Chapter 13 (1/1)

--CHAPTER 13All Baekhyun knew was that he was too afraid to look. Even though he felt like he was ready to take on anything in that fleeting and terrifying moment, he still wasn’t able to release his fingers from lying over his clenched closed eyes. After the sudden warmth and the complete loudness of the beast’s call, Baekhyun was finally able to open his eyes after realizing that he hadn’t felt the sharp pain of fangs clamping down onto his frail body. So he hadn’t been eaten or anything? When Baekhyun looked around he saw that he was somewhere that was oddly familiar. He was surrounded by a mist which had a green-ish hue about it and in some angles it would glitter in his gaze and Baekhyun could detect the sound of tiny songs being played within each bubble of mist.He knew this place—it was the place where he was first met with the beast. Wherever Baekhyun looked all he would see was the mist dancing around his body and a vastness that seemed endless. There was no one else in sight and Baekhyun began to wonder just what had happened to Chanyeol and Jongdae. Baekhyun looked around himself as much as he could, but when it finally sank in that he was alone in this place, he tried to call out to see if his friends were in any range near to him, but when he opened his mouth and attempted to call out, he was met with a choking and a sudden shortness of sound. What was that? Baekhyun lifted his hand to his throat briefly and lowered it once more and as he did so he tried to yell again, but no voice was available to him. It looked as though Baekhyun was back to being mute and when he realized this, Baekhyun’s shoulders sank and he breathed heavily through his nose.After all this time of being with Chanyeol and Jongdae and being able to talk and yet he was back to having no audible voice. Baekhyun couldn’t help but feel a sudden sense of disappointment wash over him and he pursed his lips and slowly he began to sob—a silent action that was only filled with the look of disappointment on his face and the small bubbly tears that would fall from the corners of his eyes here and there. Where were Chanyeol and Jongdae? Were they eaten and was he left alone on this place that he had no conception of what was true and what was false?Many thoughts flooded into Baekhyun’s mind and instead of going forward, possibly finding some way to search for those he knew, Baekhyun sank downward and landed his bottom on the ground which was neither hard nor soft and he placed his knees against his chest as he made a small ball of himself where he sat. Baekhyun’s hands wrapped around his legs in a way to pull them closer to himself and he continued to sob and make no sound besides his small puffs of breathing while he did so. Oh well, he supposed. Maybe Baekhyun wasn’t meant to go on and get on with getting rid of the supposedly terrible beast. What was the beast anyway? Baekhyun truly didn’t know and now that he thought about the fact that Chanyeol never bothered to elaborate on it to him or Jongdae, Baekhyun couldn’t help but begin to feel a small sense of anger welling inside as well. Baekhyun’s left hand balled into a fist and he lifted it to his cheek where he began to rub away the tears that were staining the skin there. He let out one last heavy breath of air and then sat still trying not to think about anything. Maybe if he sat like this he’d find his way back home—he thought, oddly enough—and Baekhyun was now adamant on the idea that going home was what he really needed.“Don’t tell me you’re losing your confidence again… Your drive, even?” a familiar sounding voice came into Baekhyun’s ears and it sounded as though it was whispering behind his right shoulder.Baekhyun jolted at the sudden sound and turned his head so he could meet the voice’s speaker, but alas no one was there. Too many times had Baekhyun been faced with an occurrence like this, he thought, and Baekhyun turned his head back and leaned it down to place his forehead against his rounded knees.“Hey, don’t ignore me. I’m here to help. I think you know that,” there was the voice again, this time sounding a little more pushy and certain to gain Baekhyun’s attention. It was weird listening to this voice—it wasn’t that of anyone he knew—and he quickly realized that he was hearing his own voice as he knew it.When Baekhyun noticed that he was talking with himself (that was the only way he could have described it since it was his voice after all), he lifted his head once more and looked around in an empty way since he really wasn’t sure where to look. He blinked numerous times and then made a small motion with his head that titled it to the side just a bit and it looked as though he was acknowledging the speaker.After a pause, Baekhyun heard, “You’ll listen to me then?” Baekhyun recalled hearing that same question many years ago.Baekhyun nodded and lifted his hand from his knee and made a thumbs-up toward the voice.The voice chuckled and said, “Good. Maybe you haven’t lost your drive then. You’re still willing as I see.” After that statement, Baekhyun felt a little bewildered. Where was this voice’s eyes for it to see anything, anyway? It didn’t really matter anyhow since not much in this world made sense in the grand scheme of things.When there was no sound being made between the two, Baekhyun decided it was best he would initiate something to spark words, so he used his hand to make a gesture that said something like “do go on.” He smirked when he heard the voice gasp a little like it had been spacing out and Baekhyun had suddenly just caught its attention.“Okay, if you want to get anywhere then you need to get off your ass first,” there was a sarcastic and slightly temperamental tone about the voice and Baekhyun could help but feel a strong connection within that. Just after the voice commanded it, Baekhyun pushed himself off the ground and found himself standing on his sandaled feet again. Baekhyun stirred his brown eyes back and forth, looking around just a bit and then nodding with a small sense if finality. “Now that you’re up,” the voice started again, “Look this way!” the voice seemed to yell into Baekhyun’s right ear, making Baekhyun jolt and quickly turn his entire body in that direction. When he turned, what he saw was a bubble floating just in front of him. The bubble was like how Baekhyun remembered bubbles from his childhood to be—it was large and round and whenever it was blown through the wand by a child’s wistful puff of air it would bounce a little and glimmer some colors through it that kind of looked like the shine of oil on the ground. Baekhyun tilted his head as he observed this. What was a bubble doing floating around in this vast space he was in?Baekhyun looked around and then shrugged, pointing to the bubble with a limp finger.“I need you to pop the bubble, all right?” the voice said with a small amount of urgency that was convincing enough to Baekhyun to make him move his finger toward the bubble. When Baekhyun moved himself forward to meet with the bubble, he heard the small tunes that were in the elements of the mist and as soon as Baekhyun’s finger punctured through the bubble’s layer of liquid elasticity, it burst slightly liken to a burst of some oily substance and its pieces fell to the ground only to splat and fade away. And as soon as it did this a loud song began to play—a song composed by an orchestra which was highly made of string instruments with a small brass section and only the most pivotal of percussion instruments like a cymbal and tympani. The song that escaped from the bubble’s confines was very soothing since the sound of violins could be heard playing a long melody which was slow and graceful. When Baekhyun’s ears were met with this sound he felt his eyes flutter closed and he began to bask in the melody.The voice chuckled—apparently at Baekhyun’s reaction—and said, “That was a bubble of mist. It was bigger than usual from what I can see. Wow.” Then the voice paused like it was searching around for something, maybe particularly something to say.Baekhyun opened his eyes and while still listening to the orchestral music being played which was beginning to slowly fade, he heard the voice say “Aha!” very loudly and Baekhyun jumped where he stood.“I knew it was big for a reason,” then there was a  motion within the mist that made it seem like the voice had been pointing downward and Baekhyun felt very compelled to look in that direction, so he did.When Baekhyun looked down where the bubble had burst, he noticed that there was around object lying there on the ground. As Baekhyun observed this, his eyes widened. The object there was something he recognized and Baekhyun quickly took a motion to bend downward and pick it up from the ground. Baekhyun held the object just before his eyes and peered at it curiously—he saw that it was something resembling a compass. The way that the small drawing of a compass rose was taped to the piece of rounded wood made Baekhyun realize just what he had his fingers on. Chanyeol’s compass, he thought to himself. “You’re going to need to get that if you want to get anywhere,” the voice said.As Baekhyun turned the “compass” this way and that before his eyes, he thought about just how it would help him at all. From what he knew it wasn’t really a compass that worked—its power was produced by Chanyeol’s magic. Baekhyun bit his lip while he pondered just what he had to do with this item and he was finally urged to move forward by the voice saying, “Get on with it,” in a very pushy tone. So instead of standing still and wondering longer, Baekhyun began to take his sandaled feet forward and walk through the mist, though he didn’t exactly have any sense of direction of where he was going. He walked on and on and for the longest time Baekhyun walked without hearing the sound of the mysterious voice which resembled his and after only hearing a melody from a mist bubble here and there, Baekhyun began to hear nothing at all.The silence grew further and further around Baekhyun and he soon felt a sense of danger surrounding him, though he didn’t know why or from where it sprouted. Baekhyun lifted the compass to his chest, held it against his lightly moving front, and then held it upward so he could look at it. Where are Chanyeol and Jongdae, Baekhyun wondered. Now that the voice wasn’t even saying anything to persist him to move on, Baekhyun was finding it harder to find a reason or direction in which he should keep walking through the mist. For a while the green mist would brush against Baekhyun’s cheeks and make him believe that at least he wasn’t the only thing moving in this wide place, but now the mist was moving less and less.Baekhyun stopped his steps and looked around. He noticed something of the most curious effect—the mist bubbles had paused just where they were moving and each of these particles began to sink toward the ground. Baekhyun’s eyes widened while he watched this and as the most was beginning to disappear along with all of its small songs, the air began to grow more and more stagnant around Baekhyun. He knotted his brows—he was confused and Baekhyun had no idea such a thing could occur—and just as the last bits of mist landed on the ground and disappeared there, Baekhyun noticed everything was completely still. That was very odd… The way it was reminded Baekhyun of The Void, though this place wasn’t completely pitch black but it definitely was seemingly endless.Where am I, Baekhyun asked himself as he looked at the compass with more attentiveness now. Then there was a growling behind Baekhyun like an irritated animal ready to pounce him though it was deeper and more threatening than such a thing. The sound caught Baekhyun completely off guard and in a startled feat, Baekhyun turned around to face the sound. When he turned he was faced with something else of complete surprise. It was Chanyeol standing with his hair messy atop his head, a goofy smile painted on his face, and his bare feet rubbing against one another on the ground. Baekhyun opened his name to say Chanyeol’s name, but he quickly recalled that he had no voice once again.Chanyeol said nothing which Baekhyun found completely odd since Chanyeol generally was the one to speak first when there were interactions between them. Baekhyun titled his head as he also noticed that Chanyeol hadn’t moved at all. Baekhyun took a few steps forward and reached his hand out in order to place it on Chanyeol’s shoulder when he made contact with him, but as the tips of Baekhyun’s fingers reached Chanyeol, they passed through his body—fazed through it was more of how it happened since it was so fluid and natural seeming—and Baekhyun tripped on his own step as he had not expected this, causing him to stumble forward. The Chanyeol which was now once there shoed itself to be only bubbles of mist which fell to the ground and as Baekhyun tripped through the mist bubbles, the compass fell through his fingers in an action which was definitely not purposefully. It seemed the compass was compelled to fall through Baekhyun’s fingers since it had practically broken its way through his grip.  Baekhyun’s lips fell open in a look of despair when he noticed the compass fall from his hand, but instead of watching it fall he swiftly leaned down and caught the compass in the palm of his hand just a spilt second before it hit the ground and fell into the puddle of mist which was formerly “Chanyeol.”Then something of an even odder sort happened. Just as the compass landed into Baekhyun’s hand, Baekhyun felt a brush on the back of his hand which he used to catch the compass and as he looked up to see just where the touch came from, his eyes were met with large, enthusiastic looking eyes.These eyes… They were brown and they had a glow upon them which lined the bottom of the pupils and irises and the way they were held open so widely might have been by natural instinct, but it also seemed like it possessed some sort of excitement in that way. Baekhyun couldn’t help but feel his cheeks burn when he looked into the pair of eyes in front of him and then his own eyes widened even more so.“Don’t tell me you were lost here… Just like when we were kids,” the voice belonging to the eyes said in a playfully chiding manner. Yes, the voice was deep and it had a nice ring in Baekhyun’s eagerly open ears. The eyes, the voice—it was the real Chanyeol.Baekhyun paused briefly just to take it all in, and then he gulped and nodded in a small gesture.“You’re okay, right, Baek?” Chanyeol asked. He noticed how Baekhyun looked so stunned.Baekhyun sat still. He could have nodded in response to Chanyeol’s query, but he just didn’t feel motivated enough to do so. All he could do was stare aimlessly into Chanyeol’s wistful eyes, causing Chanyeol to grow more and more concerned. As a matter of fact, he was still confused by the whole phenomenon of Chanyeol appearing in the mist and then dissipating… and now he was here? Baekhyun was totally and utterly confused.Chanyeol narrowed his eyes. “Baek,” he said softly. He hadn’t noticed that he still had his own hand lying underneath Baekhyun’s, but he had moved it before he could realize it and it was lifted toward Baekhyun. Just as Chanyeol was about to lie his fingers on Baekhyun, Baekhyun sharply flicked his wrist and lifted his hand upward, catching Chanyeol’s wrist within his fingers. Chanyeol gasped.After a pause, Baekhyun blinked and made a stern expression. He rubbed his thumb against the skin on Chanyeol’s wrist and ultimately realized that it truly was Chanyeol this time or at least a damn good duplicate of him. Baekhyun quickly moved his hand, noticing that his action was a bit odd and surprising for Chanyeol.“Hey, what’s…” Chanyeol’s head tilted back and forth and he continued to eye Baekhyun curiously. He chuckled when he noticed the strange expression on Baekhyun’s features. “Baek, say something,” he urged with a smile.Then Baekhyun glared at Chanyeol. He glared with a heated face that displayed how much he detested when someone would tell him to say something. He was mute and that was that. He couldn’t say anything. Baekhyun shook his head and lowered it and his lips puffed out while he frowned.“Baek?” there was a tone of dismay in Chanyeol’s voice. He tried to reach his hands toward Baekhyun, but all Baekhyun did was turn aside and look away from Chanyeol. “If you don’t say anything,” Chanyeol started, “then how am I supposed to know how you’re feeling—what you’re feeling?”That had been his problem his whole life, right? Baekhyun had to struggle with how no one would truly know how he was feeling because he couldn’t tell them what was on his mind. Even if he was to write it in his little notebook that he carried with him and show it to people, it still might not have come off as the message he wanted to portray. Maybe he could have written down what he wanted to say to Chanyeol? Baekhyun moved around so that he could reach into the pockets of his shorts, and he had half expected to find something in there, yet he soon realized that there was nothing in his pockets and that it should have been obvious because he hadn’t bothered to bring it with him when he ventured to Chanyeol’s world with him. He had left a lot behind when he came to this place with Chanyeol, hadn’t he? Slightly dismayed, Baekhyun blinked numerous times and he realized that he was still holding Chanyeol’s compass in his hands. He handed it over, catching Chanyeol’s attention.“Oh!” Chanyeol gasped. “My compass!” As Baekhyun held it out to him, Chanyeol took it in his fingers and held it close to his eyes. He looked at it for a few moments and then smiled to Baekhyun. “You know,” he said with slightly lowered eyes, “this thing actually never worked. I sort of lied about it.”Baekhyun’s eyes widened and then his brows furrowed. He gave Chanyeol a hard look which caused Chanyeol to lift his brows and put his hands up in a pleading way. Chanyeol shook his head. “Well, I didn’t do it to make you mad! I just needed you to listen to me and I thought that if I had a sense of direction, then it’d get you to listen easier…”After a moment of thought, Baekhyun let out a soundless breath of air. The two sat quietly, not looking at each other or really anything in particular and their shoulders would rise here and there as they breathed. Oddly for Baekhyun, there was a comfort for him despite the fact that absolutely no comforting words were being spoken. It was completely silent and Chanyeol wasn’t making any of his loud remarks nor was he smiling with wide eyes. But Baekhyun felt that with Chanyeol sitting there in front of him he could be okay. Chanyeol’s presence was what was making everything all right. Baekhyun lifted his head and gazed wistfully at Chanyeol. He looked at the wavy and messy locks atop Chanyeol’s lowered head and how his eyelashes brushed over his eyes as his eyes were looking to the ground. As Baekhyun looked upon the other, he began to forget that Jongdae was missing and forget about the people he had met along the way in this world as well as Minseok and the college professor Leeteuk. Where were they at this moment? It didn’t matter. The way Chanyeol looked created such a strong feeling of reassurance within Baekhyun that Baekhyun felt like there was nothing else he needed. Baekhyun’s hands slowly rose toward his chest and he held them there in a cupped formation as he looked at Chanyeol; Chanyeol’s fingers tangled with the “compass.”Chanyeol really was someone of beauty.“Baek,” Chanyeol said while raising his head and he broke Baekhyun out of his state of gazing and thought. He saw Baekhyun made a face like he was listening and preparing to hear what he had to say, which pleased Chanyeol. “Can I tell you something?” Chanyeol asked in a quiet way which seemed somewhat haphazard and maybe with a bit of childish instinct in how it sounded a bit worried.Baekhyun paused after hearing Chanyeol’s odd tone, and he finally nodded after a moment. Of course he would listen to him, anyway.Chanyeol gulped, lowered his eyes once more, and finally made full eye contact with Baekhyun. There was an odd shine in his eyes and with only a small opening of the lips he said, “Baekhyun, you’re the beast. It’s you.”A/N: Getting ready for college is stressful, let me tell you'''''