EXOPLANET

The phone had been ringing for some time now.  With a groan, Sehun rolled over and hid his face in his pillow, reaching out blindly and feeling around for the device.  It’s my day off.  Don’t disturb me.

His scrabbling fingers eventually came into contact with it and found the power button, which he pressed down on as hard as he could.

Blessed silence filled the room.

And then it started ringing again.

Beyond annoyed, Sehun raised his head from the pillow and levelled a hard-line squinting glare at his bedside table.  His alarm clock told him it was half eight in the morning, and he gone to bed with the pleasant feeling of knowing he hadn’t set it.  It was his first proper lie-in in weeks and not even two hours into it, noise was forcing him back into a proper state of consciousness.  Life wasn’t fair.

The ringing of the phone was getting louder and more persistent.

“Oh, shut up, you,” he grumbled, picking the phone up and turning it over to take the battery out.  “I turned you off.”

He briefly caught sight of the screen and saw that it was black and blank.  The phone shouldn’t have been able to ring.

Then it hit him.  That wasn’t his palace phone ringing.  That was his personal phone, and there were only three people with its number.

Suddenly much more awake, Sehun threw off the bed covers and swung his legs out of bed, leaning forward to access the drawers of the bedside table.  He wasn’t sure how his phone still had battery because he was pretty sure he hadn’t charged it for days, but that wasn’t important right now.

He reached it just as it began to ring yet again and picked up without checking the caller ID.

“Yeah?”

“Finally, man!  I’ve been trying to get hold of you for over half an hour!”

“Hey, Jongin!  What’s up?  Why are you ringing me so early?”  Sehun searched out his slippers with his feet and stifled a huge yawn.

“Early?” scoffed his friend.  “I know for a fact that you’re always up before quarter to seven.  This is late for you.”

“Well, you’re up early,” Sehun pointed out.  “Is everything okay?  How’s school going?”

“Eh, you don’t know what a blessing it is you get to miss out on it.”  Jongin sounded so grouchy that Sehun had to bite back the urge to laugh as he trapped his phone against his ear with his shoulder and crossed the room to root through his chest of drawers for some casual clothes.  If Jongin had been trying to get hold of him so persistently, then it meant he probably needed help with something, and Sehun wasn’t going to turn down a brilliant excuse to get out of the palace on personal business.  The last two times he’d gone out on his day off, wandering aimlessly around the nearest town to relax, he’d been called back before he’d even had a full five hours to himself because the queen had wanted him for something or other, but if he was actually doing something, or with a friend, he had a valid excuse to say he was busy.  Besides, if she did call him back today, he didn’t particularly want to face her.  She usually took at least seventy-two hours to start cooling off after they had an argument.

“But I’ve got my teleporting down to pat!” Jongin added, suddenly perking up.  “You know how you said to hide – I don’t need to do that so much anymore because I can just get out of the way whenever they come looking for me.”

“That’s great,” said Sehun, trying not to sound too absent as he unfolded a clean pair of jeans with one hand and started taking his pyjamas off with the other.  “But isn’t it a weekday – don’t you have lessons soon?”

“Nope.”  Jongin sounded very pleased with himself.  “Actually, I’ve improved so much I’ve been given a mission.”

Sehun froze with one leg fully into his jeans and took the phone away from his ear to stare at it.  He could just imagine the bright grin Jongin was probably sporting right now.  The boy was older than him, but Sehun sometimes wondered if growing up in the palace without many peers had had a maturing effect on him far too early in life, because Jongin normally acted how Sehun remembered being when he was about thirteen.  Or like Gaia at the moment, actually.

He returned the phone to his ear.  “What kind of mission?”

“That’s why I rang you.  I want you to come too.”

Now Sehun was intrigued.  He jammed the phone up between his ear and shoulder again and continued getting dressed.

“Sure.  Do you want me to pick you up from school?  I can be along in about half an hour if I speed.  What do I need to bring with me?”

Jongin chuckled.  “Your expertise will do fine.  We’re heading to the mines near Ruskine, so no need to come to the school.  Too far in the wrong direction.”

Sehun threw a black hoodie on over a dark green polo shirt.  “I’ll be there in twenty-five.”

He took the royal chauffeur’s personal sports car and made it there in twenty-one.  He would have been breaking the speed limit in a regular car anyway to make it there in under thirty minutes, but it felt much more legitimate doing it in a sleek road monster that roared like a hungry lion when he trod on the accelerator.  The car park near the semi-deserted mines was large and completely empty, so he did a few doughnuts just for the heck of it and then sent the vehicle into a screeching spin that would probably destroy the gearbox and tyres if he wasn’t careful.  It came to a halt perfectly aligned in one of the spaces.

“That was ing awesome.  Can we do it again?”

At the sound of the voice, Sehun whipped his head around to see somebody sitting in the passenger seat, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.  “Holy sh*t, Jongin!  Don’t do that!”

Jongin was much more excited about the leather interior and the car stereo facing him than about the fact he’d nearly scared his friend senseless, though.  He pressed a few buttons and beamed when the air conditioning blasted him in the face.

“Nice car,” he commented, twisting to look behind him and then out of the window.  “Is it yours?  You never said anything about it before.”

Slumping back in his seat as he tried to calm his racing heart, Sehun killed the ignition.  “No, I borrowed it for the day.  I want one, though.”

Jongin surveyed the car’s interior again, prodding at the steering wheel and ducking his head to Sehun’s elbow in an attempt to see the pedals.  Sehun gently pushed his head away, trying to resist the urge to smile.

“I can’t believe we’re the same age,” Jongin muttered.  “You’re so freaking accomplished compared to me.”

“Well, I’m not the one who suddenly developed magic powers at the age of thirteen and had to go get proper training for it.”

“Hey, hey,” said Jongin sharply, a dark expression crossing his face.  “No antimagism, thanks.  I hear enough about magic being a curse I should kill myself for and that it’s preventing me from getting anywhere in life back at school.”

Sehun lifted his hands up.  “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

Jongin folded his arms.  “And you know full well I got transferred to the non-mage section of the school with a new freaking identity so my black hole magic power doesn’t go screwing up the magic aura for everybody else and they don’t go apesh*t on me.”

“I’m sorry, okay?”  Sehun sighed.  Jongin was being even touchier than usual about the subject.

His friend just gave a sullen shrug and turned to look out of the window, his collar flopping open as he did so.  A brown mark was visible on the boy’s collarbone.  Sehun started forwards, about to point it out, when Jongin noticed the movement.  His gaze flickered down to his collar and he immediately pulled it up again.  Sehun caught his hand.

“Kim Jongin.  Is that a bruise?”

Jongin said nothing.

“You literally just told me you had your teleporting down so they couldn’t get you!”

“It’s an old one,” Jongin muttered.  “It’s… well, it’s kind of why I’m here, actually.”

Sehun paused and then let go of his hand, but he didn’t move away.

“I can teleport with people now.”  Jongin sighed.  “I discovered by accident when I was trying to get away from one of the b*stards and I accidentally took him with me.”

“What, they’re sending you into charity work?”  Sehun finally leant back again.  “You have to go on a mission to rescue somebody from the mines?”

Jongin shook his head.  “No.  There’s a D.O. in there and I have to go investigate.”

Sehun narrowed one eye, wondering if he’d heard correctly and if Jongin actually expected him to understand what he’d just said.  After a minute of silence had passed, Sehun figured the answer to both those questions was yes.

“Okay, you’ve lost me,” he admitted.

“A D.O.,” Jongin repeated, as if throwing the incomprehensible acronym at him would suddenly make everything clear.  “You know, a Dangerous Omen.  Like, remember the P.O. last year?  The Portentous Omen?  Or the G.O. the year before?”

“Didn’t that stand for Good Omen?”  Sehun remember absolutely nothing about a Portentous Omen from the previous year, but if there had been one, it kind of made sense.  Especially given what had happened last year.

“Yes.”

“Weren’t they both people, though?”

“Exactly.”

“And how do you know that the D doesn’t stand for som