EXOPLANET

The thing Sehun liked most about the princess’ memory wipes – if it could really be classified as something he liked – was exploring everywhere they had once been familiar with.  They’d spent all day at it, and he really enjoyed reintroducing her to some of their favourite places, regaling her with stories, like that one time they had been caught on the palace roof (with her brother, which he had to leave out) because Gaia had followed a sparrow up there.  They had been young at the time, and it had turned out that the king, who had since passed away, had kept a pet tiger up on the enormous roof garden.  Sehun had ended up clinging to the top of the flagpole in terror while Gaia had attempted to chat to the tiger, since it was her first time seeing one and she’d thought it was cute (it hadn’t been cute, though Gaia no longer had the scars to show for it).  Her brother had nearly fainted from shock, and the queen had gone absolutely ballistic when she’d found them there.  Sehun hadn’t realised until that moment that his frantic scrambling had lowered the flag to half mast, which had caused everybody who’d seen it to go into mourning as the half-masted flag usually meant somebody in the royal family had died.  The king and queen had spent several long months being quizzed by the media about who it was who had passed away, and even now there were still conspiracy theories that the queen had a sibling she’d kept lock up from public view and that the flag had been because she’d finally killed that sibling off and was celebrating it.

Needless to say, Sehun and the two royal children had been forbidden from venturing up to the rooftop ever again (it was the very first place Sehun took the princess after her seventh memory wipe, because it was still one of Gaia’s favourite haunts and Sehun knew how to disable the cameras there, and she insisted on going back up once they’d toured the rest of the palace) and the king had been banned from keeping pets on the rooftop.  The tiger had been moved to an expanse of royal park that Sehun and Gaia still didn’t dare set foot in.

“Hang on a second,” said Gaia, staring down at the twentieth entry in the little black book as Sehun reconnected the last of the cameras by the staircase leading back down into the palace and texted the chief guard to let him know that they were done being out of bounds.  “I have a horse?”

Sehun looked up from his internal palace mobile.  “Technically, you have three.”

Gaia blinked at him, and Sehun resisted the urge to tuck several stray strands of her long blonde hair behind her ear as they drifted in front of her face.

“So… I can ride.”  She sounded dubious.

Sehun let out a little chuckle.  “You taught me how to ride, you know.  You’re good at it.”

One of her eyebrows dipped and she looked back at the little black book, chewing on her bottom lip.  “Are you totally sure?”

“Is my name Oh Sehun?” he retaliated jokingly as he began to lead the way down the stairs.

“Well, I don’t know,” the princess said as she followed.  “My memories start from just after lunch yesterday, so for all I know, you could be lying to me about your name.”

Sehun smiled.  The old Gaia was back.

“So where are we going now?” Gaia asked, tapping him on the back of the head with the corner of the black book.  Sehun winced and mouthed a curse, reaching back to rub the spot.

“Well, I thought we could go to the stables and say hello to your horses and then go out for a ride to explore the grounds.  We’ve basically done the palace interior.  That we’re both allowed in and actually go to, in any case.”

“Oh… wait a second.”  The princess skipped down a couple of steps on the inside of the spiral staircase.  Sehun automatically reached out and grabbed her around the waist so that she wouldn’t fall.

“Thanks.”  She righted herself and dusted off her skirt before producing the page with the overall map of the palace.  “So exactly how many of these places are we not allowed in?”

Sehun tightened his grip around her waist and leant over her shoulder.  He wrinkled his nose.  “Most of them, actually.  You see everything with a red dot?  That’s out of bounds.”

The princess took a moment or so to process this.  The vast majority of places on the map had red dots.  Sehun had taken her to most of them.

“I see,” she said, sounding like her mother.  “Is there anywhere we actually go together that’s in bounds?”

“To both of us at the same time?  That’s, like, the official areas of the palace for functions when I’m on the job, otherwise we’re not really supposed to be hanging out, and then the palace grounds.  Except for the tiger run.”  He gestured to the large expanse covering half the map of the grounds that was coloured in orange and black stripes.  “But we don’t go there anyway.”

“Don’t we?  Why not?”

“Because there’s a live, wild tiger there that tried to eat you last time we went.”  Sehun let go of her and gave her a slight push so that she would start walking again.

“Really?” Gaia asked.  “You know, I have absolutely no memories of that.”

Sehun couldn’t help laughing.

Phone signal was down when they arrived at the stables.  Sehun frowned at the blank signal bar on his palace mobile before tucking the device back into his pocket.  With any luck, somebody would be around and they’d be able to send a message back to the main palace security to say they were going out for a ride.  From past experience of being chased by a zealous Bang Yongguk and co. on quad bikes when they’d forgotten to tell the palace guards that they were taking the horses out, Sehun knew that many of them were the type to shoot first and ask questions later.  Which had been great the previous year when some dissidents had snuck into an important event hosted at the palace by the queen in an attempt to assassinate her, but not so great two summers before that when Sehun, Gaia and the prince had decided to have a huge water-fight in the royal park and somebody had opened fire on them before realising who they were.  Sehun had been in the royal infirmary for nearly three weeks after that.  Gaia had had to have a memory wipe because she'd tried to use magic to protect him.  Sehun would rather have taken the bullets.  Magical injuries were surprisingly painful and lingered much longer than expected.

“Yo!” a cheery voice greeted them as they paused just through the threshold of the stables to adapt to the low lighting.  “Back in the mews?  How are you holding up, Your Highness?”

“Hey, Zelo,” Sehun returned as the gangly youth popped out of the tack room, blond hair a mess of curls and face mask pulled down onto his neck so that he could eat the apple he was holding in his right hand.

“You’re not the princess,” Zelo told Sehun bluntly, munching on his apple.

“Hi!” Gaia greeted him with a mischievous grin.  “I don’t remember you.  Are you new?”

Zelo hesitated mid-bite, eyes flicking between Sehun and the princess.  Sehun sighed.

“Your Highness, don’t be a tease.”

Gaia frowned at him, clearly confused by his sudden recourse to formal language, but she didn’t get a chance to say anything before he turned back to Zelo.

“She doesn’t remember you.  Memory wipe.”

“Oh, ag—?”

Sehun reached out and knocked Zelo’s hand back up to the boy’s face so that the apple stoppered his mouth and prevented him from finishing the word.  Zelo got the hint and chewed on the apple, producing a loud crunch.  There was a whinny from one of the horses in response.

“This is Yongguk’s baby cousin,” he explained for Gaia’s benefit.

“Baby cousin?” repeated the princess, eyes flickering over Zelo’s definitely-not-babyish height.

“I’m fourteen,” Zelo offered.  Gaia raised an eyebrow and turned to Sehun.

“Who’s Yongguk?”

“Nevermind.”  Sehun grasped Gaia’s hand.  “Zelo, we’re taking Silver and Lightning out for a ride.  Signal’s down, so can you make sure your cousin knows before he comes gunning after us?”

Zelo shrugged.  “Sure.  Give me a moment to tack them up.  And, er….”  He stared pointedly at Sehun and Gaia’s entwined fingers.  Sehun stared back coolly.

“What?” Gaia asked innocently as she caught the younger boy’s gaze.  Zelo coughed and hastily disappeared in the direction of the stalls, tossing the remains of his apple to one of the horses as he passed.

Gaia turned to Sehun.  “What was that about?”

Sehun just gave a nonchalant shrug.  “He was probably surprised I was touching you.”

“Was?”

“Still am.”  Sehun reached out with his other hand and tickled her under the arm.  “Yongguk and Himchan know we’re close and don’t really care, but it sometimes surprises other people.”

“It might do so less if you would quit addressing me as Your Highness unless you have to because you’re in front of my mother.”

“Still on that, eh?”

Gaia just looked at him, confused.

“Gaia, I need to maintain good habits.  If I call you by your name in front of the wrong person and your mother finds out, God only knows what will happen.  She’s already taken it the wrong way once.”

“And grabbing my hand is less likely to encourage people to take things the wrong way than calling me by my name?” she retorted, sarcastic.  Sehun tried not to laugh at her indignation.

“Your Highness,” he said, holding up their hands.  “This is called reassuring you that everything’s okay.  It’s