[Hellion Brothers : Book#3] Gaia's Aegis

twenty two

A/n : This chapter and the next are the hardest to write ><

"Did Seolhyun say where she's keeping your parents, D.O?" Luhan asks with a little hope.

"No, not specifically. She implied that they're here though. My best bet is that she hid them inside one of these containers."

"I think so too hyung, I've searched through every cabin and any available compartments, but I can't find them." Kai confirms D.O's suspicion.

"So what are we supposed to do now? Kai said that there are at least a thousand containers here. We won't have enough time to try to open it one by one, even if there's fifteen of us now." Everyone seems to be on the same page as Maeji as they turn to each other with concern.

"But Maeji-ssi, you and Tao-ssi can turn back the time right? Can't you just turn the time around to prevent all of this from happening?" even in this disastrous time, Inha still doesn't forget her manner. She just met Tao and Maeji once, so it's only natural that she still speaks with honorific despite the condition they are in.

"Sorry, our powers don't work that way. We can't turn the time too far back. If we combined our powers we could probably go for one hour tops. Besides, we have to be at the same location as Mr. and Mrs. Do to be able to help them. That won't work." Maeji explains to Inha as clearly as their limited time allowed her.

"Oh, I see..." Inha looks even more dejected after that.

"Wait! Maeji, we still can try to go back in time." Tao exclaims and D.O 's heart leaps with anticipation.

"What do you mean Tao?" looking at Maeji's blank expression, she clearly doesn't understand what Tao was talking about.

"Our spirits. We can travel back in time only with our mind. We can see what happened on this ship a few hours back. Even if we can't help D.O's parents right at the time, at least we can try to find out which container is holding D.O's parents. Then we go back to the present time to go straight to that container." Maeji's expression lightens as her mouth forms a soft 'O' after the explanation.

"That could be dangerous, Tao. Have you two ever tried doing this before?" Xiumin interjects.

"We have," the Leader and his anima answer in unison, "We practiced it like a month ago with the Elders, and we succeeded to travel back to three hours after a few weeks of practice. We can do this, right Maeji?" Tao reaches Maeji's hand and she nods firmly to respond.

Okay, so how will you do it and what do we all need to do?" D.O presses on, remembering the time limit on his parents' safety.

"We need to meditate to reach the state where we'll be able to detach our spirit from our body. Our previous record time to travel back for three hours and then back to present time again was forty minutes. We'll try our best to shorten the time consumed. And just fo precaution, we need Luhan hyung's power to keep us undisturbed while we're on it." Tao spills his plan. Everybody agrees right away as it was the only option they got right now.

"Luhan hyung, remember that when we reach the state where we detach our spirit from our body, you have to make sure that we're undisturbed. It's very crucial to keep us that way, otherwise, our spirit might not get back to our bodies."

Luhan nods with a serene expression while D.O winces at how calm Tao talked about a probability of his own body becoming spiritless. If there's any other way, he surely wouldn't ask this much from his friends.

"And Xiumin hyung, I trust you and D.O to handle things when I'm gone okay?"

"Don't worry Tao, we'll keep you and Maeji safe until you guys come back here." Xiumin takes his role as the eldest very perfectly, and D.O knows he's trying hard to not look nervous despite everything because if the eldest looked nervous, the others would probably freak out as well.