Tao's POV

A loud slapping sound came from where Luhan and Xiumin were standing in the halls. “Don't make me paint your nails.” warned Luhan. “Then you can see how much fun it is to chew them with bits of polish coming off on your tongue.”

“I thought nail painting was a female hobby. Why did you bring nail polish here with you?”

“No reason.”

No reason, my . These two, seriously... If they didn't move soon, I was going to leave without anything, because I was really getting impatient with them.

And then my mind flicked back to my laptop and how lost I would be without it. I needed to write, needed that escape. Breathing deeply, I waited around a corner for them to leave for what felt like hours but was perhaps only mere minutes. Kai could be dead, could be dying right now and needing help.

Peeking around, I saw them open the door to mine and Kris' room.

“Where's Tao?” asked Xiumin and I gulped nervously. Am I breathing too loudly?

“I don't know.” came Kris' voice, slow and defeated as always since Suho left. “He's not off typing. Have you tried Kyungsoo's room?”

“He's not there. I'm really worried for him.” admitted Luhan. “He was bad enough the last time he was a teenager.”

Hey, Luhan as a teenager was far worse. It's a miracle he came out of it alive with the amount of stupid he did. Honestly, who in their right mind would tape fireworks to rollerblades-

“When everyone left twelve years ago,” Luhan went on and I focused in on his voice again. “Tao was really unstable. I'm worried about what he'll do if we leave him alone for too long.”

“Tao's an adult,” Xiumin told him, rubbing the young man's shoulder in reassurance. “He doesn't look it, but he is.”

“I think it might be worse that way. He's lived so long that he's not as afraid of doing something dangerous.”

“I'll help you find him.” offered Kris.

“No, stay here. Tao might come back.”

The door whooshed closed and I quickly ducked around the corner again.

“We'll find him, Lu.”

“I hope so.”

They left. I took a moment to rethink my plan and if this was all just my hormones acting up to make me impulsive. Luhan was right when he said I had been unstable and I suppose that without Kai, stability just wasn't an option. There were no better plans available. Although this plan could kill me, I needed to go.

“Luhan's looking for you.” said Kris as I stepped inside our shared room and dug through my things.

“I know.” I'll need a toothbrush, right? That black-ish fruit had a weird aftertaste.

“Are you moving out?” Kris asked, sadly watching as I repacked necessities into a backpack and everything else in my suitcase. “I'm a depressing roommate, huh?”

I said nothing and continued, stopping at the panda plushie. Do I take it with? It's not a necessity. Imagine Kai's face if I found him and gave it to him though. He would be really happy and maybe he'd forgive me for going outside alone.

A hand held onto my arm, and I looked up to see Kris studying what I was doing. “That's not how you pack to leave a room. That's how you pack to go camping.” He looked at me in fear, waiting for an explanation.

Shouldering my backpack, I held the plushie and considered leaving it as I ignored him. What if I lost it out there? Kai would be so disappointed. If I left it here, at least no harm could come to it.

“Tao?” Kris shook me by my shoulders.

Gritting my teeth, I shoved the plushie into his arms. “Look after this for me and I'll find Suho for you.”

“Tao... I-I'll come with-”

“No. You're needed here, Kris. You're our leader, remember? We need you to convince the aliens to send out a search party or small army or something in search of Kai's group and our assistant if I fail. Luhan and Yixing can't do it by themselves. You know how stubborn the aliens are about not telling us anything too. We need you to get them to trust us humans. Stay. Please. Cover for me.”

He looked at the plushie and sniffed, hugging it close. “Tell him I love him?”

Wordlessly, I nodded and left before he could change his mind.

***

My backpack was heavier now, filled with as much food and water as would fit; getting these outside sounded difficult if the waters were dangerous and all plants were carnivorous or just plain unfriendly. I adjusted the weight of it all on my shoulders, pondering the idea of taking something out to hold instead while I watched the guard over by the door.

There were helmets and organic armor plates in that room too and I planned to get my hands on some as soon as it seemed safe enough to grab them. The guard might be asleep, but it was hard to tell from here. my lips nervously, I stepped in. I'll just say I was sent to relay a message. Wait, then how do I explain the backpack?

It's okay, the guard really is asleep. Getting past him and outfitting myself in gear was almost too easy. Something should be going wrong about now. Something should pop up from around the corner to catch me and throw me in some weird alien version of a dungeon.

A shiver ran down my spine and I glanced around, expecting a pair of judging eyes. But no, I walked around the sleeping guard, pressed fingers into the wall, and made it through the door to the outside world of an alien planet.

Holy crap. I was really doing this. I was really on an alien planet. The door shut seamlessly behind me with it's signature “whoosh”, closing off a wall of mild temperature and pleasant silence. Here outside, the roar of sound and color and heat, so much heat, came at me with the force of a train collision. There was so much to take in at once.

It was mid-day. I never would have guessed from inside the building with the constant lights streaming from above and the bustling of our small group of familiar faces that seemed to work and work without a single break anywhere in between.

Before I let myself get lost in the wonder of greens and small flitting creatures passing through the sky, I pressed fingertips to my helmet and pulled up the last mission's map coordinates and path notes into the view screen of the eyepiece. The past couple of days, I had been paying special attention to training and I was so relieved to find everything I'd crammed in my head coming back to me so easily. That alien food must've worked wonders on us humans.

Exhaling deep with new-found confidence, I stepped into the jungle of strange foliage when I spotted something purple-ish on my arm that tore the confidence straight from my limbs and had me screaming in fright.

A pair of big blue eyes on a small lavender body blinked at me and wanted to know if I was okay.

“What are you doing here?” I asked the stowaway hyena, trying to calm my racing heart. “How long have you been clinging to me? I swear, I thought something weird was trying to eat me. Could you imagine if had taken only two steps out into the wild and something had just come out of-”

Loud screeching that I swore almost sounded like laughter blasted through the air above us, drowning out everything but the thudding in my chest. I've heard that sound before, only a bit more tinny and a lot quieter as an audio file in Xiumin's lessons. Lessons on red-ed robins.

Well here's something I never thought I'd be scared to death of. Robins. Hah.

Nothing can kill them.

“, , , -” I crashed through the greenery, taking care to avoid anything that looked a little sticky, oozy, or just plain ominous. There was a flash of red above me and a lot of snapping twigs. “!” My poor hyena buddy was clinging onto my suit collar for dear life.

Being a teenager was kind of really awesome now that I could move without any aching limbs or stiff joints, but still, I was too damn slow! This thing was gaining on me!

All the air was knocked from my lungs as strong talons wrapped around my torso and yanked me from the ground. Suddenly, I was in the air, being flown somewhere far above the ground. Luhan would have fainted at this height for sure, but I was too busy being annoyed at all the air pelted at my skin and feeling of my lungs being uncomfortably crushed. Flight was not a glamorous thing. At least I was wearing a helmet and could keep my eyes open under it's protection. I studied the robin closely, trying to see if there was anything I could learn about it to use to my advantage. Anything at all.

It was a young adult. Female. It's ears were a little smaller than average, possibly a mutation, but it could be passed on and on through the generations to create a new version of robin with lesser hearing if this one survived. Fascinating. No, no, this was in no way fascinating. I was heading towards certain death; I couldn't spare even a single second on useless thoughts of fascination. There was some blue tinge to her red chest feathers, barely noticeable, but a sure sign that she had experienced some kind of emotional turmoil in her life. Xiumin said that a robin's color often changes with their mood.

She brought us to her nest on a shelf inside the wall of a giant rock cliff, a bowl made of flexible sticks and large cushioning leaves, all seemingly pasted together with a very familiar, slimy kind of leaf of the very sort that had captured both me and Luhan in our first lesson. There were no eggs in this nest, nor any signs of a mate - then again, she was still young. I was dropped right into the center of this empty nest, my little stowaway curling into a gap between my armor and my suit, shivering.

Landing in front of us with large wings folding up neatly to her side, the robin stared at me hungrily, opening her wide maw and screeching in my face. The robin's mouth is smaller than I thought and I noticed it was because of markings that edged up from the corners in lines that made her look much more frightening. Still, was big enough to fit a human head and I didn't want to stick around long enough for that theory to be tested.

I dashed to the far edge of the nest and looked over, startled to find many blue-feathered bodies mangled on the sharp rocks far, far below. A small river ran down too many meters out to be a safe landing spot if I jumped.

Warm breath hit the back of my neck and I shuddered, turning slowly back around. She was there behind me, looking over my head down to the bodies below, chest feathers becoming a bit more blue. Squeezing past her, I crept to the other side of the nest, wishing the rock shelf it sat on was bigger so I could put more distance between us.

There had to be some way to escape, but everywhere I looked, there was nothing but rock, sticks, and leaves. I wouldn't be able to climb down the cliff-side; it was too smooth. Forget making some kind of rope from the nest supplies. It would be just my luck to get stuck with slimy leaves all over and turn myself into a lovely salad for this beast. I should have taken a backpack from the alien's supply instead of bringing my own. There was sure to be plenty of survival tools in there that I could've figured out how to use.

The robin still stood at the edge of the nest, mourning over her fallen species. It was so sad and I almost wished things could be better for her, but my own survival had to place first. I needed to save Kai! Climbing over the edge, I wiggled into a small space behind the nest, back propped against the rock wall. Like this, I used all the strength of my legs to kick the huge nest out off the rock shelf, carrying the robin with it as it fell.

Did it work? Was she gone? Cautiously, I crawled over to see when the beast flew back up onto the ledge, blue feathers quickly turning red again. She was furious, feathers puffed out and wings spread, creating the image of a large pair of eyes that stared unblinkingly at the pitiful amount of life I had left.

This was it. I failed.

She growled in a nasally sort of way, stalking closer.

I would never grow old with Kai. All those years of fighting for a chance to be with him were wasted. If I could control time and do it all over, I wouldn't, because Kai was the only one who had ever made me feel like I wasn't alone. I would waste all those years all over again, even knowing that nothing would change. Because I had memories of invasive snuggles, curious poking, and cocky smirking that took away this hollow feeling of loneliness and made everything so perfect. I would choose to keep those memories even though I now sit all alone with a shivering ball of lavender fur, waiting to be eaten. But really, had I really expected anything different from this stupid little mission of mine?

Even though my vision had blurred with resigned, self-pitying tears, I could tell that the robin had stopped. Why did she stop? I blinked away the blurring wetness and found that her wings had lowered and her feathers lay down flat, becoming a deep, dark blue. She was crying.

This was perhaps the most miserable survival strategy I'd ever heard of.

The robin looked out over the cliff-side again. Her feathers never stopped turning more and more blue. It must be awful, watching so many people you know abandon their lives, all of them pained and lonely. When Kai left that first time, thinking about suicide had been so easy. I had plans laid out, considered different methods, and even got caught a couple times far too close to enacting those plans. I was lonely too. In pain. Lost. This robin stood teetering at the edge of the cliff, and I recognized the aura she put off of deep sorrow and worthlessness.

So when she swayed and collapsed, falling down to sharp rocks and fallen friends below, I cried out.

“No-” I breathed out in disbelief, hating myself for not stopping it when she came back, flying back up onto the ledge, feathers dotted in a startled and uncertain purple amongst the blue.

“You can't kill yourself. What about your future?” I continued before realizing I had narrowly escaped death only to bring it back again. Well, it's too late now. She was so young. I couldn't help but see my young adult self in her grieved eyes. “You can have so many years ahead of you to make things right if you just endure. Don't be another body on those rocks. You could give the others hope. You could be their role model, their strong rock to lean on. Ending this all won't make your friends stop hurting; it'll only hurt them more.”

Honestly, what the heck was I even doing? She couldn't understand Chinese. I just couldn't stop talking.

“Why not be the one that changes everything? Everyone feels loneliness. When it hurts, you need to push yourself and it's hard and it and it just aches everywhere, but if you find something to hold on to... even if it doesn't exist yet or isn't even real...” I trailed off, blaming my hormones for this speech. And the tears. I was going to die crying? Lame.

I sniffled and raised the eyepiece of my helmet to wipe away tears as she walked closer again, then braced myself for the feeling of teeth tearing into my skin.

Instead, the robin picked me up in her talons again, flying us somewhere away from the cliff and it's deadly rocks. I was surprised the stowaway hyena managed to cling on all this time, even wanted to cling on, as a soft tail peeked out over my armor. It could have left at any time to go survive on it's own. Where was the robin planning to take me and my passenger?

I've been outside for maybe an hour tops. What was my goal again, to save Kai's group and my assistant? I couldn't even save myself properly.