FIREFALL, OR IN EXO WONDERLAND ▷ COMPLETE

Ankomst

CHAPTER 45: ANKOMST

No more strange creatures and surprise assaults. No more political intrigues and intricate conspiracies. No more war with the Resistance and teamwork with Kris. Things up Above will always run smoothly, predictable, mundane—at least for now. Watching the news and browsing through the Internet, the world is struggling to be pretty balanced. One day, people will be sensible enough to see that they're only fighting for a tiny blue dot in a sea of infinite possibilities. One day, it will all worth nothing. Eun-soo wished the Above world luck in achieving sane, sane peace.

Things are hard on the home front, too. Eun-soo is working hard to achieve her lifelong dream to be a theoretical physicist. She believed that the world around her has an unseen wonder and everyone has a right to discover. She fancied herself as the opener of the gate, sparking more questions to make people understand more about the world and thus, appreciate it. Being an opener is not foreign to her. Isn't she the Key of Fire: the key to the ever-burning fire of knowledge? Okay, her dreams started to sound like a bad pun. She stopped musing, leapt off her bed and opened her window.

This window had it own history. She remembered Kai leaning against the window, eyes bright but narrowed, then coming towards her to whisk her away to Wonderland. Black smoke made its Brownian dance in the air as they left Above for a land deep beneath the ground. Below, Lay was playing his guitar, singing. Tao was smiling sweetly with a cake in his hands. Baekhyun was appearing from a mysterious grin.

She could always hear and remember—insightful Suho splashing his tail in a crystalline lake, the crash and rattle of teacups as Luhan forced Chen to finish some bubble tea, the deep, thunderous voice of King Chanyeol ordering his loyal card-soldiers, Sehun's perpetual strange vocabularies and Xiumin's snowdrop sobs.

Beneath all that she could also smell D.O's delicious cooking and the stinging scent of pepper in an underground kitchen... all because of Kris. She could sneeze only by thinking of him. Oh, Kris. If only she knew how does he fare now.

Letting the morning breeze untwine her hair, she closed her eyes, reimagining Wonderland all to her mind. She might be a grown-up woman, but there was something about the combination of complexity and simplicity that called her to be there again, again and again. When the day comes and she will have children of her own, she vowed to make their eyes widen and glimmer in wonder as she relate her own adventure—masqueraded as a fairy tale. Lewis Carroll sure had never told the readers this for centuries.

Her view underwent an abrupt change.

Something white flashed before her eyes.

Thunder ripped the sky above her.

Her head made too much connections, too unbearable that she severed them. A thunder is just a thunder.

Small patters made their safe landing on the soft ground, bringing along a new calming feeling. She gazed up to the sky. It was raining.

The rain Above will seep down to Wonderland. It's the same rain nourishing two different worlds. It's the only thing that links what's above land and what's under land. More specifically, the only thing they shared. Eun-soo craned her neck out of the window and called out: "Hello, drops of rain! Can you do me a favour? Can you send Kris my message through your whispers?"

She gave herself a moment of silence. She re-analysed her words and felt her cheeks heating up. Her words reeked of Gorgonzola cheese. She scolded herself for being so pathetic. Immediately, she closed the windows and locked them.

Eun-soo put on a pink rain-coat with boots to match, and fetched an umbrella. She wanted to go outside for a while. She wasn't ignorant of the falling rain. She just wanted a peace of mind. There was a reason to be nervous: Konstantin is coming to her house for the first time after two years of recovery.