Chapter thirteen

08-09-15

‘’asdf dyvuhbx cyub fv!!!’’

‘’sfvwrwH AEG ethetb’’

‘’ah’’

Baekhyun was awoken by a loud voice, continually yelling his name while shaking his shoulders. He had always been bad in overhearing conversations when he just woke up, but the high pitched voice next to his ear made him open his ears immediately.

‘’BAEKHYUNNNN WAKE UPPP!!!’’

His eyes shot open as he hoisted his head from the table, immediately regretting it when he felt a massive headache coming up. He bought his hands to his head to hold the heavy lump and rubbed his eyes.

‘’HE’S ALIIVEEEE!’’ Jongin’s loud voice entered his ears again as Baekhyun pressed his fingers against his temples, trying to sooth them by making small circles.

‘’shut the up.’’ He murmured.

‘’Aww come on Baekhyun, Kyungsoo made breakfast already and we need to get ready for the festival, school didn’t give us a free day for nothing.’’ Jongin shook his shoulders again when Baekhyun let his head drop back on the table.

‘’We are free today?’’ Baekhyun murmured against the table, trying hard to ignore Jongin’s presence.

 ‘’Yes, you were the one who requested that remember. We need to decorate the whole hall today with the decoration team and establish all the stalls, that’s why you need to stand up!’’

‘’Then why don’t you wake Chanyeol up first?’’ Baekhyun murmured, wanting his precious sleep to return to him.

‘’Okay then!’’ Jongin happily turned around.

‘’What’s with all the noise?’’ Chanyeol asked, yawning as he walked down the stairs.

‘’Oh Baekhyun! Chanyeol’s awake already.’’ Jongin turned back to the older boy who had fallen asleep again and tried to wake him again.

Chanyeol frowned as he walked off the stairs. He was sure he had dropped the boy off in bed last night, so what was he doing here? He tilted his head to the side a bit to see what was lying next to him.

‘’The DJ-set?’’ He muttered to himself in confusion, but just when the words left his mouth, he remembered they were supposed to do it yesterday but both completely forgot about it. The boy must’ve woken up and thought about it.

Chanyeol started wondering if his roommate actually did sleep last night.

He walked towards the dining table and saw that the laptop was still on, the screen bar fully green. He had done it all last night without even bothering to wake him up. Chanyeol the set and looked at all the songs that were on there before unplugging the wire from both the laptop and set and rolling it up neatly.

Jongin was still trying to wake him up while Chanyeol was cleaning up all the stuff. It wasn’t until he heard a spatula hit Jongin – who immediately shut up – that he looked up. Kyungsoo stood in front of Jongin with the spatula in his hands, ready to slap again.

‘’Let the kid sleep a bit, jeez. Kid must be exhausted.’’ Kyungsoo murmured in disappointment before going back to the kitchen. Baekhyun indeed looked exhausted. His eye was back to normal again – luckily – but now had dark bags beneath them. His skin was pale and his overall posture screamed tiredness.

‘’We have a free day right?’’ Chanyeol asked, mainly Kyungsoo, as he stared down at his roommate. He felt Kyungsoo turning around to look at him. ‘’Yeah, why?’’

‘’I’m gonna put him back to bed, we’ll just finish what he started.’’ He said before picking up his roommate from the chair. He didn’t really bother to listen to Kyungsoo’s reply and bought him upstairs, feeling his cold skin against his own hot one.

But Chanyeol had always had a hot skin, just like Baekhyun’s was always cold.

But there was something different today. His skin wasn’t just cold, it was freezing. His body shivered slightly as he unconsciously hugged the heat – the heat being Chanyeol. Chanyeol didn’t bother though and decided to warm him up a bit.

When he reached Baekhyun’s bedroom, he laid him down in the bed just like he had done the night before and tucked him in even tighter. ‘’Sleep tight.’’ He muttered before leaving.

¬

Baekhyun woke up from the cold hours later.  His head was throbbing against his skull and his throat was dry. A few soft yet throaty coughs left his mouth as he hugged the bed sheets closer to his body; then he frowned. He didn’t remember going back to his own bed. He remembered falling asleep on the oh-so comfortable table with nothing but a bright laptop screen, his notebook and the DJ-set accompanying him.

‘Chanyeol must’ve put me to bed again.’ He thought as he slowly turned around, immediately regretting it when his stomach twisted, making it feel like he could puke whatever he had eaten every second.  His forehead crunched together even more before he coughed again, a bit louder this time, feeling how a shiver ran across his spine.

His stomach twisted again, and Baekhyun knew it wasn’t going to be ‘just a feeling’. He jumped out of the bed and ran into the bathroom, just in time as he immediately fell on his knees in front of the toilet and puked his guts out.

Not much came out, the main reason of it because he hadn’t eaten much lately. But it still wasn’t a pleasant feeling. After a few minutes of post-coughing into the bowl, he flushed the toilet and heaved himself up again. His knees were trembling, just like his hand as he walked back to his own room. The moment he sat down on his bed, he felt the massive headache from earlier today returning, even worse than then.

He bought up a shaky hand to his sweaty forehead, already feeling the heat radiating from it. He was sick. Of course, Baekhyun had already expected it, it was very obvious. He just didn’t want to acknowledge it. Especially since it was the day of the festival, which he had to attend. There was no way he could stay in his room while the others were all busy

He took a look at the alarm clock on his nightstand and stared into space with determination. He pushed himself off the bed and got dressed in proper clothes.

The festival would start at eight pm.

It was 7:30 pm right now.

Baekhyun had done nothing in the hall, neither did he know if the other had already started. He ignored all the signs that told him to get back to bed and changed into a pair of black jeans and a grey sweater before he made his way downstairs, carefully to not fall off the stairs. His knees were weak once he was downstairs; he had to hold the guardrail to not fall over when he started coughing again.

It was probably good for him, going outside, getting some fresh air, walking a bit. Baekhyun grabbed his keys from the bar and got in his warm jacket and shoes before he went out.

Every step he took bought a pant with it, a throb against his skull or a cough. He got looks from a lot students as he tried to stay upright. Baekhyun felt exhausted by the time he finally entered the big hall, holding the doorframe as he softly smiled.

It was all done. Exactly how he wanted it all to be done. The tables were set, decoration hung, food was ready and everything was on its place. He saw some students still making the finishing touch, others were just having fun, happy with the result.

Baekhyun let his head lean against the doorframe as he watched in relief. Chanyeol seemed to have noticed him as he said something to Kyungsoo – who he was talking with just now – and jogged towards his him with a big smile. Baekhyun smiled back as he slowly stood upright.

‘’You’re awake?’’ Chanyeol asked when he stood in front of him, looking down with a big smile. But his smile, however, seemed to fade when he noticed how Baekhyun looked. ‘’You’re sick?’’ He asked, although it sounded more like a statement and reached out to touch his forehead. Baekhyun grabbed his hand in the mid-air, preventing it from touching his forehead and moved it back down again.

‘’I’m okay.’’ He said, voice hoarse as he tried hard to not get into a coughing fit.

‘’I can hear.’’ Chanyeol replied sarcastically as he crossed his arms as a sign of disagreement. Baekhyun decided to ignore it and turned his attention to the hall.

‘’Who did all this?’’

Chanyeol looked over his shoulder before turning back to him. ‘’Everyone did, we finished roughly half an hour ago. Everything’s set up and everything is done.’’ He said, nodding as he did so. ‘’Kyungsoo took your notes and since he was there most of the time when you made them, he kind of knew exactly what you wanted and how you wanted it. Thus this happened.’’

‘’That’s great.’’ A cough accidently left his mouth as he looked around. He didn’t feel like walking around much more and leaned back against the cold, nice doorframe.

‘’Why don’t you go back to bed. Get some more rest, eat something, I seriously haven’t seen you eating lately.’’ Chanyeol said as he looked down at the pale boy. His eyes were blank as he stared past him. Baekhyun did listen though. ‘’I’m fine, let me just… lean for a bit.’’

‘’Yeah… we’re going to eat something, I saved some salad for you since there wasn’t any more food left.’’ Chanyeol said; Baekhyun knew he wasn’t going to take a ‘no’ as an answer as his roommate carefully pulled him with him to the corner of the hall, where a table was set up with all their bags and personal stuff.

As Baekhyun sat down on one of the chairs, Chanyeol rummaged through his bag to get what he wanted and placed a full plate, covered with foil, in front of Baekhyun together with a fork. Baekhyun grabbed the fork and pricked the foil a couple of times before he pulled it off and slowly started eating. He was glad Chanyeol had taken something light for him.

‘’Say Baekhyun.’’ Baekhyun glared up from the food but kept eating. ‘’You don’t have some sort of eating disorder I don’t know about right?’’ Chanyeol asked.

Baekhyun chocked. ‘’What?’’ He coughed out in disbelief before grabbing a water bottle from Chanyeol’s hand and taking a few gulps.

‘’I suppose ‘no’?’’

‘’No, I don’t even look like I have one.’’ Baekhyun said, his voice sounding slightly hoarse so he cleared his throat.

‘’Well, kind of-’’

‘’Shut up.’’ Baekhyun held one hand up and went back to eating and Chanyeol went back to staring over Baekhyun’s hunched frame into the hall, quite impressive with all they had done in a few hours. He noticed Kyungsoo glaring at him. When the boy caught his attention, he made a few small motions with his hands, pointing at Baekhyun.

‘’Is he okay?’’

Chanyeol nodded, mouthing a silent ‘yes’. He got a thumb up in response before Kyungsoo walked off.

¬

‘’Ten minutes left guys! Gather at the stage!!’’ Chanyeol called everyone out through the mic before passing it to Baekhyun, who took small steps to the front. Everyone gathered in front of him and looked up in silence.

‘’So guys, we did it!’’ He raised his voice and faked a bright smile. ‘’I only one week, you managed to make all this!’’ he raised his non-mic holding arm. ‘’I want to thank everyone of you who helped out, even if you didn’t do much, still, thank you. I apologize for not being available this afternoon, but I hope we will all rock it tonight!’’ He gained applauds.

‘’So, we still have a few minutes left, so let’s retrace everything.

Min will be tonight’s MC, she will lead us all through the whole night.

Kyungsoo’s the lead of the food tables, so if there’s a problem with something or if there isn’t any more food left, you can ask him.’’ Everybody already knew who Kyungsoo was so he didn’t bother to point at him or let him raise his hand.

The second person after Baekhyun, who helped out everyone as well, was Kyungsoo.

‘’There will be three teachers helping the activity crew tonight. The decoration crew has done an amazing job in decorating the whole hall and is free tonight, unless you want to help the food or activity stalls.

Then we have Chanyeol who will do the music for the whole night and I will walk around to see how everyone’s doing, the lights are done by me also. Your services will be changed with others in two hours so that everyone gets the change to walk around too aaandd… I think that’s it. Let’s open the doors.’’ He shrugged. The students smiled as they all walked off to their stalls.

Baekhyun stayed on the stage for a moment and checked the lights, looking up as they became bright, and then dimmed. He made sure to keep it a bit dimmed to create a nice atmosphere before he walked to the back of the podium – where he was probably gonna stay the whole night – and sat down on one of the chairs next to the turntable.

He was happy they made it in time. Happy they were done. No more sleepless nights, no more stress, no more exhaustion. The whole week, Baekhyun had been like a zombie, today would be the last day. Although he still wasn’t feeling great, he didn’t care.

He didn’t care about anything right now.

A successful festival was their main goal.

¬

‘’Hello everyone and welcome! To the best festival in the history of EXO!!’’ Min exclaimed through the mic, earning cheers from the hundreds of students that joined tonight’s activity.

‘’The festival is about to start in a few, but I think we should start off with introducing some of our new students, here, on EXO.’’

One of the main sources for the festival to actually happen was because of the arrival of three latecomers.

‘’Firstly, we have Choi Kyuhyun!’’

A big boy walked on the stage next to the MC, almost taller than Chanyeol and thrice Baekhyun’s size.

‘’Sixteen years old, his ability is water and he goes by his nickname Kast.’

‘’Next up, we have Im Dabin!’’ Another tall, but slender boy walked up the stage. He had black, greenish hair with bangs that hung in his eyes. Even from behind, Baekhyun could feel his mysterious aura. A funny thing was that Min was the only one who had seen the latecomers and even chatted with them. The rest of the team had no idea who they actually were.

‘’Dabin will be the fourth rare in our school, after Wu Yifan, Min Yoongi and Byun Baekhyun,’’ Baekhyun felt somehow proud to be called out. ‘’, a mind crawler is what he is!’’

Yikkes, a mind crawler. Baekhyun hated mind crawlers. They were different from the readers. Whereas the readers can only read your mind, crawlers can literally crawl in your mind and take over your brain, controlling every move you make. Most people don’t even know they’re capable of doing, that’s why it’s so dangerous.

‘’, and last but not least, Lee Chaelin!’’

Baekhyun eyes widen.

Lee Chaelin?!

The Lee Chaelin from his old school?

The Lee Chaelin who always hated him?

Please tell me it’s not her.

‘’Don’t underestimate her small body because she is an excellent teleporter, please take care of Lee Chaelin!’’ 

It’s her

¬

The music was blaring through his ears, increasing his terrible headache in moderation. He left the stage about an hour ago and was just walking around, although his legs were getting sore and his whole body felt weak and fragile. His usually hawk sharp eyes started to lose its amazing ability to see and on top of that, he just felt so tired.

Chanyeol was jamming on the stage and everyone around him was having fun. The stalls were going great.

It was half past ten (10:30) and the festival luckily ended within the next thirty minutes. He found a spot somewhere behind all the stalls and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and closing his eyes, leaning his warm head rearwards on the cold wall. No one really came here, so there was no one to bother him for now.

‘’How is it going?’’ Aside from Kyungsoo. Baekhyun cracked open one eye and glared at his friend who was getting some food to refill the tables.

‘’Fine by me, how’s the stalls doing?’’ ‘

‘’Great, people are happy with what they can get. Everyone who helped is proud so yeah, everything’s going great.’’ Kyungsoo nodded. Baekhyun didn’t say anything anymore, making Kyungsoo look over his shoulder.

‘’Are you really okay?’’ Kyungsoo let go of the place, placing it on the table, and walked over to his pale looking friend.

‘’I’m really okay, just tired.’’

‘’Maybe you should go back to bed, you surely haven’t caught up with all those missing hours of sleep.’’ The younger replied concerned.

‘’Nah, I’ll be fine.’’

‘’You sure?’’

‘’Sure.’’

‘’Okay…’’ Kyungsoo grabbed the plate and bought it over to one of the stalls, giving Baekhyun the change to sneak away for a moment. There wasn’t that much to do in the last thirty minutes anyway, they wouldn’t even know he was out for a moment.

¬

‘’May the lights dim!!’’ Min exclaimed, watching how the already dimmed lights dimmed even more. Everyone reacted surprised, until they remembered Baekhyun, who had all the control over the lights. Some of them looked around, hoping to see the rare one, but no one could see him. Neither did Chanyeol, who was getting slightly worried.

He hadn’t seen his roommate for a while, and although the lights still worked, he couldn’t help but to remember how sick Baekhyun looked earlier. The pale, skinny boy kept occupying his mind.

‘’The festival has almost come to an end.’’ The MC made a pouty face as the crowd proceeded to exclaim some ‘boo‘s’. Min held up her hand to silence the crowd.

‘’I hope all of you had an amazing time, but before he play the last song, can I hear some commotion for the people who made it all happen?!’’ She exclaimed and immediately, the hall was filled with loud yells, whistles and claps.

Chanyeol could see a small smile forming on her face, probably she felt incredibly proud as well. The crowd calmed down after a minute or so and Min again held up her hand to silence everyone. She made sure the whole hall became silent before she moved the mic up to and softly spoke: ‘’we will play the last song for the night. I want to thank everyone and I really hoped you all had an amazing time.’’ She turned to Chanyeol who nodded and the last song, playing it softly.

‘’So now,’’ She whispered. ‘’Let’s have fun for the last time tonight!’’ She exclaimed as Chanyeol turned up the volume, creating cheers from everyone.

Everyone was happy and proud. He watched with a smile how the ones behind the stalls high-fived each other with a huge smile on their face.

Only a short, unfortunate, five minutes were left.

¬

‘’Yeol!’’ Kyungsoo pulled up one of the headphone pieces from Chanyeol’s head and yelled in his ear.

‘’Have you seen Baekhyun?!’’ He yelled, making Chanyeol flinch. Chanyeol shook his head and shrugged, knowing it was hard to speak over the loud music and Kyungsoo walked away.

¬

Baekhyun threw up.

He sat on his knees in front of the toilet bowl, gripping the seat until his knuckles turned white. His body was trembling violently and sweat made his bangs get stuck to his face. He flushed another time, but stayed on the ground.

His cheeks were stained with tears and his throat was hurting. He could faintly hear Min’s voice all the way from the hall, adding extra layers of pain in his throbbing head.

He felt another wave of nausea hit him and bended down over the bowl again.

He could feel himself growing weaker and weaker every second. His eyes went black for a moment, and become normal again.

Every time he hunched his back, the lights would faintly flicker.

¬

Only two minutes left before it was all done. Chanyeol looked up with concern when he noticed the lights flickering. He searched for Kyungsoo’s eyes in the crowd and found them, staring back at his with big eyes.

‘’I’ll look for him.’’

Chanyeol nodded at the non-verbal sentence and saw how Kyungsoo ran to Jongin – probably telling him he was going to search for Baekhyun – and ran off.

But Kyungsoo wasn’t even out of the hall when the lights suddenly , brighter than anyone had ever seen. Kyungsoo stopped his tracks immediately and shielded his face with his hands. All the others looked down as well, face scrunching together. Chanyeol wasn’t any different.

However, it only lasted one or two seconds. Before Chanyeol could conclude what was going on, all the lights turned off.

The hall became pitch black.

So to clear up some , there are three sorts of people in the ‘magical’ world.

There is an elemental. An elemental is either an earth, water, air of fire bender (like avatar).

Then there is the special. A special is someone who has a strange ability: teleporters, mind-readers, speed, telekinesis. Those are special.

Lastly there is rare. Rare almost never occurs, such as light, flight, mind crawling (something different from mind reading).

When you want to summarize then, you call then an abnormal. Abnormal is... a summary of them (English on point today).

I’m also editing this whole at the moment so you shouldn’t subscribe now (*grins because is stupid*). Like, I really appreciate it of course, but the whole story right now is kinda... messed up. So yeah, hope you all still enjoy and I want to thank every one of you for reading this .

Me OUT.