Chapter 6 (1/1)

--CHAPTER 6Baekhyun and Minseok had stayed awake in their dorm studying for much longer than Baekhyun had anticipated they would. Not only was it a late time when they had finished, but Baekhyun was not much of one for studying and sitting there for that many hours while cramming such information into his head was a bit strenuous for him. He knew he could read—and well—but not reading things like text books and statistical analyses of the world’s sleep patterns. It really was too much.So when Baekhyun awoke the next morning, he was weary and worn out. His round brown eyes bore little dark circles beneath them. Luckily for him, he had this day off from school and studying, so instead of going out to read, he decided to stay in his bed in his dorm room and sleep. His slender body rolled back and forth under the comforter of his bed while he slept and here and there his lips would smack in a gentle motion that made a little parting noise as they did so. Minseok had left the room much earlier, so Baekhyun had been left in solitude and silence which was comforting for him. Being a college student and all made it so solitude was hard to come by, so moments like these were quite great for someone as outside of the social loop as Baekhyun was.He slept for hours on end without being disturbed, but when the afternoon started to roll around, there was something that just had to bother his slumber.In one split second there was a flash on the side of the room opposite of Baekhyun’s bed where Minseok kept his text books and copious amounts of notes he took. “Oh no!” a deep voice soon followed the flash which Baekhyun knew as the voice of only one possible person.Baekhyun hesitantly rolled around in his bed so he could look to the other side of the dorm room—his cheeks squished into the pillow and his brown hair folded over and shifted under his head so it stood out on the top of the pillow. His eyes opened just barely and he could see just who it was that was now spontaneously in their room. To not much surprise, Baekhyun saw the tall, messy looking man standing in the corner of the room—the one he had come to know as Chanyeol.Chanyeol stood with his feet covered in notebooks and texts that were also spread out over the carpet of the dorm room floor. Minseok had generally kept his school books in such a neat pile—now they looked just as scattered as Chanyeol did. “Ah, I knocked these over…” Chanyeol mumbled guiltily while he looked up from the mess he made and over to Baekhyun on the bed. His wide eyes caught a glimpse of a small, huddled male with a blanket shrouded over his body up to his shoulders and his sleepy face hovering over a fluffy pillow. It was cute to look at, to say the least.“You did,” Baekhyun said plainly. He took some liberty with the fact that he had his voice whenever Chanyeol was around.Cautiously, Chanyeol removed his bare feet from the confines of the numerously colored note books and lined pieces of paper and when he stepped out of the pile, his right foot slipped on one of the notebooks, causing him to fall forward onto his knees.Baekhyun watched this with all curiosity and some humor. How could someone be so clumsy, he wondered, and he blinked a few times while lifting the covers off his body and sitting upward. He adjusted the white t-shirt he wore so that it fit symmetrically on his torso instead of leaning more to one side of his body.“Ah well…” Chanyeol sighed as he stood up from his kneeling position. “I came back, though,” he said with a reassuring smile while eyeing the sleepy Baekhyun.“You did,” Baekhyun said these words again, though with more positivity this time. His mouth opened to yawn—and he did so while lifting his arms into the air—and once his yawn subsided, his arms fell back to his sides and he blinked slowly, though his right eye stayed closed just a little longer than his left. “Is there a reason why you came back?”Chanyeol paused a moment like he forgot everything and then he suddenly made a complete expression of urgency with his eyes wider than usual and eyebrows arched to a height like no other. “Baek, I need your help!” he yelped. It wasn’t an exclamation that particularly answered Baekhyun’s question, but Baekhyun took it as an answer anyway.“Help?” Baekhyun’s head tilted to the side. “What do you need my help with?”“Like, everything!” Chanyeol cried out. He was sounding desperate. Then he closed his eyes briefly while shaking his head and when he opened his eyes once more he said, “It’s the beast, Baek.”The beast again. Apparently that thing was becoming more of an issue than Baekhyun had taken Chanyeol’s words to say it was. He had been hearing that roar more recently that he assumed was the beast that Chanyeol had told him of. Even so, Baekhyun could not see how he would be of any help with a situation such as this.Baekhyun breathed out heavily through his nose and folded his arms over his chest. “How could I help?” He looked away blankly.Chanyeol knotted his brows as he noted a sense of doubt in Baekhyun’s tone when he spoke. Then he took a few large steps forward with his long legs and stood in front of Baekhyun. “Baekhyun,” he said the other’s name firmly—in full this time and not as a nickname. That must have been his way of being assertive.After a loud breath of air, Baekhyun turned his head so he could look up at Chanyeol who stared firmly down at him. He puffed his lips and lifted a brow in his unenthusiastic looking expression. “What?”“Stop doubting yourself!” Chanyeol placed his left hand on his hip and then raised his right hand in the air while he looked upward and to the right. “Gosh, it’s like I have to say that every time I see you!” He waved his right hand back and forth as he said this.“Well…” Baekhyun lowered his head. “There’s much to doubt…”Their voices paused in their exchange of words as Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun whose shoulders were fallen forward and head was lowered—Chanyeol could only see the brown hair on the top of Baekhyun’s head and not his face, which Chanyeol assumed must have had some sort of sad looking expression. Chanyeol sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why is it that you have to end up feeling so down when I come to see you, Baek?” he asked slightly hypothetically. “I thought I was a nice guy…” He made a pouting expression and glanced down to see if Baekhyun was looking at him. To his surprise, the brown haired male had been.“You are nice, Chanyeol,” Baekhyun softly said. His face was quite plain.“Then please don’t act so upset!” Chanyeol exclaimed and he put his hands up in a pleading way. “And please come to help me!”Baekhyun rolled his eyes. Chanyeol was acting so cutely as he pleaded with the other… he was becoming quite hard to resist. “So what exactly is it you need help with?”“You’ll help?!”“I will.”“Okay!” Chanyeol burst and he smiled while closing his eyes. His bright white teeth showed in his expression of glee. Quickly, Chanyeol grabbed Baekhyun up by the wrist and led him off the bed, causing him to be startled.“Wha—hey!” Baekhyun yipped at the rapid motion as he felt his wrist being pulled and as his body rose unexpectedly, he briefly felt the feeling of lag like he left his senses back on the bed while the rest of his body departed. It rushed through his head, but quickly Baekhyun was able to regain himself and he realized that Chanyeol was dragging him away. “Just… Wait!” Baekhyun tried to find words to explain that he wasn’t particularly dressed to go anywhere seeing as how he was in a t-shirt and shorts, but along being dragged, he was able to put his sandals on his toes and kick them on so they laid beneath the bottoms of his feet.Looking at them with what they wore and how Chanyeol was leading Baekhyun by the wrist—they looked just like how they had twelve years ago.“Let’s go, then!” Chanyeol cheered excitedly. He moved his hand from Baekhyun’s wrist and pressed his own palm of his hand against the palm of Baekhyun’s and then initiated a finger intertwining that caught Baekhyun completely off guard. Then with his free hand, he pulled out the object that was known as his compass and held it in the air above them.In a split second there was a flash which Baekhyun knew as part of Chanyeol’s travel, but the rest to follow was completely new to the mute college student.After the flash of bright whiteness, the two were completely shrouded in darkness. It wasn’t exactly darkness, though, since Baekhyun and Chanyeol were still able to see each other perfectly, but if it were to be described as something else, maybe like a curtain of black covering the floor, walls, and ceiling (that is, if it was any sort of room they were in). When Baekhyun’s eyes adjusted to the new surroundings, he detected that what he and Chanyeol had been striding on now wasn’t a ground or floor at all, but just an emptiness—like air.“Where are we?” Baekhyun tried to ask, but only his mouth moved and no sound came out. Was he back to being mute? Well, his words went unsounded so Chanyeol had not paused and he continued to move forward while holding Baekhyun’s hand tightly and pulling the other along.They scraped their feet over the blackness and their steps became like sprawled leaps as they went on—it was become more seemingly challenging to keep any footing on this… ground.Soon it was like the two were completely set into the air and their bodies floated upward—Chanyeol’s more willingly since it seemed he was used to this phenomenon, but Baekhyun’s more jerkily since it surprised him at first. But Baekhyun allowed his body to comply with the free floating action since Chanyeol had and he darted his Brown eyes forward to look at Chanyeol—catching a glimpse of the expression on the man’s face which was that of complete concentration and motivation. It was unlike anything Baekhyun had ever seen before.Then it came—a sudden wave like a balloon of air colliding with them from below and suddenly bursting against their floating bodies—and the two were sent vaulting upward. This went by so swiftly and abruptly that it began to scare unaware Baekhyun. Baekhyun held tightly to Chanyeol’s hand like he had never held anything before.“Chanyeol!” Baekhyun tried to call again in desperation, but alas, he was void of sound. But when they flew up and soon saw a glow above them, Baekhyun tried to call again. “Chanyeol!” he moved his lips, but when he had said the other’s name, their bodies became engulfed in a warm, white light, and like escaping from a vortex that had been sucking it in, Baekhyun’s voice came back and the name “Chanyeol” filtered into their ears through Baekhyun’s call.The light washed away and instantly the sight of a city was played before Baekhyun’s and Chanyeol’s eyes. The city was rustic looking and many trees were sprawled between the buildings and all of it was set about a greenish glow in the sky. While Baekhyun was captivated by this sight, he didn’t notice that they were coming to the ground, but he was soon aware of this as he heard Chanyeol’s deep voice say, “Brace yourself, Baek.”Baekhyun looked down toward the ground that looked like it might have been hard like dirt, but shimmered just the slightest in the light. They came fast to the ground and by Chanyeol’s words, Baekhyun prepared for a harsh impact. He expected something scary and harsh, like in an action movie where the landing on the ground from a high place was shocking and painful, but when his feet touched, all he felt was sandal meeting ground like he had just taken a small step.“Here we are,” Chanyeol stated in a matter-of-fact way as they met the ground. “Good thing you braced yourself, Baek,” he smiled and looked over to the other.“What…?” Baekhyun emptily asked. Not only was he perplexed over just what Chanyeol meant by that (and what the possibility was if he hadn’t braced himself), but he also was confused by what had just happened and what was happening now.Chanyeol removed his fingers from Baekhyun’s and sighed. “We’re in my world now.”Baekhyun nodded with still a bewildered look painted on his features. “Uh-huh…” Then he bit his lip and turned his head to look at Chanyeol. “Chanyeol, where were we just at?” he decided to ask.“Oh,” Chanyeol lifted his brows. “That was The Void. It’s not good to stay there long, you know. Or else you might lose things.”Baekhyun’s eyes widened and he looked a bit terrified.“So I’ve heard, though…” Chanyeol attempted to reassure Baekhyun, but he realized that there was much for the small college student to be taking in right now. “Don’t worry about it, though, Baek. I only use it for travel and I’ve never had any problems when I’ve been in there.”Baekhyun wondered if the fact that he couldn’t speak in there would be considered as having a problem while travelling through The Void, but since he could speak once more, he assumed it didn’t matter.The air in this world was slightly stifling, but it was also something amusing to breathe in. For Baekhyun it was like breathing in the scent of his favorite food, though no scent came from sniffing this air but the sensation correlated with that phenomenon. The greenness in the sky reminded Baekhyun of a world he had once read about in a book and he couldn’t tell if the slight dimness of the green sky meant it was getting late or not. Down the path from where they stood was the city that Baekhyun had seen when they flew into Chanyeol’s world and Baekhyun couldn’t help but think that all the buildings there looked cute in the way that they were composed of bricks and old plasters.Chanyeol caught a glimpse of Baekhyun gazing mesmerized at the city below. “That’s the city where I live,” he said. “We have to go there soon anyway.”“Really?” Baekhyun asked somewhat excitedly. He was excited by the fact that Chanyeol had lived in such a lovely looking place and also by how he would be going to such a lovely place.“Yes,” Chanyeol replied proudly. “We really should--…” Chanyeol’s words were cut off as the two suddenly heard a loud and abrupt sound that pierced within their ears, causing them to put their hands up to their ears. The two of them both knew this sound very well.After it subsided, they lowered their hands and Baekhyun’s brown eyes looked warily up at Chanyeol. “Was that…” Baekhyun started slowly.“The beast,” Chanyeol beat Baekhyun to the end of his words. He nodded partially to himself and partially to Baekhyun. “We really should be going I think.”“Okay.”Now they walked down the pathway down a hill toward the city of Chanyeol’s world. Chanyeol’s world really was somewhere special, Baekhyun decided, and even if that sound that the beast produced was one of the most (if not, the most) terrifying things he’d ever heard, Baekhyun figured that at least it would beat studying. Hopefully Minseok wouldn’t miss him too much while he’s gone, though.But that was the thing. Now that Baekhyun was here, he had no idea how long he’d be gone. In order not to make too many people worry or start to worry about someone they didn’t worry about before, Baekhyun decided that he’d make helping out Chanyeol very quick and efficient, just like the heroes in the books he read tended to do it.A/N: It's about to get exciting from here!!! Comments are always welcome o3oAlso, please follow my arts farts instagram:instagram.com/nyree_artIt's just a whole bunch of crap drawn by yours truly >.<And is anyone going to the KBS Open Concert in LA this weekend? If so, I would love to meet you there!!