CHAPTER 12: EAT PEPPER!

"We're home!" Eun-soo announced as soon as she stepped into Suho's cave. All eyes were glued on her with a highly efficient hot glue-gun. On her right, Kris staggered with a blood-soaked arm coiled around the handle of his sword. On her left, however, was an unknown man, medium tall and ghastly pale.

"Aigoo! Kris!" Suho's cry splattered out from the lake. "What had caused you this?"

"We've been attacked by..." Kris gasped for air, "a giant snowman!"

Suho, Kai, Tao, and Lay showed a mix of reactions; part sympathy, part repulsed, part shocked and part tickled. Lay covered his mouth with his hand. Tao's earnest face masked his unintended chuckle. Truth is, they couldn't really process what they had just heard.

"I'm sorry, but I can't quite picture it." Kai said with a blank look. "Care to draw a picture for me, Kris?"

"Guys! This isn't a joke! I'm serious!" Kris yelled, his voice strained.

"Let's see..." Lay started to probe and prod Kris. After a couple of painful eye-twitching, limb-moving and scream-inducing moments, he shook his head and droned on with his diagnosis. "The snowman was good with its work. Multiple puncture wounds and a dislocated shoulder. An exsanguinating artery needs additional care..."

Eun-soo and Xiumin gasped.

"I'll take care of this." declared Lay. Lay placed Kris's injured arm carefully across his back and helped his patient to walk to a small, dim-lit opening in the cave. "You two just stay here." he dictated to the bewildered Eun-soo and Xiumin. They obeyed without question. Good.

"But Eun-soo ah, who is this man?" Tao asked, pointing at Xiumin.

"Ah, I almost forgot!" Eun-soo grabbed the back of her neck. "This is Xiumin, the man who saved us from drowning that day."

"So it had been you, Shiuu-meen?" Kai stretched Xiumin's name to four syllables before shaking the latter's hand. He stared coldly into Xiumin's frightened eyes while tightening the handshake. Xiumin shuddered and Kai's lips twisted into a smirk. "Thank you. Without your help, we'll all be fish food."

The handshake broke abruptly and Kai stalked into the dark of the cave.

"Ah, just never mind him. That guy..." Tao let out a sigh. "He's always like that."

Xiumin waved his hands vigorously. "I—I—I don't mind! Yes, I don't!"

"Then, why are you here?" Suho folded his arms across his chest. "I've never seen you in Wonderland as long as I can remember."

"I'm lost, eaten by a snowman and need a place to stay. Can you help me?" Xiumin was practically begging for Suho's mercy right now. He used his ultimate weapon: his sparkling, childlike eyes. Those eyes shot through Suho with the power of ray-guns. Hence, the merman was melted.

"All right, Xiumin. You can stay here." Suho admitted. Victory! Sweet victory for Xiumin! "Now, let's celebrate the latest inmate of our merry asylum!"

Eun-soo and Xiumin threw their arms into the air. Suho greeted him with a mock-salute and a tail-flip. Xiumin's puffy cheeks were merely defrosted, but colour began to return to his face as his worries faded away. He was certainly glad to stay.

"Speaking of celebrations," Tao pouted. "How about a feast?"

Silence.

Crickets, please.

In the cave's many subterranean rooms, there was a place that you'd never thought it existed. It's the kitchen. Many would do away with the idea of a kitchen under a cave by the lake in the Mermaid Cove, but Suho was a dauntless merman. A kitchen by any other name is a kitchen. Tails are good to cook, but they meddle with your cooking. In this regard, Suho did his work in the kitchen in his human form. (There was one reason why he was happy with Xiumin's presence: Xiumin made him look tall in comparison.)

In the kitchen, the Resistance of Shuffling Decks were testing their cooking skills. The Resistance's dishes might be hard to resist, who knows? Well, take a look through all that smoke. Lay and Xiumin were making fried rice, and occassionally Lay would ask the detailed Xiumin whether he had added some salt or not. Don't blame him. For a person whose mode of living is internal, Lay would miss a lot of things due to the chaotic brain-storms in his... brain.

Tao, with his amazing combat skills, came in handy for chopping some sausages. With a knife sharp enough, he reduced a 20 cm cylinder into twenty mini-wheels in two seconds. Then, he'll toss them all into the wok and see what happens. C'est parfait, until...

"This smells nice," said Kris, emerging from his sick-room after Lay's intervention. "Mind if I help?"

"Sure," Eun-soo handed him a bottle of pepper. "Make this fried rice edible."

"Piece of cake!" Kris shook the bottle, clouds of pepper falling down like ashes after a bomb raid. An extraordinary sound was going on in the kitchen. Everyone was howling and sneezing like crazy while Kris continued peppering the fried rice. The kitchen had became an underground gas chamber.

"Kris, there's certainly too much pepper in the rice!" shouted Lay.

"Yes, Kris. Are you the heir of Jabberwocky or the Duchess' Cook?" Suho asked between sneezes. Baekhyun (arrived too late—alas!) grinned from ear to ear.

"Please stop!" Eun-soo snatched the bottle of pepper away from Kris. "You're making everyone else sick."

"I'm sorry," Kris's voice sounded deeper than usual. "My head still hurts and I can't control my hands."

"I know..." Eun-soo placed the bottle of pepper back next to the bottle of salt on the racks. "Still, the way you rolled like a buffalo to evade the snowman's killer drill was so cool."

"Oh?" Kris smiled shyly, a contradiction by itself. "Thank you... And thank you for your quick thinking, too!"

It's a contradiction. A huge one, though it didn't last long. When she blinked, the charming smile evanesced into thin air. Just when she thought that Kris was approachable, he built the great wall between them again, and what she once thought as a chance for him to open up just went away. Once she thought that she was closer, he shut the door right in her face. How can you know someone better if he'd never opened up to you? All the Key of Fire thingy felt like a faraway mirage.

"Eun-soo?" Xiumin tugged on her hand and asked her for a favour. "Got a minute?"

Kris just gave Xiumin a death glare. Such interruptions are abhorred.

"Can you wait for a while?" Eun-soo brought her thumb and index finger together. "I'm talking to Kris right now."

"Well, for a skilled cook, I'll wait. Catch you later!" Xiumin twinkled and ran back to Lay. Eun-soo continued her work repairing the damages done by Kris’s over-peppering. She tried to save the fried rice. That's the only thing she could save in her wretched situation.

But Kris's irritated stare won't cease.