Super

35. many kinds of hugs

Taeyong had no idea what he was supposed to say.

He had been the one to call Shao, that was true, but he hadn't thought ahead about the conversation. The fact that she had accepted was a surprising development in itself; he had only expected her to laugh or turn him down with a joke or a glint of mischief in her eye. A glint of mischief he had got, that was for sure, but beyond that he had found his rather harsh invitation being accepted as well—and without much fuss, too.

"What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?" Shao asked, her hands resting on the balustrade. She was perched atop the railing with her head cocked to the side. Her hair was loose today, spilling over her shoulders in a curtain of black silk, and she had actually worn something that fitted her, jeans and a gray t-shirt that said Unicorns FTW.

"Unicorns don't exist," Taeyong said before he could realize what he was saying.

She glanced self-consciously down at her t-shirt, then looked back up at him with narrowed eyes. "If superheroes do, so do unicorns," she said with a sniff, moving her dangling legs with a kick. "And if that was the only thing you wanted to say, you could've said that in front of an audience."

He had to consciously make an effort not to bite his lip in indecision. They were far away from the others—visible, yes, but out of earshot at least. Taeyong looked back towards the ring of chairs, and found Baekhyun calmly flipping through holographic screens with text too small to read, but Taeyong thought he saw a penguin in the pictures somewhere.

The only reason he had had the ability to approach him and Shao to break up their little party was an ugly, alien feeling in his chest and the excessive amount of alcohol in his gut. Taeyong wasn't a drinker, and the last time he'd had any alcohol was when he'd accidentally taken someone else's drink at a birthday party for Jaemin's friend's mom.

He sucked in a breath as Shao watched him expectantly, trying to school his features into a thinking face. What could he talk about? He looked back at Shao—mostly out of a strange urge—and saw the scar that ran under her eye, looking like the jagged blade of a serrated knife in the moonlight.

"That night before the diner, you told me about the fire at the circus," he said. The words surprised him as they came out, as if he hadn't been the one to speak them. "You said the flames were white—and I know what the lighting inside a circus is like, so it couldn't have been that. Are you sure the fire was actually white?"

A flicker of something like disappointment crossed Shao's face, but not before she smothered it. "No, that was just to enhance the horror factor of the tale," she said. "You know about my superb storytelling skills."

He wanted to smile, since he hadn't exactly been looking for a proper direction for the conversation with his question, but didn't. He had thought that the inquiry had emerged from a lack of imagination, but now guessed that his overactive subconscious might actually have been on to something.

So, instead of smiling, he raised an eyebrow.

Shao, upon catching his proffering look, sobered, sighing as she turned her gaze downward. "Okay, yes," she muttered. Her tone was reluctant, though he couldn't quite figure out why. There was no reason for her to not want to talk about the issue—except, of course, he realized with a dull twinge in his heart, the trauma she associated with the event. "The flames were white."

Confusion flooded through him, leaving him stunned and silent for a few seconds, disbelieving of the fact that his meaningless words had actually gleaned something meaningful. "Are you absolutely sure?" Taeyong asked, eyebrows drawing together, making his forehead crease like a bound curtain. "Because if you aren't—"