Andromeda

XIII.

 Suffice to say, I was a mess at work that following Monday. Ever since I had driven home from the shopping mall - by the insistence of Min Yoongi and Kim Seokjin over the sound of loud screaming from inside as four boys tried to calm Jeongguk down - I had been unable to think about anything that was unrelated to that past weekend. After my stunt of missing the meeting and then being completely unproductive, I honestly wonder why I wasn't fired. I just couldn't stop worrying about the last several hours at the mall.

Andromeda had vanished and hadn't come back. Apparently, there wasn't an electric power source in the mall, as I had thought. The lights and heating system had actually been powered by the star, and they all stopped working when she left. In order to be able to see and not shiver uncontrollably, a couple of the boys had made several small fires in the mall. When Yoongi and Seokjin asked me to leave, I told them that they should come with me. My house wasn't anything compared to this gigantic shopping mall, but at least the lights turned on and there was a working furnace.

They shook their heads. "No," Seokjin said. "We can't risk being seen. We're fine here."

There was another pained yell from the circle inside, and they winced. I had told them I would be coming back as soon as possible, then said they should probably go back in and help their friend.

What I hadn't realized when I said "as soon as possible" was that 'soon' was going to be really soon. That Tuesday afternoon, I slogged out of work, tired and generally drained, and made my way to my car, hoping to drown myself in cheap ramen noodles and bad TV reruns that night. But as soon as I stepped onto the pavement of the parking lot, I could feel something in the wind shift. The orange sunset became a little brighter and the air became a little warmer.

"Damn it," I whispered.

"Sorry," Andromeda said, as hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me into darkness. 

Then I found myself in the middle of the shopping mall again. I still felt the need to vomit up everything I'd eaten in the last two days, but I managed to swallow it down. Alternatively, Jeongguk looked far better than he had the last time I saw him. He still had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he had lost a fight with someone four times his weight, but his eyes were clear and he wasn't crying. Both of which were definite improvements.

"Hi," I said after a few moments of panting and swallowing harshly to keep my puke down.

"Hey," Hoseok said.

I took in one last deep breath and looked around at the boys. Jeongguk looked the worst, but I didn't think any of them looked spectacular at the moment. Still. "Looks like you guys survived," I said. "Well done. I don't know if I could have lived without running hot water."

A few of them smiled at that. "We're Korean. We're tough," Namjoon said.

I looked around for a certain girl made out of starlight. "Where is she?"

The familiar swirling mist formed on the second-floor balcony above us. "Here," a boy's voice said. I jumped. Much to my surprise, instead of a young girl sitting on the balcony, a glowing boy with short silver hair, a large chest, and a long rat's tail braid sat there.

"What the hell?" I asked.

Andromeda shrugged, the gesture hilarious with her new form. "I felt like going a little more masculine than usual today. What do you think?" The voice was oddly deep for such a soft, effeminate boy.

I examined her (him?) more closely. "Why do you kinda look like Seokjin?"

Seokjin made a weird choking noise, spitting out some of the water he'd been drinking out of a childish purple cup. "Um," he sputtered.