It had been a quiet few hours, and it was starting to drive Hyun Soon crazy. He’d expected Fa Lian to make things a little uncomfortable, after all she was the patriarch’s daughter. He didn’t know much about her, but being from the top of the family meant she never got told no, could do what she wanted and was used to having people want to do everything for her.
If he was honest, Hyon Soon disliked her. She was nasty when she could be nice instead. She called him fat, and Xiaomei definitely didn’t like her. Hyun Soon didn’t know what to call the feeling inside himself about Xiaomei, but he knew that if she didn’t like something, neither did he.
On the other hand, Dan really liked Fa Lian. It was obvious to Hyun, at least, though maybe not to Dan himself. His eyes almost changed shape when he looked at her, Hyun thought. It would have been funny if things were normal, but everything had changed. It felt silly for him to be wondering what girl his friend liked, or what girl he liked.
Hyun Soon didn’t blame himself for his simple thoughts though. It didn’t occur to him to try and come up with a plan, because Dan, Fa Lian and Xiaomei were all so good at it. He just punched things mostly. Nothing wrong with that, he thought to himself, I’m probably the best at punching things.
Content with the simple idea of being a good enough spear that his more tactical allies could aim, Hyun decided to let them worry. He would channel his mana instead.
Find the spark. Hyun Soon’s mana burned like fire within himself. It didn’t hurt, but it moved like pure energy. He’d spoken to others about their mana and apparently it felt different for everyone. Dan said his felt like water. Xiaomei described hers as lines of colour, filling in a colourless square. His was fire. He stoked it by tensing his muscles, pushing the mana from his core against the resistance of them.
He felt the heat rise up over the pressure from the muscles and flow out to his extremities. It felt like holding onto power with his bare hands. When things were confusing, or loud, or scary, Hyun liked to feel powerful.
He had felt anything but that recently.
Running through the halls of the Jiaoduo, it had been Dan and Xiaomei who dealt with the assault from Po Daiyu and her brother. He’d just been a bystander, reacting to the situation. The same thing happened in the vault. Stupid Hyun Soon walking around with his head in the clouds because he’s so big, that’s probably what they thought. It’s definitely what Fa Lian thought, Hyun Soon was sure.
Well, he thought, the door wouldn’t have been opened without me.
That much was certain. He’d never strained his muscles harder in his life. Even now, he was aching like someone was stabbing him with fiery needles, the torn muscles not yet calmed. He’d ask Dan to soothe the aches when he could, but if he was feeling this rough then Hyun Soon could only imagine how much pain Dan was in. Most people were small compared to himself, but Dan seemed particularly tiny right now, curled at the foot of the leftmost door of the large room.
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There were seven in total, and Hyun Soon felt like he knew every single detail of each at this point. Everyone was in their own area, cycling or sleeping. With Dan, at least, you couldn’t tell. Even in the forest of Sasin, where their friendship had been forged, Hyun Soon hadn’t been sure whether the closed eyes and steady breathing had meant he was meditating or if the smaller boy had drifted off to sleep.
The door which Dan was lying under was the least intricate in its design. Not plain, but not decorative either. It was a simple door of dark wood, with the name “Kumiho” scratched in neat script underneath the handle. Hyun’s best guess towards the reason was a hopeful hint from a previous wanderer to another. He didn’t know what everyone else was thinking because everyone was being so quiet. After Fa Lian began crying, everyone had become very interested in being alone.
The other doors were much more eye-catching, and so Hyun laid the mystery of Kumiho to one side and inspected the others..
The door to Dan’s immediate right was a strange white material which none of the group recognised. The closest description they had come to was that it was like the whole door was cut from one big pearl. It would have to have been the most expensive door in the whole world, if that were true. When they knocked on it, the sound was less clear than they expected. It felt thinner than stone, and other than the white of the door itself, there was an inlay of blue. The inlay showed a scene of a snow covered mountain peak.
The next door along was definitely made of wood, like the first, but it seemed to be many hundreds of roots all squeezing together as tight as could be managed. The door seemed to thrum with energy when the hand was placed on it, as though the door itself was excited to open. Around the base of that one was a fine layer of dirt, as though blowing in from the other side.
The fourth door, in the middle of the set, was the first metal door. With a sharp design, this door was the most imposing. The black metal looked a lot like the metal of Rise and Ruin, a similar angular aggression to the design which said that it was for function, not form. The function here seemed to be keeping people out, as there was no handle or visible way to open it.
The next two seemed to be paired somehow, though the design of them was starkly different. When someone knocked on the fifth door, which was made of a strange red crystal, the same knocking came from the other side of the sixth door, which looked like blue crystal. The same wasn’t true the other way around, though. When Hyun had tried to open the blue door, everyone had acted like he was crazy, so he left it.
The last door was metal, a severe grey steel with dozens of small welds along it, creating a floral wreath of metal around the top of it. Hanging around the door and doorframe were similar pieces of art, metal that looked so well crafted it might have grown from the ground. Xiaomei was sitting near that one, occasionally looking up at the hanging metal petals. Hyun would join her, just as soon as Fa Lian stopped being so menacing.
Instead of sitting to one side, she had placed herself uncomfortably in the middle of the room. After he had paced the length of the space three times, she had shouted that his feet were making too much noise to think. It had taken a lot of self control not to throw them at her, but Hyun had managed to hold himself back. Now, he wondered if he should have bothered.
“How are you doing?” He asked Xiaomei as he found a spot next to her. She lay her head against him nearly instantly, settling into comfort before answering.
“Tired. Why did we come here again?” She asked. It should have been an easy question to answer, but it took him a while to formulate a response. At first, Hyun closed his eyes, but when he did all he could see was the awful face of the bat monster. When he opened them, they settled on the now clearly sleeping form of Guan Ah Dan.
“He needed me, and this is where he needed to go.” Surprising even himself with the answer, it was the honest truth. “It was that simple for me, I think. It felt like everything was going to change at once, and if Dan went alone… It felt important to go with him.” Without speaking, Xiaomei nodded against his arm. When her silence continued, Hyun asked her the same. “What about you?”
“The same.” There was a long pause before she answered, but Hyun put that down to tiredness. “I didn’t think we’d get stuck in here though.” Xiaomei sounded bitter, but Hyun honestly didn’t mind it at all. Fa Lian was a little spoiled but he was on another adventure with his two best friends, it didn’t matter to him where they did it.
With a start, Hyun realised that he was still holding his mana fiercely pressed against his muscles. It took some conscious effort but he managed to put a cover over the fire of his core. It seemed harder to do than usual, with Hyun Soon attributing it to the labyrinth itself. The walls seemed to be humming with energy, not making actual noise, but influencing how the mana moved around inside.
Honestly, the situation wasn’t giving Hyun Soon much of an issue at all. The feeling of the labyrinth, though, was already starting to wear on him. Hyun’s control of his mana had never been the most impressive, but even he could feel the tugging on his core. Like the labyrinth itself was trying to steal away his mana. It gave him goosebumps, and he dragged all of his energy back into his core and kept it there.
If it felt like that with his poor perception, he could only imagine what it felt like to the others.
He could only wonder at what Dan might be going through.