Path Code Drabble Series Part One
Title: Finding You
Pairing: OT12, hinted!kaisoo
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1.1k
Summary: With everything they’ve been through, it should mean something.
“Kyungsoo,” Lu Han calls out softly. He looks happy, content, as he contemplates his words before speaking again. “You’ll be able to tell, right? With your power?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t understand, brows furrowing in confusion as he stares at his friend before the other looks away back up towards the never-ending blue and purple shaded sky. He stares at him a bit longer, admiring the smooth skin and finally being able to see the one scar on the man’s upper lip, mostly healed but still visible in the bright daylight.
“You’ll know when it’s time to go back, right? You should be able to tell when it’s the time to go back home.”
Kyungsoo wants to say, “No, I can’t tell - I don’t understand,” but Lu Han is turning to give him a small smile and the air is taken out of his lungs.
“Infuse the ashes that will be given to you into my ten remaining crystal balls. Keep watch over them. Okay, Kyungsoo?”
He doesn’t understand. There are twelve of them. Whose ashes is he talking about?
“You’re the only one who will remember and understand.”
Kyungsoo frowns as he stares up into the blue sky, headphones resting around his neck as music plays softly through them. There’s a nice piano melody playing and it’s the only thing keeping him calm in the midst of his nightmares. The dream with Lu Han comes every few days and he’s done what he had asked of him months ago, after they were suddenly released from the series of probing and experiments they were subjected to for one full earth year.
He still doesn’t know what the point of it all is. They lost their powers when two of their eldest died, the scientists realizing they weren’t any different from other human beings except for the fact they had supernatural powers. They simply tried to find ways to control them in the beginning, hoping to utilize them for some sort of future war, but it never happened, not when they exhausted and experimented on Yixing to his ultimate limit. With him gone, their balance was thrown off, not so much that it changed them drastically, but enough to know one of their own was gone.
That was when Lu Han suddenly appeared in his dream in that dreadful place, being able to expand his powers even more to extend himself into another’s dream without any horrible side effects. He was able to collect the ashes the scientists turned Yixing into, finding a way to give it to him in the middle of the tests, but he was foolish to not understand the meaning of it until he poured it onto the ground and watched as the ashes disappeared within the earth underneath his feet.
Yixing came back to life unexpectedly, Kyungsoo remembering Jongdae once telling him that they are beings made of ashes. Once they pass, they turn into ashes and return into the core of life only to be born again either as the same being or into an entirely different one depending on the situation. But of course, scientists were confused and amazed, testing even more on their recovering healer and hoping to figure out what made them genetically different from the human race.
If it weren’t for Yifan and Lu Han though, Yixing would’ve probably suffered another horrible death, one that Kyungsoo didn’t even want to imagine. Because of their interference, they exhausted Yifan to his limit and tortured Lu Han to his death, and at the time, Kyungsoo didn’t know how badly that would affect them. They didn’t know their balance would be thrown off horribly with both of them gone, eventually causing each one of them to lock their powers away and try to blend in as normal human beings on this Earth instead. They knew the scientists wouldn’t want anything to do with them if they lost their powers, Junmyeon told them so and they eventually confirmed it the hard way.
Kyungsoo sighs as he puts his headphones back up, swiping his finger up on one of the sides to increase the volume, before turning to go back inside his apartment. There are books scattered everywhere ranging from wolves to medical journals about overdoses and there are candles placed in lamps still burning throughout the daylight. He looks to each one of them as he passes by to get a glass of ice cold water before going back to sitting on his favorite place on the ground where there are ten metal balls scattered next to the wall. He stares at each of them, reaching out to grab three before he resumes his habit of turning them in a circle in his palm as he thinks.
Suddenly, he sees visions of three of his friends, Jongin, Zitao, and Sehun, and he could never understand how he was able to do this in the first place. The only explanation he could think of was Lu Han but even then, he should only be able to stare into Yixing’s past life.
None of them have ever been able to correctly get in contact with the other, remembering some of Yifan’s last words telling them to always stay separated so that when the time comes, they can easily reunite to return back home without any problems. He’s the only one who knows where each of their friends are anyways.
The ice clinks in his drink as he sets it on the ground next to him and he starts at the sound, watching as all three men in his mind become frightened as well. His eyes widen when he witnesses each of their powers returning to a degree, all three of them looking around or looking back as they run, clearly confused and lost wondering why it’s happening. He gasps as Jongin suddenly disappears from his head.
There’s the long forgotten sound of crackles in the air.
He slowly looks up confused, seeing the man looking around himself surprised and wearing a long trench coat draped around his shoulders to keep the cold from infusing into his body.
It’s not cold where Kyungsoo is now.
“Jongin?” he quietly asks, quickly letting go of the balls in his hand to scatter the other seven on the floor.
Jongin doesn’t jump at the sound of his voice. He merely looks confused, turning to stare back down at him before his eyes suddenly brighten and a smile lights up his entire face. Kyungsoo’s heart starts racing, skipping a couple beats, until he hears thunder crashing inside his head. There’s a hint of a smile on his face as well.
Jongin quickly takes the two steps towards him before he falls to his knees, pulling in Kyungsoo for a tight hug. “I’ve finally found you.”
Title: My Sunshine
Pairing: Yixing-centered, OT12
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1k
Warnings: [spoilers]violence?
Yixing can’t breathe. It feels like his lungs are on fire, and it all hurts too much. There are bright lights in his eyes and needles in his arms, large leather straps tied around his body to the bed to keep him still. He wants to sleep. He wants to finally drift off to eternity and let the burn simmer underneath his skin instead of burning him alive. But he can’t. He knows he can’t because his power won’t let him.
“Yixing!” he hears someone shout, fear and panic clear in the person’s voice as he hears tables being overturned and other, older men and women screaming trying to gain control of the situation.
“How did you get in here?!” he hears somebody else scream and he has just enough strength to let his head fall to the side to try and see what’s going on.
His vision is blurry. He can’t even make out what these moving blobs in his vision are, but he does see someone moving closely up to him, gently turning his head back to face the bright lights before he can feel rough fingers trying to pull at the leather straps keeping him bound. He can’t tell who it is.
“Hurry up!” the same voice that called his name earlier screams, and the tugging on his binds quickens considerably. He can’t speak.
Who are you?
“Yixing,” a different voice calls him, and something is blocking his vision of the bright lights, “Yixing, come on. Stay with us.”
Only for you.
“Yixing,” the voice keeps calling out to him. And suddenly, he feels free. Free of the straps and free of the needles keeping him hooked to the laboratory table.
Something moves underneath his back and legs, lifting up until he feels his body disconnect from the table below. He feels like he’s dead weight in this person’s hold.
“Come on!” comes a shout and he feels himself being lifted into the air even more.
“Keep running,” he hears the voice from the beginning say, “When you see any type of sign I or Yifan may give you, run.”
Yixing looks up into the night sky, the clear presence of bright streetlights and smog obstructing his view of the beautiful stars yet he smiles anyways. He’s in his home country, albeit in a different region, but he’s where he’s comfortable and knows how to get around without seeming immensely lost as to where to go.
He’s walking through the streets, holding onto his bicycle by the handles and simply bringing it along with him. He initially thought about riding it to his favorite cozy teashop but ultimately decided against it halfway there. He hasn’t felt this peaceful in a while. It seems a bit odd to him.
He’s busy looking up at the growing familiar lights that he doesn’t even notice the wilting flower he passes by before finally arriving at the shop and parking his bike next to the entrance. When he enters, he chuckles lightly at seeing the owner dozing off, head on his propped up hand seeming to be waiting for him to come in at his regular time. His smile softens as he walks up to him and gently shakes him awake, asking if it’s okay to get the regular and apologizing that he always comes so late. The owner brushes it off, telling him to go sit at his regular table, and Yixing just smiles again, thanking him politely like he’s always done.
Yixing doesn’t really remember much before he arrived to the Yunnan province. He just remembers waking up in a small bed with a thick blanket on top of him and a cell phone next to him with only nine other numbers in it. There was also a small keyboard piano in the corner of the room as well as a small bathroom. The only thing the apartment really lacked was a proper kitchenette with cookware and food.
It’s in his dreams he remembers somebody telling him to live, run if his life depends on it.
He lets out a soft sigh as he moves his finger to his earpiece, sliding his finger up it gently to increase the volume of the recent song he just composed. He takes out his cell phone, pulling up a blank document, and stares at it, trying to think of the lyrics that would go perfectly with this tune.
The melody continues on and he smiles, visions of flowers blooming in his head as he sets to work on the words for his song. But then he feels confused when the old shop owner puts down his cup and pours his tea for him before leaving to tend to his business again. He doesn’t understand why he wrote - You are my sunshine. I need you. You are the one.
He suddenly feels something is off, the light flickering up beside him. He turns to give the structure a confusing look before turning back down to his phone to stare at the recent lyrics and then his phone glitches.
Panic flares in his chest as he sees visions of glass and hands, maybe even a picture of somebody he knows, and he quickly gets up and stumbles backwards, almost falling to his behind if he didn’t try to grab a hold of the chair still keeping his foot bound in his haste. He looks at his phone shocked before looking back up to the light lantern behind him, music cut off as he rips his headphones out from his phone and quickly takes off out the shop.
“Huh?” the old man questions, caught off-guard with his sudden leave, “Hey, young man… Wait! Are you okay?”
Yixing doesn’t wait to answer. He doesn’t hesitate to grab his bike and quickly mount it, hurrying to get away from the place with a familiar word ringing in his mind - ‘Run.’ He still doesn’t know from what.
He doesn’t notice the flower in the road coming back to life as he passes by it.
Title: A Tricky Little Thing
Pairing: Baekhyun-centered, OT12
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1.3k
Baekhyun smiles as the sun shines brightly outside, casting its warm rays inside his open apartment and making sure to chase all the darkness away. He feels warm inside, content with how he’s been living the past few months. It took so much for him to be able to live comfortably in Lyon, France, but he thinks the outcome is slowly getting better.
He turns around from the window to head to the couch, smile brightening as he sees Lu Han and Yifan sitting there, talking to each other. They both look so nice, cleaned up and not wearing the dreaded white clothes they were made to wear when they were held captive before. Lu Han’s wearing a colorful jacket, contrasting to Yifan’s black and white ensemble, but they still complement each other perfectly. They look so happy.
Baekhyun remembers a lot of things from the times they were all captured, being tested over and over again trying to see what each of their limits were. He remembers seeing Kyungsoo being the smallest yet strongest out of all of them physically. He remembers hearing Yixing being the softest, gentlest amongst them scream his lungs out at the pain coursing through his veins. He remembers feeling the soft feathers of Yifan’s strange wings that would appear half the time he was tested on, disbelieving that a man so large could look so angelic despite his sharp facial features.
“Lu Han? Yifan?” he questions when he stops next to them on the couch, watching as they stop talking to look up at him curiously. He feels water well up in his eyes at the innocence they both exude in their gazes. And then they each give him a soft smile. It finally registers they weren’t even saying anything at all. They can’t speak. It’s like watching a moving picture. “I wish you were still here.”
The images of Lu Han and Yifan slowly disperse into the air, his mind continuing to put illusions of his friends anywhere and everywhere without him knowing. He forgets.
Light can be a tricky little thing.
Baekhyun takes a deep breath as he starts to walk up the steps to a historic building, stopping halfway to turn around and make sure nobody else was following him. He always liked to take walks right before sunrise to clear his head, but sometimes others don’t approve. He hums when he doesn’t see anybody and quickly goes to turning on his music, listening to the melodic beat as he continues his way up and into the large building.
He hasn’t visited this place in a while, but he likes it. There’s an odd familiar feeling of all the passageways he can take, bringing him to a new section of the city if he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. He lightly sways back and forth as he continues to walk, looking up at the light fixtures hanging off the walls as he passes by. It’s bright enough to still make him feel comfortable.
And he thinks back to the afternoon before, seeing Lu Han and Yifan again as if they were still alive and breathing. He wonders if there was anything he could have done to help them stay alive. He wishes their freedom didn’t cost them their breaths.
He sighs as he tries to will away the depression starting to eat him up alive again. His light has been flickering inside of him ever since their leave, and he doesn’t know when it’ll finally just die out. It’ll probably happen in the dead of night while he sleeps. Maybe nobody will know he’ll be gone just like Yifan and Lu Han.
Suddenly, the light he passes by flickers and he immediately stops, looking up at it curiously to see it flicker some more before staying on. He eyes it a few minutes longer, wondering if the bulb is just about to die out, before continuing on his way, his music continuing on as if to give some meaning to his life.
He wonders how his other nine friends are doing. He hasn’t seen any of them when they first left, but he knows who is probably doing better than he is right now. Yixing, unfortunately, wasn’t one of those people at first, but they all trusted Jongin to bring the recovering man somewhere safe, away from all of them and somewhere he could survive on his own when he woke up. Hopefully, Jongin brought Yixing to a place where he would have a difficult time being spotted by any official.
Baekhyun frowns when he passes by another light fixture and it flickers, causing him to stop and stare at it again. But this time, he simply continues on even as it still flickers, only to wince and stop again when he hears a beep resound in his head. He touches his earphones curiously, taking one out and wondering what that beep was before it clicks in his head that it received a message. He frowns at the realization, fumbling for his phone in his back pocket and staring at it curiously when there’s a little icon of an envelope on the front screen.
All of a sudden, his screen flickers just like the light fixture next to him and a foreign voice enters his ear. “Someone is -”
Baekhyun’s eyes widen as he quickly turns around, watching as all the lights before instantly turn off one by one, and he runs. He runs away from the darkening hallways. He remembers why there’s an odd familiar feeling about this large area. He gasps as he narrowly avoids running into a wall, turning last minute and almost tripping as he makes his way down some steps, hoping to find a way out.
It reminds him of the maze they had to escape the first time they were caught.
His eyes widen with fear at seeing a gate coming up to him, forgotten memories of a clear forcefield keeping him away from his best friend. He gasps when he runs into it, grabbing at the metal bars and tugging at them, hoping something would give way. He stares up fruitlessly at it before turning around and leaning against it, looking around frantically and waiting for the darkness to catch up with him.
He eventually closes his eyes, more memories coming to the forefront of his mind, and he can’t help his harsh breathing. He slumps back against the metal gate, trying to make sense of everything.
“Do you know that even in the darkest moments, in the darkest of nights and the darkest of times,” he remembers Yifan quietly telling him one day long ago, staring up at the ceiling before the lights suddenly cut off and the glow-in-the-dark star stickers light up. It was such a foreign yet comforting room. “You can still see the stars?”
Baekhyun slowly opens his eyes at the words, his breathing calm, and he tilts his head to his side, seeing Yifan’s tall figure standing next to him looking up at the night sky. There are little sprinkles of light floating up from the ground around him and he looks to his other side to see Lu Han staring straight ahead of them instead. His heart beats a little faster as the sprinkles continue to grow around him until it forms a large ball of light in front of his chest and shoots out to the darkness engulfing him.
In a second, all the lights come back on and Yifan and Lu Han slowly disappear again. He breathes out a sigh of relief as he slumps back even more, falling to the ground as tears fall down his cheeks. He wants to see his friends again. All of them.
“I miss you,” he whispers into the fading night, the sun slowly and surely rising behind him.
Pairing: OT12, hinted!kaisoo
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1.1k
Summary: With everything they’ve been through, it should mean something.
“Kyungsoo,” Lu Han calls out softly. He looks happy, content, as he contemplates his words before speaking again. “You’ll be able to tell, right? With your power?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t understand, brows furrowing in confusion as he stares at his friend before the other looks away back up towards the never-ending blue and purple shaded sky. He stares at him a bit longer, admiring the smooth skin and finally being able to see the one scar on the man’s upper lip, mostly healed but still visible in the bright daylight.
“You’ll know when it’s time to go back, right? You should be able to tell when it’s the time to go back home.”
Kyungsoo wants to say, “No, I can’t tell - I don’t understand,” but Lu Han is turning to give him a small smile and the air is taken out of his lungs.
“Infuse the ashes that will be given to you into my ten remaining crystal balls. Keep watch over them. Okay, Kyungsoo?”
He doesn’t understand. There are twelve of them. Whose ashes is he talking about?
“You’re the only one who will remember and understand.”
Kyungsoo frowns as he stares up into the blue sky, headphones resting around his neck as music plays softly through them. There’s a nice piano melody playing and it’s the only thing keeping him calm in the midst of his nightmares. The dream with Lu Han comes every few days and he’s done what he had asked of him months ago, after they were suddenly released from the series of probing and experiments they were subjected to for one full earth year.
He still doesn’t know what the point of it all is. They lost their powers when two of their eldest died, the scientists realizing they weren’t any different from other human beings except for the fact they had supernatural powers. They simply tried to find ways to control them in the beginning, hoping to utilize them for some sort of future war, but it never happened, not when they exhausted and experimented on Yixing to his ultimate limit. With him gone, their balance was thrown off, not so much that it changed them drastically, but enough to know one of their own was gone.
That was when Lu Han suddenly appeared in his dream in that dreadful place, being able to expand his powers even more to extend himself into another’s dream without any horrible side effects. He was able to collect the ashes the scientists turned Yixing into, finding a way to give it to him in the middle of the tests, but he was foolish to not understand the meaning of it until he poured it onto the ground and watched as the ashes disappeared within the earth underneath his feet.
Yixing came back to life unexpectedly, Kyungsoo remembering Jongdae once telling him that they are beings made of ashes. Once they pass, they turn into ashes and return into the core of life only to be born again either as the same being or into an entirely different one depending on the situation. But of course, scientists were confused and amazed, testing even more on their recovering healer and hoping to figure out what made them genetically different from the human race.
If it weren’t for Yifan and Lu Han though, Yixing would’ve probably suffered another horrible death, one that Kyungsoo didn’t even want to imagine. Because of their interference, they exhausted Yifan to his limit and tortured Lu Han to his death, and at the time, Kyungsoo didn’t know how badly that would affect them. They didn’t know their balance would be thrown off horribly with both of them gone, eventually causing each one of them to lock their powers away and try to blend in as normal human beings on this Earth instead. They knew the scientists wouldn’t want anything to do with them if they lost their powers, Junmyeon told them so and they eventually confirmed it the hard way.
Kyungsoo sighs as he puts his headphones back up, swiping his finger up on one of the sides to increase the volume, before turning to go back inside his apartment. There are books scattered everywhere ranging from wolves to medical journals about overdoses and there are candles placed in lamps still burning throughout the daylight. He looks to each one of them as he passes by to get a glass of ice cold water before going back to sitting on his favorite place on the ground where there are ten metal balls scattered next to the wall. He stares at each of them, reaching out to grab three before he resumes his habit of turning them in a circle in his palm as he thinks.
Suddenly, he sees visions of three of his friends, Jongin, Zitao, and Sehun, and he could never understand how he was able to do this in the first place. The only explanation he could think of was Lu Han but even then, he should only be able to stare into Yixing’s past life.
None of them have ever been able to correctly get in contact with the other, remembering some of Yifan’s last words telling them to always stay separated so that when the time comes, they can easily reunite to return back home without any problems. He’s the only one who knows where each of their friends are anyways.
The ice clinks in his drink as he sets it on the ground next to him and he starts at the sound, watching as all three men in his mind become frightened as well. His eyes widen when he witnesses each of their powers returning to a degree, all three of them looking around or looking back as they run, clearly confused and lost wondering why it’s happening. He gasps as Jongin suddenly disappears from his head.
There’s the long forgotten sound of crackles in the air.
He slowly looks up confused, seeing the man looking around himself surprised and wearing a long trench coat draped around his shoulders to keep the cold from infusing into his body.
It’s not cold where Kyungsoo is now.
“Jongin?” he quietly asks, quickly letting go of the balls in his hand to scatter the other seven on the floor.
Jongin doesn’t jump at the sound of his voice. He merely looks confused, turning to stare back down at him before his eyes suddenly brighten and a smile lights up his entire face. Kyungsoo’s heart starts racing, skipping a couple beats, until he hears thunder crashing inside his head. There’s a hint of a smile on his face as well.
Jongin quickly takes the two steps towards him before he falls to his knees, pulling in Kyungsoo for a tight hug. “I’ve finally found you.”
Title: My Sunshine
Pairing: Yixing-centered, OT12
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1k
Warnings: [spoilers]violence?
Yixing can’t breathe. It feels like his lungs are on fire, and it all hurts too much. There are bright lights in his eyes and needles in his arms, large leather straps tied around his body to the bed to keep him still. He wants to sleep. He wants to finally drift off to eternity and let the burn simmer underneath his skin instead of burning him alive. But he can’t. He knows he can’t because his power won’t let him.
“Yixing!” he hears someone shout, fear and panic clear in the person’s voice as he hears tables being overturned and other, older men and women screaming trying to gain control of the situation.
“How did you get in here?!” he hears somebody else scream and he has just enough strength to let his head fall to the side to try and see what’s going on.
His vision is blurry. He can’t even make out what these moving blobs in his vision are, but he does see someone moving closely up to him, gently turning his head back to face the bright lights before he can feel rough fingers trying to pull at the leather straps keeping him bound. He can’t tell who it is.
“Hurry up!” the same voice that called his name earlier screams, and the tugging on his binds quickens considerably. He can’t speak.
Who are you?
“Yixing,” a different voice calls him, and something is blocking his vision of the bright lights, “Yixing, come on. Stay with us.”
Only for you.
“Yixing,” the voice keeps calling out to him. And suddenly, he feels free. Free of the straps and free of the needles keeping him hooked to the laboratory table.
Something moves underneath his back and legs, lifting up until he feels his body disconnect from the table below. He feels like he’s dead weight in this person’s hold.
“Come on!” comes a shout and he feels himself being lifted into the air even more.
“Keep running,” he hears the voice from the beginning say, “When you see any type of sign I or Yifan may give you, run.”
Yixing looks up into the night sky, the clear presence of bright streetlights and smog obstructing his view of the beautiful stars yet he smiles anyways. He’s in his home country, albeit in a different region, but he’s where he’s comfortable and knows how to get around without seeming immensely lost as to where to go.
He’s walking through the streets, holding onto his bicycle by the handles and simply bringing it along with him. He initially thought about riding it to his favorite cozy teashop but ultimately decided against it halfway there. He hasn’t felt this peaceful in a while. It seems a bit odd to him.
He’s busy looking up at the growing familiar lights that he doesn’t even notice the wilting flower he passes by before finally arriving at the shop and parking his bike next to the entrance. When he enters, he chuckles lightly at seeing the owner dozing off, head on his propped up hand seeming to be waiting for him to come in at his regular time. His smile softens as he walks up to him and gently shakes him awake, asking if it’s okay to get the regular and apologizing that he always comes so late. The owner brushes it off, telling him to go sit at his regular table, and Yixing just smiles again, thanking him politely like he’s always done.
Yixing doesn’t really remember much before he arrived to the Yunnan province. He just remembers waking up in a small bed with a thick blanket on top of him and a cell phone next to him with only nine other numbers in it. There was also a small keyboard piano in the corner of the room as well as a small bathroom. The only thing the apartment really lacked was a proper kitchenette with cookware and food.
It’s in his dreams he remembers somebody telling him to live, run if his life depends on it.
He lets out a soft sigh as he moves his finger to his earpiece, sliding his finger up it gently to increase the volume of the recent song he just composed. He takes out his cell phone, pulling up a blank document, and stares at it, trying to think of the lyrics that would go perfectly with this tune.
The melody continues on and he smiles, visions of flowers blooming in his head as he sets to work on the words for his song. But then he feels confused when the old shop owner puts down his cup and pours his tea for him before leaving to tend to his business again. He doesn’t understand why he wrote - You are my sunshine. I need you. You are the one.
He suddenly feels something is off, the light flickering up beside him. He turns to give the structure a confusing look before turning back down to his phone to stare at the recent lyrics and then his phone glitches.
Panic flares in his chest as he sees visions of glass and hands, maybe even a picture of somebody he knows, and he quickly gets up and stumbles backwards, almost falling to his behind if he didn’t try to grab a hold of the chair still keeping his foot bound in his haste. He looks at his phone shocked before looking back up to the light lantern behind him, music cut off as he rips his headphones out from his phone and quickly takes off out the shop.
“Huh?” the old man questions, caught off-guard with his sudden leave, “Hey, young man… Wait! Are you okay?”
Yixing doesn’t wait to answer. He doesn’t hesitate to grab his bike and quickly mount it, hurrying to get away from the place with a familiar word ringing in his mind - ‘Run.’ He still doesn’t know from what.
He doesn’t notice the flower in the road coming back to life as he passes by it.
Title: A Tricky Little Thing
Pairing: Baekhyun-centered, OT12
Rating: PG-13
Length: 1.3k
Baekhyun smiles as the sun shines brightly outside, casting its warm rays inside his open apartment and making sure to chase all the darkness away. He feels warm inside, content with how he’s been living the past few months. It took so much for him to be able to live comfortably in Lyon, France, but he thinks the outcome is slowly getting better.
He turns around from the window to head to the couch, smile brightening as he sees Lu Han and Yifan sitting there, talking to each other. They both look so nice, cleaned up and not wearing the dreaded white clothes they were made to wear when they were held captive before. Lu Han’s wearing a colorful jacket, contrasting to Yifan’s black and white ensemble, but they still complement each other perfectly. They look so happy.
Baekhyun remembers a lot of things from the times they were all captured, being tested over and over again trying to see what each of their limits were. He remembers seeing Kyungsoo being the smallest yet strongest out of all of them physically. He remembers hearing Yixing being the softest, gentlest amongst them scream his lungs out at the pain coursing through his veins. He remembers feeling the soft feathers of Yifan’s strange wings that would appear half the time he was tested on, disbelieving that a man so large could look so angelic despite his sharp facial features.
“Lu Han? Yifan?” he questions when he stops next to them on the couch, watching as they stop talking to look up at him curiously. He feels water well up in his eyes at the innocence they both exude in their gazes. And then they each give him a soft smile. It finally registers they weren’t even saying anything at all. They can’t speak. It’s like watching a moving picture. “I wish you were still here.”
The images of Lu Han and Yifan slowly disperse into the air, his mind continuing to put illusions of his friends anywhere and everywhere without him knowing. He forgets.
Light can be a tricky little thing.
Baekhyun takes a deep breath as he starts to walk up the steps to a historic building, stopping halfway to turn around and make sure nobody else was following him. He always liked to take walks right before sunrise to clear his head, but sometimes others don’t approve. He hums when he doesn’t see anybody and quickly goes to turning on his music, listening to the melodic beat as he continues his way up and into the large building.
He hasn’t visited this place in a while, but he likes it. There’s an odd familiar feeling of all the passageways he can take, bringing him to a new section of the city if he wasn’t paying attention to where he was going. He lightly sways back and forth as he continues to walk, looking up at the light fixtures hanging off the walls as he passes by. It’s bright enough to still make him feel comfortable.
And he thinks back to the afternoon before, seeing Lu Han and Yifan again as if they were still alive and breathing. He wonders if there was anything he could have done to help them stay alive. He wishes their freedom didn’t cost them their breaths.
He sighs as he tries to will away the depression starting to eat him up alive again. His light has been flickering inside of him ever since their leave, and he doesn’t know when it’ll finally just die out. It’ll probably happen in the dead of night while he sleeps. Maybe nobody will know he’ll be gone just like Yifan and Lu Han.
Suddenly, the light he passes by flickers and he immediately stops, looking up at it curiously to see it flicker some more before staying on. He eyes it a few minutes longer, wondering if the bulb is just about to die out, before continuing on his way, his music continuing on as if to give some meaning to his life.
He wonders how his other nine friends are doing. He hasn’t seen any of them when they first left, but he knows who is probably doing better than he is right now. Yixing, unfortunately, wasn’t one of those people at first, but they all trusted Jongin to bring the recovering man somewhere safe, away from all of them and somewhere he could survive on his own when he woke up. Hopefully, Jongin brought Yixing to a place where he would have a difficult time being spotted by any official.
Baekhyun frowns when he passes by another light fixture and it flickers, causing him to stop and stare at it again. But this time, he simply continues on even as it still flickers, only to wince and stop again when he hears a beep resound in his head. He touches his earphones curiously, taking one out and wondering what that beep was before it clicks in his head that it received a message. He frowns at the realization, fumbling for his phone in his back pocket and staring at it curiously when there’s a little icon of an envelope on the front screen.
All of a sudden, his screen flickers just like the light fixture next to him and a foreign voice enters his ear. “Someone is -”
Baekhyun’s eyes widen as he quickly turns around, watching as all the lights before instantly turn off one by one, and he runs. He runs away from the darkening hallways. He remembers why there’s an odd familiar feeling about this large area. He gasps as he narrowly avoids running into a wall, turning last minute and almost tripping as he makes his way down some steps, hoping to find a way out.
It reminds him of the maze they had to escape the first time they were caught.
His eyes widen with fear at seeing a gate coming up to him, forgotten memories of a clear forcefield keeping him away from his best friend. He gasps when he runs into it, grabbing at the metal bars and tugging at them, hoping something would give way. He stares up fruitlessly at it before turning around and leaning against it, looking around frantically and waiting for the darkness to catch up with him.
He eventually closes his eyes, more memories coming to the forefront of his mind, and he can’t help his harsh breathing. He slumps back against the metal gate, trying to make sense of everything.
“Do you know that even in the darkest moments, in the darkest of nights and the darkest of times,” he remembers Yifan quietly telling him one day long ago, staring up at the ceiling before the lights suddenly cut off and the glow-in-the-dark star stickers light up. It was such a foreign yet comforting room. “You can still see the stars?”
Baekhyun slowly opens his eyes at the words, his breathing calm, and he tilts his head to his side, seeing Yifan’s tall figure standing next to him looking up at the night sky. There are little sprinkles of light floating up from the ground around him and he looks to his other side to see Lu Han staring straight ahead of them instead. His heart beats a little faster as the sprinkles continue to grow around him until it forms a large ball of light in front of his chest and shoots out to the darkness engulfing him.
In a second, all the lights come back on and Yifan and Lu Han slowly disappear again. He breathes out a sigh of relief as he slumps back even more, falling to the ground as tears fall down his cheeks. He wants to see his friends again. All of them.
“I miss you,” he whispers into the fading night, the sun slowly and surely rising behind him.