“You were found in the forest here yesterday afternoon,” Junmyeon explained, his voice gentle. “I found you lying unconscious on the ground, and decided to bring you back here for safety.”

  “But...?” Keira asked tentatively, her body warming up to the strange drink he had given her, something he had  told her was called ‘tea.’ “I detect a ‘but.’”

  Junmyeon hesitated, but only for a second. “But before we could get you inside, we were attacked. By several masked men. And their intentions seemed to be on you.”

  Keira’s blood ran cold. She remembered she had been running, and was terrified of something – but running from what? And terrified of what? Or was she running to someone?

  The harder she pushed to remember, the graver her headache became. It was like a thousand prickles that were triggered every time she tried to ‘remember.’

  The realization came in an instant. She knew what this headache was – or to be exact, the side effect of what. She clenched her teeth. Only one kind of person could do something like this to her.

  And a whole group of that kind was right back at where she had come from.

  “Oh, Keira.” It’s Mother’s voice again. “Don’t taunt the Commander. Please, do anything but that.”

  But looking straight into his blazing eyes, Keira’s dead mother’s voice doesn’t seem so convincing like before anymore.

  “So that’s why you’ve been training us ever since we could walk?” She asks. “Why you’ve been pushing us to our extremes, to become the best fighters here? Why you recruited Jungkook and me into your own elite squad? Because you want to take them down?”

  “Because I want you to take them down with me,” the Commander corrects. “Imagine me, the Lead Commander of Spellbinders defeating those Stargazers. Those who help – you, the boy, everyone else in the Team, will be promoted in ways you’ve never even dreamed of.”

  “Then what is your plan, huh? Waltz into the Southern Commonwealth and slash everyone to death?” How can someone so cold-blooded like you be the Commander, the best friend of the Head Chief, who is the polar opposite?

  The Commander’s eyes blaze even brighter with determination. “No, Keira, no. I will attack them at their most vulnerable state, and then I will take back what is truly mine.”

  Clutching her hands into fists by her side, a flame of determination ignites in Keira’s heart, too. But not for the same purpose of the Commander’s.

  Then I will prove to be more smarter than you, Commander, she thinks to herself. I will stop this massacre you’re planning before you can even realize it.

  "Can you remember anything?"

  Junmyeon's clear and gentle voice jolted Keira out of her flashback. His eyes were also clear, so clear that Keira was suddenly starting to be uncertain of her undercover plan. Her undercover plan that she had come up with the moment she realized what Kyungsoo and Junmyeon were.

  "Not everything," she replied, deciding to be honest. Well, half-honest. "I remember who I am. And where I'm from."

  Instead of looking suspicious as if knowing she was giving unsatisfactory answers, Junmyeon looked genuinely surprised, and happy. "Really? That's great, Keira." He smiled. "You're not hurt too severely. That's great."

  She was confused. A stranger was happy that she wasn't hurt? She wasn't used to this kind of... kindness and concern. Not even Jungkook had ever said those words to her before.

  “Then why do you look so sad?”

  Startled, Junmyeon looked at her. “I look sad?”

  “For a split second you did,” she said. “When I said I remember.”

  He stared at her for a good few moments, then smiled, and chuckled, but the chuckle somehow sounded sad. "I guess I'm just jealous," he replied honestly with a sigh. "Jealous that you can remember."

  Keira tilted her head. "You talk like someone who has lost their memory."

  His answer stunned her, because she had never seen it coming. "Because I am one."

  "You?" she studied him carefully. This boy in front of her, who seemed to hold himself so well and so calm, had lost his memory? "H-how...?"

  "It was an accident that happened eight years ago," Junmyeon replied casually, as if commenting on the weather. "When I woke up with no memory of the past I found Kyungsoo beside me, and he told me that we had been friends ever since we were children and I was injured in a fire, and brought me to his house. To here." He gazed around the room, genuine curiosity shining in his eyes.

  “And you never thought to ask?" Keira asked. "Who your parents are, where they are, who else knows – “

  "No one else knows about me except for the servants in the manor," he said with a crease between his eyebrows. "And my parents have passed away. They were killed in the Fire that I lost my memory in. No one has ever come looking for me, and no one really knew me before the accident, as Kyungsoo has told me. So I – “

  “And you believe him? Kyungsoo? You've never went out to check in person, that there might actually be people who know you out there and think you've disappeared or something?”

  This time Junmyeon really frowned, as if troubled by something that he had never considered. “I do,” he replied. “And I... I never really thought of all that. I...” Then suddenly, as if out of a daze, he shook his head. “But I guess I like it here that way. It's quiet and peaceful and I like it here.”

  “But – “

  All of a sudden, Junmyeon's head snapped to his right, as if he had heard something. But Keira hadn't heard anything. Then he stood up from the chair by her bed, ears still straining as if he were listening to someone talking to him, someone Keira could neither see nor hear. “My apologies, Keira, but I must go now.”

 “Go where?”

  He looked into her eyes again, and they were sparkling like he had enjoyed their conversation – or more like Keira's interrogation. He took her hand, and kissed the back of it. “I will see you downstairs later at lunch, hopefully?”

  Before she could give him an answer, he rushed out of the room.

  Lunch was peaceful, quiet. Just how Kyungsoo liked it.

  But also lonely. He knew Junmyeon deserved as much freedom as he should've had, but Kyungsoo was still worried. Was he still talking to that girl he had found in the forest? What was he telling her? Who was she, and where was she from? What if she was someone who knew Junmyeon, had thought he was dead just like the others, and now knew that he was actually alive?

  But no. She had looked completely baffled when she’d woken up, like she knew nothing. Like she had come from somewhere else. Maybe she really had come from somewhere else. Suddenly, Kyungsoo remembered something Baekhyun had shared with him some time before during his brief visit.

  “Yeollie and Kai have reports from their guards that proof has been found that other surrounding cities and countries are now watching our every move. More and more people never seen before and do not talk like us are appearing around the borders, and they don't know if such findings are good or bad.

  “There is a possibility that the other countries have found ourselves vulnerable because we currently don't have a king on the throne, and are plotting to conquer us.”

  It had just been a thought, Baekhyun had assured him, but now he started to be suspicious. What if the girl in his spared guest room was a spy? What if she was here to learn about everything in the Southern Commonwealth and report back to her own country? Kyungsoo had never seen her before; she could've been from somewhere else.

  Although, well, he hadn't been outside much so that wasn't a very valid reason.

  Suddenly, a clatter outside the dining room double doors rang out, followed by a muffled apology and the scuffing sounds of skirts sweeping against the ground.

  The double doors opened, and Junmyeon walked in, his hand on the back of the Forest girl as she was looking over her shoulder, apologizing to the maid she apparently had bumped into.

  Gently, Junmyeon led her to the chair right across from where Kyungsoo was sitting; the other side of the long table. "My apologies, Soo," Junmyeon said with an apologetic smile as he sat down in a chair on the side, five seats away from him and five seats away from the girl. "I went off to check on something and was irresponsible enough to assume Keira would find her own way down here." He turned to face Forest Girl – Keira, Kyungsoo corrected himself. Such an odd name, and the outfit she was wearing was odd, too, he realized for the first time: her grey shirt was brown around the places of her shoulders, elbows and arms while it looked like it we're made out of some thick, rough grey material, and instead of a skirt she was wearing brown, faded pants with black boots decorating her feet.

  They looked like something Sehun would be wearing, a seemingly random thought crossed his mind.

  “Again, my apologies, Keira. I shouldn't have just run off like that.”

  “N-no,” Keira stammered, “I apologize for bumping into that maid out there; I didn't know where I was going – “

  “Nonsense, it is I who should be apologizing – “

  “No one is apologizing for anything,” Kyungsoo interrupted with a grunt. “Just appreciate the meal the cook has made.”

  Mentally, Keira gave Kyungsoo another score for being grumpy. And rude. Oh, and not to mention that apparently he had been hiding Junmyeon in his manor for eight years, which in any way sounded wrong. Why was he hiding him? What was the boy sitting across from her hiding?

  “Junmyeon was just being polite,” Keira snapped as a servant placed her silverware in front of her. One disadvantage of hers no training had ever helped: how she could never stop her tongue even if her life depended on it. She'd even broken a few ribs once because of it. “A trait you obviously lack.”

  Kyungsoo's face immediately darkened, and Junmyeon stiffened. Apparently they didn't get a girl saved from the forest talk back to Kyungsoo at lunch every day.

  “You don't know anything about me.” Kyungsoo's voice was calm, but Keira heard the emotions lying underneath. The anger. The shock.

  “I know you're called Kyungsoo. I know you're the owner of this manor. I know Junmyeon always listens to you for earth-knows-what-reason. I know you're both Stargazers, because you're both pulsing with – “

  She stopped herself, but it was too late. Both of the boys were staring at her as if she had just grown another head.

  “With what?” Junmyeon asked, but all that could be heard in his voice was genuine curiosity. Nothing more.

  “I – “

  It wasn't the same with Kyungsoo. “You're not from the Southern Commonwealth, are you?” It sounded more like an accusation that a question, and it somehow, to Keira, stung. “So perhaps it would make sense that you don't know anything about us at all.”

  “Maybe you just don't want anyone to know anything about you,” she shot back.

  “It hardly makes any sense as to why you would want to know anything about me.”

  “Maybe I'm just curious.”

  “Or maybe you're a spy.”

  “Kyungsoo!” Junmyeon exclaimed. “How could you say that – “

  Oh, he wasn't done. “And maybe, just maybe,” Kyungsoo continued, his eyes locked on Keira's, “you're trying to gain sympathy from Junmyeon just so it could be easier for you to gather information like the hyprocrites spies are – “

  Junmyeon slammed his palms on the table. “Kyungsoo!”

  A streak of silver flashed through the air, landing right on front of Kyungsoo with a clang.

  Everything stopped.

  Frozen, Kyungsoo looked down to the table before him – somehow he had stood up from his chair of all his anger – and stared at the dangling fork with wide eyes, its front end stuck firmly in the table through the white tablecloth and the other end vibrating due to the force it was thrown with.

  Equally stunned, Junmyeon – who was also on his feet – tore his gaze away from the fork to his right. He didn't speak; he just stared at Keira, who was also standing, her left hand extended.

  “You might not know anything about me yet,” she said, her fierce gaze boring into Kyungsoo's. “But I am not a spy.”

  With that and one last glare, instead of leaving, she shocked them even more by sitting back down into her chair and grabbing her spoon for the soup that was just being delivered into the room by an oblivious servant.

[A/N] Finally have time to be back ;;;;;;;; So the next chapter is one of the biggest fillers to come!!! Yay!!! And it's gonna be super long! Hahahaha so it'll make up for this rather short chapter, hopefully x) The interesting parts are gonna start coming soon; I know, the first few chapters are a bit boring... sorry > <

Thank you, every one of you, for waiting this long, and to show my gratitude (AND LOTS OF LOVE SO MANY THEY OUTSHINE THE STARS jk <3<3<3) the next update is gonna be soon! Reeeeeeeeeaaaaaalll soon!!!!!!! Because you guys are all so amazing and your comments just make my day!!!

*gif credit to owner*