"Today, you rest and tomorrow we leave." Panacea told her daughter.
"Why?" Alek asked. They were currently still in the hospital bed. She had finished eating and was chatting with her cousins when her mother came. By this time, her cousins had taught her the multi mind link.
"We have been staying here for weeks, Alek. We can't stay here. We are bothersome."
"It's not, Pan. You can stay here as long as you want. You are always welcome." Minaki and Yukari came through the open door.
"Really?" Alek beamed her eyes at them. She hadn't really gotten the time to explore this magnificent place.
"Stop saying that, Minaki. You are going to regret it later when you free Alek." Panacea told her old friends and saw the quiet wife giggling in silence.
"I'm just going to explore some places. I'm not gonna cut down trees and eat fishes from the river up there." Alek pointed her fingers up.
"Are you sure about this?" Her mother sighed before she turned around and asked Minaki.
"Of course." Minaki smiled along with his wife.
"Thank you." She spoke as she jumped out of the bed.
"You can move?" Panacea widened her eyes at her daughter, who acted like a monkey to the doorway. Pain in Alek's muscles was going away slowly and, she was ninety per cent recovered when her mother came in.
"I never said I couldn't." She replied from the corridor and, her voice echoed a bit.
Panacea sighed again. "I'm sorry, Yuka and Minaki."
"It's okay, Pan. Let her have fun. She is going to miss it." Yukari replied.
"True." She nodded.
"Well, then we have a meeting with the Fumizuki clan. Would you want to join us?" Minaki asked.
"I don't think I should be there. I am not the head." Panacea declined. "But I think Alek should be there with Jin." She then looked at her nephew.
"I will call her." Jin's eyes immediately shifted to his king cobra's. It was apparent that he was going to reach her through mind-link.
"I didn't know she could do that." Yukari muttered quietly.
"No need. You also don't need to come if you don't want to. It's just going to be much more of a family gathering than clan meeting, so..." Minaki stopped before Jin could knock on her mind. The door to her head was dark brown like her hair. It looked absolutely unordinary for Jin, who has seen bright pink and other vivid coloured doors. But the designs on the door was nothing like the others. Her's had layers of intricate sunflowers on it. Those designs shined gold and white at the same time. Most of the doors he had seen never reflected lights in this world. Anyway, maybe it was a thing for heads. He hadn't had a chance to look at his and his grandparents.
"Then I will stay out on this one. It's sounds like it's not for me." Jin smiled and told them.
"Okay. Enjoy. We will be Fumizuki's territory. My son and his wife would be here. Don't hesitate to ask them for anything." Minaki spoke and exited the room with his wife in his arms. Soon, the people in the room heard something entering the water body in the sky. They must be gone now.
"We are going after Alek. She would get lost." Pollux told his aunt.
"Okay. I will be in the room with Robin. I will tell your parents that you are with Alek." Panacea told them before she went in a different direction from the twins in the corridor.
"Alek, where are you?" Rin asked his cousin as he and his brother walked out of the house. There were no signs of her.
"The b*tch?" Alek tripped on a root of a tree, hearing someone talking in her mind. She was used to visiting others from the mind, but she was not used to someone invading her. She didn't hear a knock she was supposed to hear. Her mind unlocked the invader on her own. "Who is this?"
"It's me, Rin." Rin spoke. He then saw Alek appearing in her mind. She looked troubled but fine. "So where are you?"
"I'm in a forest. The one that doesn't have the head's house." She told him. She had moved to the hill she saw the boy named Lee. She wanted to meet him again, so she came in search of him. "I'm looking for Lee. You remember, the boy we came across on our way to the house?"
'Yeah. I do, I do. Okay, but why?" He asked.
"I just want to. And I think he knows where good spots for a visitors are." Alek told him.
"Okay. We will join you. We'll look for him separately and use telepathy when we find him." Rin spoke and ended the conversation by returning to the physical world. He was actually brought back to the world when Alek disappeared from the mind.
Alek didn't get surprised when she heard 'we'. She knew Rin was his twin. So she continued to look for the boy. She was barefoot and didn't realise it until when she was on the sand between the hills. Her feet felt hot and, when she looked down, she was shoeless, but she was too lazy to go back and just continued.
When she walked for some time, she found the tree that Iris marked. The mark was still there and, she remembered this was around the place she had met Lee. "Lee?" She called. "It's the girl you met two weeks ago."
Then from behind her, she heard something dropping to the ground. She thought it was Lee and she went into the bush where the sound came from. When she cleared another bush, that was about her height, she saw something she did not expect to see.
There, it was a very tiny human with wings that looked like water. It was a fairy. Alek's widened eyes met the fairy. They were both in shock at seeing each other. The fairy had light blue coloured hair that she had on braids. It was a girl fairy. There were also some clear stones in the braids that reflected the lights from the sky.
But before Alek could really process the situation, she felt something hitting hard on her neck on the same spot her sister had hit her before. Just how many times did she need to be unconscious?
'Here we go again.' She thought as she fell on the ground with her face first. She didn't feel pain when she landed. Her spirit has already left her body. Kiryuu didn't even bother helping her.
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"Alek? Alek?" Alek felt her shoulders being shaken and opened her eyes with annoyance. It was hurting her head as her head was also going back and front. "Finally, you are awake." It was Jin who was shaking her.
"Huh?" Alek asked after she sat up herself. She found herself in the same place she had lost her consciousness. She didn't find her other cousin, though. "How did you find me?"
"I called you when I asked you where you were. So I became worried and followed your locked door." Jin was supporting her shoulders.
"Oh. Thanks. Where's Rin?" Alek asked, and just at the right time, the devil showed himself to them.
"Jin, what happened? Wait, you are awake?" Rin asked his brother as he came. He only received a call from his brother saying he found her unconscious. There was a bruise on her neck, indicating she was attacked by someone.
"Yeah. Do you know who attacked you?" He came to her side and kneeled.
"No. But before I was knocked out, I saw something that lowered my guard." Alek spoke.
"What was it?" Jin asked.
"A fairy." Alek answered after she stared deeply into their eyes.
"WHAT?!"
"WHAT?!" The twin said the same thing and made the same expression.
"What did you say?" Jin asked.
"I said I saw fae. She was tiny and had wings that looked like water." Alek told them. "I didn't intend to find her. I was calling out for Lee when I heard a noise in the background. I went to the origin of the noise and found her. But before I could do anything, someone knocked me out from the back."
The twins had their mouths hanging low. He didn't know those kinds of fairies really existed. More so in here! The stories they read about fairies differentiated fairies into four categories of elements. Fire, water, air and earth. The fairies in the sunflower field must be earth fairies, while the one that Alek encountered sounded like a water fairy.
"Okay. I understand how you ended up here. Now, let's go look for the person who attacked you and the water fairy." Jin spoke.
"What is a water fairy?" Alek asked. She didn't know about fairies being elemental. So, for the next couple of minutes, the twins explained the whole fairy thing in detail with easy explanations. "Ohh, got it."
"Now, we will move together." Rin spoke and, he helped Alek to get up.
"I suggest looking for Lee before anything else." Alek told her cousins.
"Why?" Rin asked.
"Because he knows the forest better than we do and maybe he can help us finding them."
"Okay. We will look for him first." Jin spoke next. Then they started calling out his name. Since they weren't close with him, they couldn't use mind links to connect to him.
When they looked for him for some minutes, they heard some movement from next to them and, when they waited, Lee appeared. He looked guilty as he walked to Alek and the twins.
"I'm sorry!"