have realized its existence until Sehun put his hand on the flower she realized was actually a doorknob, and turned it.

  Feeling compelled and seeing the look in Sehun’s eyes, knowing that whatever was in there wouldn’t be dangerous, she walked into the room that smelled like vanilla and… coal? Burnt ashes? Sehun walked in behind her, along with Gillian and Hazel, but Andrea forgot their existence as soon as she turned her attention to the bed in front of her.

  To the person on the bed.

  The boy on the bed had curly, light-brown hair that covered half his eyes. He looked as if sleeping peacefully, with his long legs dangling on the edge of the obviously-too-small bed, but something felt off to Andrea. Although his beautiful, handsome face looked disturbingly familiar and made her chest feel heavy, the way his breathing was so shallow…

  Andrea’s mouth felt dry. “Is he…”

  “Chanyeol has been in that same state for seven years,” Sehun said behind her, in a quiet voice. “He breathes, he grows... but he has never once woken up.”

[A/N] I should be studying now. Yeah. And running away from you guys wanting to kick me becoz I just keep dropping bombs and thickening the suspense... hahaha. But I assure every single lovely you that ANSWERS ARE GONNA START APPEARING IN THE NEXT CHAPTER!! AND MAJOR MAJOR FILLERSSSSSSSS <3 Dang I'm in a state that the plot is becoming like a movie in my head andd haunting my sleep... LOL.

AND YES, BECOZ I WOULD STAB A KNIFE IN MYSELF IF I REALLY KILLED MY ULTIMATE BIAS. I LOVE YOU YEOLLLLLL <3<3<3

Love you people!!!!!! Your comments always make my day LOL <3

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