Channing woke up with a start, scaring both himself and the one staring down at him, their noses barely inches away from each other.
Jae shrieked as he avoided the vicious claws that aimed for his face, nearly tripping over the chair that sat beside the hospital bed. "Y- you're alive!" he exclaimed, his expression brightening despite almost getting smacked.
Channing groaned and relaxed his muscles, running his hands down his face as he realized it was just his friend...not some undead creature ready to pounce on him. He peeked between the gaps of his fingers up at the textured ceiling, noticing the machines sitting beside him and the open hospital curtains.
'The hospital? Why am I here?' he wondered. 'What happened? I feel perfectly fine, though?'
"Bro, do you feel okay?" Jae asked, drawing his attention towards his worried expression. "Do I need to call the doctor?"
Channing shook his head and instead pushed himself up to a sitting position on the bed. He glanced down at himself, pulling at the hospital gown that replaced his suit. "How long was I out?"
Jae reached forward to assist, only to find that his help wasn't needed at all, seeing that Channing could move around just fine. He frowned, utterly confused as he answered his question.
"I'm not sure...but noona and I ditched work the moment we received a call more than six hours ago, so I'm assuming more than that?" he said.
That long??
"Damn," Channing murmured under his breath, having realized he missed another day of work. With a sigh, he rubbed the side of his head, his hair a mess.
Jae frowned and rolled up the sleeves to his loose blazer. "What happened?" he asked in all seriousness. Jae was rarely ever serious. "You told me you were going to a school. A school. And yet, you arrive at the hospital knocked out with the doctors not knowing what the hell was wrong with you. I was going to sue this place, Chan. But noona said she'd disown me if I did."
He muttered that last part under his breath, sulking like a wronged child as he mentioned Jenna. "You know what else had us worrying?" he continued with a raise of his brows. "Even your bodyguards look traumatized, which was a sight to be seen. They were disoriented, I tell you. You have to tell me the truth. Don't try to hide anything from me..."
Channing grimaced. "I... give me a moment to think."
And honestly, Channing did try to remember. But to his frustration, his mind wasn't working as fast as he wanted to. At first, he could recall the fact that he had gone looking for a girl at the outskirts of town...then they were attacked by - what were they called?
Undeads?
And the last thing he could remember hearing before blacking out was someone asking for his forgiveness...someone telling him that he would make it up to him-
Lune.
Channing straightened up, alarmed as he remembered the poor condition Lune was in, pale and bloodied. This was not the first time this happened to him. He wasn't brought to the hospital, was he? The last time, the doctors tried to restrain him and they might try again...
He whirled towards Jae, he was still waiting for an answer from him. "Where's Lune?" he demanded to know, ignoring the questions he was asked. "He was with me. Where is he?"
Jae let out a breath, realizing that he would have to wait for his answers later. Still, he answered his friend without complaint. "About Lune-ssi," he started uncertainly, scratching the back of his head of silver. "I..."
His voice trailed off as the muffled noises on the other side of the door suddenly grew louder, and Channing could almost instantly recognize Fenn's voice speaking above the rest, though he couldn't yet make out what they were saying.
Jae's expression twisted with regret, almost helpless. "I think it's best if you see for yourself," he stressed. "No one had been able to take a step inside his room, there's a girl that keeps fighting the doctors off... We can't let your men man-handle a child, can we?"
Channing blinked. He remembered Lune was suffering from a bloody wound at the shoulder... does that mean he hadn't had it treated for the past six-plus hours?! But...if no one entered his room, that means the immortal was safe from suspicion.
He wasn't sure whether to be mad or be grateful for the girl, whoever she was.
Jae stood up and stretched his arms before reaching for a stack of clothes on the desk nearby. He threw them on Channing's lap and said, "Hurry and get changed if you're okay. The mess is getting out of control outside."
.
.
Sha-Sha tasked herself with standing guard outside the door of the hospital room they brought the immortal in, and she had spent the last several hours tirelessly fending off the black-suited bodyguards of that man named Channing, and the medical staff that tried to force their way in.
There was no way she was going to let the humans violate the immortal's bodily essence with their needles and machines, and she could not risk them trying to treat that wound on his shoulder. He promised to help her meet her grandmother's ghost, and in return, she must protect him when he needed it.
She was surrounded on all sides, around six adults towering over her. These humans...what was so hard in leaving the immortal be? They were relentless. It was to the point that she had to seal the door with demonic qi in order for her to freely fight them off without worrying about someone sneaking past her into the room.
The nurses and doctors gave her varying looks of pity and displeasure, seeing how hard she was trying to prevent them from treating the patient.
Florence, that foreigner, was left disappointed as none of his attempts to persuade her worked. "Just one," he tried to convince her once again. He knelt down on the floor to match his bulkiness to her height, looking pleadingly into her eyes. "One doctor. Let one doctor go in...please?"
Sha-Sha scowled and rejected him for the who-knows-how-many times.
The few guards that remained let out an impatient huff, one of them turning around to pinch the bridge of his nose in irritation. "Why?" Fenn asked, exasperated. "Why are you doing this? What do you want from us, Little Miss Zhu?"
"Just leave him alone!" Sha-Sha insisted. "I don't want anything. Just leave him! Alone!"
"Where is Miss Jenna?" one of them mumbled amongst themselves. "She knows how to deal with kids, right?"
But seeing how head-strong Sha-Sha was, they fell silent. They didn't have any other way to get her to cooperate. A few were tempted to just drag her off by the arm or perhaps pull a gun on her...
And so they waited. And waited. And waited.
It was like a contest to see who would break first.
A while passed without anything happening, and Sha-Sha was just about to relax, thinking it was her triumph when all of a sudden, a distinct pair of footsteps came tapping down the hall towards them, firm and strong.
She froze, goosebumps running up and down her arms and legs as the steps sounded clear, her eyes widening with terror as she did not dare to try to see who it was. She already knew. This qi...it was far greater than that of a normal human's-
She flinched as she sensed the release of killing intent into the air, immediately recognizing the frightening prowess of that of a human cultivator.
Sha-Sha was familiar with this type of fear. It was different from the fear she had of the human product, the gun. This was the type to make her really think twice about her situation, contemplating whether or not she should run to save herself from a gruesome fate.
The question was, did she cherish her life?
Yes, she did.
Human cultivators knew how to kill a demon, to destroy their soul that even they cannot be reborn in the underworld after they die. If she were to be targeted by this person...she possibly never be able to see the light of day ever again.
But...
'Without grandma, what's the point of being reborn...?'
And so she made her decision. She won't run even if she were to lose her life right here.
Sha-Sha lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut, praying that the human wouldn't notice her and just pass. They wouldn't care for such an insignificant demon as her, would they?
As if.
Bile rose in her throat, dread overfilling her chest as the pair of worn sneakers came to a stop right before her eyes. "Excuse me," he said rather conceitedly.
Fenn and Florence turned, and the others cast a narrowed gaze upon the stranger. With an oversized t-shirt and pants and streaked hair pulled back in a short tail, he didn't seem much more than some normal, trendy young man coming by the hospital for a visit.
"Is there a problem here?" he asked, and Sha-Sha stiffened, feeling his overbearing gaze fall on her.
Fenn frowned. "What? Can you help? Just move along-"
But the man ignored him and stepped forward, lowering himself so that he was peering up at Sha-Sha's face. He snorted, a look of mockery spreading across his face upon seeing her terrified eyes as she tried to stay still.
All of a sudden, there was a spur of movement, and before Sha-Sha even knew it, she was painfully lifted off her feet by the neck, and the bodyguards were thrown into a frenzy seeing such a sight.
"What the hell are you doing?" Fenn shouted, stupefied. "Put the girl down!"
The stranger found himself surrounded, guns drawn and pointed at his head. He looked side to side, unbothered as if what he was about to say was sure to change their mind.
Thankfully enough, the nurses and staff had already gone, leaving the men the only ones in the hall.
"You don't understand," the man said haughtily, tilting his head to the side. "This one here" - his hand closed tighter around Sha-Sha's neck, blocking her airway, and she desperately flailed to break free - "is not a human."
"Not human? What kind of sh*t nonsense are you spouting? Let her-"
"Listen here, sir. Do you know what a demon is?" he questioned impatiently. "Don't be tricked by a simple disguise. A demon from the underworld can only bring evil, much worse, wreak havoc with their undead puppets. But you wouldn't understand."
But they did.
To Sha-Sha's horror, their unyielding stances seemed to falter upon the mention of 'undead puppets', uncertainty flashing across their once-steady expressions. Her one hope of being spared was fading away right before her eyes.
"Now," the cultivator said. He turned and smirked at Sha-Sha's fear, qi surging through his arms and slowly beginning to chip away at her comparably small amount of demonic qi. "I'll take care of this little demon for you. And because I am so generous, I will undo the seal on the door this little brat placed- ugh-"
His cocky words were suddenly cut short as Florence seized the man by the neck, just as the way he was holding onto Sha-Sha. The foreigner's face was burning red with rage, his patience had run thin. "Let...go," he snarled. "Or I...break your neck, fils de pute."
Fenn had also recovered from his uneasiness, and this time, he had the barrel of his gun pressed against his head, the safety lock was heard clicking off. "Young man, do we need to spell it out for you?" he threatened. "Demon this, demon that. Who looks like the demon right now? It's you, don't you think? This is the last time. Hands off."
The cultivator's jaw clenched, and the look on his face seemed more pissed than scared. "Do you know what you're doing right now?" he hissed through his teeth. "I can beat all of you here if I wanted to-"
Sha-Sha's vision blotched from the lack of air and her ears rang, whimpering at her uselessness as no matter how hard she tried, she remained a dangling hostage to this one cultivator she had never met before. A sob barely escaped her mouth, tears forming at the corner of her eyes.
Please...someone help.
The door across their's suddenly burst open, and two men came rushing out, flabbergasted at the violent commotion before them. Shouts erupted once again, but she couldn't make out a single word they said.
Someone...help.
...great immortal. Please-
As if on cue, Sha-Sha felt the slight breeze of the door behind her open easy, the door that she swore she had sealed with her strongest demonic spell. A wave of relief washed over her as the shadow of that immortal's towered over them all, the humans falling dead silent altogether.
"Off." The immortal spoke, his tone soft, yet at the same time, as hard as steel.
That was all he had to say for Sha-Sha to feel her neck untighten, her senses returning to her as the cultivator obediently let her go in the air. She fell right into the immortal's extended arms and broke into a coughing fit, the air coming in and out of her mouth in painful rasps.
She clung desperately to his shirt, taking fistfuls of the cloth as she could still feel the sickening sensation of the cultivator's qi around her neck. She could only feel safe close to the immortal, as far away from the humans as she could get.
The sound of her heavy breaths returning to normal was the only thing everyone heard for a while.
Without warning, the humans suddenly cried out, causing her to flinch and yelp, thinking they were after her again. But it only took her a second to realize that the distress in their voices was not meant for her.
She glanced up the moment she felt the immortal shift his weight, only to see crimson, red blood flowing steadily down the side of his mouth to his chin, leaving dark spots on his thin shirt.