Trailing an ugly mixture of blood and water behind him, Yixing limped out of the river, carrying Hana’s lifeless body in his shaking arms. Deep red drops kept streaming down her dangling arm, falling from the tender tips of her fingers, causing a thread of blood globules to tail after her.  Numerous deep cuts graced her legs, arms and face. Large bruises painted fractions of her skin blue and purple and from what Yixing could see and feel, she had several fractured ribs and a broken left leg.

Yixing collapsed to his knees on the grass once he had finally made it out of the torrent while roughly coughing repeatedly. He too, was cut up and bleeding badly, looking like veteran after war. The red liquid kept running into his eyes from a wound on his forehead, limiting his vision, blending into the clear fluid of his tears. He indeed had fought a war. A war against his principles and most terrifyingly: against his own species.

With utmost care, he laid Hana’s body on the cold floor. Her state was devastating. Broken and torn. Like a cruelly tormented doll. The sight was burning into his eyes, firing bullets through his heart, painfully tearing it apart.

This just couldn’t be happening.

Hesitantly he reached out a shaky hand to caress her scarred cheek. She was so screwed up yet so beautiful as her body glistened in the pale moonlight. Dolorously Yixing doubled over and broke down, crying, yelping her name in anguish. Choking on his sobs he damned his existence and watched his teardrops fall onto Hana’s motionless figure. He had wanted to save her, to haul her out alive, to hold her while telling her she’d be fine, to finally reveal his real self to her.

And now she wasn’t even breathing.

Had he underestimated Suho’s skill? Had he been too slow? Or maybe just too weak?

Questions after questions flooded Yixing’s mind, making it hard for him to think straight. But suddenly everything stopped when the last string of words invaded his thread of thoughts. It was the question he had feared to ask himself the most.

Was she revivable?

No.

Hana was beyond repair. Not even his healing powers would have an effect on her. It was hopeless. She had gone to a place Yixing wasn’t capable to dream of and would never be able to reach.  All he could do, was pray for the angles to -

A bright light stung his eyes. Automatically he squinted and held a hand in front of his pearls to make it possible to watch the miracle in front of him. A white, blue, purple-ish globe of luminosity radiated from Hana’s heart. The light was so mighty; it lit all the surroundings within a reach of a hundred meters.

Ever so slowly her outer wounds glowed up, healing, lessening and eventually vanishing.

Yixing couldn’t explain the phenomenon. It was a puzzle he could only attempt to complete but would never be able to understand. This couldn’t compare to anything he’s seen before, it was something much greater than anyone could ever dare to imagine.

The light got brighter with every second and before he was able to blink once more it had disappeared, leaving the dark to embrace the two bodies again.

Yixing was just about to inspect Hana’s body for any wounds the light hadn’t healed when he heard a soft sigh. With utmost effort she weakly coughed up the water in her lungs. He froze. Time froze. Squinting his eyes at the girl before him, he watched as her chest heaved up and down, breathing in and out.

Hana was alive.

“Freedom!” Hana cheered as she skidded through the automatic glass doors, letting the soft rays of sunlight caress her skin. It was a bright day in late summer, the air smelled of vibrant green leaves, the sweet sunshine, the longing for summer that was soon going to descend into autumn - it just smelled intoxicatingly fresh.

No words were able to express just how much she anticipated that day. After having been hospitalized for two months - literally held captive - she was finally released and the cast around her leg, which had limited her in pretty much everything, had vanished into thin air.

“Hana, be careful!” Jaehyun scolded, holding onto the girl before she was able to tumble down the flight of stairs. “Sorry, but I just can’t help it. You have no idea, how caged in I felt ever since I woke up in that uncomfortable sterile bed” she faked to be in pain and with a wide grin she hurried to Daeun’s car.

Daeun sighed. She was glad to see Hana back on her feet after she suffered a rather heavy concussion and several broken bones, but she couldn’t hold back a feeling of distressing uneasiness. Nobody knew how she had ended up in that devastated condition and to add to the mystery, Hana wasn’t able to remember anything about the accident. It was more than just alarming.

“Hana!” a voice cried in pain. It seemed so horrifyingly real that it sent her sitting up in panic the very nanosecond it tormented her ears. Sweat trailed down her face. Her lungs tightened, making it hard for her to breathe. Hana looked around the dark room for a sign of the person that could have called her name, but like every night, she only found Daeun’s sleeping silhouette next to her bed on a spare mattress.

Once again she had been haunted by a nightmare. A nightmare in which a person is kneeling by her dead body, wailing her name in between sobs. Her hand cautiously reached for her cheek to caress where she had thought to feel the person’s tear drop on her skin. Inexplicably, the patch of flesh was perfectly dry.

Hana hadn’t been able to sleep peacefully for even one night since she had left the hospital. But the more she relived the nightmare, the more she shivered in fear and although it was completely absurd, the more she wanted to see the person’s face.

The first time that dream had hunted her down, she had immediately dialed Daeun’s number and reported the incident in a swivel. Without a second thought having been given to it, Daeun had decided to move in with Hana the following day, to be by her side whenever she’d feel unstable and if Jaehyun wouldn’t still be occupied with school, he would have followed her actions.

Often the two friends got together to talk about Hana’s ominous nightmare. They were certain that it was connected to her accident and that it mirrored the experience she had made, consciously or unconsciously.

However, Hana’s nightmare wasn’t the only thing that’s been troubling the pair of friends. Ever since she’d been released from the clinic she seemed to get quieter day by day, was constantly caught up in a daze, would go ice skating to the most obnoxious times and even harbored suicidal thoughts.

It was concerning them to the extent that they even dragged Hana to a psychologist not too long ago. The attempt failed, though. The moment Hana had pieced everything together and found out where they were taking her, she threw a fit worthy of being called a thunderstorm, because that’s exactly what Daeun and Jaehyun thought they were stuck in while being confronted with this new side of their friend, taken aback to the very max.

After her breath had steadied Hana silently got up, fetched her skates and headed for the ice rink. Even though she was still slightly unsafe on the ice, the sound of metal scratching against and slicing the frozen surface enveloped her in a comforting fantasy of being fine.

Hana leaped forward, setting foot before foot, gaining speed. She was just about to jump into a pirouette when that same voice screamed through her head, “Hana! Don’t-“

She lost her balance and harshly catapulted to the floor. “No!” it howled and as Hana struggled to get up she looked into the most beautiful face she’d ever seen. She was so mesmerized that she couldn’t help but stare at him through the clouds of their cold breaths. “Are you alright?” he asked her, his eyes full of concern, scanning her for any injuries.

“Hana?” Daeun’s voice cut through the heavily cold silence. “!” Yixing cursed and within a second he had disappeared. “Hana!” Daeun called again as she saw her friend lying in the middle of the icy surface and hurried to her carefully, trying her best not to slip.

“Daeun” the girl spoke faintly, “I saw him…”

Her friend crouched down in front of her, “You saw who?” she inquired perplexed. Hana just smiled and passed out.

The midnight sky was clear, dozens of stars competed against each other, seeking to glow the brightest. The usually strong presence of the moon was nowhere to be found, darkening the scenery more than usual.

Yixing maundered down the Han River when he sensed a certain person’s stare burn into his back. He didn’t want to turn around, he didn’t have the confidence to face the person he betrayed and once called his friend. All he could do was hope that the darkness would swallow him and make him seem like an innocuous shadow.

“Lay” a voice bolted towards him. Yixing flinched as panic dashed through him, gluing his feet to the ground.  He knew just too well who this husky and demanding voice belonged to. There was no way he was going to escape now.

“Tao” Yixing broke the silence that hovered above them. Taking in a deep breath he prepared his mind to ask one last favor of the younger when the said boy interrupted him in the process. “It’s good to see you again” he whispered, walked to where Yixing was rooted to the floor and softly s his arms around the older’s shoulders.

4 months had passed since the ‘accident’. 122 days slipped by in which Yixing had decided to vanish from the Time Keeper clan’s sight, hiding in Hana’s shadow. 2 928 hours in which he attempted to ban the prospect of his punishment from his mind. And now in only a second Tao had smashed the wall Yixing had established around himself. He was back to the start.

“I’m sorry,” he gulped to hold back a sob, “for everything.” Tao sighed, hugged him closer and whispered, “I’ll never be able to understand why you chose to save her. But for some reason, I’m glad you did.”

Yixing wriggled out of the younger’s strong arms and turned to gaze into his dark eyes in a quandary. “Tao, please stop time for Hana and me to let me spend my last moments with her. I’ll be done for once Kris finds me” he begged, his eyes becoming dangerously teary.

Tao looked troubled. He knew that helping Yixing could have grave consequences for him. However, it was more important to him to grant his friend’s last wish. “Alright” he muttered in defeat.

The tall boy raised his hand and snipped.

That familiar ticking noise echoed through Yixing’s head again, getting slower and quieter by the second and eventually it disappeared, leaving nothing but hollow, celestial silence behind.

Time had stopped.

“Make the most of it” Tao breathed before watching Yixing descend into darkness while a tear of gratefulness fell from his eye.

When silence embraced every atom within Tao’s reach a silhouette emerged out of the black from behind him. “He’s got it. It’s in him now.”

“I know, Kris.”