Moments before, Kris came to the rescue of a man who seemed to have clumsily stumbled backward before he hit the pavement. He couldn’t figure out the panicked look on the other one’s face when their eyes met, but Kris knew he felt something stir inside him.

‘I wonder what his name is,’ Kris was saying to himself when he suddenly stubbed his toe on the first step up to his dormitory building.

“Ow!” said the young man, somehow managing to land on both feet before he fell over. He said to himself, “Stairs. Concentrate. Stop thinking about that cute guy.”

Taking a deep breath, Kris made his way up to his dorm room without any other mishap. That is until he was outside his dorm room and he heard laughter coming from inside. Being curious, Kris suddenly opened the door, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

From inside the room, Tao gasped. He was holding a nerf gun in his hand. The bullet had flown straight to the middle of Kris’ forehead and got stuck there.

“Hyung!” Tao immediately scrambled to stand a few feet away from the older guy and bowed his head. “For give me! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to do it!”

“We were only messing around, Kris-hyung,” said a different voice. “Forgive us.”

Kris was too stunned when the bullet hit him that he didn’t realize that Tao wasn’t alone inside the room. There was another guy and he too had a nerf gun in his hand. Kris tried to stay calm as best as he could. He tried to think of the best way to handle the situation.

Kris cleared his throat, and removed the bullet from his forehead with all the dignity he could muster. “I didn’t notice you had company, Tao.” He turned towards the other man and said, “Sehun, could you excuse us? I need to… err… speak with Tao in private. Don’t worry, there was no harm done anyway.”

“Oh,” said Sehun, standing up straight. “Uh… thank you, Kris-hyung. Taozi… umm… I’ll see you later?”

“Oh... uh… yeah,” Tao replied, unable to look at Sehun, since he was blushing to the top of his ears.

Sehun made his way out, and the dorm room grew quiet. Tao was still bowing forward, and he didn’t notice the other man slowly making his way towards him.

Kris waited a few more moments to make sure that Sehun was some distance away, before he suddenly grabbed Tao by the neck and proceed to give the younger man a noogie.

“Ahh! Gege! Ow! Ow!” Tao tried to free himself from Kris’ grasp, but the other man proved to be stronger.

“Tao, you have no game, man!” said Kris, giving the other one final nudge on the head before letting him go. “Geez! You had the room to yourself for the afternoon and this is what you do?”

Tao tried to fix his messed up hair.  “I don’t know what you mean, Kris-hyung.”

“See? This is what I mean,” Kris jumped back on his bed, landing with a soft thud. He leaned back a bit too far though and hit his head on the wall. “Ow! Sheesh! What is wrong with me today?”

“Are you alright, hyung?” asked Tao, who took one of their study chairs.

“Yeah, yeah” the other one replied, rubbing the back of his head. “Back to more important things. You, Huang Zi Tao, have no game. You hear me? No game at all! I’ll give you props for inviting Sehunnie over, but what did you guys do?”

“Uhh… nothing... we just…” Tao began to speak.

“Exactly!” Kris interrupted him. “You guys did nothing! Do you see what I mean now?”

“Not really…”

Kris facepalmed and shook his head in frustration. “Are you really this dense, didi? You. Sehun. Empty dorm room. Alone. No one to disturb you. Do you understand now?”

“Oh…” Tao started to say, when it seemed a light bulb went off in his head. “Oh… that…” The younger man blushed once more.

“Sheesh!” Kris said, standing up from the bed. “I mean, I heard laughter outside the door. I was actually half expecting you guys to be making out or something, but playing with nerf guns? Really? How long have the two of you been dating? You should have at least been to second base by now.”

“Um…” Tao coughed, surprised by Kris’ remark. “We haven’t been exactly out on a real date yet.”

“Are you serious?”  Kris exclaimed. “Have I not taught you anything at all? We are a family of conquerors! Descendants of the Jade Emperor himself! You shall not bring shame to this family! You will ask Sehunnie out on a date the moment you see him again, you hear me?”

“Yes, Kris-hyung!” Tao stood up with confidence and placed a closed fist to his heart.

The older man placed his arms on the other one’s shoulders and with a firm shake, he said, “I believe in you, Tao Tao-er! Go get him!”

With a determined look in his eyes, Tao nodded and turned to leave.

When the door closed, Kris heard his cell phone ringing. Fishing it from his front pocket, he answered it. “Hey! Kris here.”

 “Uh huh…” he said, walking towards his drawer.

Kris put down his phone for a moment to take off his shirt. He picked it up in time to answer, “Sure, I’ll be there in a few.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can start without me,” he finally said, before hanging up.

Meanwhile in another area on campus on the opposite side of the quadrangle near Kris and Tao’s dormitory, poor little Baekhyun was trying to make sense of the map that had appeared on his scroll. It was supposed to lead him to the person written on the card that his boss, Chen, had left him.

“Okay, there’s the tree,” Baekhyun whispered to himself.

The luck fairy tried his best not to speak loudly after the weird incident some time ago. He had just received the map on the scroll and was trying to get his bearings when he realized that he had been speaking a bit too loud. Some of the students walking by were looking at him funny. It couldn’t be helped though as the luck fairy was still in his regulation uniform and Baekhyun’s choice of gold-flecked eyeliner wasn’t helping him blend into the environment.  Taking note of his mistake, Baekhyun tried his best to be as inconspicuous as possible, even though the sight of a man in a white suit, flame-orange hair and eyeliner walking around campus with a scroll was totally unusual.

“This must be the building,” Baekhyun double checked his scroll before rolling it up and placing it inside his suit. “The card said second floor and the room at the end of the hallway.”

Taking a deep breath, Baekhyun made his way to his destination. When he got there, the luck fairy raised his hand and was about to knock on the door.

“You don’t have to do that,” someone spoke out from beside Baekhyun.

The luck fairy visibly jumped in surprise. “Oh, sh~! You scared me. A-are you S-se…?”

The man made his way to the door and unlocked it. Without looking back at Baekhyun, he made his way inside and said, “Oh Sehun, at your service. You must be Baekhyun. Come in and lock the door behind you.”

Baekhyun did not know how to reply, but did as he was told. As he turned around after locking the door, the luck fairy was greeted with a wide expanse of clothes hung from every wall. It was different from what he saw when Sehun went in moments before. “What in the world…?”

“You may close your mouth now,” said the other one. “I apologize for not being able to properly greet you outside.  The memo for your arrival was a surprise, and I already had a prior engagement. I trust you made your way here safely despite what you’re wearing.”

“Huh? What?” Baekhyun looked down at what he had on. “Oh, yeah. I was alright walking here. No one seemed to pay much attention.”

“Well, aren’t you lucky?” Sehun answered a bit drily, while he was picking out clothes from one wall. “You’re in the mortal world now, and unlike in fae land, jerks are commonplace here and they have no cure for such people. I suppose you did see some people look at you in a weird way, right?”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun answered, still not moving from where he had been standing.

“Baekhyun, right?” said the other man, still perusing through the racks of clothes. “Can I just call you Baek? Your name sounds too much like food and I really don’t want to be hungry all the time.  Now, what are we going to do with your style of clothes? Goth? Punk? Emo? Ugh! Too mainstream. Preppy? Haute couture? Hollywood? Nah! They stick out too much. What do you think Baek? Baek? Hello, are you listening?”

Baekhyun was still amazed at how big the room was, when Sehun called him. “Oh… umm… I really don’t know what you’re talking about, or what I’m doing here for that matter.”

“Tsk! Tsk” Sehun shook his head. “Did Chen leave you hanging again? Sheesh! And that fairy calls himself a proper supervisor.  Let me get this straight. Correct me if I’m wrong, okay? But basically, you are here because you lost your cloud puff, the equivalent of fairy wings for your kind of fae, right? You obviously did not know that such thing can happen because your boss kept droning on and on about The One Thousand and One Rules for Being a Luck Fairy, instead of giving you actual practical tips of doing the job.”

“I guess,” Baekhyun replied, wondering how a mortal could know all that.

Sehun continued, “So, now you need to blend into the mortal world in order to keep doing your job because heaven forbid that an intern would stand idle while waiting for a replacement cloud puff that his boss could not procure at the moment because an ex-fling is the one manning the cloud puff production at the moment.”

“Wow,” the luck fairy whispered to himself. “Boss Chen and this Notus fae had a past?”

“Just to inform you, Notus is his proper title as the fae of the South Wind,” said Sehun, pulling out some pants from the rack.

Baekhyun bit his lower lip, embarrassed from acting like a gossip.

“His real name is Minseok, but don’t mention that name in front of your boss if you don’t want another frying pan to the head,” said Sehun and turned towards Baekhyun. “Try this on first.”

“What in the world?” Baekhyun exclaimed. “No way am I wearing that!”

Sehun shrugged his shoulders. “Noted. Thongs are not your thing. So what will it be then? Boxers or briefs?”

“What are you talking about?” Baekhyun asked, his voice slightly raised and breaking at the end.

“Underwear!” Sehun held up one on each hand. “Remember, you’re in the mortal world. You’re going to have to wear this stuff for support. There’s a thing here called gravity. You know that? Please tell me you at least took humanities as one of your electives in fairy academy?”

“I took up archery and herbology as my electives in my last year,” Baekhyun answered.

“What the-?” Sehun exclaimed. “Then why are you a luck fairy? You’re supposed to know about the culture of mortals in case something like losing your cloud puff would happen.”

“My transcript was not requested when I applied,” the fairy answered weakly.

Sehun’s jaw hung open for a moment before he answered, “Did the Fairy Resource Department just pull your name out of a hat or something?”

Before Baekhyun could answer, they heard a knock on the door. In a blink of an eye, the room that the two were in had changed back into a usual dorm room big enough for two. Baekhyun gasped. Sehun shushed him and opened the door.

“Taozi!” Sehun greeted. “You’re here! Come in. Did Kris-hyung give you a hard time?”

Baekhyun scratched his head. The harshness in Sehun’s voice just a while ago had also disappeared. He saw the other man open the door wider and in came a young student, dressed in a simple tee and khakis. Baekhyun couldn’t help but notice the newcomer’s large eye bags though.

‘This must be what pandas look like if they become human,’ the fairy thought to himself.

“Oh, you have a visitor?” said the young man that Sehun called Taozi.

There was a tinge of disappointment mixed with a hint of jealousy in his voice that Baekhyun was able to immediately pick up. See, he didn’t need that humanities elective in the academy. He was attuned to mortal feelings just as he needed to be as a luck fairy.

“This is my cousin, Byun Baekhyun,” said Sehun, holding out a hand towards the fairy. “He just transferred to the university. Cousin, meet Huang Zi Tao.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Baekhyun greeted with a bow. “Please call me Baekhyun.”

The other man bowed back. “It’s nice to meet you as well. I am Tao.”

“How is Kris-hyung, Taozi?” asked Sehun. “Is he still angry that we were playing with toy guns in your dorm room?”

“He said it was okay, Sehunnie,” the other man answered. “But… umm… I came here for another thing.”

“Oh?” answered Sehun. “What is it?”

Baekhyun wondered if Sehun was faking it or something. The change had just been so drastic from their interaction before. Now that Sehun was talking to Tao, the former was acting sweet and attentive. That’s weird.

“Umm… err…” Tao fidgeted for a bit, before he suddenly stood up straight. “Oh Sehun, please allow me the pleasure if asking you out on a date tonight.”

“Oh, wow…” Sehun gasped. “I… I…”

“Come on, cousin,” Baekhyun suddenly interrupted, with mischief in his voice. “I know you want to say yes. Don’t worry about me. I can manage a few hours alone.”

“Will you, Sehunnie?” asked Tao again, a pleading look in his eyes.

“Okay, yes,” Sehun answered with a smile, and the next thing he knew, Tao had grabbed him for a hug.

“I better go prepare,” said the young man. “I’ll pick you up at half past seven, okay? See you later!”

Before Sehun could say anything more, Tao had run out of the door. His hollers of joy echoed throughout the hallway. Sehun could only give a chuckle as he closed the door behind him.

“So…” Baekhyun drawled. “Taozi, huh, cousin?”

“That’s as far as you can get,” Sehun snapped.

“And the ice prince is back,” said Baekhyun. He looked around and was once again in awe that the room had changed back to being a multi-level walk-in closet. “This room is wondrous.”

“Well, it pays to be Lord Cupid’s illegitimate child with a mortal.”

No words could come out of Baekhyun’s mouth in reply.