#czennet

You ignore him. A piece of metal metal whirls by and cuts into your leg, the waters sting against your raw skin, but you keep going. You’ve come all the way down, already ventured so far—and you need to figure out exactly what’s going on. Be it beating a confession out of Doyoung or finding some trace of where Mark disappeared off to, you need to do something. Anything.

The Marquises showed up just after your meeting with Sol. Johnny recognized them and pulled you out of danger. Mark had all three of you cornered. He had two of you pinned down, and yet he only took Johnny. Doyoung knows far too much and escaped the entire incident with the least injuries. Perhaps you’re overthinking, pulling all the wrong details from your memory and stitching them into a twisted narrative, but something’s clearly amiss. You won’t find anything in the cold and swampy waters of a dark alleyway, but that won’t stop you from trying.

“We’re gonna fucking freeze to death,” Doyoung calls, struggling to keep up with you. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not worth it, ____. This is useless.”

This time you turn on him, momentarily forgetting about the cold. You grab him by the collar.

“Then explain to me exactly what all of this was.”

His eyes go wide, like those of a deer caught in headlights, but they betray no emotion. His fingers close over yours immediately, and he roughly pulls your arm away from him. “A bit much for your lover boy.”

“Not for him,” you all but growl at him. “I’m just having a difficult time trusting you and all that bullshit coming out of your mouth.” It’s a harsh truth, but it comes out weak and quivering beneath the uncontrollable chattering of your teeth. Doyoung’s right; you’re going to freeze to death before you can properly accuse him of scheming behind your back.

“What bullshit?” He’s trembling just as violently in the cold, but his movements are bold. “I know what you’ve been saying, ____. I’m not fucking deaf.” His voice jumps up in pitch: mocking, ridiculing, an utterly unflattering imitation of you. “Oh, Doyoung knows too much, he’s got too many connections, he’s too smart, oh he must be a backstabbing little fucker. Yeah? That sounds about right?”

“Exactly,” you spit, too vexed to mention the fact that your voice doesn’t sound like the muppet impression he’s doing. “Glad I don’t have to spell it out for you.”

He lets out an unimpressed laugh, but is cut short by a sneeze. Under any other circumstance, you would’ve laughed. “And? Swimming around in these shit waters is gonna help you prove that? If I had any bad intentions, I would’ve killed you ages ago.”

“Then explain. Tell me exactly what you’re after, and how you know so much about the Marquises.”

Without a doubt, you know you’ve struck a nerve with him. You’ve set him off without even meaning to; he whips around, scorn twisting his soft features in an instant. “I already told you. I’ve spent years following them. And unlike some people, I get off my ass to do my own dirty work instead of running a freak show and taking cuts where I don’t deserve it.” He stops there, but only for a moment. You give it a second, give him a chance to redeem himself through keeping his silence; but he doesn’t pay your benevolence any mind.

“Some of us don’t come from wealth like you do, you know,” he says, pushing uncomfortably far into your space until you’re forced to back away from him. “Some of us have been doing this for a long, long time, just to live. You? I’ve been watching. You can run home to mommy and daddy whenever you want. You’re just like Sol, but unlike him, you were born different from all the others.”

His words fall on you like fuel being dumped on fire. It’s enough to ignite your wrath even whilst you stand beneath the rain.

You grab him when he turns to leave, locking your arm around his and pulling him back to face you. He clearly wasn’t expecting you to attack him, because a swift manouver of your foot around his leg and push on his shoulder is all it takes for you to fling him to the ground. The ensuing splash of water has you both soaked, but you don’t care.

You plant your knee against his chest, and keep him pinned in the flood for several moments while the memories of your childhood swirl through your head. For him to know all of that—for him to think that he knows everything about you—he really was watching you.

“You must really pride yourself in knowing so much about people.” You leer at him with unrelenting anger. “You pride yourself in all your research and hardwork, in all the shit you dug up on the Link. And if that’s the case, you might want to double-check your intel.” You push down on him with a bit more of your weight, just as a warning. “Because you’ve got it all wrong with me. You found out nothing about me. You know nothing about me. What makes you think you know anything about them?”

He raises a brow nonchalantly, but you can tell your words have cut deep enough. “Alright. Noted.”

Still seething, you let go of him. You turn on your heels and walk away.

“And likewise,” he calls from behind you. “You think I have all the wrong intentions. You don’t trust me. You’ve got it all wrong too.”

“You don’t give me much reason to trust you.”

He laughs: a bitter sound that cuts through the crashing rain and cold. It’s far from warmth, but while you stand motionless in the freezing currents of the flood, you almost mistake it for that.

“I’ve been trying to take them down since the very first day of their existence,” he says, almost breathlessly. There’s a long pause. “I’m hunting the Marquises because someone I knew was one of them. They took him in, used him to build their empire, and then threw him away like garbage. If that’s not enough to convince you, I don’t know what will.”

He sits up from the water, shivering. His skin is starting to take on a blue tint, and you can only imagine that you look similar. With a sigh, you decide that you can listen to his sad sob story another time; for now, you need to get out of the rain. Intent on finding shelter, you muster a vague gesture for him to hurry up and go—but he doesn’t move.

“What is it?” You snap impatiently, watching as he strains and struggles around on the ground. He gives up a moment later, and looks up at you blankly: no trace of anger, annoyance or anything at all. With his expression still set in stone and his voice completely deadpan, he tells you:

“I think I’m stuck.”

You groan.

ELEVEN: Ten calls at eleven.

AFTER TRUDGING AROUND in the rain for several minutes, a dingy little hotel on the east side of the quarry is all you could settle for. Perhaps dingy is an understatement, because crumbling is a much better descriptor. There’s only one mattress suspended on a broken bed frame, the windows are boarded up with plywood, and Doyoung immediately finds a nest of rats in the closet. As for the bathroom, it’s barely the size of your closet, covered in suspicious stains from floor to ceiling—but at least the water is warm. At this point, it’s all you can ask for.

The reality that Johnny’s gone hits you once you’ve stripped out of your drenched clothes and stepped into the shower. You’re scrubbing the dirt from your hands when he drifts into your thoughts—silently like the steam in the shower, but persistent enough to cloud the rest of your senses. The mental image of him crashing down the sides of bridges and buildings with Mark’s hands wrapped around his neck jolts you from the warmth of the water. The shower head squeaks on the wall and spritzes a violent jet of water into your face.

He’s not dead. Not from the fall, at least. A ten metre drop into shallow water, with a mutant who would’ve tanked most of the trauma if he wanted his captive alive. There were no bodies when you went down to check, and you’ve seen Johnny survive much worse.

If he dies, it’ll be at the hands of the Marquises. And if they spare him, it’ll be so they can beat all the answers out of him. It’ll be so they can come back for you and Doyoung.

“Don’t go looking for me if I get caught, doll.” Johnny told you that once, a few minutes shy of midnight. You were about to drop into a rich CEO’s estate, crash his charity party and swipe the diamonds he had on display for the auction. Johnny leaned in to steal a kiss, fingers gentle on your chin as your limousine rolled to a stop. “I’d miss this pretty face if something happened, but I wouldn’t do the same for you.”

He’d always been direct with you, and you always understood that you were only business partners—no matter what unfolded between the two of you after hours. Later that night, after throwing the stolen diamonds in a locked safe and opening a bottle of wine, he took you over every surface imaginable in your shared hotel room. It was only ever pleasure or business for the two of you. One or the other, and absolutely nothing more. His frequent romantic gestures meant little to you; and you knew he didn’t mean them either.

So whatever unease you feel about his disappearance, it must be out of selfishness. You’re only worried that the Marquises will find you through him. You don’t care for him, but you do suppose you’ll have to find someone to replace him—

“Are you baptizing saints in there or what?!” Doyoung yells at you from outside. There’s an angry knock on the door; any harder, and he might just break it down entirely. Begrudgingly, you shut the water off.

“Finally,” He huffs once you’re dressed and out of the bathroom. “Someone’s been calling you, by the way.” He stomps inside with a small bag full of toiletries—shampoo, body wash, even a razor and shaving cream—and slams the door behind him. How he has the mind or pocket space to carry all of that around with him, you have no idea. But you do feel a little self-conscious for washing your hair with bar soap, even if it was the only thing available.

You reach into the front pocket of your bag to find your phone buzzing. Two missed calls from an unknown number, and another incoming.

You hesitate; your phone has been tapped and traced countless times in the past, and after a run-in with the Marquises themselves, answering should be the last thing you do. Fuck it, you think to yourself, and thumb the green button. In the worst case scenario, you’ll just have to toss it and get a new one tomorrow.

“Oh good, finally!”

Groaning internally in a mix of annoyance and relief, you check the number. A whole lot of 10s. You should’ve guessed.

“What do you want, Ten?” you ask, collapsing onto the bed. The metal frame shrieks in protest, and you can only hope that it doesn’t collapse beneath your weight.

“We’ve got a problem.” As if on cue, there’s a loud crash off in the distance.

“Looks like your meeting with that hottie this morning—” He lets out a loud and purposeful cough as if to cover up a mistake he very knowingly made. “Sorry. I meant, looks like your meeting with Qian Kun this morning did not go well.”

Another crash, and then a muffled scream. You can’t imagine why Ten would go through all the trouble of finding your number and contacting you if it wasn’t a real catastrophe.

“Whatever deal you made with them, however you negotiated, it didn’t work,” he says, with what almost sounds like nonchalance. “They’re already here. No sign of Kun yet, but I’m sure he’ll show at some point…”

You put him on speaker so you can check the security cameras. Sure enough, the glass door to your office has been shattered and the handle lays broken on the floor nearby. Someone ripped the blinds off of the bay view windows and made a hole through the wall in the shape of a person. Your desk is upturned in the corner, and the bottom drawer is open, completely empty.

The three vials of Neo are gone.

In panic, you check the rest of the house, only to find half the surveillance system out of order. Several sports cars are parked on the street, and it looks like there was a nasty collision in the cul de sac. There’s fighting on the ground floor, on the stairs and upper levels—there’s a mutant being thrown off the balcony when you check the cameras at the side of the house. You tap through a couple more rooms to see Ten in the kitchen, his phone held between his ear and shoulder while he rifles through the pantry.

He pulls out a forgotten box of cereal and walks away. “They’ve been here since nine, picking fights with people and kicking furniture around… said something about you stealing from them. A couple of casualties, but nothing too serious.” A gunshot rattles the speakers of your phone. “Oh! There goes Lucas. Eh, he looks fine.”

“What the hell are they doing?” you murmur, watching as one of your members is sent flying across the room.

“What do you think they’re doing, smart ass?” Ten replies through a mouthful of what must be expired cereal. You can’t even fathom how he’s eating in the middle of this, much less how he manages to escape the chaos every time. “You and Johnny clearly fucked up somewhere, so they’re taking their anger out on the rest of us.”

“Those bastards,” you let out a frustrated growl. “This is my business, not the Fence’s. We aren’t a gang.”

“We may as well be one, though,” Ten replies coyly. “____, dear, this is a good thing! People are fed up. They may not have much loyalty to you—as they shouldn’t, of course—but they’re ready to fight.”

“Cut the bullshit and get to the point.”

“We should stand together as a united front, do whatever the big bad dictators did back in the day, and fight back. I’ve had enough of these mutant fuckers kicking us around.”

It’s not too difficult to sense Ten’s ulterior motives. If the fun-loving, thrill-seeking adventure-enthusiast is looking to unite and fight for a seemingly valiant cause, then he must be looking for just that: fun, thrill, adventure. And attention—like when he intercepted Kun in the foyer to toy around with him. He wants to take charge in the spotlight.

“Organize the people yourself if that’s what you really want. I’m not coming back.”

“Wonderful,” he drawls. “And if you’re not coming back—”

Oh, so he wants to use this as an opportunity to take over completely.

“We are but a rag tagged group of money-hungry mercenaries and hit men,” you remind him. “There’s nothing for you to take control of.”

He laughs. “But there will be, soon enough. Trust me, darling.”

The line clicks, and the disorderly sounds of fighting cut into the gentle hiss of the running shower.

TWELVE: The robot nation’s inevitable takeover of the universe.

“WHERE’S YOUR FRIEND?”

Sol taps his foot impatiently against the ground, staring at you haughtily. He seems particularly impatient today: dressed a bit more haphazardly in a gold-trimmed black tracksuit, constantly checking the golden watch on his wrist, a clipboard in hand as he goes down the line of new workers.

“He fell off a bridge,” you shrug, and Sol narrows his eyes at you.

“Fell? Or jumped?” When you fail to reply, he scribbles something down on his clipboard with a golden ballpoint pen. “Jumped, probably. As you animals like to do. Well, Doyoung promised me 280 hours of work between the two of you, so… Mm, that’s all on you now. You’ve got three weeks.”

280 hours of work, divided by three weeks and then six working days, that’s basically—

“Fifteen hour shifts?!” you demand, and he only gives you a mindless nod. It doesn’t really matter to you; after all, you’re only here to clock in and take a look around. You’ll reconvene with Doyoung at the neighbouring facility afterwards, find Phenex, kill him, and move on. If Sol finds out and comes after your head, well, it won’t be the first time someone tries to kill you for skipping work.

“Find someone to cover them for you, or just suck it up.” He pats you on the shoulder patronizingly. “I’ve got a business to run, sweetheart.”

“I can cover you,” the girl standing next to you says once Sol has sauntered off. She introduced herself as Yoomi earlier, and insisted that the two of you stick together. But with all that heavy eyeliner, neon pink eyeshadow and chains draped all over her black outfit, you think it’s best to stay away from her—before she starts talking your ear off about the newest quarry fashion trends or asks you to take pictures of her for some super niche forum about the robot nation’s inevitable takeover of the universe.

“Oh really, now,” you say flatly, and she nods enthusiastically. Apparently accompanying her lack of knowledge in colour theory (the neon pink and eggplant purple streaks in her dirty blonde hair do not work well) is her inability to understand sarcasm.

“Really!” she chirps happily.

“I don’t need you to cover my shifts,” you grunt, and follow the long line of workers onto the bus. From what you’ve gathered, it’ll take you to the lowest level of the atrium, and then some hundred metres deeper into the core of the refinery. Yoomi plops down in the seat next to you just as the doors slam shut and the driver throws the vehicle lurching forwards.

“So what are you doing here?” she asks after a moment, once you’ve descended into one of the tunnels and everything floods black. You swear her hair glows in the dark too. “You don’t really look like the type of person to be working here.”

You glance around at the others: bulky figures with scarred limbs, fading ink tattoos, painful piercings, and muscles that would put even your biggest hitmen to shame. Most of the people who work in the refineries work here because it’s all they’ve known their entire lives; they were brought into the facilities by their parents, thrown left and right by the guards, roughed up a whole lot by the factory directors—until they had no choice but to stay and keep going.

“You don’t either,” you mumble, and she giggles.

“Of course I don’t, silly,” she says, hitting your shoulder playfully. Her voice drops to a low whisper, and her eyes darken with… is she going for the mysterious look? Because if she’s attempting to intrigue you, all you can see is an innocent cherub wearing too much mascara and ridiculous hair extensions—intriguing, but not in a good way. “Between you and me, I’m actually doing this for a school project. I’m doing an experiment where I only pretend to work somewhere, and this month, it’ll be here. Last month, I pretended to be a chef and accidentally gave someone food poisoning. And the month before that, I pretended to be a socialite for three weeks—“

You’ve already tuned her out.

She keeps yapping until you’ve reached your destination, at which point the man sitting behind you snaps at her to “stop holding up the fucking line, Highlighter!” She scrambles to exit, and you follow suit.

You’re met with an extensive security checkpoint the moment you step off the bus: a long corridor of conveyor belts and metal detectors, flimsy airport-esque displays of prohibited items, and security guards patrolling the walkways. Faintly, you hear Yoomi protest and say something about sticking together—but you’re already being ushered to the other line, where another worker throws your bag onto the conveyor belt and pats you down for weapons. Had you known that this would be an issue, you would have been a bit more discrete; the lady searching you seems rather unimpressed when she finds a collection of knives under your jacket and a pistol at your hip.

“Employee number?” she asks sternly, and reaches for the tablet on her desk.

“Uh.” Were you supposed to have one? “They never gave me one?”

She stares at you for a little longer, then grabs your bag from the metal detector. You brace yourself. She isn’t going to be very happy when she finds the rest of your weapons, burner phones and stacks of cash you brought along. A grimy, illegal Neo refinery is the last place you expected to find such stringent rules, but you suppose they can’t risk losing their workforce to petty knife fights.

She pulls open the front compartment of your bag and scowls, immediately waving a hand at another security guard. “This one’s tryna start a fight or sum’,” she says when he arrives, snapping a gloved finger at you. “Who hired you?”

The intercom behind her desks buzzes with an oddly-familiar voice before you can answer. “I know this one. Room 250, please.”

Begrudgingly, the woman returns your things, points at the nearest flight of stairs, then calls for the next person in line. You swing your bag back onto your shoulder and head in the direction she indicated. The stairs take you up to a catwalk, which then leads to a set of double doors. The numbers 250 are stamped in red across a black-tinted window, behind which you can make out a set of computer monitors.

The doors swing inwards on your arrival, and you step inside to find an extensive network of computers and screens. The person sitting in the corner pushes back on his swivel chair, turning around like a classic movie villain cornering his archenemy after a long, winded chase—and you come face-to-face with the last person you expected to see here.

Long streaks of platinum-blond hair, sharp eyes the colour of obsidian, and a circular black ring through the corner of his lip. He’s wearing an oversized black hoodie with tattered jeans and combat boots: a getup you would’ve never imagined him in some ten years ago, when you first met him.

“Jeno?”

He grins, his eyes crinkling into crescent moons while his lips take on a more smug look. He’s grown at least two heads taller, leaner, much stronger, but his smile has stayed unchanged. “I know you’ve probably got a machine gun in that backpack of yours but don’t go trying to blow my head off yet. I’m just trying to help.”

You don’t have a machine gun, and even if you did, it wouldn’t be a threat—you’ve been rendered speechless by his transformation.

You grew up with Lee Jeno in the rich suburbs of the upper city, attending business parties together, badmouthing your parents’ new mistresses and misters (concerning enough, there were a lot of them), sneaking out of charity auctions to indulge in greasy fast food instead. But you weren’t exactly friends, either; it was rather hard to make friends with the kids of your parents’ greatest competitors. Rich kids in general.

“What are you doing here?” you ask, taking in his surroundings quickly. Judging by the half-finished puzzle cube in his hand and the box of pizza on the table, he’s got considerable enough influence to slack off whenever he wants—that, and his authority over the intercom.

“Working,” he shrugs, and turns to grab his unfinished slice of pizza. He offers you one, and you shake your head in distaste. “Donghyuck mentioned you were coming in. Some guy showed up looking for a Moon Taeil, and in exchange, brought two people for the worker’s program. I figured it was you from the description he gave me.”

“Who? Donghyuck?” you ask, at a loss.

“Oh right… you wouldn’t know Donghyuck from back home, huh. His parents’ mining business merged with my dad’s a couple years after you left… Anyways, he goes by Sol around here.” He snaps his fingers, and an android arrives with a chair for you to sit on. “It’s Mars, by the way.”

“It’s what now?”

He blinks. “My name. They call me Mars. You know, the Roman god of war?”

“What is it with you people and naming yourselves after mythological bullshit?!” you exclaim, quite frankly fed up with the amount of information being thrown at you daily—your brain has been reduced to a tangle of overloaded circuits spluttering with sparks and discharge. Any more, and it might implode.

“So you’re looking for the Marquises,” he muses, laughing a bit at your sudden outburst. “Phenex, was it? Taeil?”

“How did you—“

“Know?”

“I mean, why are you—“

“Helping?”

You groan. Even after all these years, he hasn’t lost that miserable, droning voice and infuriating attitude. You suppose Jeno wasn’t nearly as bad as all the other trust fund kids you were forced to talk to, but after years hanging around the Fence, he’s a jarring sight.

“Let me start from the beginning,” he cackles at your confusion and spreads his hands for emphasis. “Donghyuck and I met through Dad’s stupid business. He was high off his ass one night after a party and suggested we start our own business, mass producing the one thing that actually makes you any money in this city. Business school bullshit by day, real business by night. And now, here we are.”

“And you know the Marquises on a first name basis,” you say cautiously.

“Relax, I don’t actually know any of them,” he admits through a mouthful of pizza. “But anything the Link does, it all passes through the Origin at some point. Us, I mean. The Origin.” He waves the thought aside dismissively. “Anyways, if you’re looking for Taeil, I have his room number and everything. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find him.”

Just like that? You of all people should know that Jeno doesn’t just give people things for free. He may resent his CEO parents as much as you resent yours and hate the way they run their business—but back in your old circles, the ‘rich asshole syndrome’ seemed to transcend generations regardless of family feuds. Children grew up to become carbon copies of their parents, whether or not they were truly aware of it. Even as a kid, Jeno didn’t let you borrow his things without asking for something in return. And now here he stands, moving chess pieces around on a board, directing a factory that very well brings in billions of bits a year.

Jeno seems to sense your reluctance and is quick to add, “There are at least a thousand doors in our facilities, ____. You’re free to check behind each and every one of them yourself, but I could just give you the number.” He turns back to his computer. “Yeah. I’ll go ahead and do that for you. Hm… here we are. North wing, room 283. He’s there today and tomorrow.”

He scribbles the information down on a loose sheet of paper for you, and then makes a vague gesture at the door. His fingers drift down the catwalk, up the stairs and into the far distance until he inevitably shakes his head and says, “Show any guard and tell them Mars sent you. They’ll take you there.”

“Wait, Jeno—”

“Go on now.”

“No, I mean—”

“What do we say, ____? Thank you, Jeno.”

“Why are you doing this?” you ask before he can interject again, and he gives you a smile—the same one he wore when he offered you his exam notes and then asked you to pay for them, by the number of pages you looked at. “I haven’t seen you in years and you show up just to give me this?”

“What, were you that excited to see me? You wanted the whole reunion party and shit?”

“No.”

“Then stop asking questions and get out of here,” he scoffs, already turning back to his computer.

You’ve seen some strange things in the past twenty-four hours; but a simple, seemingly normal run-in with your childhood “friend” has somehow become the strangest of them all. It doesn’t feel like a reunion either, not when he talks to you like you’re a regular employee or sends you off on what feels like a tedious errand. No goodbye, no further acknowledgement, nothing. He pops his headphones back on and pulls up the cat video he was watching earlier.

Scoffing, you crumple the note and slip it into your pocket. As if you need a written reminder for three measly numbers, or someone to escort you.

THIRTEEN: Phenex.

“SO YOU’RE TELLING ME… you got pulled over by security for the knives in your jacket.”

“Mhm.”

“Then you managed to find Taeil’s exact location.”

“Sounds about right.”

“The Moon Taeil. Marquis Phenex Taeil.”

“Yeah.”

“Through a childhood friend of yours who once, quote, ‘ate sand in the playground sandpit because you told him it was brown sugar,’ end quote.”

“You got literally all the wrong details from that, but yeah,” you grumble into the phone as you make your way down the hall. As it turned out, you did need Jeno’s note to get here—navigating the twists and turns of the facility tunnels aside, you encountered at least half a dozen security guards who wanted to break your legs just for walking around unsupervised. By the time you reached the North wing, you were practically wearing the pink piece of paper on your chest to ward off unwanted attention. How Doyoung can possibly get down here without one is completely beyond you.

“North…” You hear him mumbling to himself as you continue. “And then this way… Oh, there you are. I see you.”

You look around in confusion to find the corridor completely empty. “What?”

“I put a tracker on you last night, just in case.”

“What?!” Now you’re searching your clothes, looking all over yourself for any sign of it. You shake your pockets empty, but find only a couple of old gum wrappers and folded sticky notes. Out slips the pen you’ve been searching for since last month. “Where did you put it?”

A short burst of evil laughter. “In your breakfast, sweetheart.”

“Seriously, what the fuck is your problem?”

“Now you know what it feels like to not be trusted,” he quips back at you, barely missing a beat. “Okay, I think I’m here.” There’s a loud screech from his end—what sounds like heavy metal plates shifting against each other—and you jerk your phone away from your ear in fright. A thump, another scrape. Then the metal grate guarding the air vent in the ceiling comes crashing down, followed by a hooded figure. He somersaults upon landing and comes up on one knee, holding onto the hood of his jacket to keep it from flying off.

“Show-off,” you mumble, walking past. You hear him scrambling to catch up, so you instantly double your pace. Just to keep him on his toes.

“Those vents are fucking nasty,” he remarks, dusting himself off when he finally catches up.

“Well what were you expecting?”

He rolls his eyes. “Lucky you with your hall pass—” He comes to an abrupt stop in front of one of the doors. “Is this it?”

In your impatience to get to your destination and your eagerness to escape his sarcasm, you completely disregarded the numbers on the doors. You’ve just arrived at what looks like a laboratory: a heavy duty door marked with the same red paint you saw on the windows of Jeno’s security hub. A peeling vinyl sign on the window shows a series of warnings. Entry to the lab requires goggles, lab coats and protective gear—but considering you’ve come prepared with only weapons, you’ll have to make do with the possibility of… you check the sign. Corrosive compounds, chemical burns, biohazards, toxic fumes, radiation, the list goes on.

“Oh come on, don’t let that stop you,” Doyoung says, and pulls the door wide open.

You may as well be marching into a lion’s den.

It’s a much smaller room than you were anticipating. It’s about twice the size of your motel room, with enough floor space for two lab benches and a couple racks of equipment. The furthest wall is completely glass, and allows for a panoramic view of the production line in the neighbouring room. Other than that, it resembles a typical high school chemistry classroom: books on the shelves, chemical samples under a fume hood, and a giant styrofoam ball model of the Neo molecule hanging from the ceiling.

You stop and do a double take, unsure if your eyes are playing tricks on you.

“That can’t be him.”

Doyoung’s in a similar state: his jaw’s on the floor and his eyes are the size of teacups, filled with a mix of disbelief and horror. Because if that’s Phenex—the overlord of Neo production and the sole person responsible for developing new strains of the stuff—the Link would be selling men’s body spray on the streets of the quarry, not the most deadly substance in existence.

His face matches the image Doyoung showed you earlier, but the rest of him is leagues off from the supposed unhinged scientist and madman you were expecting. His hair’s tangled and kept in an awful mullet, the ends bleached patchy platinum and styled in gel-coated spikes. He’s wearing a counterfeit brand tracksuit, an equally tacky watch, and a stained lab coat draped over one shoulder—clearly not how you’re supposed to wear a lab coat.

“Hello?” you call out rather cautiously, and he abruptly swings around on his chair.

His eyes widen in surprise, going round with what you might even mistake for innocence. “Oh, hello.” His gaze shifts from you to Doyoung curiously. “Y’all with the plumbers? You were supposed to come and fix the toilet yesterday.”

“What toilet? What toilet in a lab?” Doyoung splutters before you can stop him, clearly distressed by your findings. He shakes his head frantically, as if to expel all of the thoughts from his consciousness. “Who are you, exactly?”

“My name’s Taeil. Moon Taeil,” he chirps, flashing you a crooked, toothy smile. “They call me Mad Eye Moony ‘round here.”

“Like Mad Eye Moody from—”

“Moon. Moon-y. Like my last name. Not moody, I don’t get moody.”

“Okay but, where’s the eye—”

Taeil points at his own eyes, as if it’s obvious. “Right here.”

Doyoung furrows his brow in frustration. “Are you mad?”

Taeil blinks. “What makes you think I’m mad?”

“It’s literally in the name—” Doyoung stops himself, and quickly turns back to you with an incredulous shake of his head. “This has to be the wrong guy. Your friend set us up.”

You frown. “He couldn’t have.”

He lowers his voice to a whisper, and pulls you back to the doorway where you’re out of earshot. “You really think he could be a Marquis? Even if it were only an act, they would never stoop down to this level of stupidity. There’s way too much pride and ego on those fuckers.”

You glance back at Taeil. Currently, he’s forgotten about your presence completely and is busy building a playing card house on the inclined surface of his keyboard. He puts down about two cards more before the thing topples over and he mumbles something unintelligible to himself. He picks up a king card and flings it across the room in some sad attempt at card throwing. He reminds you of a child—ridden with boredom but easily entertained by just about anything.

“Jeno has ties to the Link,” you reemphasize quietly. Taeil looks up, but when he goes back to his playing cards without saying anything, you can only write it off as a strange coincidence. “I don’t know what his intentions are, but he clearly said Phenex—”

Instantly, all the lights snap off. Every door in the room swings open, then slams shut and locks in place. Your gun is in your hands immediately; Doyoung’s knives glint dangerously beneath the faint light of Taeil’s keyboard and computer screen. The glass on the other side of the room must be mirrored on the other side, because the workers in the adjacent room don’t seem to notice anything.

“What’s happening?” Doyoung murmurs as if to avoid being heard, but his voice is strained.

Taeil rises from his seat calmly and stands motionless for a second, “Oh, loves… I really wish you’d taken your conversation outside. Moony doesn’t like hearing that name.”

It’s his voice, but not him. He’s lost that drawling accent, started annunciating his previously slurred words, and refined his speech in a way that’s so foreign—dark and alluring, rushing at you from almost every corner of the room like a voice from the heavens.

“It’s a shame I can’t be there in person with you. This is a rather unflattering image of the real Phenex, no?”

As if in a trance, Moony turns around and waves at you. His eyes are like black buttons sewn into his head: unblinking, unmoving, completely void of any emotion or expression. He moves like a puppet hanging from the strings of a puppeteer, limbs jerking on creaky joints, arms rotating to unnatural angles. It’s such a surreal sight, so animated and cartoonish that it’s horrific—and Doyoung must be just as affected because the next thing you know, a knife’s whizzing across the room in search of a target.

Moony—Taeil, Phenex, hell you don’t know who he is or what he is now—darts away so quickly that you mistake him for a passing shadow. The puppeteer has now mastered his art, and his puppet moves in fluid, graceful lines; he emerges from the shadows at the speed of light and has you knocked off your feet in a split second.

Your head smashes into the ground, and a violent shockwave of pain snakes through your skull, into your spine. You roll out of the way in time, just as a fist strikes the floor and punches straight through the floor tiles. He rips his hand out of the ground without hesitation and makes another swing for you. This time, his arm passes overhead and knocks an assortment of beakers off the shelf above you. Glass shards and drops of acid come down like rain, breaking your skin in more ways than one—the glass cuts, the acid burns, and an intermingling mix of the two have your entire body in flames.

Fuck. It’s one thing to stupidly go into a lab without the right gear. it’s another to get into a fistfight with a mad scientist’s mutant marionette.

Someone grabs you from behind, and you go tumbling. You black out.

When you regain consciousness a split second later, you’re on the move again, acting on instinct alone. Doyoung tosses you one of his knives—you hadn’t even noticed that you’d lost your gun in the struggle—then sends a second one hurtling at Moony. It hits him clean in the stomach, but doesn’t seem to faze him in the slightest. He rips it out of himself, the skin knits back together, and then he’s on you again.

“Get him away from the shelves,” Doyoung tells you breathlessly while you duck for cover. “There’s no knowing what’s on there. He’ll start a fire or explosion and kill us all—” you both go tumbling to escape his fists.

“You’re not helping, Doyoung!”

“Just keep him distracted! I got this, okay?”

And with that, he disappears into the shadows of the room. You’re now Moony’s sole target.

His swings are almost impossible to avoid. He catches you across the jaw once, so hard that you see stars; so hard you see all the galaxies, a fourth dimension, then some more. The blood rushes to your head when you realize Doyoung must have left you for dead. He’s after the Marquises, not some puppet controlled by one. His business here is finished, he’s left you with a murderous Florida man and already left—

A fire extinguisher crashes into the side of Moony’s head. He’s sent flying through the glass, straight into the assembly line.

Utter chaos. The workers scream, someone yells at them to run, and an alarm goes off in the far distance. Doyoung passes you your gun and takes his knife back from you and hurriedly explains, “There’s some sort of chemical weapon in the storeroom, set to detonate in about five minutes. I think Phenex set it off remotely when we got here. Grab what you can and go. Anything you can find.”

“What about you?” you ask, glancing warily at Moony. He’s sitting in a daze in the other room, struggling to heal the nasty wound in his head—but still very much alive.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” Doyoung says tightly. “I’ve got a bone to pick with this guy.”

“That’s not Taeil.”

“That’s his voice,” he shakes his head, his gaze murderous as he steps through the broken glass. You don’t dare challenge him.

At the sounds of combat only a few feet away, you fly into motion: putting the lights back on so you can see better, checking the storeroom and cabinets of the desk, ripping through the contents of the computer. You unplug the USBs from the PC and shove them into your pockets, then copy all of the remaining files onto a spare drive. Three minutes. Three minutes to finish copying documents that might very well be useless, then get the hell out of here.

Data transfer complete. Two minutes left.

There’s a resounding thud in the other room, clearly indicative of someone’s tragedy. You look up in surprise, fully expecting the worst—but to your relief, it’s only Doyoung standing over a motionless body. He turns back to you with unspoken curses behind his lips, anger smouldering in his brown eyes, and the most vengeance-hungry gaze you’ve seen from anyone. And you can’t help but wonder exactly what the Marquises did to his friend to incur such violent wrath.

But there’s no time for that.

You run, breaking through the doors just as a deadly heat erupts behind you.

FOURTEEN: Moony, Dal, and Taewoo.

YOUR SKIN FEELS RAW.

You’ve doused yourself with water already, stood soaking in a cold shower for several minutes while Doyoung looked around for medication, but it’s unbearable. At the very least, you’ve confirmed that none of the chemicals you came into contact with were biohazardous. You aren’t concussed—Doyoung’s knowledge in first aid astounds you when he could barely sew himself up the last time—but your head’s pounding uncontrollably. At any moment, you feel like it’ll all burst out of your skull.

“Here,” Doyoung says, passing you a container of antibiotic ointment, painkillers, and a glass of cold water. You nod appreciatively and knock back a pill. It hurts to swallow.

“Any luck over there?” you ask once he’s returned to his computer.

“Almost done.”

Your findings in the lab comfirmed your suspicions: Phenex has clones.

All the answers are on one of the USB drives you pulled, crammed into a password-protected zip file that Doyoung forced open earlier. But even after opening it, it was unreadable; a mess of broken code that has to be rewritten and debugged before it can display what you’re looking for. You assume the real Phenex left it in Moony’s hands thinking no one would care for it, and that the clone wouldn’t have the intelligence to access it.

“Here we go,” Doyoung murmurs after a couple minutes of silent typing. He’s still bleeding from a cut on his forehead and a nasty split in his lip, but he insisted on finishing this before taking care of it.

You trudge over, and he hits enter. The code runs. Line by line, through a couple of loops, snagging a bit at some point—you keep waiting for an error, but it never comes. The numbers start flooding in. Coordinate points, times and dates under three subheadings.

PHX 1.0 MOONY

PHX 2.0 DAL

PHX 3.0 TAEWOO

No three clones have ever been to the same place, except for the place of their creation; the very first logs show the exact same coordinates and you assume they correspond to the original Taeil’s lab. New numbers for Dal and Taewoo appear at the bottom of the screen, but Moony’s get cut off at the refinery where Doyoung killed him.

“Holy shit,” you gasp, scrolling through the rest of the chart just to make sure you’re not imagining things. “This is some shit right out of a horror movie.”

“Barely,” Doyoung scoffs at you, but it’s only teasing.

“It’s scary!” you protest. “The clones don’t even know about each other’s existence, or about the real Taeil. They get possessed by him every now and then, and if he created them as adults to begin with, they probably don’t have any memories of childhood— Ok, listen. Imagine you’re hunting a bounty.”

“Mhm. Sure.”

“And you run into a… I dunno, the guy’s name is Kim Dohyun or something. You show up to his house and boom, it’s your clone. Do you kill him?”

“Yes,” he replies flatly, without hesitation. “Because I’m clearly the superior clone.” He hands you a spare laptop, putting a definite end to the indie horror movie playing in your head. “Run the coordinates for me. We can probably figure out exactly where Phenex is and what his clones are doing if we just look at their locations.”

You figure out more than that. Coordinates lead to buildings, buildings lead to illegally-sourced security footage, and security footage leads to stalking them around the city. You map out the clones’ lives and gawk at how vastly different they are; the same bodies biologically, the same faces, but three completely separate personas.

Moony was Taeil’s first experiment, likely thrown out onto the streets when he came out the way he did, and then sent to keep an eye on the refineries from the inside. His coordinates alternate between the refinery, a tiny bedroom suite in someone’s basement, and an all-you-can-eat wings place in the quarry.

There’s Dal, a single dad with two adopted kids and three golden retrievers. You’ve deduced from his social media that his main hobbies consist of grilling sausages at neighbourhood barbecue parties, advocating for workers’ rights and trying to buy high demand baseball tickets. Nothing too out of the ordinary, though a note in Taeil’s code mentions that Dal is the only clone he’s allowed to live a normal life.

Finally, Taewoo. An eligible bachelor and company executive, and the one clone in close contact with the rest of the Link. Taeil must have modified Taewoo’s face in the process of his creation, because his professional profile shows a softer, more delicate version of the other two: clean-shaven with natural black hair, sporting expensive jewellery and a custom-made watch. Following him around the private villas of the elite and wealthy takes you straight to Jaehyun.

“He was here for four days straight. And it happens twice a month.” You elbow Doyoung lightly in the ribs and show him a photo of the house in question. “The cameras only show him going in, never out… the program stopped recording his coordinates the second he disappeared inside. For security reasons, maybe? Either way, there has to be something in there.”

“Phenex works closely with Orias, oftentimes for days at time. That must be where Jaehyun’s staying.”

“How do you know that?”

Doyoung rolls his chair over to his whiteboards and plucks Taeil’s picture away from the web of yarn. There’s a plastic sleeve of notes stapled to the back—he seems hesitant to detach them.

“I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” he says. “Look, I was so eager to tear Moony’s head off because… my friend worked with Taeil and Jaehyun in the early years of the Link. He’d go on ‘business trips’ every once in a while and say he was with his coworkers. He wouldn’t let me meet them or even tell me their names, but they had codenames for each other. Phenex and Andras. That’s what I knew them by.”

“Andras?” you question.

A shadow passes over his face, carrying some semblance of the past. “Shotaro was Orias to begin with. That was taken away from him when they killed him.” His expression hardens. “Jaehyun killed him.”

The room falls silent. You don’t know what to say; Doyoung’s not the type of person to accept condolences from a stranger, but it all feels a bit too tragic for you to ignore. Luckily, you never have the chance to say anything. He continues.

“A couple years after he died, I started hearing the name Orias on the streets again. I thought I’d gone crazy. I thought maybe he staged his own death just to run off and start a new life, but I saw the body with my own eyes. Someone left him dead for the rest of us to see. They put a mark on him, warning us not to go looking for the person who did it. At that point, I knew someone had stolen his name.”

“The leader title. Your friend… would’ve been their leader.”

He nods slowly. “I still don’t know why he would form something as horrible as the Link or what he was planning to do with it, but he must have been good at what he did. I can only assume that he built the entire empire, masterminded everything… only to die in the end. Maybe him being the youngest of them pissed the older guys off.” He takes a thoughtful pause. “All of this, all my information, I pieced it together from what little he left behind.”

“He didn’t tell you anything while he was still around?”

“No.” His response comes out in a sigh. “I knew he was up to some sort of trouble, but I didn’t know what. He was the type of guy to take his secrets to the grave.”

“You’re out for revenge, then,” you say, cautious with your words.

He musters a tired smile, to your relief. “Not a very valiant mission, I know. You’re trying to dismantle the deadliest substance trade in the city, while I’m busy avenging the guy who started it all in the first place.”

It hits you hard. When have you ever had a valiant mission? Not when you went on dangerous joyrides in high school and dated every single person your parents disapproved of just to spite them. Not when you cheated your way through most of university and landed an executive job at your parents’ business through nepotism alone. Not when you ran away, not when you sat alone in your office counting earnings and taking your cut, and certainly not now.

“I really don’t think I’m any better,” you laugh.

He raises a brow. “Then why are you still here?”

The answer is obvious, but it takes you a few moments to properly admit it to him. “Because it feels better than running away again.” Your fight in the flood resurfaces from your memories, and you recall his words from that night. “You know, I ran away from home. Cut ties with my family… cut ties with my old life. I left with nothing and I know what it’s like to not have a roof over my head. I’d rather fight back and give myself a chance at something than be hunted in the streets like an animal.”

And in the same careful manner you’d asked him your questions, he asks his own. “Were you being hunted when you ran away the first time?”

You give a content sigh at the memory—certainly not your fondest, but it’s been so long that you can look back on it without feeling the fear and trepidation you felt back then. “My first night, I ran into Johnny. I robbed a guy to buy him some weed because he talked me into it. A dare, you know. That was all. But the next thing I knew, we were scamming people out of their savings and plotting heists for diamonds. Eventually my mom hired a PI to figure out what I was actually doing. She had the cops on me every waking second after that.”

“Wow,” is all he can manage for a little bit, his gaze downcast so he doesn’t have to look at you. “Talk about bad parenting. Make your kids’ lives so miserable that they run away from home, and then hunt them down like they were never even yours to begin with.”

You send him a quizzical glance. “You speaking from experience or something?”

He huffs. “I would never tell you so much if it wasn’t for the purpose of sending these Maraquis fuckers to hell. Don’t get too comfortable.”

“Or maybe you’ve just exhausted your reservoir of social skills for today. Because if that’s the case, we can always do another day.”

“Never.”

Instead, he hands you the plastic sleeve of notes and gives you a respectful nod. Almost like he trusts you to read the only thing he has left of his friend.

“We’ll get them,” he says beneath his breath, staring wistfully at the screen of his laptop. “All of them. They’ll pay.”

FIFTEEN: A stroke of luck.

THE SHARP SMELL of cigarette smoke and cannabis fills Johnny’s lungs when he steps into the room—heavy and stifling like an impenetrable fog, all-consuming like an evil witch’s spell cast upon him. The air hangs dense with unmistakable corruption, and it only drags heavier the further he ventures: the clicking and clattering of poker chips against the gambling tables, the frequent sound of alcohol spilling from crystal containers, bits and crescents being passed around like they’re hors d’oeuvres at a dinner party. He smiles.

This is home. He’s home.

Home, where he ruled the underworld beneath the guise of an unsuspecting civilian. Where they all answered to him without even knowing who he was or what type of authority he held. Where he used to sit right hand to Orias. The men closest to the door still recognize him, and they part for him when he walks by. They do so, not entirely out of respect—he fears the attention they pay him has to do with the body he’s dragging in, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Someday, they’ll learn.

He scans the room for faces, and is pleasantly surprised to find several unfamiliar ones. They must have purged the ranks once he was cast out, and brought Earls in to replace the Marquises they eliminated. But the ones he does recognize, they all stare back at him resentfully. Forneus rises drunkenly from his seat when he catches sight of him—they had unfinished business before Johnny left, something about an unpaid debt at a fighting ring—but the masked figure next to him stops him. No one else moves. He requested this audience, and they honour it.

The noise dies down, and the smoke clears. He reaches Kun at the end of the room and throws his prisoner forward, letting her fall pitifully against the table. With her wrists still bound in front of her, she claws uselessly at the edge to keep herself upright. Johnny sighs, pins her to the table beneath his weight, and then rips the cloth bag off her head.

Long strands of jet hair spill out around her shoulders, framing a delicate face and almond-shaped eyes the colour of molten gold. Even in her distress, she’s unmistakably beautiful: golden complexion, a sculpted nose and full, red lips. Smooth skin marked by only a faint tattoo on the inside of her wrist, indicative of her time spent as an escort somewhere in the exclusive clubs of the upper city. To any other onlooker, she’s a woman of astounding beauty who turned her life around. To the Marquises, she’s still an object of possession. Kun’s, specifically.

Deathly silence.

Kun rises from his seat, angrily but with enough control that he doesn’t immediately lash out—brows furrowed, fingers tight around the glass he was drinking from, and his eyes locked on the woman in front of him. He looks up at Johnny, furious.

“What is the meaning of this?”

Johnny pushes her forward in response , roughly prompting her to speak. “Tell him what you did, darling. Tell him what you told me.”

Her eyes are glistening with tears when she looks up, and they threaten to spill down the perfect curves of her cheeks. They flit around the room in a blind panic, and Johnny knows exactly what she’s doing: matching names to faces, and confirming that everything she learned about her lover is very much real. Johnny found her in a motel on the outskirts of the quarry while he was tracking down loose ends for Kun, caught her in the middle of hiring a hitman to murder the man she fell in love with.

“I—“ Her gaze falls on Kun, and her composure shatters. An anguished sob escapes her lips, and the tears flood down her face, completely unrestrained. “I didn’t— I’m sorry!”

“What for?” Johnny presses gently, coaxing despite his impatience.

“I-I found o-out.”

“About?”

“E-every… everything.” She takes in a shaky breath before returning her gaze to Kun. “Y-you’re not, you’re not who you say you are. You’re not a lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer, darling,” Kun says gently, anger dissipating into something much more patronizing; he puts his drink down, then circles around the table to take her from Johnny’s arms. His hold is gentle. “But now, you must know that’s not all.”

Johnny laughs. “Such a smart girl. She figured out… I’d say, about ten of you? From Gamigin to Orias. She unearthed half of your supply routes and almost all of your connections with the Origin.”

Kun looks down on her mildly. “Is that true?”

She nods, trembling violently in his arms like a leaf in the wind. “I didn’t mean to— I swear, it was an accident—“

“It didn’t look like an accident to me,” Johnny corrects her. “You wanted him dead, didn’t you? You hired someone to kill him, and once he was done with, you would release all the information you’d collected to the press.”

“No!” She wails, and this time Kun hushes her lovingly. For just a moment, Johnny feels badly for putting her in such a predicament. He has his reasons for his cruelty, of course, as he does with everything—this is a mere stepping stone on the path back to Kun’s provision, and a considerable distance closer to executing the glorious picture he has in mind.

“Tell me, my love,” Kun whispers, quiet enough to leave the rest of the room in the dark. “I’m not upset with you. No one here will hurt you, I promise.”

“You kill people,” she says in a broken sob, and then whimpers helplessly at the chorus of laughs from the other Marquises. “You kill people. You’re a murderer. You lied to me for years.”

“Did you want me dead because you were afraid?”

Hesitantly, she nods, then breaks into uncontrollable hysterics. There’s another burst of quiet laughter, but Kun silences it with a wave of his hand—authority with his men, but forgiveness for his supposed lover. “Shh, it’s okay,” he murmurs, and gently brushes aside a stray piece of her hair. “It’s alright, I would never hurt you, my love.”

He kisses her forehead, marking an invisible spot for what comes next.

The ensuing gunshot shatters the silence, blasting apart every molecule of still air in the room. She falls from his arms and comes to rest motionless in a pool of her own blood.

Kun slides his gun back into its holster and sits down to finish the rest of his drink, his previous act nowhere to be seen. Anger flashes across the expanse of his face for a brief moment before subsiding into the deep crevices of his frown. “Jungwoo and Mina can stay. The rest of you out.” He locks eyes with Johnny knowingly: neither kindly nor angrily, simply acknowledging. “I’m sure you did this expecting something in return.”

Johnny allows for a slight smile. “Oh, it was a stroke of luck… pure coincidence. Or perhaps the gods guided me right to her door.”

Kun scoffs lightly, and takes the bottle from the woman sitting next to him—Ronove, Mina, who previously revealed all of Johnny’s transgressions to Jaehyun and watched idly as he was thrown from the ranks. She’s grown ever colder since he last saw her: silent and brooding, likely plotting how she can get rid of Johnny a second time.

Now clearly more at ease, Kun pours himself another glass. “That means nothing to someone who doesn’t believe in that sort of thing. What do you really want?”

Johnny knows exactly what he wants. He always has.

“Return me to my rightful place.”

Kun laughs, snide and clearly insulting. “And where’s that, Marchosias? Heaven?”

Johnny caves, now deciding that stooping low and feeding Kun’s ego is the only way for him to get what he truly wants. “At your right hand once Orias has been eliminated.”

There’s a sharp laugh from Jungwoo; he was so uncharacteristically quiet that Johnny had forgotten about him entirely. “You’ve forgotten someone, Johnny,” he says. His voice is light, but Johnny knows that tone of his. It’s a warning. He only arches a brow in reply.

Jungwoo snarls at him. “Don’t you think his right-hand man should be… perhaps someone a little more competent? Someone who didn’t immediately fuck up his end of the deal?”

“That’ll be my decision to make,” Kun snaps in agitation, clearly intent on ending the conversation before it pulls him into an uncomfortable position—as if it hasn’t already. He expertly stacks the poker chips on the table, and then reaches into his coat pocket for a set of latex gloves. Johnny isn’t even surprised that he carries those around with him. “Now, if the three of you don’t have anything more productive to discuss… I have matters to attend to.”

He bends down to examine the lifeless form of his lover. Johnny turns reluctantly towards the exit just as Mina brushes past him with unmistakable irritation. Jungwoo sends him one last warning stare before taking off after her. It feels like a rather pathetic attempt at winning them over, but he trusts that Kun will return his favour graciously some way or another. He takes his leave before he can dwell on it any longer.

“I take it didn’t go well with Aamon?”

The woman who stopped Forneus from gutting him earlier—she’s waiting for him when he leaves the room, shrouded in the shadows of the hallway and the swirling colours printed on her mask. A butterfly knife spins around her hand in a blur of silver, cutting arcs of blue between her fingers. She flicks her hand upwards and catches the blade between the two handles before slipping it away. A mindless hobby, fuelled by boredom.

“It was as much as I expected,” Johnny murmurs as she guides him into her secluded corner. She slips a taped package out from beneath her leather jacket and places it carefully in his hands: the three vials of Neo that previously went missing from the Fence.

“They’re in ruin,” she muses, smoothly slipping her hand into his while he checks the package. It’s exactly as he’d found it when he took them from right beneath Taeyong’s nose. “Taeyong’s men tore the Fence down looking for these, and now Ten’s out for revenge. I didn’t think he had it in him… but if all goes well, he’ll take care of Sabnock for us.”

“And Kimaris?”

“Fei lured him out of the country. Said she’d leave him stranded in the street without a single penny, and then get some local gang to deal with him. She’d kill him herself if she had the motivation, but alas. You know how she is.”

“Shax, ever the hard worker.” Johnny rolls his eyes.

“And you considered having her at your right hand. Be grateful I made myself infinitely more useful.”

She undoes the clasps on her mask and pulls the fabric away, revealing a cheshire grin: purely mischievous and sly, and a hint of malevolence in her black eyes. Andrealphus, the thirteenth Marquis with the appearance of a peacock and the ability to turn any man into a bird. In a sea of male demons, she fought tooth and nail for the title, turned all her victims into useless little birds as her name was to suggest—and she’s made it clear that she’ll go to the exact same lengths for Johnny. For his vision, for his ploy, for him.

“They’ll regret ever casting you out,” Yves murmurs, taking one of the containers out from its plastic case. She unscrews the lid for him.

“And they’ll regret ever doubting you,” Johnny replies.

He drinks, letting the compound seep into his veins and wrack his body with horrendous, irreversible damage—knowing that he’ll emerge from the white-hot flames of agony ever stronger.

SIXTEEN: Fast food and fugu fish.

DOYOUNG PULLS THE CAR to a stop at the side of the road, where the shadows of the magnolia trees swallow you in darkness. Up ahead, just a couple hundred yards down the street, is your final destination: a private villa of glass and white concrete, supposedly Jaehyun’s preferred meeting location when consulting very select Marquises.

You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Doyoung spent the previous night hacking into and monitoring the cameras across the street, only to come up with nothing. No one came in, no one came out. A delivery truck stopped by with a large parcel in the evening, but the side of the house obstructed your view of whoever opened the door. Even now, while the house is completely lit and you have a set of binoculars with you, you can barely see anything. The windows are foggy from the last snowfall, and the barren branches of the trees draw jagged lines across your vision.

“Can’t see anything,” you mumble. You turn the dial on the lens and zoom in a bit more, catching a blurry shot of a squirrel in the tree. The window comes into focus, but you can only see a couple shadows. “Can’t we move up?”

Doyoung seems skeptical. “And risk someone seeing us?”

“I’d rather risk being seen now than walk into them completely blind.”

He relents and shifts the gear. You creep forwards until you’re at the edge of the grove, at which point he parks and grabs his phone. “I’m calling delivery,” he says.

“What? Like, takeout?”

“Yeah.”

“Now?!”

He chuckles. “Just so we can see if anyone’s home. Relax.” He pauses for a second to scroll through the options. “What’s the worst thing we can order for them? In case someone’s home.

“Fugu fish,” you grin.

“Isn’t that a delicacy?”

“They have a deadly concentration of tetrodotoxin in all of their vital organs. Consuming it will result in a slow, excruciating death from conscious paralysis and asphyxia. So if it’s not prepared properly… well, then we’ll have one very dead Marquis and at least one less problem on our hands.”

He checks his phone. “It’s two hundred thousand bits for a tiny serving.”

“Never mind.”

He ends up ordering burgers, one set for the house and another for the two of you—the perfect last meal, according to him. When you berate him for treating it like it really is his last meal, he only laughs.

You catch a glimpse of his expression when he returns his attention to his phone. His laughter seems to shatter, breaking into the notes of tinkling wind chimes and dissolving into a bittersweet melody that reminds you of your most faded memories. His presence flickers: like he might disappear at any given moment. Almost like he wants to disappear.

“Doyoung?”

He looks up. A fleeting second of sadness in the depths of his eyes. Yet when it all departs, you don’t think you’ve ever seen him so content. Desperation wrapped in joy, relief fueled by pain. The words get caught in your throat.

“What?” he questions, arching his brow at you expectantly. Only then do you realize you’ve been staring.

You don’t think you’re in any position to ask, so out of nervousness, you blurt out the first thing that comes to mind instead: “Can we get fries?”

When the delivery man arrives twenty minutes later, he pulls up to the side of your car with visible confusion and fright. Doyoung told him to “come to the black car parked in the trees” as a special delivery instruction, and now you can only ugly cackle in amusement as he tries (and fails) to explain: he needs the rest of the order delivered to the house. It takes him at least a minute more to finally get the message across, but he tips the guy generously. After all, he already looks terrified, and you’re practically sending him to scout a lion’s den. You’re sure it’s not everyday he has to deliver to a rich, snobby neighbourhood and get pulled over by two shady people in a car.

To your relief, nothing happens. He goes up to the door, rings the bell, and waits. The seconds tick by and reach minutes, but no one answers. Eventually, he backs away from the entrance and glances in your direction as if contemplating whether or not he should give you your food back—but he must sense something’s wrong, because he immediately speeds off in the opposite direction.

“Think we scared him,” Doyoung says.

“No shit,” you scoff, eying his outfit. In his black mask and hood, he looks like he’s out for blood—which he is. “You look like a murderer.”

“Thanks. You too.”

“Thanks, I guess?”

He rolls his eyes. “Shut up and eat your food.”

Given no one’s home, you’re in no rush. You don’t consider this to be your last meal—after all, you’ve already survived Naberius and Phenex, and Orias can’t be all that bad if Doyoung came close to killing him once. But even if it isn’t, you try to enjoy it. Doyoung seems content to eat in silence, though he gives you a dirty look when you nearly get burger grease on the leather seat of his car.

“Ready?” he asks you a few minutes later, once you’ve finished your fries. He’s already taking inventory of his knives and sliding more weapons into his clothes: a couple on his belt, up his sleeves, in the soles of his shoes, one hidden on the inside of his hood. It’s a sobering reality—what you’re actually here to do.

“Fucking hell, at least let me digest for a couple minutes,” you groan, wiping the oil off your fingers. “Maybe we should’ve had something lighter, you know.”

He shrugs. “Like I said. The ideal last meal.”

“Don’t die.” The words are out before you can stop them, and you instantly wish you could pluck them out of the air, put them back in your mouth, pretend it never happened. “I mean, this isn’t the end. There’s more we could do, right? The other fourteen Marquises?”

Doyoung pauses. He doesn’t look at you. “Right.”

He leans over to open the glove compartment, and pulls out a spare pistol. He checks the barrel, refills the magazine, and offers to do yours too. You’re not too sure what he’s thinking while he does it, but you know he wants to do it in silence. So you let him.

“Don’t worry,” he tells you when he’s finished, offering you a wry smile before he gets out of the car. “It’ll take a lot more than just a couple of mutants to kill me.”

You don’t tell him, but you certainly hope what he says is true. Your fate and the hidden mysteries of the house—it’s all you can think about until you’ve expertly picked the lock on the back door and dismantled the security system.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Doyoung asks you skeptically, once you’ve slid your locksmith tools back into your bag.

“Ever heard of the Byun Estate Diamond Heist?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

You hum in contentment; you’d let him imagine the rest for himself.

Having expected him to accuse you of lying, you’re pleasantly surprised when he only laughs. “From socialite to criminal overnight,” he muses as the two of you search through the office on the first floor. “And a whole ass diamond heist. You’ll have to tell me how you pulled that one off.”

“Stay alive then.”

It’s now clear to you that the house is entirely a front for whatever Jaehyun’s hiding; the filing cabinets in the office are empty, the upper rooms reveal no trace of life, and all the appliances in the kitchen are spotless; as if someone bought the property, ordered furniture to be delivered, and then never moved in. You walk through the empty halls the way you did when your parents used to take you to house showings: aimlessly, not knowing what you’re looking for. You feel as though at any moment, a perky real estate agent will take you by the arm and introduce you to a tasteless sitting room. Glamorize the perfect view, the perfect entrance hall, the perfect floor space.

Doyoung calls your name from the ground floor, immediately pulling you out of the past. You shake your head and find yourself in the master bedroom, standing in the presence of a floor-length mirror; your reflection stares back at you blankly. Hollowly. Watching as you leave the room.

“What is it?” you ask as you come down the stairs.

He gestures at the bottom step, where you were just standing. Against the underside of the wood trim is a metal switch, no bigger than the size of your pinky nail. When he pushes it to the side, the adjacent panel of wood slides open and reveals a keyhole.

“Think you can pick this one too?”

It takes considerably longer than the one on the back door. The frame containing the hole measures only a couple of inches across, and is far too small for you to properly fit your hand inside. You’re left fumbling around blindly with your tools, trying to feel and move tiny pins with what little leverage you have. Your pick pushes through two pins. The lock shifts, and you get through one more. Another. After a few moments of wiggling it around, the final one clicks.

And the floor opens beneath your feet.

You scramble back in surprise as the first tile gives in. Under the flight of the stairs, a new one emerges: invisible lines in the marble deepening until several sections of the floor have sunk into the ground. Where they end, there’s a set of spiraling steps that plunge into darkness.

“After you.” You nudge Doyoung forwards, hardly even trying to conceal the fact that you’re scared shitless. You’ve come this far, already dealt with much worse, but something about it is ridiculously unnerving. A slow descent into the mouths of whatever monsters await, bordered by your last chance to turn back.

But Doyoung doesn’t turn back. He presses forward without hesitation, and you can do nothing but follow.

Spiral after spiral, you descend. You count at least two hundred fifty before you read the end—about fifteen storeys in any commercial building, which puts you at about the same level as some of the refineries. The steps end at the mouth of a cavern, where you’re met with one final gate. To your confusion, the keypad on the wall is lit green with someone’s authentication. The door gives in with a gentle shove.

“Someone’s been here,” you murmur, and cautiously push into the room. A lab about the size of a basketball court. Several tanks of green liquid, empty incubators of some sort, and an extensive evidence board that makes Doyoung’s warehouse whiteboards look like child’s play. But no sight of anyone; it’s completely empty.

“Someone’s been careless.”

“Or it’s a trap,” Doyoung warns you. “Don’t let your guard down.”

You don’t. You enter with your weapon trained at the corners of the room, directed at the furthest point you can see around every turn you make. Silently, you each take an opposite side of the room. You clear out the storeroom and the adjacent office, trying to ignore all the computers and intel you can sink your hands into. Something tells you’ll regret looking through it anyways.

“Clear,” Doyoung calls from his end, and you echo him as you put your gun back into its holster.

“This is insane,” he says beneath his breath when you join him. He’s at the front of the room, up on one of the elevated platforms, hunched over a control board. There are no switches or even buttons, only four folding screens laid out on a motherboard like sheets of paper. The entire room ripples with light when he swipes his finger across one, revealing hidden rooms beyond what you can see. The walls phase in and out of vision, out of existence entirely, unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

“What do you think they’re doing with all of this?” you ask in a mixture of awe and horror. “This looks like… it’s way too extensive of a set up for just Neo.”

He pulls up a window filled with records, but only skims through the document titles. Like you, it seems as if he’s reluctant to find out. “It’s not just Neo,” he says as his face twists with slow realization. You scan the screen:

Stage 1: Conceptualization and formation.

Stage 2: Production and cloning.

Stage 3: Deployment via city waterways.

Out pops a computer-generated image of an insect you’ve never seen. It’s some sort of cross between a firefly and dragonfly: four angular wings to carry it faster than either of the insects it resembles, and a brilliant green tail to store what you can only assume is the deadly compound already running through the veins of the under city.

It hits you all at once. The conceptualization, formation and cloning of an insect that will deploy the substance all over the place. Through the air you breathe, through the water you drink, up through all levels of the food chain until the entire city is festering with a chemical that was never meant to exist in the first place. Corrupting and polluting all aspects of society until…

Stage 4: Consumption and dependence.

You choke on a breath.

Until it’s the only thing people know. Until it’s the only fuel they need to live, at which point they’ll always want more. And whoever has the trade under their control—they’ll have the whole city wrapped around their pinky finger.

You’re still frozen still in shock when Doyoung seizes you by the arm and begins dragging you away. In desperation, his fingers fly over the screen, toggling the switch that broke the walls down earlier. You’re rushed to the side of the room, through the barriers and into his arms—just as the short-lived quietness of your investigation is shattered into pieces.

The door opens, and in walks Orias himself.

SEVENTEEN: Orias.

YOU DON’T MOVE. You don’t speak, you don’t do as much as even breathe. Because at any given moment, the walls will crumble inwards and he’ll see you. Because now you know—with utmost certainty and increasing dread—that the man on the other side of the barrier is far more dangerous than any of the other Marquises you’ve previously encountered.

You practically cower in his presence. The temperature in the room seems to plummet the moment he steps inside; the cold comes off of him in waves, freezing you rigid before burning through your skin with the same intensity as an open flame. Ice, and then fire, in a vicious cycle that leaves you shivering against the wall. You’re sure you’re only imagining it. Surely, it’s a product of your trepidation. A figment of the disturbed mind.

He strides forwards into the centre of the room, and the iciness follows—at which point you realize that this strange combination of warmth and coldness is no hallucination. There’s a hint of a bluish tint to his skin, a sheen that stretches across the expanse of his curving cheekbones and perfectly-shaped nose. His skin ripples, his eyes flash, and then a warmer glow envelops his entire body.

His eyes stalk every corner of the room, and you understand. He controls the temperature of his surroundings. He senses the body heat of his prey and uses it to hunt them down. And he uses it to kill them.

Doyoung’s hand closes over your mouth when you let out an unconscious breath. In any other scenario, this would be far too close for comfort. But now, while Jaehyun stands a mere metre away from your last line of defense, you brace yourself against him. The slightest movement will give you away.

At last, Jaehyun backs away. His skin returns to its normal colour, and he quickly loses the predatory gaze he was wearing. He turns his attention towards the entrance. “You can come in now, Jaemin.”

A younger man emerges from the door, and you’re suddenly glad that Doyoung’s hand is there to stop the noise you make.

Na Jaemin, the mayor’s son. An environmental activist with hopes of becoming a politician like his father, who spends his weekends representing charities and collecting funds for his environmental campaigns. You’ve seen him on TV, all bright-eyed and eager to change the world against unfavourable odds—and now he’s here. Dressed inconspicuously in a wool sweater and jeans, carrying a small backpack, meeting with the head of the Marquises like they’re old friends.

“I must seem paranoid to you,” Jaehyun chuckles as he invites him to sit. “My security measures aren’t usually so… extensive.”

Jaemin laughs. “Believe me, I’ve seen tighter measures at my father’s place.” He frowns, tilting his head in what must be an apology. Surprisingly, his mannerisms aren’t all that different from those of his on-screen persona. “Not to say that yours aren’t effective. I’m sure they serve you well.”

“No, you’re right. Within these walls, I’m usually alright. But outside… it’s a different story,” Jaehyun snorts, and you’re sure he’s thinking about Doyoung’s last attempt to kill him.

“Someone made an attempt at your life, I heard.”

“It’s rather embarrassing. He came close.”

“I can’t even imagine how that happened.”

“Well, I met him at a bar about a week before it happened, spent a bit of time with him… if you know what I mean. So I didn’t think he would be a threat when he showed up again.” He pauses, and there’s a metallic click of something against the table. You cautiously crane your head a little further to see him playing with two silver rings: one red and the other blue, worn on two different hands. “And I took these off.”

An incredulous scoff. “Then you were just asking for it.”

Jaehyun laughs. “What, am I not allowed to have a personal life? Or at least try to find some semblance of normality outside of work? He seemed like a good guy.” He pauses. “But enough about him.”

Jaemin promptly unzips his bag and hands him several binders. “I’ve compiled all the data for you. The councilmen I interviewed kept going on and on about how the current infrastructure would never allow for an outbreak—you know how defensive they get—so I decided to do my own research. Here are all the ideal deployment times, pesticides and insecticides to be careful of, natural predators that might threaten their existence… oh, and funds.”

He hands him an envelope. “If there’s anything else you need, I’d be happy to look into it for you.”

Jaehyun sighs. “You work too hard, Andras.”

Jaemin is a Marquis—and you now know that names are stolen from dead bodies, replaced, shuffled around, passed from predecessors to successors like rusted, unwanted tools. Jaehyun treated his own title like an object, tossed it away the moment he found one he liked better,. Next to you, Doyoung stiffens. His hold on you tightens as if to restrain himself, but you see him reaching for his knife. You stop him with a gentle hand on his wrist. You need to hear the rest of it.

“I assure you I don’t,” Jaemin says, almost coyly. “But when it comes to necessary change… perhaps I do. It’s about time we built a new government up in the city. A new leader.”

“You don’t ever think about taking that position for yourself?”

It’s a trap. You know, because Jaehyun is too power-hungry to offer it to someone else. He's standing at the very pinnacle of wealth and influence in the under city, and will soon have the upper elites bending to his will—yet his urge to climb higher never seems to subside. Through niceties and the false illusion of allyship, he’ll coax the other into confessing their true intentions. And when it becomes apparent that his supposed ally is interested in taking power for himself, he could very well eliminate him. You can only imagine that he did the same to Shotaro.

“Haven’t I been in the spotlight for long enough?” Jaemin asks wryly, either fully aware of Jaehyun’s ploy, or fully loyal to him. You can’t exactly tell. “Besides, I’ll be busy with other things. You need someone on the inside. To convince the people that your little insect outbreak is nothing to be afraid of.”

“They’ll hate you when they realize you’ve lied to them.”

“At which point they’ll never hear from me again.”

You’re no hero. Just three days ago, you and Johnny were plotting to kill Doyoung; and a week before that, you were accepting money from clients who wanted to assassinate political writers. But this ends here. You have to end it all here, before his masterminded abomination reaches the surface, and a cruel play for power subjects you to his rule.

“I’ll be going, then,” Jaemin says after a moment, and Doyoung immediately reaches for his weapon. You stop him with a panicked shake of your head and frantically-mouthed words; now you’ve seen what the Marquises are capable of, and there’s no way you can take on two of them at the same time. Albeit shakily, with unmistakable anger, he relents.

You wait for Jaemin to leave, still holding onto Doyoung to steady yourself. You hear Jaehyun escort him to the exit, a few parting remarks from both of them, and then the door sliding shut. Still, even when Jaehyun comes back inside and starts going about his own business, you wait. You count the seconds until five full minutes have passed.

You lock eyes with Doyoung tentatively. At his confirmation, you shift through the wall, gently pull your gun free from its holster, and take aim.

“I thought I heard something.”

Your blood runs cold at the sound of his voice. Jaehyun turns, and you pull the trigger.

You’re holding fire in your hands when the shot goes off: scalding metal against your skin, so blazing hot that you mistake it for coldness. A flash of pain that puts all the nerves in your hand to sleep before rudely awakening them with searing heat. You yelp, and the weapon slips from your hand. Behind you, a knife clatters to the ground. You can only hope that the bullet found its destination before Jaehyun turned your gun into a literal torch—but when your vision clears, he’s standing only a metre away, completely unscathed.

He raises a brow, looking past you to fixate his gaze on Doyoung. “Sorry things never worked out between the two of us, pretty boy.”

Behind you, Doyoung all but growls. His anger washes over you, carrying violent hostility towards the Marquis and a rousing call for you to move—and you act as one.

You’re throwing yourself at him before you even realize it, making a grab for his hand so you can target the ring first. Instantly, coldness spreads through your body. It first soothes the afflictions on your fingers, then burns like fire. Jaehyun grabs you by the arm, braces, and sends you flying the other direction. A wall of hot air slams into you like a tonne of solid bricks, nearly blundering you into stupor. You know the cold will come next, but it still renders you breathless when it does.

Your hands find purchase around him again just as he sends Doyoung flying. You bend, twist, fighting to escape his blows until you have the leverage to return your own. You’re sweating profusely and your vision’s gone blurry with perspiratio —a split second of miscalculation is enough for him to fling you aside. His hand comes around your throat while you’re still midair, closing around you so insistently that you almost black out. Your side meets a table with a telling crack.

This time, he doesn’t let go. His fingers tighten, pushing deep into the flesh of your neck and breaking the flow of air into your lungs. You gasp, thrash around to escape him, but it’s no use. He has you effectively pinned to the surface of the table, pressing down on you with all his weight. When your eyes finally roll back in their sockets, he pushes you aside, letting you go crashing from the table. If your ribs didn’t fracture earlier, they must have now.

You cough and splutter, unable to see anything, unable to do anything but listen to him deliver the same punishment to Doyoung. The abrupt change between heat and cold has the air hazy with fog, and it carries the stench of something else. You glance to the side and see green vapour escaping the cracks in the ground.

He’s feeding on the chemicals in the air, drawing on it to fuel his body while yours withers away. Every second spent in this room is another step closer to death, but there’s nowhere for you to go.

You stagger to your feet. Across the room, Jaehyun strikes Doyoung across the face. He grabs the knife from his hand, releasing a streak of crimson across the floor.

“I meant it when I said I’d take you on a second date,” he says calmly, but your ears are ringing so loudly that you can barely hear him. “A shame it’s come to this instead.”

In his hold, Doyoung struggles for the air to speak. “Go to hell.”

“We’re already here, darling. We took on demon names for a reason.”

And as if calling an ancient beast by its true name to quell it, Doyoung utters his. “Andras,” he says through a mouthful of blood, his lips pleading for breath but his eyes filled with hatred. “I know that was your name. The one he assigned you. You killed him because you weren’t happy with it, because you always wanted more.”

Jaehyun falters. His eyes narrow with contempt. “You knew Osaki Shotaro.”

“Oh, I knew him,” Doyoung laughs, managing a crazed grin. “And I know what you did to him.”

“Then you would know I took these from him,” Jaehyun says, holding his hand up. The rings on his index fingers—glowing red and blue to maintain the fluctuating temperatures in the room, the very source of all your pain and agony only seconds prior. Their original owner was none other than Shotaro himself.

Doyoung opens his mouth in protest, only to gape inaudibly. His eyes glaze over. His body goes slack. And he falls to the ground, not quite unconscious, but too spent and cold to fight back.

Suddenly, you’re on your knees, shaking uncontrollably as the world slows around you. The same wave of coldness that rendered Doyoung useless—Jaehyun uses it to wrack your body until you’re numb, without ever touching you. It’s what you felt the night you ran away, when the sun vanished and left you in the freezing depths of winter. A hundredfold the magnitude of your worst memories, laced with debilitating dread. You slip under, and allow the darkness to claim you.

This must be the end. This is the end, and you can only accept it.

A gunshot rings through the haze, and you expect to collapse in a pool of your own blood. For the ice encasing you to melt, and for warmth to return as your life drains out of your body. There’s blood—you see it staining the edge of your peripheral—but it’s neither yours nor Doyoung’s.

The kingpin lays motionless at your feet. Not a breath, not a whisper. A life claimed, but not by you.

In a daze, you look up—to find a warm gaze and inviting embrace awaiting you.

Johnny.

EIGHTEEN: Deus ex machina.

“IS HE DEAD?” The adrenaline is still coursing through your veins, and the fact that it’s over still hasn’t quite reached you. Your senses are flooded with white noise and the irregular drumming rhythm of your heart. The sound of desperate inhales and wheezing exhales as you supply your lungs with oxygen. The steady beeping of the machines in the room. And the presence of a man who once said he would never come back to save you.

“You’re okay, baby, I’ve got you.” Johnny’s arms wrap around your waist to hold you steady, and he sits you up against the table just before the world deteriorates around you. The room caves in on you, and a rush of blood to your head has you seeing stars. You still feel as if you’re on fire, and Johnny’s hands feel sweltering hot against your skin; yet you don’t know if your body wants warmth or coolness.

“Is he dead?” you ask again, only to double over onto Johnny’s shoulder in a coughing fit. Specks of your blood stain the collar of his shirt. You swallow hard, and taste bile.

“He’s dead,” Johnny reassures you.

“Doyoung, is he—”

“Unconscious, but he’s fine. He’ll live.” You try to break free from his grasp and stand up, but he’s quick to stop you. “You’re injured, ____.”

You shake your head. “That’s not important. He— The Link, they’re trying to—” When he refuses to let you go, you can only point at the control screen on the desk, where you found the records. Reluctantly, he leaves your side to retrieve it. He lays it in front of you—and with trembling fingers, you show him.

The images crawl out of the screen and onto your hands: dragonflies the size of cockroaches, with exoskeletons that glitter putrid yellow beneath the dim light fixtures of the lab. Bellies and tails swollen with green liquid, wings beating uncontrollably as they take flight from your hands. The gaps in their outer skin engorge and exude liquid, until every corner of the room has been filled with the green vapour you saw earlier. You watch as they burst midair, watch until they all disappear—and then withdraw from your hallucinations.

“Jaehyun and the mayor’s kid,” you manage before the insects flood your vision again. In agitation, you shake them away. “We saw them. Whatever charity shit Jaemin does… he must have been embezzling funds for Jaehyun.”

“To drive up demand… and expand profits…” Johnny’s properly reading now, clicking through folders and images out of what must be morbid curiosity. He toggles a switch experimentally. To your horror, the lights in one of the incubators flicker to life. White smoke spills into the tank, and then a single insect. Another. Until the whole glass is filled to its maximum capacity with twitching, moving wings.

“Fuck,” Johnny mumbles beneath his breath, and gets up to take a closer look.

“We need to do something,” you say, your skin still crawling with the horrible sight before you. “Tip the cops off or something, because if those things end up out in the city—”

“They won’t believe you.”

“What do you mean, they won’t believe me?”

His attention is still on the incubator when he speaks again, and his voice contains a peculiar hint of… amusement. Awe, perhaps even wonder, like he’s never seen something so cleverly-designed. “Why else would he involve the mayor’s son? To keep it under the radar. If word got out, he’d have someone to take care of it.” A laugh. “Andras… that bastard.”

It doesn’t occur to you that he’s named a demon Doyoung never told him about.

He turns back to you, and leans down to press a kiss to your forehead. “You did well.”

He’s never looked at you like this before. There’s pure, unadulterated joy in the deep red of his eyes, but it’s not for you. The same glee and excitement you saw the night of your heist, but different, somehow. He looks at you like you’ve just done wonders, like you breathed life into the cosmos and placed planets around the sun, etched constellations into the skies and brought light to his days… yet it makes you feel like you’ve done the unspeakable. Like you’ve blessed him and doomed yourself in the process.

“Thank you, ____. You and Doyoung have done me a great favour.” His hands find your face, and you feel metal brush against your cheek.

Only now do you finally realize: on his hands are the two rings he plucked off of Jaehyun’s dead body. From behind the lifeless form of one leader rises another.

The epiphany is earth-shattering.

“No,” you whisper, as your mind plunges you into the events of the last three days. How well he handled the Marquises when they came in with their demands, and how carelessly he handled the client in comparison. The way he fought Mark on the bridge. The untimely nature of all these things you wrote off as coincidences. “You planned this?”

“Some of the other Marquises have wanted Orias dead for years,” he says, smiling wistfully. “So Kun proposed we stage an assassination attempt using Doyoung. When Doyoung failed, I would lead you on a wild goose chase for a non-existent client… send the Fence into a frenzy when we inevitably killed you…”

“You were trying to start a full on war,” you realize, and it comes out in a shaky breath. “In hopes that Jaehyun would die in the crossfire.”

He nods, patting your cheek in mock pride. “Alas, Doyoung ruined all of that when he overheard us.”

“And then you let Mark take you.”

“Oh no, that was unplanned. Naberius has a long-standing grudge against me,” he laughs to himself. “But I told Kun to keep the two of you alive, knowing you would eventually get the job done for us. And as it turns out, you’ve outdone yourselves.”

Sitting powerlessly captive to him, bleeding out while he recounts everything he’s done to you, you don’t know how you’ve outdone yourself. You weren’t even the ones who killed Jaehyun. You nearly died to Phenex’s puppet. Jaehyun would have killed you, had Johnny not arrived in time—

No. You have outdone yourself. You’ve led Johnny here, and you’ve shown him everything. You’ve shown him the details of Jaehyun’s genius, and led him to the very place his greed for power manifests. Where he can assume the former’s position and deploy his creatures at will. He’ll bring the city to its knees.

“I always suspected Orias of plotting something,” Johnny admits, laughing. “But I never thought it would be… anything like this. I’ve been searching for months, and you ended up doing all the work for me.”

His brows furrow gently, but almost sarcastically as if to ask: how can I thank you enough? And if that was the question he truly had in mind, he answers it for himself a second later. “You can join us. Whatever you want, ____, I can make it happen. Your wings. Your back. Whatever you want to fix, we can fix it.”

“You can’t,” is all you can tell him.

He laughs, and pulls at his collar to show you the white scales along his neck. “Then explain these. I used to have these all over my arms, but I got rid of them. Neo isn’t restricted to only human use, my darling. I can’t say it’s a painless treatment, but it does wonders for our kind too.”

“You’re lying,” you whisper. You’re already broken beyond repair, and no amount of anything can fix you. If such a treatment with illicit drugs existed, your parents would have subjected you to it—no matter how illegal, no matter how dangerous.

Johnny sighs, like a father dealing with a difficult child. From his jacket, he produces a vial. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Then you’re thrashing, yelling, biting, trying to escape him with whatever energy you have left. Your sides scream in agony, but you already know that whatever he does to you will be infinitely much worse. The damage will be unpredictable, irreversible—and whatever comes out of it will be exactly what your parents wanted from you. You’ve had enough of people trying to fix you, of people telling you what’s good for you, of feeling so unwanted because of something you had no control over.

He grabs you by the jaw, hardly gentle now, and forces you to lean back against the table. “Easy now,” he coaxes you, parting your mouth with his thumb. You bite down hard, taste blood, but instantly regret it when he lashes his hand across your cheek.

Your vision floods white, and the next thing you know, he has the open end of the bottle positioned at your lips. The moment you open your mouth for breath, it’s over. The liquid’s pouring down your throat.

It lights a fiery trail on its way down, burning your insides like acid. You feel it in every inch of your body: in your throat, your stomach, spreading through your veins and into the affliction on your back, rearranging nerve endings and bones. Your lungs fill with water. You feel as if it’ll all burn straight through your flesh and pour from your skin. And you can only twitch uselessly against the ground as you succumb to the agony. You scream until the sound floods your ears and swallows everything in black. The ensuing gunshots on either side of you are lost to white noise.

Before it all goes silent, you feel trembling hands lift you from the ground. You’re eased onto Doyoung’s shoulder and pulled to safety, stolen away from danger just in time.

Your last memory of your escape is the furious, warning words of a man you’ve just put on the throne.

NINETEEN: The Conjurer.

JOHNNY’S REACHED THE SUMMIT.

At his feet is an empire. A thriving, sprawling dynasty that knows no bounds—and now, the lifeless body of its leader. Orias, who took baseless accusations for truth and cast him to the foot of the mount, stripping him of everything he had. Now Jung Jaehyun lies motionless before him, eyes wide with the last emotions he experienced in life.

Johnny pities his old friend; Jaehyun lived in steadfast confidence that his throne would be eternal, only to die having achieved nothing. A clean bullet through his head, and his most prized possessions stolen from him, claimed by someone else.

Better than anyone else, Johnny knows that power is fragile when it rests in the hands of a single person. Jaehyun was plagued with paranoia, constantly sleepless while he watched the horizon for danger. When no visible danger made itself known, then he would walk up and down the ranks, examining his men for defects. The slightest blemish meant weakness. It made them susceptible to treason, and he would have them executed on the spot. Johnny had been lucky when he exiled him instead.

The weak link in the chain—that was what Ronove called him before handing Jaehyun proof of his reckless behaviour at Kimaris’s casino. It was true that Johnny had drunkenly ransacked Xiaojun’s business several years ago, unintentionally provoking powerful clients and dragging criminal activity onto the streets for the police to investigate. But it had never been out of ill intent. If anything, he wound up finding three moles and stopping a moron from blowing up Jaehyun’s car.

There were those eager to get rid of him, and those who were rather indifferent. An evenly-split tie. If it weren’t for Taeil’s long-standing policy of never casting his vote when it came to judgement, Jaehyun would have put a bullet through Johnny’s head without hesitation.

It became evident to Johnny a few months later: Jaehyun was turning into a tyrant. Word among the ranks was that Orias had drowned Shax in the quarry lake and replaced him with someone new. The more people Orias accused, the more people he had killed and replaced… the more unrest. The more control he wanted for himself, the less he achieved. His greed and secrecy sowed seeds of unrest. When he kept his secrets, people became suspicious. When he exposed them, people wanted to claim what was his.

Not one to commit the same mistakes as his predecessors, Johnny knows to give his own people a taste of power before he takes the rest for himself.

So he calls them to the house and unearths Jaehyun’s plans before their very eyes.

The ten remaining Marquises—Sabnock was killed by Ten, Kimaris was left stranded in a foreign country, Orias now lies in a bloody puddle at Johnny’s feet. As for Phenex, Taeil hasn’t attended a gathering in years, and very rarely does he send Taewoo in his place; Johnny isn’t too worried about him anyways, not when he’s usually content to work with anyone who pays him enough. He searches his audience for the two bodies that’ll soon join Jaehyun’s, and is pleasantly surprised to find them standing together. It’ll make cleanup a lot easier.

“Orias is dead, as required,” he announces when they’ve all arrived, and is rather disappointed when the only response he gets is a sad round of applause from Fei. “Now, if I remember correctly, we had previously decided that Aamon would succeed him.” He locks eyes with Kun, before finding Jaemin’s next to him. “Unfortunately… our proposed leader was involved in some business that wasn’t made known to the rest of us.”

He thumbs a button on his control panel, projecting the contents of Jaehyun’s personal computer onto the screen behind him: everything from financial records, to prototypes, to Kun and Jaemin’s involvement. The incubators lining the shelf behind him fill with convulsing insects.

“For the last seven years, Orias has been developing a new type of insect that can distribute Neo throughout the city. The idea was to introduce the substance into the lives of ordinary citizens, let them develop a dependency, and then cut off their supply. Demand would be driven way up, and profits would grow exponentially. If the government cracked down on us, then the city would be driven to chaos by deprived addicts. Orias planned to seize central control when that happened.”

Unrest ripples across the room, and Johnny can hardly hold back the smile twitching on his lips. It feels exhilarating to be back in the spotlight. At the centre of attention. Yves catches his eye from across the room and nods.

He knows he’s won them over: he’s wounded them, simply by insinuating their inferiority to Orias, by suggesting that Kun and Jaemin are the true villains. Even his most bitter supporters—Jungwoo glares at him, Mina looks rightfully furious, and Mark openly gives him the finger—they have no choice but to listen to him.

“He did all of this behind our backs, recruited only Aamon and Andras to help him… and neither of them said a word. Why?”

His gaze lands on Kun, prompting him to speak. The man merely stares back at him, holding his ground. “We were told not to.”

“Yet you were so eager to kill him?” Johnny questions, stepping down from his podium to approach him. “You rallied all of us together in an attempt to bring him down, but were so content to keep his secrets?”

Kun reaches for his gun, perhaps habitually, purely out of instinct, but the rest of the Marquises are quick to stop him. Johnny’s always appreciated that about them—violence has no place at a gathering, unless the majority decides on a suitable punishment. And it seems as if they have decided on one today; because when Johnny draws his own weapon, no one protests.

“I called everyone here because, well, things would work out a lot better for us if there were no secrets,” he muses, strolling around his two targets leisurely. It’s the first time he’s seen Kun so tense: his jaw clenched, eyes fixated on a spot in front of him, breaths even and controlled. Next to him, Jaemin is completely silent. Johnny senses nothing but fear, and can’t help but scoff. “We would be much stronger united. If no individual were so blinded by greed.”

He smiles. “There are no Kings here, my friends. No Dukes, no Princes. We were all named after Marquises of the same power and authority. They say our original founder did this to humble us, but Jaehyun killed him.”

He points his weapon at Kun. The men standing next to him back away—not wanting to be too close when it happens, whilst silently giving Johnny their approval. He looks around one last time, and is overjoyed to find them all nodding in agreement. Jungwoo even puts his hands up in surrender, as if not wanting to be lumped together with his previous ally.

“There should be no Conjurer we answer to, yet some of us so desperately wanted that role.”

The ensuing gunshot echoes through the hall like a clap of thunder, like final judgement in the courts of Hades and a warning for all the onlookers of his jury. Kun’s body drops to the ground.

Next to him, Jaemin stiffens, preparing for his own turn. Johnny points at him—but after a moment of hesitation, lowers his weapon. The mayor’s kid is a useful bargaining chip. At least, he wants him to believe that.

A split second of silence more. Bang. Jaemin’s body joins Kun’s on the ground.

Johnny looks around, taking in expressions, sizing up new allies, reminding himself not to let the power get to his head. Because he knows domineering above the others the way Jaehyun did will only contribute to his downfall.

He smiles. “We have a lot of work to do.”

To be continued… :) 

It wasn’t like you were close friends or anything of the like to see his face on the regular, either. You only knew him since you went to school for four years together, were in the same groups for a few projects and outings together, and shared a few conversations and unfortunate events together (i.e. the time you were forced to act out a couple scene for a class roleplay, but that’s a story for another day). But then twelfth grade and college came swinging by and you haven’t heard of him ever since, save for a few whiffs here and there when someone would mention him, or when he’d heart your recently changed display picture.

The only other connection you can count with him is the fact that you also shared the same friend— Chaewon— your best friend of over ten years and the only girl a part of Jeno’s friend group. She’s also the star of the party you’re attending today, and the very reason why you’re meeting Lee Jeno again in the first place.

The very reason why you end up seeing him again when you enter the hotel room, white button up with rolled up sleeves tucked in sharp fitting slacks and all, and think: oh shit, I used to have a crush on him.

“Whoa. Y/N, is that you?"

He turned away from the mirror when he heard the door opening as you entered, sporting a look of surprise before melting into a wide, closed-eyed smile.

Oh shit, you think again. He’s still hot.

Out of the five things you knew about him, it seems this one still checks out.

“Y/N, Jeno’s asking if you’re Y/N,” Donghyuck chimes in as he squeezes past you, trying to maneuver around the crowded hotel room filled with people preparing and voices muddled together. You see faces you haven’t even caught a glimpse of in two years (Donghyuck was one), some you’ve seen just a week ago (Sunwoo, whose head you saw popping out from the bathroom. He went to your house last weekend to borrow a book). There are also people you’ve never met before in your entire life but have heard their names mentioned (Chenle was a name you’ve heard many times and is a name currently being shouted by a guy you don’t recognize), so that increases your ill comfort.

“No,” you snort in reply, placing your bags down on one of the empty spaces on the floor. “Who could I be, I wonder.”

Jeno chuckles and turns back to the mirror, throwing on his coat. “It’s nice seeing you again, Y/N.”

Christ, you sigh and sink into the closest chair. Even his back looks hot.

THE SECOND THING you knew about him was still the same, as well.

“Hey.”

You hear a familiar voice from a few seats away.

“Where did Jeno run off to?”

Despite all the music and voices chattering in the ballroom, your ears pick up Mark Lee from the table next to yours asking the rest of his friends in the middle of the event, and you let your spoon drop onto the saucer to listen out of curiosity. Letting your eyes gloss around their table, you can recognize each one of them— Donghyuck, Jaemin, Yangyang, Shotaro, Renjun (people you went to highschool with), and an empty chair right beside Mark— presumably, Jeno’s.

“Right,” Yangyang adds, flicking his wrist to check his watch. “It’s almost time for us to perform.”

All six turn to Jaemin simultaneously, and the orange-haired boy nonchalantly looks back at them in his seat. Jaemin takes out his right hand, two fingers open and raises it to his puckered up lips. He blows into the gap between his fingers and drops his hand down, shoulder slacking. “Out.”

They release a groan. Sunwoo asks from beside you if you’re gonna eat your remaining ice cream or just let it evaporate.

“I thought he stopped smoking,” you hear Renjun say.

“He stopped smoking to start vaping,” replied Donghyuck. “Jaemin, why don’t you tell your friend off. It’s Chaewon’s birthday, for fuck’s sake.”

“He doesn’t even listen anymore when I nag him,” Jaemin whines before turning back to Mark, who already looked worried because of two reasons. “But, hyung. If you’re worried about Chaewon’s party getting ruined if he doesn’t show up on time—”

He nods his head, chin pointing to the ballroom entrance.

“Don’t.”

At that moment, Jeno waltzes into the scene— one hand in his pocket, the other languidly swinging on his side as he makes large strides to the table. The moving lights flicker on his face for a split second, just a second before it slid elsewhere in the room, and you took in a sharp inhale of the conditioned air. He makes eye contact with you as he passes by, nods and smiles, one corner of his lips just barely twitching upwards, before grinning wider as he skips to his table with the boy.

“Hey,” he says, settling down beside Mark. “We’re up next, right?”

The chair you’re sitting on is kicked by Sunwoo, and you yelp out a swear. “What the fuck?”

“Your ice cream,” he deadpans. “Melting.”

Drawing your eyes back to the table, you see bits of nuts and marshmallows swimming in a pool of white, brown, and a darker shade inside your tall glass. You groan and push it aside. Jesus, it’s like you’re sixteen again.

YOU’RE LOSING YOUR MIND.

Were you that relationship deprived, romantically denied, and so much in need of something to water your dried-up, shriveled-up love life to the point of gawking at your old crush (of whom you don’t even know if he’s still single) throughout the entire party and after?

Perhaps.

You don’t want to admit it, but you also don’t have another explanation as to why the fuck you’re sitting against a seat in the cold, cold corner of the dim hotel room, fries and tupperwared cake and wine in a coke cup in front of your crossed legs, looking up, french fry between your fingers, and with your mouth slightly ajar at the Lee Jeno that’s looming over you at this very moment.

He’d just taken a shower. You can see from the droplets melting into the gray towel hanging around his neck.

“Can you get my phone?”

“Don’t want to,” the words automatically come out of your mouth before you can think, and you inwardly cringe at yourself, feeling your soul shrivel up and die just like your love life.

“It’s literally behind you,” Jeno grumbles. “Please?”

You wipe your mouth and blink more times than normal, returning the fry to its basket. “Where?”

“Wedged between the cushion,” his face scrunches together while he aggressively dries his hair with the towel.

You quickly turn around and look for the damned phone.

“Yup. That’s it,” he says, and you pass the device up to him. He shoots you a grin and turns on the screen. “Nice, good job.”

“Am I a dog?” you grimace, swiping your paper cup of wine from the floor and bringing it up to your lips, looking to the side. Jeno laughs and reaches for the top of your head, his fingers slipping through strands of your hair while he ruffles it up.

“Thanks.”

His fingers disappear from your scalp and he sits on the bedside, still close to you while he busies himself with his phone.

You could feel the wires in your brain start to fry and short circuit.

“Hey, you don’t have a cough or anything, right?”

Just then, Sunwoo enters your peripheral and settles himself down right in front of you on the floor, just beside Jeno’s feet. You remembered that there were other people here inside the hotel room, and suddenly you hear all the noises around— the screaming at each other, the laughing at the television screen right in front of the two, pushed together beds, and the hysterical crying from the dining area just outside the door.

“No,” you look at him, feeling the sting of liquid crawl down your throat before throwing the now empty cup to the floor. “Why?”

“Let me borrow your spoon.”

You look at what he has with him. It’s the mango float Shotaro brought. Sunwoo waits for you with a hopeful glimmer.

“Wait. I have a runny nose.”

You flinched when you heard Jeno break into a snort and laugh.

This isn’t supposed to make you feel proud, but it does.

Sunwoo scoffs, adjusting his legs with a glare directed straight at your forehead. “If you don’t want me to use it then just say it to my face.” Offended, you try to defend yourself, saying that he only asked if you were coughing at first, so of course you’d say no and that he should’ve clarified his intentions from the beginning, but Sunwoo wouldn’t take any of your shit. You could still hear Jeno’s stray chuckles. Sunwoo continues to ignore you and decides to pay attention to the guy sitting on the bed instead, much to your outrage. “Long time no see Jen.”

“Hey,” Jeno answers. “For the record, Y/N has a point.”

You stick your tongue out. Sunwoo ignores you. “You go to NCIT, right?”

“Yep. What about you two?”

“Music production at SNU,” your friend replies. Jeno hums and says something, but you lose whatever it was when his eyes flit over to you.

Right. He has a mole under his left eye.

“Y/N?”

“O—oh,” you stammer. Sunwoo snorts and makes fun of you. You give him the finger. “Hanyang.”

“What are you taking?”

You don’t know why but you’re suddenly embarrassed. “Uh— public administration.”

“Whoa,” he leans down, elbows resting on his knees while his hands dangle in front of him. The lights are all off. The television screen is the only thing illuminating the back of his head. You can see the outline of his features— sharp and gentle. Jeno opens his mouth. “That’s cool. You gonna run for president?”

You start coughing.

“I thought your throat was fine,” Sunwoo grimaces from in front of you, throwing sheets of tissue paper that he found on the floor to your direction.

“Fuck off,” you crumple the sheets and pelt it to his face before turning back to Jeno, un-knitting your eyebrows. “I’d rather get run over thanks to all my readings.”

“At least you’re taking a break today,” your friend butts in. You grumble and take a scoop of cake from the tupperware. “What about you, Jen? Weren’t you planning on being an engineer, or something?”

“Oh,” he says. “I’m taking up nursing.”

The spoon hangs from your mouth. Huh.

“What’s with the face?”

Jeno laughs at Sunwoo’s expression, his side profile highlighted by the television screen. Number three on the things you used to know about him is now crossed out, but still—

“You don’t think it suits me?”

It’s hot.

“Y/N, I’m fit to be a nurse, right?” suddenly, he turns to you, and you chase all your stupid thoughts away. Jesus, this guy needs to warn you before he looks at you. “I’m pretty sure I can rock a pair of scrubs and a stethoscope. I took your side earlier, c’mon.”

You stare at him. Why the fuck did he have to insert that image into your head.

Jeno lets out a groan, leaning back against the bed with his arms behind his neck. He lays on a nearby stack of pillows. His shirt rides up and your blood pressure is reaching a very dangerous level. “If you’re feeling sick, you can just phone me,” he grins at you. “I’ll nurse you back to health in no time.”

“I don’t even have your number, Jeno,” you manage to reply.

“Really?” his eyebrows lift up, tongue pushing against the inside of his mouth in a moment of thought. “Hold on.”

The phone you were looking for is suddenly thrown to your hands, home screen bright and open and unlocked.

“Save your number. I’ll text you.”

You make a noise of affirmation.

He has dating apps. At least now you know he’s single.

IT’S ONE IN THE MORNING when you return to the hotel room with Sunwoo from the convenience store to get some fresh air, and by god— you never knew how terrifying it would be to open a door and be greeted by around a dozen men scattered all around a dark room until it happened to you just now.

Fortunately for you, Chaewon is there to save you from the debilitating testosterone and sausage fest. She squeals when she sees you enter the room.

“Y/N!” you’re enveloped in a tight hug after the girl sprang herself from the bed to glomp you. A soft smile scatters across your lips, nose tickled by the stiff curls of her hair while she rocks you back and forth in her arms. “Ahh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to pay attention to you the whole day. There’s just so much things going on and a lot of people to tend to, so—”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I get it, Chae,” you assure her, pulling away. “I could use a break from you, anyway.”

Her bottom lip juts outward. You laugh and bring her back into an embrace. “You literally call me every single day.” But that wasn’t enough for her, obviously. It takes a total of six minutes before she finally and reluctantly pries herself away from you.

“Make yourself at home, Y/N. There’s still some space on the bed, so go lie down and watch the movie they’re playing,” she says, and you take a peek at the television screen. The first thing you see is a shot of dismembered…member flying in the air. You look at Chaewon. She smiles stiffly. “Or not. I have to go to the other room, sorry.”

“Hope you make it until sunrise.”

“I’m having fun, it’s fine. You on the other hand better tell me if you need anything alright?” you nod and nod, telling her not to worry. “Sureness? I’ll be in the other room, so just— oh, jesus fuck— Kim Jungwoo, put that down!”

Chaewon rushes out of the room, door slamming after her. There’s a crash. You sigh and take in the scene right in front of you.

There is Donghyuck and Renjun sitting in the right corner that you previously occupied, mixing drinks and passing them to the men on the bed (the men on the bed being Yangyang, Mark, Jaemin, and Shotaro). Meanwhile, on your left, you can spot a certain Eric Sohn emerge from the bathroom, looking a little, uh, disoriented, managing a smile and wave to your direction while he passes by Dejun who was already mixing himself a packet of 3 in 1 coffee. You miss a few faces scattered herr and there in the dark, but you’d rather be here than outside where you can hear Chaewon and maybe Sunwoo trying to get an already wasted Jungwoo to get his shit together.

You exhale, crawling past a passed out Shotaro to position yourself right beside Yangyang. “The fuck are you guys watching?”

“No idea,” he replies. “It’s funny, though.”

When you tuned into the TV there was a dick again. It really feels like you’re transported three years into the past and not in a good way because you also find yourself laughing. God, is all the testosterone in the air getting to your head or what?

“Mark,” you call out to the guy on his phone at the edge of the bed. He looks behind and meets your eyes with pleasant surprise.

“Oh, Y/N,” he bats his eyelashes. “You’re here?”

“Since, three in the afternoon, dumbass,” you dig your legs under the blanket, stretching one out until your left foot barely hits Jaemin’s back. “Throw me the pillow.” He does as you say, and you settle the pillow on your lap.

Your attention flits back and forth over your phone and the movie (which is funny, you had to admit). At some point, Yangyang had decided to use your left arm as a resting post, and you had to push him off because he reeked of alcohol. Laying right in front of you is Na Jaemin, back flat on the two mattresses and taking up the most space along with Shotaro. Mark had already ran out to help Chaewon with the chaos outside, so Donghyuck took his spot in the far right corner.

It’s cold in the room. People have entered and left through the door multiple times over the course of twenty minutes, but you still don’t see Jeno anywhere. Not that you were specifically looking for him, but Na Jaemin is here and it’s odd to see them apart. Well, not that you’d seen them at all prior to this day, anyway.

You sigh.

Alright. Maybe you are looking for him.

“Where’s Jeno?” Yangyang asks the question for you, and your ears perk up for the answer.

“He went out with Kunhang,” says Jaemin, eyes glued on the TV screen. “Why? You miss him?”

Yangyang grimaces. “My phone’s dead and he borrowed my fucking charger.”

Speak of the devil. Leaks of light from the outside enter the room when the door swings open, revealing Jeno in a black shirt and a pair of basketball shorts before the lights dim once again. He’s stuck right by the door for a moment, right in front of the bed and staring at your direction. Why the fuck is he staring at your direction?

You swallow down, saliva cracking through your dry throat.

He answers by jumping into the empty space right by your legs.

“Oof— oh god, holy shit that hurts, man.”

A loud smack! bounces around the four walls of the room. Jeno yelps and curls his leg into his chest. Jaemin grunts and moves away to give him space.

“Dude, where did you put my charger?” Yangyang asks.

“The couch, somewhere,” he replies, squirming on top of the mess of blankets to get into a comfortable position. “Oh wait, Renjun borrowed it.”

Yangyang grumbles and leaves his spot beside you, and somehow Lee Jeno’s head finds its way on the pillow you were using. The pillow you were using to warm up your lap. He was laying down on your fucking lap. You can smell the bubblegum scented smoke that’s knitted into his hair, skin, and clothes. You can see the outline of his nose and eyelashes from the glow of the television screen right in front.

He lets out a deep laugh, eyes trained on the movie. You can feel the vibrations spilling into your thighs, stomach, chest, up to your faint and dizzying head.

There’s sweat trailing down the back of your neck. Fuck, it’s getting hotter.

“Found it.”

Yangyang announces as he throws himself back beside you, and you choke on your own spit in surprise. “Jesus, you good?”

Jesus, you hope you are.

“Who’s this?”

Jeno turns around briefly, and your legs are able to breathe for a quick moment and you mentally rejoice— “oh, it’s Y/N,”— however he settles back down, head resting on the pillow above your thighs, as if it isn’t a breach of platonic comfort.

It’s not like you’re friends or anything for him to be all close to you. This is the first time you’ve seen him in over a fucking year.

Jaemin is also laying beside Jeno, scrolling through pictures on his phone instead of watching the movie, and your attention is caught by the very stupid photo of Haechan and you burst into an unplanned two second of laughter before covering your mouth. The two look up, smiling, and continue to scroll through Jaemin’s gallery. “Jaem, Hyuck is gonna kill us.”

“He’s passed out on the floor.”

You try to hold in your snorts and chortles, but god damn— why did they have to show you the clip of a clearly pissed off Renjun, swearing and pointing his finger at Yangyang, ready to throw hands before slipping on the longboard conveniently in his way. It’s difficult to keep your hysterics on low volume, especially when the two are also laughing.

However, you go silent when your eyes catch a glimpse of a certain photo of Jeno, quickly scrolled past by Jaemin who went off to show a shot of Mark Lee’s ass in rash guard shorts.

Go back, you want to say. That was barely a second, go back.

“Hey, let me borrow the phone for a sec,” Jeno steals the phone from Jaemin’s hands to which the guy responds with a whine. He scrolls back dozens of photos, all in your perfect view since the guy was still using your legs as a second pillow, right before stopping. “Wow. Perfect.”

It’s the shot of him from earlier. Thirst trap mirror selfie. Sleeveless shirt. God, his jawline can slice through your arteries.

“Ew, you’re just trying to show off,” the screen is shut off in the process of Jaemin snatching his phone back. He turns around to look at you. “Hey, Y/N.”

“Hello,” you reply flatly. Your right leg is starting to become numb. “Do you need anything?”

Jaemin stares at you for a few seconds. You raise a brow.

“Yes. I need to pee. Hold on.”

The guy shuffles off of the bed, and Jeno lets out a long, happy sigh for finally having all of the space to himself. You expect him transfer his fucking head elsewhere, but no. Jeno lifts his head up for a second— one second— only to adjust the pillow on your legs and stretch himself, right before dropping his head back down your lap with a comfortable groan, arms crossed.

Are you a joke to him?

Your mouth is itching to say something. For example, out of all the places, why here? Is this normal for him? To use the legs of a person he hasn’t even talked to in one point five years as a resting cushion? Does he realize how close he is? That you can smell the musky shampoo he used a while ago? He can take the fucking pillow and move away, why the fuck is he doing this?

The blood that’s supposed to be circulating around your legs is cut off. You can barely feel your thighs. However, you still can’t bring yourself to say anything because holy shit— he’s moving his head up and closer and you can feel it each time he breathes.

Suddenly, he shots up.

Your blood comes rushing back into your legs and you can feel them again. Jeno doesn’t say anything when he slides off the bed and walks out the door.

“Where’d he go?” Jaemin asks after returning from the bathroom. You shrug in response. He lays back down and the sounds coming from the television speakers enter your ears once again, and you let out a deep sigh.

While the end credits roll and air finally starts to become colder, you’re flashed back to the time where you first had a crush on him: 11th grade. Middle of the semester. You’d always been aware that Lee Jeno is a remarkably fine specimen, and that you were able to confirm that up close when you were roped into roleplaying a scene where he ended up pinning you against the blackboard for the sake of your grades— but you digress. It really, officially began when you were whining to Chaewon about being single, and that all you wanted was an attractive and strong looking man who had a pretty voice and liked cats, and Lee Donghyuck had to fucking overhear and scream to the entire class “hey! That’s Jeno!” subsequently causing the guy to look over to your direction, slow-mo style, and it clicked inside your head like the barrel of a gun.

You were a goner for five months tops. But then you moved up to twelfth grade and forgot about him.

Had you not been here today, you quite frankly would have continued to forget about him, but you didn’t— you’re here, you’ve seen him, and he’s back in the fucking room with a paper cup in hand that he slammed down onto the television counter right after downing the shot. You caught all of that with your eyeballs in 4K, especially the way his Adam's apple bobbed up and down when he swallowed the drink.

You mumble a silent swear.

He runs his fingers through his hair before falling back into his previous position (your lap), faced down with a grunt. Jaemin smacks Jeno’s ass upon return.

It’s almost as if your backlogs aren’t enough torture.

“You’re not allowed to smoke in the hotel,” Jaemin tells him.

“I didn’t. I went to the kitchen to drink a bit,” he groans in reply, flipping himself over and taking out his phone from his short pockets. You spot Jaemin about to get up. Jeno stops him. “Don’t go out unless you want to ice skate on vomit.”

Jaemin lies back down.

“Are— are those your cats?” you find yourself asking when Jeno’s phone screen shines on your face, full view of his home screen wallpaper. When he passed you his phone earlier, you took notice of the three different colored cats laying down on three different surfaces like a ladder.

“Yeah,” he replied with a smile. Not that you can see it, anyway, since his eyes are trained on his phone screen. “That’s Bongsik, Seol, and Nal. Cute, aren’t they?”

Jaemin scoffs. “You can’t even hold them without sneezing your ass off.”

“So? There’s always a small sacrifice when it comes to love.”

The two of them continue their back and forth banter. You smile to yourself. Item number four on your list also checks out. That’s three out of five since the guy suddenly switched over to nursing instead of mechanical engineering— the story behind that, you don’t know and don’t expect yourself to know since, well again, you aren’t close.

Supposedly. That closeness becomes arbitrary when he’s literally snuggled up on your legs at the moment.

Jaemin interrupts your mental musings by calling Jeno a ballsack. You didn’t get to hold back your snort and laughter.

“Oh god—” you wheeze, fingers covering your lips because god you aren’t proud of laughing over something as juvenile as that, but you are. Jaemin looks satisfied. You want to bury yourself. “Sorry, I’m— fuck, holy shit.”

It hits you that Jeno is dead silent, and when you look at him, you’re met with a pair of eyes, upside-down and reflecting the light from the television screen, looking straight at you. You can see his eyelashes fluttering open, his under eye mole contrasting his blue-tinted skin in the dim arena, and the shimmer on his slightly wet lips that’s turned into a faint pout.

His head is still resting on your lap.

Your giggles die down immediately.

“What’s so funny?”

Suddenly, he gets up. Your legs can finally breathe again, but now your lungs are clogged— seared shut and unable to squeeze in or out even the tiniest bit of cold air because for some reason Lee Jeno thinks it’s a good idea to get an answer from you by putting his face three inches away from yours. You sink into the mattress. His knuckles dig deep into the white blanket cascading down your sides.

“I can’t believe you’re laughing at his ballsack comment. Y/N, that’s so mean.”

“I— I’m not!” you stammer. Jesus fuck, he’s so close.

Jeno purses his lips and narrows his eyes, scrutinizing. A deep breath slips past you when Jeno finally moves away.

“Move it. I’m getting off,” you hastily announce. Yangyang, whom you’ve honestly forgotten until recently, asks where you’re going and why the hell were you leaving him and if you’re going home already when it’s literally two in the morning and you haven’t bonded enough yet. Jaemin and Jeno’s eyes follow you with the same level of curiosity. “Restroom. Jesus, stop being so dramatic.”

With that, you left through the door and for some fucking reason the floor is wet.

“You have slippers on, right?” Mark greets you upon your exit. “There was, uh, an accident earlier. Don’t take them off.”

You glance down at the now suspiciously shiny floor, and let out a long sigh.

You need a breather. A long one.

THE CHAOS TONED DOWN AT QUARTER TO FIVE IN THE MORNING, but not until after a total of three broken glasses, two trips to the shower because of another accident happening, and one misunderstanding with the boys which led to a very brief fist fight because they all passed out not long after. You could hear everything while you hid in the other room, only getting out when you finally sensed a semblance of peace outside.

Now, you’re sitting in the dark at the dining table with Yangyang, Sunwoo, Renjun, and Chaewon— the poor girl barely conscious after babysitting a grand total of a dozen boys the entirety of the night and morning. She’s using Renjun as a headrest, while the boy (clearly sober) asks you questions about your major and academics and life in general.

You’re sure you’ve shared a total of five words with him prior to this night. You don’t know why you’re telling him all about your college stresses and all the university organizations you’re in.

“Although your acads are the primary thing you’re entering college for, it’s still important to balance it out with extracurriculars. What you’re doing— Y/N, right?”

“Yes, I’m Y/N.”

“Y/N, yes, right,” Renjun nods to himself. You can barely see the outline of his head moving. “What you’re doing is a hundred percent correct, Y/N. Even if it’s difficult to balance everything, there’s always pros and cons.“

You sniffle from the cold, sounding out an agreement while adjusting the jacket you took from Sunwoo. “There are a lot of things you can get from joining orgs that you can’t just attain from sticking your nose solely into your academics. For one, socialization and networking You can mingle with a lot of people from different years and majors if you join them. And of course, you can actually immerse yourself in society, and apply the things you learn from—”

“Yes, exactly!” Renjun slams his palms down the table, causing Chaewon to flinch awake. “Shit, sorry. Go back to sleep, Chae. That’s it.” You lean back against the chair, arms crossed with a small smile curling on your lips. She must have been tired, you think to yourself.

“Hate to interrupt your nerd bonding, but aren’t you guys hungry?”

Sunwoo pipes in, shining his phone screen into your eyes that says 5:17AM. It occurs to you that you are hungry and thirsty, considering the fact that there’s literally no food or water, only alcohol in the hotel room. Yangyang makes a suggestion to go grab something to eat and drink at the nearest 7/11.

“You guys go ahead, I’ll bring her to one of the rooms,” Renjun grunts, lifting up Chaewon’s limp body to the room you were hiding in earlier, right past the bathroom.

“Careful, dude,” Sunwoo calls after him, then turns back to you. “Y/N, you coming?”

“Yup. Let me get a mask and my wallet first.”

You trail after Renjun and Chaewon minutes after, maneuvering yourself in the dark because if you’d turn the lights on, you’re sure to receive an earful of grown men complaining about the brightness. Just as you’re about to pass by the bathroom, the door swings open, shining light into your irises and you bump into someone.

The door closes. Your eyes readjust to the darkness and realize it’s Jeno.

Of course it’s him.

“Oh, crap.”

It’s Lee Jeno with his hair dripping wet wearing nothing but a towel in the dark hallway of the hotel room. There’s a sliver of light slipping through the crack of the bathroom door. It glazes over the droplets of water sprinkled on his chest and you refuse to let your eyes wander lower.

“Didn’t you sleep?”

He asks, voice raspy. Your own vocal cords stop functioning.

“You look tired.”

“I’ll sleep when I get home,” you manage to croak out. “We’re going out. Do you need anything?”

“We’re going out?” Jeno repeats in the same low voice, a small grin playing on his lips. You flush and smack his arm, instantly regretting because he dodged and your palm lands on the middle of his chest. Thank fucking god it’s dark. “Sorry, sorry,” he laughs. “Water, please. And if you’re getting ramen, count me in.”

You grunt in affirmation, sliding past him to retreat into the room at the end of the hall. The door slams shut.

“Whoa, calm down. Chae’s asleep.”

Renjun scolds you as you enter. You ignore him  and throw yourself into the mattress, burying your face in the crumpled up blanket next to Chaewon.

“You okay?” He asks. You grunt in response before he leaves the room.

No. No, you aren’t.

Stupid question when you’re having an existential crisis about an teeny tiny ex-crush that shouldn’t be ruining your life and senses this much had he been a little more sensitive, a little more self aware about the effect he has to all the people around him.

Or maybe that’s just you.

“Y/N! Aren’t you coming?”

Recap.

There’s at least five things you know about Lee Jeno: first, he was and is still insanely hot. No questions there. Second, he still smokes. Third, he switched interests from engineering to nursing. Fourth, he still likes cats and owns three of them now despite being allergic. In addition to all of that, you know he’s a little shameless and he has no qualms about invading your personal space. You also know he’s single.

“Y/N!”

Lastly—

“One moment!”

You know you had a crush on him.

“Took you long enough.”

Sunwoo grumbles the moment you stagger into the dining area, and you see Yangyang and Renjun waiting for you along with Jeno, now fully dressed in a gray hoodie, baseball cap and sweats. He shoots you a grin and wave. “I’m coming with. They need my car.”

You nod absentmindedly.

“Okay.”

Scratch that.

You still have a crush on him.

You met Yuta at a bar two years ago. You were both starting out at your jobs and looking to drink away your stress of being the new employee and paying off your student loans. You noticed him right away: his long hair and suit stuck out to you as he didn’t look like the typical corporate guy. So you made a plan to sit next to him and order a drink, and you almost succeeded until you approached the bar and he turned around, spilling his drink all over you. 

“Oh no!” Yuta exclaimed, grabbing a napkin. “I didn’t see you coming. I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” you waved him off, your face hot with embarrassment. “Mistakes happen.”

He attempted to pat your blouse dry, touching your breasts by mistake. You cleared your throat, and Yuta realized what he had done. Now, it was his turn to be embarrassed. 

“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know,” you responded, taking the napkin from him. 

You patted yourself dry as best as you could, feeling disappointed that your plan didn’t go through. You thanked Yuta for trying to help and left the bar, ready to go home and wash the stench of liquor off of you. Well, tonight was a bust, you thought to yourself, kicking small pebbles out of your way.

“Hey! Wait!”

You heard a voice calling from behind, and you turn around. Yuta was running up to you out of breath, holding a small black wallet—your wallet—in his hands. 

“You dropped this when you left,” he said, handing it to you. “You sure walk fast.”

“Well, I wanted to get home and shower, so...” you chuckled, motioning to your ruined dress. “I currently smell like Budweiser.”

“Honestly, I am really sorry about that.” His tone was soft, and his face was sincere. “Let me make it up to you tomorrow over dinner.”

You were at a loss of words, flattered that he asked you out on a date. However, you didn’t answer right away. Instead, you took a pen and a sticky note you had in your purse and scribbled down your number. Then, you stuck it on his coat, telling him to meet you tomorrow at 7pm at a local diner that you frequent. 

“I know the place,” Yuta disclosed, taking the note and putting it in his coat pocket. “I’ll meet you there.”

The date went great the next day: you learned more about each other and realized that you had more in common. For example, you both shared the same humor, tastes in music, tv shows and movies, and are family-oriented. You spent all night at the diner, talking about everything you could think of until the sun came up. Yuta was the perfect gentleman, ordering you a cab and making sure you got home safe. 

“I’ll call you when I wake up,” he said, leaving a kiss on your cheek. 

One date turned into several, and now, years later, you share an apartment and plan to spend the rest of your lives together. Thank God he spilled his beer on you that night. 

“Baby, are you ready?” Yuta calls out from the living room.

You are in the bedroom, packing up some last minute things before you both hit the road. Yuta wouldn’t tell you where the place is, saying it’s a “secret” and to pack clothes that you can quickly get out of. You know he mentioned a picnic, but your mind started wandering all over the place in excitement. So, you packed a sundress, t-shirt, shorts, and a swimsuit just in case wherever he is taking you has water. 

“Yeah, babe.” You rush out of the room. “I have everything I need.”

Yuta had packed all the foods you would need so you wouldn’t get hungry while you were out. You had offered to help, but he had insisted on doing it, saying that he wanted to make it special. He’s always thinking of you and how to create moments meaningful for you. He’s thoughtful, caring, and not afraid to tell you if you are messing up. How did you get so lucky?

You both exit the apartment and pack your things in the car, the early morning sun greeting you with its bright rays as you hit the road. You stop by a local cafe to get coffee and pastries in the drive-thru, complaining to Yuta that you did not feel fully functional without coffee.  

“I’m sorry, baby,” you giggle, eating your strawberry-filled danish. “You know how I am.”

Yuta shakes his head and smiles, pulling out of the drive-thru. He gets on the highway, and the ride is good for three hours. Watching the sunrise over the horizon is one of your favorite things in the world, and you let the window down, sticking your head out of the door occasionally. The ivory clouds and luscious green trees make a beautiful sight, and so you pull out your phone to take pictures. You capture everything in sight, including Yuta, who looks delectably handsome driving the car. 

“You are really handsome,” you tell him, snapping one last photo.

“Thank you, my love,” Yuta says, his shyness taking over. 

There aren’t many things that can make Yuta blush or feel cute, but you aren’t just anything. You are the apple of his eye, the love of his life. You love how bashful he gets when you praise him, and he deserves it. He is a good man, and there will never be a day he doesn’t know that. 

“We’re here! Wake up, sleepyhead,” Yuta announces. 

He nudges your shoulder, and you stir out of your sleep, eyes being met with tall grass, sand, and ocean water. You haven’t been to this beach before, and the smell of salt water and the seagulls flying overhead makes it more surreal. Yuta mentioned he found a beach while doing research for his job, and he wanted to take you whenever you had time. You are glad you thought to back everyone. Now you can really enjoy yourself. 

“It looks so pretty here,” you say, stepping out of the car and stretching your legs. 

“I found out that this area is private property, so you have to ask permission from the owners to come and spend time here,” Yuta says. “Fortunately, the owners are long-time clients of mine, so it was no big deal.”

Yuta grabs everything you packed from the car and walks towards the beach, settling on a spot that’s not too close to the water. The high will be in the early 80’s today, so you knew wearing your bathing suit was definitely ideal. You rummage through your bag until you find your one piece and shorts before searching for an outhouse to change in. 

“Babe, just go into the house there.” Yuta pointed to the beach house right behind you. “My clients left it to us for the day.” 

The house sits on a stone structure, and you couldn’t help but think that the architect wanted to make sure the house could withstand any storms that came its way. The rich tan wood and high decks made of sandstone pavement complemented each other very well. 

You walk in with the key Yuta gave you, and you are floored with how beautiful the house looks. These must be wealthy clients, you think to yourself. You find the bathroom, quickly change into your bathing suit, and make your way back to Yuta.

“It took you long enough,” he jokes with a silly grin on his face. 

Yuta had set everything up: the cold foods are on platters on the blanket and the warm food is still in the basket. He hands you a can of lemon-lime soda, and you take a seat next to him, looking at the ocean. The endless choppy waters crash into each other and the sun shines brightly in the sky, making you feel nostalgic. It reminds you of when you were a kid, and your parents used to bring you to the beach. You would run around with your brothers until you were out of breath and sandy, eat sandwiches and popsicles until your face was sticky, and were out cold on the drive home. At this moment, right now, you feel at peace. Yuta managed to do the one thing you’ve always wanted: to feel at home with the love of your life. 

“Hey Yuta,” you say, looking at the sand between your toes. 

“Yeah?” He takes a sip from his strawberry soda. 

“I love you. Thank you for this.”

You lean in and kiss him, the sweet taste on his soft lips drawing you in. He leans back on the blanket, and you straddle him, your lips not leaving his. For a moment, you forget that you are out in the open. Your short dress hikes up, showing your matching panties, and Yuta’s hands firmly grip on your ass. The bulge in his pants grows, hitting you in the right spot that’s making you melt. 

Yuta pulls the top of your dress down. “Take it off.” 

Half of your breasts are exposed, and you feel uncomfortable being half-naked out in the open. You nervously meet his eyes and slowly move your straps from your shoulders. Then, as if he read your mind,he stops you and places your hand over his heart. 

“Are you okay?” he asks softly. 

“I just feel a little nervous, being out in the open like this, you know?” 

Your face gets embarrassingly hot, and you sit back on the blanket. Yuta rubs your back, reassuring you that it’s okay and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. It’s not like you haven’t had sex before. In fact, you have sex a couple times a week if possible. But you were always at home, where you’re the most comfortable, and where no one can see you. In theory, the thought of beach sex sounds nice, but your nerves won’t allow it. You fucking hate it. 

“I’m sorry,” you say softly. “I wish I was more adventurous for you.”

You put your head down in between your legs, wanting to hide from him and from the world if you could. You hate the thought of disappointing him, and even though he’s cool without getting any action, it doesn’t stop you from feeling bad. Especially when you want him just as badly. Yuta wore a black and white striped muscle shirt that showed off his toned arms, just the way you like it. He got his haircut the day before, styled in an undercut that drives you mad. Your center is pulsating for him, and even though you are scared shitless of being caught, you can’t ignore the way you feel. 

“Are you hungry?” Yuta hands you a bowl of strawberries. 

You take one, eating it slowly while your mind succumbs to dirty thoughts. Unbeknownst to you, Yuta watches you eat the strawberries, hard as a rock under his blanket. He doesn’t want to pressure you into doing something you aren’t comfortable with, but he can’t help but be turned on by you.

“Hey, babe?” Yuta’s voice cuts through your thoughts. “I want to try something with you, okay?”

You nod, setting your strawberries down and watching him move in front of you, and you notice the blanket covering his body. 

“You look really good eating those,” he says, palming himself. “We have the beach to ourselves, and I want nothing more than to taste your sweet pussy right now.”

“Yuta!” you gasp, face hot with embarrassment. 

“I’m sorry, babe. I can’t help it.” He kisses your cheek. “You are just so beautiful to me.”

Yuta kisses you once more, starting with your lips and tracing down to your neck. Your skin is on fire, every kiss he leaves setting you ablaze. Your nipples harden as his mouth trails down your body, the excitement of being touched in the open overtaking your fear. 

“We’ll take it slow, okay?” 

You nod, and a smirk creeps up his face, eyes twinkling at your faith in him. His hands slowly take off your dress, sliding your panties down and off your legs. He slowly spreads your legs apart, and his kisses move dangerously lower, his mouth now on your sensitive buds. Your hands run through his silky hair. He continues making his way down your body, careful to not miss an inch of you. He stops right as he reaches the paradise in between your legs, licking his lips and gazing at you. 

“Please,” you say softly. “Don’t make me wait anymore.”

Yuta nods, placing a sweet kiss on your folds. His tongue splits you open, his love for you spelled out with each lick. His face is buried in your cut, sucking on your clit like it would be his last. You bite your lip, trying to not bring any attention to yourself. 

“You taste so good.” Yuta sucks the juices off his fingers slowly. 

He clings to you and grips your thighs, eating you hungrily and lapping at your clit with a need that only you can fix. A muffled moan escapes your lips, and you feel him smirk against your thighs, humming softly as he continues to eat you alive. Your legs shake, and you feel your lower abdomen tighten, and your orgasm crashes down as you scream his name. 

“Go ahead, baby,” Yuta coos. “Cum for me.”

You’re a whimpering mess, your hands gripping his hair tightly as your sweet nectar covers the lower half of his face. You ride your hips against his tongue, riding out your orgasm until you are ripe with sensitivity. He releases you from his hold, and you sit up, trying to catch your breath. You watch him adjust his shorts, his hands covered with his load, and you realize that he pleasured himself while he was making you feel good. 

“Aww, babe.” You grab a napkin and wipe his hands. “I wish I could have helped you with that.”

He suddenly becomes shy, chuckling before leaving sweet kisses on your face. “It’s okay, baby.” His hand brushes your cheek softly. “I wanted today to be perfect for you.”

It’s your turn to be shy, and you bite your lip and cover your face. A flock of seagulls fly above the two of you, and the sparkling sea water invites you both in for a swim. You look at Yuta, who has the same thought in mind, standing up as you do and shedding off his clothes to change into his swim trunks. 

“Last one in the water has to make dinner tonight!” you exclaim, speeding off towards the waves. 

You’re halfway there before Yuta catches you by your waist and carries you into the water, bridal style. 

“So I guess we both are making dinner tonight?” You smile at him, clinging on to his shoulders. 

“Mmhmm,” he responds, kissing you before he throws you into the water. 

Since high school, you two have been best friends, going to the same college and sharing many experiences together. Jaehyun was your plus one for everything, your study partner, first kiss, and your sexual experience. When you asked him to take your virginity, he laughed at you and didn’t take you seriously until you kissed him. He had experience before you and took care of you on that rainy night, being extra cautious to not hurt you and make you comfortable. It’s become a regular thing since then, fucking him when you weren’t seeing other people. Your feelings for him grew deeper over time, but you haven’t had the nerve to express how you feel, and you definitely don’t want to do it via Love Alarm.

Still roaming the park, your thoughts are clouded with your feelings of him when you feel your phone buzzing in your pocket. As if his ears were burning, it’s Jaehyun calling you, and you take a deep breath before taking the call. 

“Hey there,” Jaehyun greets you. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing, just at the park, walking around,” you sigh, your heart beating out of your chest. 

“Are you okay?” he inquires. “You sound a little off.”

“Nope!” your voice squeaks, the people around you giving you looks. “I’m good. What’s up?”

“Well,” Jaehyun clears his throat. “I wanted to know if you wanted to come over tonight? So I can order some food and wine, and we can watch a little tv?”

Your heart beats heavy at the thought of spending time with him alone; your center tingles at the thought of his head in between your legs.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll be there,” you confirm, sitting down on a bench.

“Cool, I’ll see you later,” he verified before hanging up the call. 

You know it’s not healthy to continue sleeping with your best friend and catching feelings for him without knowing how he felt. But at the same time, you don’t care; if this is the only way you can have him without bearing your soul, it’s worth it.

“Hey, you made it. Come in,” Jaehyun waves you in, shutting the door behind you.

His good looks nearly knock you on your ass, with his chiseled jaw and dimpled smile making your heart jump as you snuck glances at him. You take off your shoes, walking into his apartment, the smell of chicken and fries in the air. Jaehyun has plates with food already set up for you on the dinner trays, and you grab a wine glass, filling it up halfway and taking a quick swig before settling next to him on the couch. 

“Do you have an idea of what you want to watch?” you questioned, taking a bite of your food,

“Not yet,” he reported. “I’ll let you choose what we are going to watch.”

You aimlessly browse through the channels, stopping on a tv show about a man struck by lightning while he was by a plant and gained superpowers. You and Jaehyun have a love of supernatural shows, and even though you have seen this episode before, it was still an enjoyable one. As you are making small talk, a commercial appears for Love Alarm, with an announcement of a sweepstake for anyone that signs up. 

“Oh wow,” Jaehyun’s voice booms through your thoughts. “$50,000? That’s a lot of money.”

“Yeah, I know,” you mutter, your eyes focused on your plate.

You gaze at him, his focus on his phone and dings ringing from the phone, confirming something was downloaded.

“Look, I downloaded it,” he shows you the screen of the phone, the Love Alarm app in full display, looking for someone that loves him. “You should download it too.”

You scoff and push your plate away from you. “Yeah, no thanks.”

“Why?” Jaehyun teases you, nudging your arm. “Are you going to ring my Love Alarm?”

Face heating up, you quickly get up, almost knocking over the tv tray. You mumble that you are going to the bathroom and high tail in there, locking the door. You lean against the door and exhale the breath you were holding in before looking at yourself in the mirror. With your heart palpitating, you fear that Jaehyun will discover how you feel about him. You don’t want to fuck up your friendship, as much as you love him, and confessing to him will just do that. 

You splash your face with water, taking a couple minutes to relax, and you exit the bathroom, going back to your spot in the living room. Jaehyun is already in the kitchen, putting the food up, and you help him straighten up, putting the trays away and straightening up the couch before he returns. He sits down next to you, handing you your phone, and your stomach drops, the Love Alarm application ready to be downloaded on your screen. 

“So I almost downloaded it,” Jaehyun confessed, leaning back on the couch. “But based on that look of panic on your face, I’m glad I didn’t.”

You clear your throat, raking your fingers through your hair before returning his gaze with your best poker face.

“I’m not panicking, Jae,” you lied, sliding your phone under your thigh. “I just didn’t know I didn’t have my phone, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” he quips, biting his bottom lip. “So why won’t you download it then?”

“Why would I?” You lean back into the couch. “I don’t like the idea of confessing through an app when I can just say it in person. Plus, I don’t have anyone that I am in love with anyway.”

He chuckles and moves closer to you, wrapping his arm around your shoulder. Your body tenses, feeling uncomfortable because you want him, but you don’t want him to know. Of course, it doesn’t help that he decided to wear grey sweatpants that perfectly outline his girth. 

“You know,” Jaehyun announces. “You said something that has me thinking. You said you don’t like the idea of Love Alarm confessing someone’s feelings for you, right?”

You nod carefully, not sure where he is going with this.

“Well then, if you don’t have feelings for me, then it wouldn’t ring, right?”

“Y-yeah, that’s r-right,” You stammer, fidgeting with your fingers. 

“So download it then,” he taunts, softly rubbing your thigh. “Plus, you can get into the sweepstakes and maybe win some cash. What’s the worst that can happen?”

You find out I’m in love with you, you think to yourself as you download the app.

After registering, the icon appears, waiting for you to press to see if anyone nearby loved you. Your hands are shaking, but Jaehyun doesn’t notice, pulling up the app on his phone and already entering it. 

“Go on, press it,” he eggs on you. 

You take a small breath and press it, waiting for the magic to happen. Instead, the circle spins for a moment, and you both sit in suspense, unsure of what will happen. 

“See, this is silly!” you declare, showing him your screen. “Nothing is happening-”

You are cut off by the sound of the alarm ringing on both of your phones. You drop your phone on the carpet and jump back in shock, not believing what just happened. It must be a mistake, the alarm ringing on your phone as you are confident Jaehyun has no romantic feelings for you. You look at him, his calm demeanor unsettling you. 

“I mean, this is obviously a mistake, right?” you question him, pacing back and forth. “There’s no way you like me like that.”

“And what if I did?” He approaches you slowly; his energy is carnal, slowly sucking you in. “What if my Love Alarm was telling the truth? What are you doing about it?”

You feel hot, the butterflies making themselves known in your stomach as he is dangerously facing you. You want to kiss him badly; you lick your lips as the thought of tearing off his shirt and riding him on the couch is turning you on. You want to lay on his chest and confess your deep cemented feelings for him, and he holds you close, admitting those same thoughts. You want him, you need him, and you have to have him. 

Jaehyun holds up his phone, ringing your Love Alarm, a broad grin plastered on his face.

“If I couldn’t be more obvious, I’m in love with you,” he confesses, his lips brushing against yours.

Your body urges you to kiss him, and you do that, pulling him close to you. His hands run through your hair as he kisses you back, the passion ignited between you two. You lead him to the couch and accidentally fall back, breaking your kiss earlier than you’d like.

“So…” Jaehyun climbs over you and gives you small kisses, “I take it, you feel the same way.”

You don’t answer right away; the fear of being rejected after telling him how you feel despite what just happened is at the forefront of your mind. Jaehyun looks disappointed as he stops his kisses before getting off of you and adjusts his shirt,

“I-I’m sorry I did that,” his voice is small, hurt. “It’s okay if you don’t feel that way about me.”

“That’s not it,” you stammer, swallowing your pride. “I’m in love with you as well. I always have been. I’m just scared that this will mess up what we had before.”

Jaehyun’s face relaxes, and he lets out a sigh of relief as he sits down next to you.

“Nothing is going to change,” he says, holding your hand. “The only difference is that we just now know out loud that we love each other, and we are going to be together. When you think about it, we have practically been together this whole time. We hang out all the time, talk to each other every day, and we’ve been sleeping together. I mean, it’s a no-brainer. “

You nod and lay your head on his shoulder, agreeing with his every word. You two practically do couple things without actually being one. So why not make it official? Why not make him yours? 

“You’re right,” you announce, looking up, admiring his handsomeness. “We’ve basically been a couple this whole time.”

“So we need to make this official then,” he picks up my phone off the carpet and hands it to me. “Ring my Love Alarm.”

You cock an eyebrow at him and smirk, pushing the pink icon that rang his love alarm. Soon yours was ringing as well, the rhythms in sync with each other and the melody sounds off. 

“See? Love Alarm isn’t so bad after all,” Jaehyun points out.

“Yeah, whatever,” you roll your eyes, inching your way to him. “Just kiss me already.”

Jaehyun does that, lips never leaving yours while laying you back on the couch. Your hands are all over each other, clothes flying across the room, your naked selves are bared to one another. His long, slender hands spread your legs apart, and his fingers slipped slowly into your entrance. You gasp as he moves coarsely with vigor, his fingers twisting inside of you. 

“Fuck, this feels so good,” you moan, enamored with pleasure. 

You gaze up at him, his eyes focused on his fingers, watching your nectar drip on his fingers. His dick is ironically in front of your face, hard and leaking with precum, and you take a lick, loving the way he tastes before taking him in whole. It gives you great pleasure when you have him in your mouth. In a way, you like seeing him succumb to your pretty lips wrapped around his cock. You own him at this moment, and he knows it. 

“You’re teasing me,” his deep voice barely above a whisper. 

“And?” You taunt him, “What are you going to do about it?”

Jaehyun’s hip bucks into your mouth, bringing him deeper down your throat. Your nails dig into the couch to take control of your gag reflex, eager to please him. His free hand clutches onto your hair, gripping it tightly as you suck him harder. His fingers thrust cavernously inside of you, earning a cry from you, cock still in your mouth.

“You like that baby?” Jaehyun grunts darkly. “Do you like it when my cock is shoved deep down your throat?”

You nod feverishly, slobbering all over his shaft. He rubs your clit, sending electric jolts through your legs as your stomach coils, reaching your peak. 

“Fuck! Jaehyun!” you gasped, your back arching, hips moving sinfully as your orgasm hit you.

It sends you into overdrive, bobbing your head back and forth until you feel him stiffen. Both of his hands clutch your hair, and you allow his length to hit the back of your throat roughly. Your center is flooded with your juices, and you are well aware you made a mess on the couch. But it’s well worth it when you hear him moan your name, your reward being coated down your throat with his cum. 

“Oh man, baby,” he grunts, stroking your mouth slowly. 

Pulling out, he tucks a damp strand behind your ear before lovingly rubbing this thumb against the softness of your heated cheeks. Leaning in, he presses a gentle kiss against your lips sweetly before pulling away, forehead against yours before whispering those eight lettered words that swell your chest, and vacuums the words from your mouth. There wasn’t much to left to say, and there wasn’t the need to say anything. All that mattered was the two of you, in each other’s arms like this for the night instead of a fleeting moment. He’s yours to keep, and it took the fucking Love Alarm to show you that.

. 

He squeezes your hand and flashes a smile, holding a flashlight in the other,  leading you to your destination. He hums a soft melody, and you can tell his nervousness is eating at him, his palm getting a little sweaty. You lift his hand and kiss it, a silent solace that he appreciates. You make it to the top, and you meet a meadow of flowers, and in the middle of it, you can sit on a patch of grass. YangYang leads you to that spot, reaching into his bag and setting out a blanket that you can sit on. You brought food and drinks for you two to devour while you laid down, looking at the night sky.

“Oh, I brought a Bluetooth speaker so we can listen to a little music,” he grinned, pulling out a small speaker.

You laugh at the irony, pulling out your speaker as well. He chuckles and gives you a tight hug, followed by a sweet kiss on your forehead. Being touched by him always made your stomach flutter, and you sink into his arms, appreciating this simple display of affection. He is wearing his favorite cologne, the scent light enough that it doesn’t give you a headache but strong enough to leave traces of him on your clothes. You gaze at him, your eyes full of adoration, leaving a small kiss on the cheek. 

“I missed you so much,” he whispers, squeezing you tighter.

You melt entirely in his embrace, your feelings taking over, and you close your eyes, taking it all in. He runs his fingers through your hair, a moment of silence between you two, no other sound being heard aside from the leaves rustling in the wind. 

“Let’s eat, shall we?” He offers, sitting you down on the blanket. 

You take out the food contents, handing him a homemade sandwich you made and a can of soda. Next, you take out your own food, take a bite of your sandwich, and look up at the sky. YangYang fiddles with the speaker, finally setting onto a song from his phone before taking a taste of his own sandwich. 

“This is really good, Y/N,” he comments in between bites. “You sure know how to make things feel like home.”

“Anything for you,” you beam at him.

He talks excitedly about his upcoming promotions, and while you are happy to listen, you have a crestfallen look on your face. You are sad that you will not see him for a while, and it’s hurting you inside. Being with an idol isn’t easy, and you swore to yourself that you would never date one. You have friends in the industry, and you see how busy they are, and so realistically, you thought it would never happen, and you were okay with that. But meeting YangYang at a coffee shop with a friend was meant to happen, you suppose. Dating and falling in love with an idol was not something you had in the cards, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Y/N, what’s wrong?” his voice cuts through your thoughts. 

You contemplate lying and saying everything was fine, not wanting to make it a big issue, but you know, later on, the guilt would eat at you. So YangYang needs to understand how you feel. 

“Nothing major,” you begin. “I am just going to miss you while you are away. A month is a long time, you know.”

He nods, putting down his sandwich and grabbing your hand. His eyes peer into yours, and you feel open, vulnerable even, that the littlest thing can have you in the palm of his hand. 

“I am going to miss you as well,” he whispers. “I wish I could pack you in my suitcase and take you with me. 

“If it were only that simple,” you chuckle. 

You smile softly, taking a sip of your drink before moving closer to him. Your faces are inches away from each other, your noses eventually touching, and you lean in, kissing him. Kissing YangYang obliterated every thought you had, the world melting away with just you and him. He cups your face, pulling you in, and he falls back on the blanket, a giggle escaping your lips. His hands are on your hips, and you break the kiss, falling deeper in love with him as he bit his lip.

“I swear you knock the wind out of me every time,” he sits up to catch his breath.

The song changes on the speaker and noticing that his group’s music catches his attention. YangYang’s eyes lit up, and he got up, dusting his pants off. 

“Let’s dance,” he motions for you to get up, grabbing your hand. 

You shake your head in laughter, taking him up on his offer, and you wrap your arms around his neck, slow dancing with him in the stars, listening to the song: 

“I want it all, I want it all

 It’s a little lonely to be dancing among the crowd

 and stars 

I wanna have it….”

His lips quirk upwards. “Nothing. That’s my world without you. Nothing.”

Your hand slips, and the pen makes a bold mark across his eyelid. It looks horrible, like a preschooler drew on his face with black crayon, but you can’t even be bothered with fixing it; the heat rises to your cheeks and you swat him away, turning to grab him a new jacket so he won’t see how flustered you are. “Get out.”

“But—“

“No, I’m being serious now, we have a minute before your manager murders me,” you groan. “Get dressed and get out.”

He does as he’s told, slipping into the new outfit in a matter of seconds. When he’s done, he leans over to peck you on the lips—and still giggling, gives a soft murmur: “My world.”

“OUT.”

You allow him one last kiss before shooing him away, but you’re grinning like a high schooler in love. He runs off, up the inclined walkway of the corridor and through the set of double doors, back into deafening sound. You see him appear on the monitor a couple seconds later: striking as ever, his guitar hanging from his neck and his hands wrapped around the mic.

He flashes the camera a mischievous smile as the lights dim—and without a doubt, you know it’s for you.

close your eyes bro

ok bro

what do you see bro

nothing bro

that’s my world without you bro

bro...