Guardian: The Broken World

The Coming of Nightfall

-Yunlan-

The remaining hours of the day seems to last forever for Zhao, as he was eager to get all preparations for their trip to the mountains done as soon as possible. The reason? He wanted to see his Professor and ask him to go with them. The Ghost Slayer had given his approval, but he still needed to convince him to go with him. Shen Wei was proving to be too shy and he was sure he will try to avoid him at all cost, but unfortunately for him, he wasn’t going to let him run away without a fight.

So, Zhao Yunlan keep himself busy, making reservations for them to stay in the best hotel in River Village, as well as to take care of their transportation, making countless highly strong wards for the villagers, to replace the old ones and so on. However, as he took care of the accommodations in the hotel, which wasn’t all that big, just a rural one, he make sure he was to share his room with Shen Wei and him alone.

He had found himself enjoying teasing the Professor, but more than that, he was sure that somehow his dark prince has steal his heart in one go. He never truly believed in love at first sight, but after meeting Shen Wei so unexpectedly, he had never stopped taking him out of his mind. He even felt that he knew him for a very long time, although he was certain he had never seen him before the case in his dorm.

Nonetheless, he was without a doubt love sick for someone he just met and who wasn’t even human. He didn’t care about him being a powerful ghost, nor that he may be keeping some secrets from him. The last time they talked, he failed to explain a few thing he had asked, but that was okay. He could wait for him to come along, as it was too soon for him to fully open to him or fully trusted him.

By the time he finish with the most important parts of the preparations for their trip, it was almost nightfall. As soon as he got inside Shen’s car, he wasted no time in drive back to Dragon City University. At that hour, so close to nightfall, the streets were almost empty. Most citizens were at home before nightfall, because the nights belonged to the ghost and it was the time when people were killed, mostly in very horrible ways.

Those few who dared to go out into the cold darkness, were drunks, idiots that didn’t care about their lives, monks or priests who served the Order and patrolled the street occasionally, specially trained policemen and Guardians. Wang and Sang were most active at that time, since they could sense other ghost crossing the border, although only the small fries, because they would never sense the presence of the Ghost Slayer for example, stronger ghost or a high level demon.

Usually, those were the ones they needed to fully investigate, because those they deal when on patrol, were easy to handle. The Guardian Order was huge, the city itself could not be protected by only a handful of people, even if they were special. So the Order have quite a few subdivisions, that worker under him and his selected team, however only them could take the more dangerous cases involving the strongest, crossing from the underworld or even hell, which unfortunately, was beginning to become more usual, in the last few months.

They had wonder about the reason of the increasing of stronger ghost attacking humans and have done their best trying to find the cause, but now that they know what was really going on, he could not help but pray they could restore the barrier before it was too late. And so his thoughts go back to Shen Wei, the one he was so eager to see again like a teen in love for the first time.

Soon, he parked Wei’s car and go out in good spirit. The walk toward the teacher’s dorm wasn’t long, so he found himself asking for his Professor’s room number at the reception, because he had sent home his team earlier than usual, to give them the proper time for packing their things and had forgot to ask Lin for the number.

As he walked in excitement toward the Professor’s room, he took out a lollipop from his pocket and put it on his mouth. It was a sweet one, like he like them and he hoped that having his mouth full would stop him from attempting kissing the Professor again, because he really had acted out of impulse last time and he didn’t want for Shen Wei to be scare off by his rash action.