White light.

Melodious beeps in three seconds interval.

Warm, spring-like wind that smells like raspberry liqueur. 

"Am I dead?" Hoseok choked on whatever air was left in his lungs after the rest was knocked out when a strong gush of warm air caused him to be thrown back against the grassy ground. 

A bluish-white light that filled the entirety of his field of vision when Hoseok slowly opened his eyes only strengthen the belief of what state of existence he was in. 

The more he opened his eyes though, the clearer it came upon him that this light was from an artificial source, the beeps were actually not melodious, and even better, he wasn't dead. Or at least, not yet.

With that, a squeaking scream escaped from his mouth as he dragged himself away from the expanse of metal hovering only tens of centimeters away from his face. 

"W... W... W... Wh... What the..." 

His disbelieved stutters were understandable because there, right upon his gaping eyes, a silvery-white air craft of some sort was majestically floating with the help of this strange propulsion system. Well, the majestic part was questionable.

A sudden rattle coming from within the mini van-sized aircraft broke Hoseok out of his awe-induced daze and suddenly he was reminded, that this thing might contain some kind of hostile alien form ready to disintegrate him to smithereens with a futuristic ray gun. He felt his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach when Hoseok realized that he was the first line of defense to the safety of earth in its entirety. What he did in this moment will determine the survival of human kind. He could take that handful of hay sitting idly by his side and create a primitive weapon of some sort to ensure the prevalence of the age of man, or he could run away and safe his .

Hoseok ran away to safe his . 

But as he took one big leap away from the aircraft (as there was too many a distance away from anything for him to take cover behind), the door to the craft unceremoniously banged open. No buildup, no hissing piston to indicate that it was coming, no slow-motion hatch release closely followed by white smoke oozing out from the gap. It was just like any normal doors. A heavy looking one, but normal nevertheless. 

And behind that, standing around with a scared and unsure frown on their faces were three... Humans. Or are they?

"Is it breathable?" The tallest one whispered to the other two.

"I don't know, I haven't breathe it in."  The one with hazel brown hair wheezed back a breathless answer. "L said it is?" He added with the last of his reserved air. 

The third one whose hair hung around his forehead like an eye-curtain remained silent. He only stared ahead while holding the handle of the door in a vice grip. 

The three seemed to be consumed fully in trying to hold their breaths as long as they possibly could, that they did not spot a frozen-on-the-spot Hoseok who was standing just on the edge of the circle of faint glow casted by the ship's interior lighting. He was clearly terrified to move, afraid of bringing their attention towards him. It felt like a game of daruma-san with his life at stake. 

In the end, the tallest one decided to went for it and took one deep gasp of earth's atmosphere. The two that were still scared of computer data malfunction (even though L was never wrong, ever), only looked at him worriedly.

He coughed for a bit, causing the one with hazel-brown hair to nervously grab onto something out of his coat pocket. Some kind of... Cabled stylus? 

He seemed to have a bit of difficulty breathing as he struggled to gulp down a few big mouthful of air. But after a few while, he rested his arms on his knees and gave a thumbs up to his two crews who immediately took one long inhale. 

Hoseok noticed that since the door open till the moment of first breath, the aliens had held their breath for almost two minutes and still looked like they could go about a few other minutes with no problem. Unlike him, who couldn't help but let out a loud gasp when he realized he'd been holding his breath for less than 30 seconds.

Two pairs of eyes suddenly homed in on his and Hoseok literally felt his heart stopped for a second. 

'They're gonna leap from that UFO, bared their fangs and gorged on my brain.'

He hadn't even got the chance to realize he just mixed three characteristics of different supernatural beings that he wouldn't normally attach to 'aliens' before the one with hazel brown hair pointed at him and exclaimed, "oh! Living specimen!"

Hoseok didn't know if this was the perfect time for him to run. It was, and probably he should. A sane person would. But he found himself still petrified on the spot as he watched the tall humanoid being got shoved out from the ship and was shooed to his direction. 

'Oh my god first contact. This is human's first contact with aliens. Unless those area 51 stories are real, this is LEGIT first contact.' His mind was reeling kilometers ahead and by the time the alien was standing right in front of him, Hoseok was contemplating if he should do the vulcan salute at him. 

It seemed that the closer proximity between these two species was the factor that activated Hoseok's fight or flight reaction to the fullest. Because when the alien suddenly raised his arm up for what seemed to be a friendly offer for a handshake, Hoseok freaked out, screamed, and threw at him the nearest solid object that his hands could reach. Which was a handful of disgustingly wilted hays. God knows how long it'd been sitting under the sun...

The pitiful strands merely bounced on the alien's face. Although, some did land on the alien's open mouth, as he suddenly broke down into a panic frenzy of loud 'ewww's and jumped around while trying to spit out the rancid thing out from his mouth.

"WHY?!" He yelled as he was frantically wiping the nasty taste off his tongue. "Why did you do that?!"

"I... I don't know," a dumbstruck Hoseok whispered back.

After he pulled the last bit of browned hay from the underside of his tongue and flicked it off his fingers, this dark haired alien sighed and raised his hand to Hoseok once more.

Hoseok hesitated to reciprocate his handshake. Partly because he hadn't wiped all that traces of saliva off his fingers. Icky.

"Don't worry, I'm just going to say our official greeting." Hoseok finally linked their hands together when he saw how sincere the smile on the alien's face was (albeit still looking a bit annoyed), which was quickly followed by a surfacing sense of safety.

"I, Captain RM of Pigin 16 hereby declare a request on building a peaceful affiliation based on the interest of the acquirement of knowledge and wisdom between the residents of planet Earth and our planet's representative.

We would normally be able to independently support ourselves during our stay, but we are currently caught in quite an unfortunate situation, which caused our inability to do so. It would be much appreciated if you could be our guide until at the very least our transmission devices are fixed." 

Hoseok squirmed uncomfortably on his spot, as he honestly didn't know what response was appropriate in this situation. 

"Just answer with 'I agree'." The boy called RM (what kind of name was that Hoseok couldn't even comprehend) leaned in and whispered an encouraging prompt.

"I agree." Hoseok finally said after he tried to swallow the unswallowable lump of nervousness from the back of his throat. 

"Great! Thankyou also for your consent to be subjected as a medical experiment! We can start on that right away." The bright grin on RM's face was beaming in conjunction to Hoseok's horrified gasp.

"Y... You didn't say anything about m... Medical experiments!"

As he took a cautious step back from the joyfully laughing RM, the man with hazel hair approached them and gave his captain a disapproving look. 

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help it." RM snickered as the man tried to discreetly shove a thin, circular thing into the captain's inner coat pocket. He leaned in and firmly whispered something into his ears, followed closely by a meek apology by RM. 

Now that the private alien conversation was done and dealt with, the man then turned his attention to Hoseok (still confused as ever) and jerked his hand up for a brief wave. "Good evening. The name is JN, chief medical officer of Pigin 16."

But looking at the metal strip barely hanging by a thread on the plate of JN's beige coat, Hoseok found a very different placate that read 'Lieutenant Commander - Chief Engineer'. 

The need to point out this disparity began to mount but Hoseok was not given any opportunity to say anything when the hazel haired man, JN, suddenly turned into a living fountain as tears freely dropped from his eyes.

Both Hoseok and RM looked at him with confusion.

"I don't know why this happen," JN tried to chuckle in between all his running snot and sniffles. "And no I am NOT being overly emotional." He raised his index finger to shut RM on his way to state the reason for JN's tears. 

"Probably he is," RM smiled curtly at Hoseok, at the expense of an annoyed look given to him by JN. "Anyways! Now that we have your consent, will you help us find a place to spend the night? We really need some hot bath and our little guy really needed some winding down before he could function again." Hoseok thought RM's thumb was pointing at their ship (who actually, compared to how UFOs were depicted in the media, did look a tiny bit... Tiny), but after they began to walk closer towards it, Hoseok realized that he was actually pointing to the still dazed boy standing by the ship's entrance.

"How's L, V?" RM tried to make his voice sound cheerful, but a sudden sting of ichiness on the back of his throat caused it to stumble on its way out. Ignoring that failure of raising the overall mood of the situation, he opted to just firmly pat the boy's shoulder, which caused no visible response for the next minute or so. It seemed that the shock of surviving a crash land caused some malfunction to his neural transmitters and V found it so hard to form sentences.

"... Still down." He finally managed a whisper. At least now Hoseok knew the boy was capable of speech. 

When he was only an arms length away from the entrance, Hoseok couldn't help but peeked past the curtain-haired boy's shoulders to see the interior of the ship. He hoped for something out of a campy sci-fi flick. Dark, green lights, gooey substance hanging from the rafters. He should say he was slightly disappointed when he only saw a bland looking hallway that almost looked like any standard earth bound airlines.

Suddenly, the interior lights began to dim and the aircraft's hover descended by a few centimeters, enough to touch and snap the blades of grass lying underneath it. RM went around to the shell-shocked boy and led him away from the landing before he closed the door shut.

RM clapped his hand together and nudged two of his crews, one was utterly unresponsive as he stared ahead with wide eyes and the other kept blowing his nose on a piece of handkerchief while mumbling questions such as 'why?' and 'This never happened to me before.' In conclusion, both were looking like a mess.

"Done! Please lead the way out mister...?" RM was just about to ask the human for his name and he didn't understand the look of utter disbelieve in his face as the living specimen didn't stop snapping his head between horrifically looking at him and the ship. At last, Hoseok found his voice and loudly enquired, "what will you do about this thing?!"

RM didn't seem to be in the same page as him as he only gave Hoseok a slightly hurt gaze for calling his ship as a 'thing'. "Hmm? Just leave her be."

"But people will go crazy if they saw that!" He himself felt like he was going crazy just with the fact that he's engaging extra terrestrial life in a mundane conversation of where to properly park their transportation device. 

RM and JN shared a knowing look. One only nodded when the other grunted.

"This is a level 4 planet." 

"Well then," RM coughed as the thought of warm bed went further and further away from him, "where do you think we could store it?" 

Good question. It managed to make Hoseok stop dead on his track until a blurry image of a perfect location popped into his mind. "There's an unused tool shack near stables. Nobody ever goes near it. I guess you can use it for the meantime." 

For a moment Hoseok almost added a demand for them to say thankyou for how lucky they were that he was their first human encounter. Anyone else with less knowledge of the farm and the government would've come and decimated the small community to the ground in an effort to maintain the illusion that everything was in order. 

"Well, lead us this 'staible' place then, mister hooman." RM punched one button near the tail of the craft and the ship buzzed back to life, "the steering wheel and back propeller is completely fried... Hmm..." He mumbled to himself before snapping sharply at his crews, "V! Help me push her out of here. JN, go help Mr. Hooman with the steering." 

His voice again wavered midways when the persistent tingling on his throat suddenly increased in intensity. It was as if there was a stack of needles jutting from the sides of his passageways. But it's okay. Nothing a loud cough couldn't fix.

"Right away captain." JN shouted back with a nasal tint on his voice.

In the silence of their short walk to the toolshed, the weight of everything finally crashed down on Hoseok. Like a train, just mercilessly colliding with his brain straight on. There is life outside of earth. We are not alone. A UFO almost crashed onto me. I was almost dead. And now there he was, helping a race of alien, (which he didn't really know for sure was peaceful or malevolent) hid their less than spectacular spaceship. 

"Am I dreaming?" He whispered quite louder than he intended it to, as it attracted JN's attention to the sight of him slapping and pinching the skin of his cheek. 

"It might be a bit hard for you to adjust on this fact. I read in a book it took us around two decades to get used to this knowledge." JN told him that little tidbit like it was a chat over tea, not regarding it as something heavy that would've completely shift a person's way of viewing the world. To be fair, for him it probably was.

"I never thought I would live to see it, let alone be a first hand observ-bless you." 

"Thankyou," JN wiped off the shooting snot with one hand as the other was occupied in keeping the ship stabilized. As if one sneeze was not enough, two others followed closely after. 

"Three times the luck." Hoseok tried to lighten up the situation by laughing, but JN didn't stop sneezing until the fifth count.

"What about five?"

"Extreme luck."

As if on cue to complete the storm of sneezes, a loud coughing sound came from the rear. It was RM, who was repeatedly hitting his chest as he let out a series of shallow wheezes. 

Deep breaths. It seemed difficult. He was clearly struggling to catch them and could only do shallow intakes. Added to that, the combination of the borderline painful itch and the force of his coughs were enough to make his eyes water.

"Getting tired this quickly?" JN jokingly shouted back after a quick sneeze passed through his nostrils.

"Keep your eyes to the front." RM tried to sound casual on his answer back to JN's jest, but only a weak squeak was heard as his voice seemed to be trapped in his seemingly enclosing throat.

"You got it captain." 

JN was himself busy dealing with a combo of two sneezes in a row that he failed to notice the sound of RM discreetly gasping for air at the back.  V, in turn, looked at him with raised eyebrows. Just when he was about to abandon his spot and drag JN to take a look at his condition, RM caught him by his sleeves and shook his head. 

"It'll pass," he said in a strained whisper.
 

"You're going to be remembered in history books as the first correspondent between interplanetary lives!" JN slapped his palm twice on the metal insulator to signify the two at the back to stop pushing. They've arrived at their destination, a very sad looking wooden structure. This was his first time visiting a level 4 planet and JN was curious how primitive their tools would look. He never thought it would be so bad that they didn't have the knowledge of care and restoration of organic wood. He almost cringed when thinking how much an engineer back home would kill to get their hands on just a sliver of a fresh specimen.

But that cringe was interrupted by two sneezes from him. Followed by one long cough from RM and a wet, high pitched whine of air going through a tightening passageway. All in the span of Hoseok fishing the bundle of keys from his hoodie pocket. Another perks with of having him as their first human. Being the junior farmhand in this place means he had all the keys to all locked doors in the vicinity.

"I don't think I want those kind of exposure." Hoseok chuckled as he jammed the biggest and oldest looking one to the similarly conditioned rusty lock. 

Three more sneezes. 

Someone was choking.

"Oh god. It won't pass."

In one moment of clumsiness, Hoseok lost control of his fingers. They twitched and he lost his grip around the padlock. 

Metal hit against dried grass, and Hoseok was too busy bending down to reach his keys to hear another sound of matter collapsing against the ground. More meaty, weighted, unlike the small rectangular lock which almost weighed nothing. 

"M... Medic! JN! Help!" 

He turned his head up toward the source of that panicked shout to see the back of JN's torn up coat swaying to and fro as he ran the length of the spaceship and roughly dropped his knees against the rough gravel road when he arrived by the side of...

Indeed, who was the person? He hadn't spent enough time together with the group to distinguish that cry of agony. Hoseok lowered his head again, instinctively, looking past the gap of the ship's hover mechanism to see what was happening at the other side. 

In that short glimpse, he saw true fear. And panic. And a hand clawing against the base of ones own neck as if it would help get the disagreeing air to fill up his lungs again. 

And at that moment, the unexplainable tears on JN's face found a reason to be. 
 

A/N: A month... almost a month and a half... Dear lord I apologize...