Refresh (Stray Kids Hwang Hyunjin)

Thirty-six

"Are you alright? You've been having your heads in the clouds all day long. Did something happen down at the river?" Hyunjin asked.

Seungmin continued staring at the wall as if he heard nothing. Hyunjin had to jab him to gain his attention.

"I met her," he simply uttered.

"Who? Met who?"

"Her. The girl I've been dreaming about."

"The girl of your dreams?"

"No. Not the girl of my dreams, the girl I've been dreaming about."

"I see no difference. Are we or are we not going to get a new Queen?"

"I mean... We might but not because of me. She loved someone else. Used to love someone else. I don't remember who but I have a feeling he was part of the royal family... Though he was not wearing a crown."

"Well then why are you so bothered about it?"

"I'm not bothered... I'm shocked. When we said our names, we just remembered each other. We were together in some different life. We were close friends."

Hyunjin blinked at him.

"Have you by any chance been messing with black magic recently?"

"What? No! You're the only one dumb enough to do that."

"I had my reasons."

"Are you honestly telling me I'm the only one who had dreams about a girl with blonde hair in Wonderland? Or had a dream about something that is all blurry? Has no one else heard gun shots in their dreams or pictures of the palace burning?"

The Fifth Prince paused.

"Those were your dreams?"

"Yeah... And I met the girl in them."

"You did?"

"Oh, look who's suddenly interested," Seungmin laughed.

"I wasn't interested until you talked about your dreams."

"Why? You're worried about me now?"

"No... When I was practicing black magic, that was exactly what I saw..."

"Really?"

"Yeah and recently I've started to have dreams about Earth. And I've never even been to Earth."

"You might have."

"What do you mean?"

"The girl, she's from Earth. And if she had something to do with me, she probably had something to do with you."

***

"You said you were going for a walk!" Jinyoung shouted.

"I was," Alex argued.

"No, you were out meeting Princes. That was so close. At least it was Seungmin... What if it wasn't? What if it was the Fifth Prince? Wait... Seungmin's friends with the Fifth Prince. You see, this is why I didn't want to let you guys out of the hut!"

"It's not my fault!"

"How isn't it?"

"I just decided to sit down at the river and take a break before coming back. I had no intentions of meeting anyone but then he came out of nowhere and sat beside me. I swear if I knew it would ruin things I would have just left him there."

"Go easy on the girl, I bet she's telling the truth," Jackson, who had arrived in Wonderland while Alex was on her walk, told him.

"She's ruining things!" Jinyoung paused for a second when he realised he wasn't the first to say that. Hyunjin had said it in their past lives.

"No, she's not. She's helping you out."

"How exactly?"

"Alex can find him on her own without our help. Why don't we just scrap the whole plot on only focus on the bigger dilemma: Naymoor."

"Jackie's right. It's working to our advantage. She found Seungmin, she can find everyone else any way she pleases. Let's just leave her to it," Amber agreed.

Jinyoung paused and looked at her.

"But the plan. It was so good a bound to work..."

"The plan has changed, Jinyoung. Alex wasn't supposed to die, Naymoor wasn't supposed to be released and we weren't supposed to go back in time. Things have changed," Jackson told him.

"Fine," the Wonderland witch finally gave in. "But if she isn't careful, I'm taking control again, got it?"

It was a rhetorical question so no one answered. Alex silently made a plan to visit the river the next day.