The past three weeks at Ibaraki had been passing by almost too quickly.  Double-majoring in Bio-engineering and music studies was a pretty demanding schedule in itself; and then training as well as the series of trials for the uni track and field team had left Takuya with close to no time for his own.

He had just come back from a late night cross-country session with the seniors from track and field, which pretty much took up all his energy for the night. Exhausted and fresh out of the shower, Takuya sat on his bed and propped himself against the wall. The room was divided into two halves almost comically; on his side, things were in a hilarious mess – jerseys, socks, textbooks, sheets of half-used manuscript paper and what have you were strewn everywhere in every manner possible. On the other side however, life looked like a ghost town. The single bed was in a corner, made and almost untouched. There was almost nothing on the floor once it reached the perimeter that Takuya had told himself was “Lee Joon Jae Territory”.

Speaking of Lee Joon Jae, he was supposed to be here by today. Takuya decided to room with another guy this year as finances were quite tight at home. His mother recently had a huge paycutt due to the economic slowdown in his town and he couldn’t afford the daily transport expenses worth 3 hours of bus rides. Neither could he afford his own dorm room. Meanwhile, Takuya would work his off in his extra-curricular activities in order to gain enough hostel points so that he could have a dorm of his own next semester.

His roommate was called Lee Joonjae, from Gwangju, Korea. He was supposed to move in today, according to the file he was given from the admin office. Thus he had kept everything on Joonjae’s side of the room clean. However, it was already 11pm at night and there was no sign of his roommate appearing.

The more he thought about it, the more worried he got. In an effort to take his mind off the matter, Takuya decided to livestream an EPL match between Swansea and Chelsea, although he wasn’t particularly interested in both teams. Their results did matter however, in the grand scale of whether his homies Manchester United would make it to top 4, thus he clicked play and set his Mac on his lap.

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Dark portraits of nameless faces adorned the hall, as well as the faux taxidermy deer head at the end of the red-carpeted corridor. He could hear voices murmuring, urgently, secretively, worriedly, about things he wasn’t supposed to know.

It didn’t take him long to notice.

Takuya was at his father’s house.

The last time he had been here, it… those weren’t good times. He didn’t remember much, only fragments, but he did remember screaming as he sat restrained on a chair, his mother sobbing on her knees and his father saying something about “destiny”, “ancestry”, “endangering the city” and.. it was too hard to remember the rest. The next thing he knew, his mother and his father had a divorce. He was five.

And now, he was here again.

Wandering through the hallways, he accidentally stumbled into a room from the corner. The lights flicked on; and he couldn’t believe his eyes. Whips, chains, micro-webs and silver daggers hung around the room and stood on display sets. He could already tell that this was somewhere his ...father... would have forbidden him to enter. His curiosity got the better of him and he decided to venture further into the weapon chamber.  Nearing the end of the room, there were various bows on the stands and in another glass container lay a sheath of arrows. But there was something different about the tips of those arrows… He pried open the box with careful fingers and held them to his eyes. Those tips were made out of silver.

“Silver? Why silver? Even the daggers were silver-plated,” Takuya wondered in his head,” What would you even require silver for-“

His train of thoughts were cut short at the sudden ringing noise that filled the room. It didn’t stop, but grew louder and resounded at a regular, impatient pace. Was there someone here? Did his father’s guards discover him? Holy crap, what was he supposed to do?

He rushed towards the door, when suddenly a hand from behind grabbed his and caught him in a hostage like position(-hold??). In the blink of an eye, there was a dagger dancing centimetres from the skin of his neck and the harsh breathing that he could feel on his neck.

“What the ?” Takuya shrieked in shock, not daring to turn his head to see his perpetrator. “Who the hell are you?”. The grip on his neck and shoulders grew tighter. Meanwhile, the ringing still sounded, almost annoyingly.

“I’m Wonho, but you probably don’t even remember who I am, don’t you?” the unknown man behind him hissed, sending shivers down his spine. “Whatever, just don’t go out there. It’s a war out there, your father’s guards are searching for you, and there’s someone out there we can’t trust.”

“We?” Takuya mocked, plucking up the courage to look at him. Why was there so much going on that he didn’t know about? And since when was he a team with Mister Masked-mouth that had a ing knife to his throat? Wonho? More like Won-who? “Why should I listen to you? And who is it that I can’t trust huh? What’s up with this whole place?”

“You don’t understand, our clan can’t even detect what’s his kind, let alone his motives. If you open that door, you’re risking this. And it’s the clan’s responsibility to make sure you’re safe!” Wonho whispered rapidly. The ringing became more frequent, and it was followed by loud banging that reverberated throughout the walls. Takuya was starting to wonder if it was an earthquake going down and it was one of the warning sirens wailing its way through the city.

“Look, I know you won’t understand now. Just… be cautious, alright? Take care of yourself; there’s things in the shadows which… don’t exactly want you alive,” Wonho muttered and due to the trembling in Takuya’s body, he accidentally jerked forward and a tiny sliver of skin was slit by the dagger. Takuya immediately hissed in pain.

Wonho released the dagger, and with an almost inaudible “bye”, he was gone.

Takuya collapsed on to his knees from the shock, and spontaneously out.

“diNGDONG,” went the dorm bell. “DINGDONGDINGDONGDINGDONG!”

“who the hell-” Takuya murmured as he rubbed his sleep-ridden eyes and swaggered to the door.

Unlocking the door and pushing it ajar so that he could see the person outside, Takuya brushed back his mop of dirty blonde hair backwards and went, “Hello, how may I be of your service?” in his patronizing tone he was used to using from his past part-time job at a customer service counter.

“What?” the man at the door blurted out.

Takuya’s mind was still very much occupied with trying to figure out what the dream he just had meant. He wasn’t processing very well at the moment.

“… did I say something wrong?” Takuya face-palmed, in the realization that “I might have said something dumb to this really foreign looking guy outside my room”.

“Uh, I’m Lee Joonjae. I’m your roommate. I’ve been ringing the bell for quite a long time. Guess you’re a really deep sleeper, huh.” The guy said nonchalantly as he pushed open the door and set his luggage on the floor. “I’m guessing this is my side?” he said, gesturing to the clean side of the room.

“Y-yeah…” Takuya mumbled, scratching at his head. What time was it even? He looked up at the neon digital alarm clock next to his bed and, woah, it was 5:00 am?

“Are you okay? Why did you take so long?” he asked worriedly as he helped Joonjae prop up his luggage and haversack.

“Uh, I had a flight delay. It was postponed to a night flight (a/n gET MY REFERENCE THO?) so yeah. Late. Sorry.” Joonjae replied curtly. Oh yeah, he was from Korea. His Japanese pronunciation was not bad actually, for a non-native speaker, Takuya mused in his head.

Just as he was about to ask a little more about Joonjae, he told Takuya that he was going to sleep.

“Yeah, you must be tired…” Takuya said as he leaned over to in between both beds to switch off the night light. He had almost thought Joonjae was sound asleep, when Joonjae suddenly opened his eyes.

In the fading yellow light of the lamp, Joonjae’s pupils were a off-gold shade of amber. Takuya couldn’t tell if it was just him and his groggy sleep-deprived state or was it for real, but Joonjae’s eyes seemed to be… flickering.

“What?” Takuya squeaked, not understanding how the situation seemed so intense that it sort of overwhelmed him.

“You… you have a small cut on your neck. It’s bleeding.” Joonjae pointed out, and almost right after, changed his position to sleep on the other side so that his back faced Takuya.

A collective silence ensued as thoughts began filling Takuya’s mind. How did Joonjae know? Did he really have a cut?

Getting up and tiptoeing to the bathroom, a quick inspection confirmed that yes, there was indeed a small cut just near his jugular vein. After washing it and spraying disinfectant, it started to hurt like a little . Takuya returned to the bed and lay awake. He was tired, but it was hard for sleep to come to him when his mind was running at a breakneck speed, trying to tie loose ends together. Where did he get the cut from? It seemed fresh… It couldn’t be, right? Dreams don’t give you cuts, unless you sleepwalked and banged into a cupboard or something.

The more he thought of it, the more he began doubting his self. The cut was pretty much at the exact  same spot where.. what was his name.. ah yes, Wonho. It was where Wonho’s knife had left a slit on his throat. But surely the ringing sound was from Joonjae waiting at the door. And what did Wonho mean by “don’t open the door”? and that his “clan” couldn’ tell what “kind” “he” was. What??? This Wonho guy probably didn’t even exist.  

“It was probably just a dream,” Takuya repeated the phrase like a mantra as he tried to take his mind off the sheer realness of the dream and let sleep consume every fibre of his body.