Chapter 2 : A Time For Growing Up

Teen years hit Krystal hard. She greeted thirteen with acne and limbs that grew faster than the rest of her body. She grew about six inches in five months, and then seemed to stop altogether when she turned fourteen. She could only hope that she wouldn’t reach Maturity for a long time, like Victoria, and that she would have more time to grow into a lovely young woman. Her parent Generation had all reached Maturity within weeks of each other, but they had also all been born within five years of each other. In the case of Krystal’s generation, Amber was born forty years ago, and all the girls seemed to be reaching Maturity in small groups of three or four at a time.

She could only be grateful that Yoona, closest to herself in age, was experiencing the same problems. It made her feel better, knowing that she wasn’t the only one. But Yoona wanted to reach maturity soon, convinced that it would mean she had reached her peak potential as far as her gift went. She had become quite a master, both Krystal and Yoona were often praised for their control of their gifts, but Yoona herself admitted that she was lacking in her mental control. She couldn’t meditate very well, and she often lacked patience.

One night Yoona came knocking at Jessica and Krystal’s door to ask Krystal for some advice on meditating. Despite the late hour, Krystal had been feeling antsy all evening, and decided that on this lovely summer night, the fresh air would be nice. They decided to take a shortcut through the palace to get to the back garden. there was something thrilling about it, sneaking through the palace after dark. They darted between shadows hand-in-hand, giggling and hushing each other. They were probably making a lot of noise, but not so much that they didn’t overhear a sudden crash that made them both startle. Then they heard raised voices, and looked at each other with wide eyes.

“That’s Jongin-oppa,” Yoona whispered.

Krystal tugged Yoona’s hand. “Come on, let’s go listen.”

Yoona pulled back. “No way, are you kidding?! We shouldn’t—”

“Come on!” And with surprising strength, Krystal pulled Yoona down the corridor. They crouched in the shadow of a large vase and listened at a crack in one of the doors to the library.

Suho was speaking. “After all these years, you’re still upset?”

“I was robbed,” Jongin was saying. “After all these years? What about those eight years that I spent watching Sehun fall apart, watching Lu Han—” his voice broke. “Lu Han didn’t deserve that. Sehun didn’t deserve that. Sehun is my best friend. I saw him slash his wrists in an attempt to make Lu Han at least look at him. We thought Lu Han was gone, we thought we would never see him be independent again.”

There was another crash, and Yoona and Krystal jumped and clapped their hands over each other’s mouths in unison.

“EIGHT YEARS!” Jongin screamed. “And everything after that! I blamed you, all of you! I was so angry, I was looking for someone to blame! And now, Lu Han, he still, even today, all because somebody damaged our ship! How are you not mad?! Why am I still mad, why aren’t you?!”

“I am angry,” Suho said quietly. “But not angry enough to want what you want.”

Jongin had started to cry. “They didn’t deserve it. Suho-hyung, if you had seen them…I have nightmares about it. About being alone, afraid that I wouldn’t be able to take care of them all by myself, and I missed all of you, and I missed my best friends, and I thought I would be alone forever and nobody would ever find me and save me…”

“I’m sorry,” Suho said. “I’m so sorry. And I know you want answers, but I’m begging you not to hurt anyone. You would regret it forever if you did.”

Jongin didn’t answer. He was crying.

Krystal glanced over at Yoona. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and Krystal was barely holding her own in. She grabbed Yoona’s hand and pulled her away, and they stumbled along until they found a room—too large for a closet, too small for anything else—that they had transformed into a clubhouse a while back. It had been years since they entered, but the pillows and cushions were still there, and on Krystal’s favorite cushion sat her stuffed bunny, Russell. Krystal heard Yoona fall onto a cushion, and she followed her friend’s lead, pulling Russell into her lap so she could sob into his soft fur.

It was some time before either of them calmed down enough to speak, and when they did they could barely bring themselves to discuss what they had heard.

“I knew that their ship had been damaged,” Yoona said, her voice hoarse. “But…they knew who it was?”

“I think it was a Guardian, of an older Generation,” Krystal said. “I think Mama made them do it.”

“How do you know?”

“Things they said,” and Krystal was just now realizing how much she really knew. “They said things, not realizing I was there, or that I didn’t understand because I didn’t have context for it. But I understand now.”

“And Jongin-oppa…what he said…it sounds like he was with Lu Han and Sehun in their…escape pod, is it called?”

“Yes, that’s it.” Krystal said. “He was with them.”

“Lu Han-oppa…he got hurt. He did something.” Yoona gasped and suddenly started crying again. “Oh, I know,” she sobbed. “I heard him, but I didn’t know…they went through an asteroid belt, and he moved the asteroids away from the ship…”

“It destroyed his mind,” Krystal finished. “And when Sehun realized what had happened, he became depressed.”

“And Jongin took care of them,” Yoona said. “Oh no, oh in the name of the Tree, that’s so horrible, poor Jongin-oppa…” she broke off sobbing.

It figured that Yoona would know about Jongin taking care of them. Sehun was her mentor, and he was glued to Lu Han at all times, and Jongin was often with the two of them. Now that made sense. Everything Krystal had seen or heard about Lu Han during her time at the Sanctuary was rushing back at her, and she could barely keep track of her thoughts. She remembered Lu Han trailing off midsentence or staring at nothing, and how someone would distract her and take her away, and she would forget about it. She remembered Kris and Suho whispering about Jongin, about his plans. And now she understood, she knew what he wanted, and if she was honest, she didn’t blame him.

It was almost sunrise before Yoona and Krystal were able to leave their little clubhouse, and they snuck quickly and quietly through the halls. They promised not to tell anyone about what they had overheard, but that they would talk about it more later. It wasn’t until Krystal got back to her room that she realized she promised to hide something from Jessica, and she didn’t know how to keep that promise. She was so tired that she couldn’t even really be worried, she fell into bed and was asleep instantly, and when she woke up it was because Kris was tapping her shoulder.

“Honey, are you okay? You’ve never slept this late before.”

It was nearing ten. Normally Krystal was in the library at 9 after meditating for an hour and eating breakfast, she could see why Kris had been worried.

“I feel sick,” she lied.

“Yoona is in bed too. Sehun said she was crying. Did you two fight?”

“No,” Krystal mumbled. “We were up late. She asked me to teach her to meditate.” It wasn’t a lie.

“Oh. Well, I suppose one day off won’t hurt.” He kissed her forehead and tucked her blankets around her, and then left.

A few minutes later the door opened and Yoona came in, and they both cried some more.

“Lu Han has nightmares,” Yoona whimpered. “Sehun too, I’ve heard them. Not often, but enough times where I remember from when I was younger and slept in their room. I never knew how bad it was.” She sniffled and rubbed her eyes. “How can we possibly stand for peace? I was thinking about it all night, we’ve all had horrible lives, absolutely horrible. And after all that injustice, we’re supposed to fight for the rights of these people who hurt us?”

Krystal did see her point, but she knew it wasn’t right. “No, not everyone hurt us. Some of them didn’t know. some of us were okay.”

“But why? Why us, when we’re just kids?”

Krystal held her hands. “Because it teaches us about suffering, and how love can help people heal. That’s what we do, we remind people to be kind and loving because we know how bad it can get.”

Yoona scowled. “But love and kindness only go so far. What happens when people betray us?”

“I don’t know,” Krystal admitted. “It’s never happened before, that I know of. But I guess we’ll be around to find out, won’t we?”

Luckily, Yoona and Krystal didn’t have to keep their secret for long, because it was only two days later when they were called to the library for a talk. There, Lu Han, Suho and Kris explained what had happened on their home planet, and told them a little more about Mama, and the attacks on Kai and Tao, and the sabotage of their ship, and what had happened to Lu Han after.

When they were done, Yoona started crying and admitted that she had already known, and spilled the beans about what she and Krystal had overheard. Krystal was so mad at her for tattling that she stormed out of the library and ran for the lake, ignoring Kris’ calls for her to come back.

It was Jongin who eventually found her. She was sitting at the shoreline, her toes freezing in the water, when he showed up and draped a blanket over her shoulders.

“You’ll get sick if you stay out here too long.”

“I don’t care, I’ll get better in a day. Besides, it’s summer.”

Jongin shook his head. “I could never stand being sick, even if it was for a little while.”

Krystal peered up at him, wondering how much she dared to ask him. He must have known that she and Yoona had heard what he told Suho. Finally she said, in a very soft voice, “I keep wondering what I would have done if it was Jessica. And every time I do, I can’t stop crying.”

Jongin put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her. “Darling, if my Generation has anything to say about it, you will never know that pain.”

Krystal looked away again. “Are you going to kill them?” She asked quietly. “Because…I think I would.”

“No,” Jongin said immediately. “I’m not going to kill anyone. I wanted to for the longest time, but I won’t. And you probably wouldn’t either. It’s so easy to say that you want to kill someone, but to do it is…is horrific. I couldn’t, at least I don’t think so. But sometimes I underestimate my rage. Sometimes I forget about how angry I am, and then something reminds me of my anger and it comes back full force and knocks me off my feet, and it sends me into a fury. And I lash out, at people who don’t deserve it. That’s what you overheard.”

Krystal lowered her head, shame making her face hot and her eyes sting. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Jongin said soothingly. “It’s not like you did it on purpose. And it was really my fault, I had no business yelling at Suho when any one of you could have overheard me.”

That made Krystal pause. “Well, why not? Why shouldn’t we know what anger is? If we’re taught peace and love, we should know the other side of the coin. And why shouldn’t we know what Mama is capable of making people do? We’re going to have put a stop to it, aren’t we?”

Jongin looked at her in a way she’d never been looked at before.

“What?” She asked.

Jongin smiled at her. “It’s just…have you ever considered yourself a leader?”

Krystal knew she looked absolutely baffled. “What, me? No, of course not.”

“Well, don’t discredit yourself. You would make a pretty damned good leader. Tell Kris and Suho what you just told me.”

And when Krystal did finally buck up the courage to tell them, they both said the same thing.

“You’re very well spoken. You would make an excellent leader.”

And perhaps that thought scared her more than Mama did.

Krystal never thought of herself as a leader, and for a while the one comment from Jongin was all she heard about it. But as she got older and more outspoken, and confident in her abilities, and as she learned more about the world and the past Guardians, people started to take notice of her. Not just the older Guardians, but her own Generation. And Krystal was absolutely bewildered by it all.

“Isn’t Amber our leader?” She asked Yoona.

Yoona laughed so hard that she attracted Hyoyeon and Sunny’s attention from the other room, and when Krystal told them what she had said, they laughed as well.

“No,” Hyoyeon said, wiping her eyes. “No, Amber isn’t our leader.”

“Well why not?” Krystal asked. “She’s the oldest, and the wisest.”

“She’s too much of a goof off to be a leader,” Sunny said. “She can’t even take herself seriously and she at giving orders. She can give advice but like…she’s not Kris, or Suho.”

“Then, who is our leader?”

“We don’t have one,” Sunny and Hyoyeon said together.

“I guess Victoria could be,” Yoona mused. “She’s very motherly.”

“That is true,” Sunny said, “But I don’t know. I guess right now we don’t really need a leader. But we will one day. Especially if we’re going to face Mama.”

Yoona and Krystal both shuddered at the mention of Mama. Ever since they had overheard Jongin and Suho talk about it, they had been haunted by what they knew. Though the others now knew of Jongin’s past, they hadn’t heard it told the way Yoona and Krystal had. They hadn’t heard Jongin cry and scream in rage and heartbreak.

“I would want you to be our leader then,” Hyoyeon said, looking Krystal dead in the eye.

“But why?” Krystal asked.

“You have this way of looking at things, in a way that most people don’t. You’re creative and smart, and when you put those things together…you’re almost unstoppable.”

“No one is unstoppable,” Krystal said.

“No, but you’re very…Kris.”

“That doesn’t make me a leader, though. Sooyoung was mentored by Suho, is she like him?”

Hyoyeon rolled her eyes. “We’re not saying that Kris being your mentor makes you a leader, we’re saying that you’re like him, and hey, you might have turned out that way if you had Tao or Kyungsoo for a mentor. You just remind us of him. Plus you’re very in tune with the more spiritual aspects of our job. Sometimes when I talk to you, I almost feel like I’m talking to the Tree of Life.”

If it was possible, Krystal was even more confused by that conversation. How in the world was she possibly like Kris, or the Tree? She excused herself and ran off to find Jessica, figuring that she would be down by the lake, but she only found Minseok.

“Have you seen my sister?”

“She went somewhere with Tiffany,” Minseok said with a slight grin. “I think it would be best to leave them alone.”

Krystal felt her face get hot for some reason. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

“They’re best friends. Jessica cried for days when she got here, I did what I could to make her feel welcome but Tiffany was the one who pulled her out of her misery and got her to eat.”

Krystal knew all that, and she was certainly grateful that Jessica had a friend like Tiffany.

Minseok looked at her curiously. “Are you jealous of their friendship?”

“No,” Krystal said quickly. “But…it does mean I get less time with my sister.” She knew for a fact that Tiffany was regularly sleeping in Jessica’s room, and it wouldn’t be long before they became roommates. That was what she was more jealous of, that was her job.

Krystal sighed. “They should just get married already. Everyone knows it’s going to happen one way or another.”

“Oh, but not for a while.”

Krystal looked at Minseok in surprise. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know your sister. She’s not going to get married, not now. To do so would be to betray the bond that you two have, or at least that what she thinks.”

“Well she’s not wrong,” Krystal said. “Anyway, I guess you could answer the question that I had for her. do I remind you of Kris at all?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Minseok said.

“How?”

“It’s the way you talk, and the way you act towards the other girls.”

“So that makes me a leader?”

“No,” Minseok said.

“No?” Krystal echoed, “Then why does everyone keep saying that I would make a good leader?”

“Because you take charge. Krystal, you are often if not always the first one to act in any given situation, and the first to make suggestions, and honestly before you came around, those girls rarely came to any decisions at all. You start conversations that they maybe don’t want to have, and you get them moving on things they don’t want to do. You’re the first to offer comfort when they’re suffering, and the first to try to rationalize a situation. All of that makes you very much like Kris and Suho.”

As Minseok spoke, Krystal began to see that he was right. “So what does that mean? Do I have to be a leader?”

“Absolutely not.”

Krystal sighed in frustration. “But you’re saying that I act like I leader!”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t become a leader if it’s going to make you miserable. It has to be your choice, not a choice made by everyone around you. And in the end, that’s what makes a good leader an excellent leader.”

And then Krystal got it, and she felt a little better. “So, what happens if I don’t want to be a leader?”

Minseok shrugged. “Maybe your Generation won’t need one, or maybe someone else can step up. in our Generation, our leaders were chosen early on, maybe too early. You definitely have time, maybe one of the girls will fill the role in a few years.”

So Krystal didn’t have to be a leader if she didn’t want to be. The thought calmed her immensely, and she gave Minseok a crushing hug. “You’re the best, Minseok-oppa. I’m glad you were here.”

Minseok patted her head. “I’m glad I was here, too.”

Krystal considered her next words carefully. “I love Jessica and Kris, and Suho and Tao, but if there’s ever something that I don’t want to talk to them about, can I talk to you?

Minseok looked at her in surprise, and Krystal was afraid that he was going to ask what she could possibly not want to talk to her mentors and sister about, but he smiled widely and said, “Of course you can! Honey, you don’t even need to ask. I’m here for you whenever you need me.”

Krystal had friends in her Generation, but truthfully she had never felt like she could be friends with the older Generation. Minseok had changed her mind about that.

The Guardian dynamic was a little strange. Traditionally Guardians of the same Generation addressed each other as “brother” or “sister,” but the older generation hadn’t done that, since half of them were married to each other and it felt weird, and Krystal knew some of the other girls had never been comfortable calling their mentors “uncle” or even “dad.” But there didn’t seem to be words to describe their relationships. Kris, Suho, and Tao were married. Krystal saw Suho and Tao as often as she saw Kris, and they felt very fatherly to her, but she didn’t call them her dads. And Suho and Tao’s mentee’s were Sooyoung and Jinri, which kind of made them Krystal’s sisters, but Krystal already had a sister and Jessica meant far more to her than Sooyoung and Jinri did. Not that she didn’t love them, but she could never call them her sisters.

Jinri was not the youngest Guardian to reach maturity, Jongin said that title had gone to a girl named Seven who was only fourteen, but on Earth Jinri was the youngest Guardian to reach maturity. She would be sixteen and a half for eternity, and Krystal could only imagine that it was weird. She had been there when Jinri had reached maturity, and she remembered Jinri taking it very well in public, but she had no idea what Jinri had thought about the whole thing, and she could say the same about Sooyoung. And the closer Krystal got to reaching maturity, the more worried she was that she would be exactly like Jinri. But it felt a little weird to ask Jinri and Sooyoung about something so intimate.

“Intimate?” Sooyoung laughed when Krystal told her about it. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

Jinri elbowed her. “But it is a big deal, you have to admit it.”

Sooyoung waved her hand. “I think the guys make it out to be a bigger deal than it really is. Maybe it’s a little weird at first, but once you get to like, Amber’s age, or hell even the guys’ age, then you really don’t care that you’re 20 forever. You stop feeling like it matters.”

“How could it not matter?” Krystal demanded. “Jinri, don’t you care that you’re sixteen forever?”

Jinri shrugged. “No. Honestly, age is a concept invented by humans, and we aren’t human. We’ve never really been any age. We’ve been children and teenagers, sure, but I think a better way to describe how we were growing up is young.”

“But you’re talking about mentally,” Krystal objected. “Physically though, we’ve been ten, twelve, and so on. You look like you’re a kid, does that bother you?”

This time, Jinri laughed. “Oh, is that what this is all about?” She elbowed Sooyoung again. “She’s worried about being mistaken for a kid.”

Krystal blushed and muttered, but didn’t deny it. She was on the cusp of sixteen, and she could almost feel maturity sneaking up behind her. She desperately wanted to beat it back with a hockey stick.

“Don’t worry about that,” Sooyoung said, far more kind and understanding than before, “Nana is great with makeup, she can make you look twenty five!”

“But that won’t change my body, will it?”

“Well no,” Sooyoung agreed, “But that’s something you’ll have to get used to. And really, in a few years it won’t matter at all, trust us.”

But Krystal’s fears were not calmed. Aside from the physical aspect of maturity, the mental part of it concerned her, too. For that, she talked to her sister. Jessica said that mentally speaking, maturity was weird.

“One day, you wake up and you just know that it’s happened. I can’t explain how you know, but you know. And then you stop and think about when you’ll be your mentor’s age, old as dirt, and you’ll look exactly the same and so will everyone around you, and it freaks you out a little. Or it freaked me out. The first thing Sunny did was yell, ‘Look at my s, guys! They’re awesome forever!’”

And at the time, Krystal hoped that she would have such a reaction.

Krystal woke up just a few days after her sixteenth birthday, and she knew that it had happened. She had reached Maturity. And she threw the covers back, hoping against all hope, and looked down at herself. But nothing had changed. She screamed first in horror, then rage, and then she threw herself face down on her bed and started crying. The first one to come running in was Nana.

“What?” She gasped, “What happened?”

Krystal picked up her head. “It happened!” She wailed, and then she started crying again.

Other guardians knew too, when you reached Maturity, so Nana immediately caught on.

“What, why are you upset about it?”

Krystal was so mad she actually stopped crying. “Look at me!” She yelled, flinging her covers back and gesturing at her body. “LOOK at me! I was supposed to have a few more years, I was supposed to be beautiful!!”

Nana gaped at her. “What…what do you mean, supposed to be? Krystal, you are beautiful!”

“I’ll look like this forever!” Krystal moaned. “Oh, nobody will ever take me seriously as a leader, as soon as they look at me they’ll think I’m a child!”

Nana chuckled and wiped Krystal’s cheeks. “If that happens, I’ll stand behind you and make fart noises, so you’ll seem more mature by comparison.”

Considering that she did that already on a very regular basis, it was highly conceivable. Krystal stopped crying and started giggling, and the more she imagined it—her and Nana dressed in their formal robes, addressing a town, Krystal at a microphone while Nana made fart noises and pulled faces behind her—the more she laughed, until soon she was crying again, but not because she was sad.

Sooyoung and Hyoyeon came by, with Jessica and Tiffany on their heels.

“Oh, our youngest has reached Maturity?” Hyoyeon asked around a yawn. “Congratulations, I guess. Now we can move on to the really hard stuff.” And she staggered into the room and collapsed on Krystal’s bed. “Ugh, it’s too early in the morning for this.”

Jessica pushed Hyoyeon out of the way so she could give Krystal a hug. “Are you alright?”

Krystal nodded and hugged her sister tightly. “I think I will be. It’s just going to be hard to get used to.”

Sunny peeked into the room, and Amber elbowed her out of the way. “Girl, why are you screaming this early in the morning?”

“She reached maturity,” Nana explained, “Before she could get s like Sunny’s.”

Krystal turned bright red and smacked Nana in the head with a pillow, Hyoyeon woke up and started laughing, Sooyoung fell over from laughing, and Amber frantically started taking off her shirt while yelling, “Will it make you feel better if you see how mine look?”

Tiffany yanked Amber’s shirt down, Sunny winked and shouted that she would be queen of bras for eternity, and Tiffany looked up and gasped, and shrieked, “Oh my god, Kris-oppa! How long have you been there?”

Kris was standing in the doorway, with the rest of the girls hovering behind him. His face was perfectly blank.

“Well, I heard the queen of the bras thing.”

Sunny just laughed. “Well, it’s true!”

“If you like that sort of thing,” Kris said quietly, and all the girls burst into laughter at that.

“Well if you’re all quite done,” Kris called over them, “You can come help us make breakfast and then join us in the library. We have a lot to talk about now.”

As everyone left, Jessica pulled Krystal aside and asked quietly, “Are you really that upset about your body? You really don’t look that young, but if you’re worried then you should talk to Minseok-oppa. He told me when I was younger that people used to always mistake him for being much younger. Although really, I think you look just fine.”

Krystal smiled and hugged her sister again. “Thanks. I was pretty worried, but I actually think I’ll be okay.”

But maybe she would talk to Minseok about what it had been like for him. She was starting to accept any excuse to have a conversation with him.

HOLY CRAP FINALLY!!!!! Well having AWE get featured was great motivation for me to get my moving on this chapter, and I have an idea for where we’re going in the next chapter. Next time, you’ll get some more info on each of the Guardians, then we’ll move on to why we’re all really here—taking back the home planet.

Here’s a little blog with info about the girls + pictures. I didn’t want to put this up at the top of the chapter because SPOILERS. But if you saw the blog post before you saw the chapter then oh well it’s not too spoiler-y.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter, sorry it took so long!