not afraid to fall [chapter 6]
Title: not afraid to fall [chapter 6]
Author: ivoryroyale
Genre: supernatural, drama, suspense, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG
Summary: in a which a group of six aren't afraid to stand tall because they have each other
Note: 2,719 words. This chapter transitions between present and past each paragraph, so it might be a bit confusing.
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[prologue] [chapter 1] [chapter 2] [chapter 3] [chapter 4] [chapter 5] [chapter 6] [ chapter 7] [chapter 8] [ chapter 9] [chapter 10] [chapter 11] [ chapter 12] [chapter 13] [chapter 14] [ chapter 15] [ chapter 16] [ chapter 17] [ chapter 18] [ chapter 19] [ chapter 20]
not afraid to fall
chapter six
It reminds Jongup of his brother, when he makes his way up the stairs of the house looking for Junhong only to find an empty room.
The eerie familiarity of it all scares him. The memories flood his brain, stabbing at his eyes like knives to bring back fresh tears.
He remembers coming home from working at his part time job, aced math test in his hand and smile on his face. Moving to unlock the door only to find that it was already opened, wood slightly peeling away from five deep lines slashed into the surface. (Jongup finds out later that they're claw marks from fingernails, and dies a little.) Stepping inside the house to see all the furniture flipped over, broken glass stuck in the living room rug, coffee table broken through, the lights flickering ominously.
At the time, he didn't know what was happening. He thought it might've been some burglar, and his brother was fine, probably somewhere not too far away from the house. Jongup would just call him later to make sure he was alright and everything would be fine when he hears his voice.
He didn't know his brother was kidnapped until he walks through the debris in the living room through the hallway and to their shared bedroom.
He finds his brother's phone is broken in half on the ground, and there are even more nail marks along the walls and forced through the wood floors.
Jongup pieces everything together soon enough from past experiences of men breaking down their doors when he was twelve and dragging his mother away. Doing the same to his father after he managed to sneak Jongup and his brother out of the bathroom window, giving them enough time to run away. Jongup remembers the same exact nail marks dragged along the floors from his mother and father trying to cling desperately onto something as the men dragged them away.
And he realizes, suddenly, that now he's all alone. He's the only one left.
Felt that way until Himchan stumbled across him when he was sixteen and brought him to the house where he met Youngjae, Yongguk, and most importantly Junhong - his best friend, his second brother.
But now, he's gone too.
"He's not in his room?" Himchan asks, holding Jongup an arm's length away to look into his eyes, turned red-brown from crying. "Are you sure he's not just hiding? He wasn't in your room?" His voice is deathly serious, gaze hardening, trying to figure out how something like this happened. This must be some kind of sick joke. And Jongup shakes his head no, he wasn't in his room and he wasn't in my room, he's gone Himchan hyung, biting back a painful sob, scrunching up his face to keep more tears from falling.
Then where the hell is he? Himchan wonders, running a panicked hand through his hair.
It was amazingly easy to sneak out of the house without anybody noticing.
Once Junhong got out of school, faking sick, telling Jongup that he was going to go home and rest, the rest was easy.
Although he didn't know much about Yongguk and his missions and his searches for other mutants, Junhong knows enough to find out where he hides the maps to every location of every government base out there.
Jongup's brother is bound to be in one of them.
So Junhong runs from his school to his house in a second flat, quickly typing in the passcode then dashing as fast as he can to his room, unnoticed. The clock on his nightstand reads ten in the morning and if the sounds of laughter echoing up the stairs says anything, Himchan and Yongguk are downstairs, eating breakfast.
Perfect, the youngest smiles.
He makes a little to-do list in his head:
One: get enough maps from Yongguk's room without making it look suspicious. Two: decide which one to go to first. Three: leave. Four: find Jongup's brother.
Five: make Jongup happy.
Junhong bites back a smile, thinking about how happy Jongup will be when he brings back his brother as he tiptoes his way into Yongguk's room.
He's been in the man's bedroom before, countless times during lonely nights whenever he was eleven and had a nightmare and needed somebody to be there for him. It's probably one of the biggest rooms in the house, and also, one of the emptiest.
The man doesn't do anything with his walls like the other boys in the house, he just leaves them a boring, plaster white. He has this huge king sized bed that could possibly fit two of him on there, stacked from the headboard to the end of the bed, but other than that that's about it for the furniture except for a desk and a huge, black wardrobe against one of the walls, obviously dusted constantly because there isn't even a trace of filth on it.
In fact, the room would probably be sparkling clean if not for the pile of cook books and scrapbooks scattered at the foot of his bed that Junhong knows right away is Himchan's doing.
Junhong makes his way further into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. His feet move to stand in front of Yongguk's desk, faced business-like against a wall with a window in front of it, conveniently shining sunlight into the room, armchair pushed neatly into the desk. The desk is unbelievably cluttered compared to the rest of the room, displaying stray papers with an array of words that Junhong don't quite understand (Mutants, chemically altered genes, Jongup's brother?, whole family of mutants, none left, where?) and a picture of the five of them, framed, facing the seat at the very corner of the desk.
He's going to have to replace that, Junhong thinks, remembering Daehyun and his newly made appearance. Junhong sort of frowns. He doesn't know what to think about Daehyun.
He made Jongup sad though, so he can't be all good news.
Junhong hears the turn of Yongguk's doorknob and snaps out of his thoughts, swiping the nearest map he sees on the desk before climbing onto the wood and practically flying out the window to dangle carefully on the branch of the tree outside it. The teenager tightens his lips together, careful not to make a sound as he hears footsteps making their way into Yongguk's room.
"Why the hell do you have such a big bed," Junhong hears Himchan's voice laugh from the inside of the room, followed by a sudden soft, thump. Junhong think he must have jumped onto the bed. "It's so bouncy," Himchan points out. The bed screeches quietly as the twenty-one year old jumps, giggling. "Here, jump with me,"
Junhong mock gags.
"Remind me again why we're best friends?" Yongguk asks, gruffly, but Junhong can feel the affection as it snakes its way around the room and out the window to tickle at the back of Junhong's head.
"Cause you love me," Himchan says teasingly, and Junhong rolls his eyes.
They just need to suck it up and realize their feelings for each other already and start dating. Honestly, it's getting annoying to feel all the pent up sexual frustration and confusion from the two men whenever they're around each other.
When Junhong starts to get sick from the amount of flirting the two men are doing, he starts to inch his way down the tree.
He's down from it exactly three seconds later and he dusts invisible dirt off his clothes, studying the only map he managed to snatch.
He guesses he's going here.
Himchan paces the length of Yongguk's room as he runs his hands through his hair, biting his fingernails to a nub. The man looks like he hasn't slept in days, and quite frankly, he hasn't.
Junhong's been missing for two days.
"Where is he, Yongguk," Himchan demands, suddenly stopping in his pacing to look pleadingly at the man sitting at the foot of the bed, head in his hands. "What if somebody has him,"
"What if he's-" What if he's dead, he means to say, but he can't.
Yongguk looks up at him now, through the spaces between his fingers. Sees Himchan standing there in the middle of his room, looking at him but not seeing him through puffy, glazed eyes. Himchan's been crying, Yongguk knows, locking himself inside his own room where he's unseen, trying to figure out how and where and why as the tears fall unwillingly. "Calm down," Yongguk whispers, but he doesn't know who he's telling it to, Himchan or himself.
Himchan scoffs, eyes widening in outrage. "Calm down?" He demands, yelling for the first time in forever. "I am calm! If I wasn't calm, I would be outside of this house, going up to everybody I know and demanding them to give me back my baby!" (Because that's what Junhong is, his baby. The child he's had ever since he was sixteen.
Junhong, where are you?)
"I would be busting down doors, looking for him if I wasn't calm, so don't you dare tell me to calm down!"
(It's been two days.)
Yongguk stays quiet and the silence kills Himchan inside. The brunette breathes, gasping in shallow air through the hitches in his throat, until his anger dies down enough to see the hurt dancing around Yongguk's eyes. And then he loses it, hand pulling hard at brunette strands falling in wiry lines in front of his face. "I'm sorry," He chokes.
He walks up to Yongguk, falling into the man on the ground, wrapping weak arms around his best friend's neck as he admits, voice cracking miserably, "I just want him back home,"
Yongguk shuts his eyes tight and wraps his arms around his best friend's waist, holding back tears, trying to stay strong as Himchan falls apart in his arms.
Junhong gets to the base a day later (a day later because he had trouble reading the stupid map) after running around, ending up in cities he never even heard of before and foreign countries he didn't mean to land in.
The base is incredibly huge and the structure resembles a great, metal dome. It's hidden behind miles and miles of trees, just like Junhong's house, except this place seems far more creepy, eerie, and ominous. Junhong doesn't like the evil intent swirling around the atmosphere, creeping out of the long barbed wire fencing surrounding the place.
He feels fear curling around in the back of his head, but he ignores it, nullifying it to nothing.
He can do this.
He has to do this. For Jongup, he reminds himself.
So he sucks in a deep breath before running behind one of the trees closer to the metal fencing to peek over it, observing the base a little closer. There are thousands of men on the other side of the fencing, carrying guns in their bulky hands, expressions a mask of seriousness. They're trained, unbelievably so, and Junhong can feel the murder seeping out of them like a wildfire, but there's no way in the world they can ever catch him, so the youngest isn't too worried.
He watches as vans, insubstantial and worn-down, make their way through the metal fencing via a gate straight through the middle of the barrier and, quickly, he runs over, making it through with one of the vans as the gate closes narrowly behind him. Junhong runs through the crowd of soldiers, going too fast for them to even see him and stops somewhere in a dark crevice near the dome shaped base, unseen.
He grins.
This is almost too easy.
Youngjae's a wreck.
No, scratch that, he's furious. He won't give Junhong the satisfaction of admitting he's a wreck without him.
(His head is wondering why, why, why.
Why did you leave?
And his head, his super brain, provides him no answers.)
Screw the fact that Junhong's always been closer to Jongup then him. Screw the fact that Youngjae should be comforting Jongup with Daehyun about Junhong's absence rather than wallowing in his room, alone. Screw the fact that Junhong and Jongup act like brothers.
Youngjae and Junhong were brothers, (before this oddball family even started to form) for a brief second in time, when the boy was ten and he was thirteen, but still, brothers (related by files and files of adoption papers) nonetheless.
Junhong was the first person to ever acknowledge him. His brother that magically showed up one day when his parents came home from visiting a foster home. The first person to ever actually talk to him, the first person that made Youngjae feel as if he were actually there instead of invisible. He brought him out of that house and took him here, telling him he didn't have to worry about anybody ignoring him anymore.
And now he's gone.
"Where the hell did you go," Youngjae shouts, cradling his head, forcing back tears and memories of Junhong's ten year old voice telling him don't cry, I can see you, I can see you. "Why did you leave me?"
Youngjae doesn't know. So he gets up from his bed, gets up from his curled in on himself position, and leaves his room to go find out.
There has to be an explanation to this.
Because he deserves to know why.
Inside the base, it looks somewhat like a mental ward, just one big, wide hallway, despite the base's size, with millions and millions of doors leading to unknown rooms that Junhong has no time to look through. It's alarmingly white, and surprisingly, there are little to no people in the hallways.
And it seems familiar in a way.
Junhong runs down the seemingly never-ending hall, wondering when it'll stop and wondering how he was going to find where Jongup's brother is.
And suddenly, the hallway stops and Junhong digs his feet into the ground to stand in front of white double doors. Laboratory is written in black block letters over the two doors and Junhong feels a slight, dull pain resonating from inside along with the curious little screams yelling in his head to open it.
So he moves to push it open, hand shaking as it feels the cold surface of the door, wondering as he does, why does this place seem so familiar?
And something hits him from behind, bashing the back of his neck.
Junhong sees stars as he falls forward.
"You have to let me look through your stuff," Youngjae says after barging through Yongguk's door, unfazed by the sight of Himchan and Yongguk hugging each other at the foot of the bed.
All he's worried about is Junhong.
Yongguk furrows his eyebrows as Himchan tries desperately to hide his face, stained by tears. "Why?"
Instead of answering, Youngjae marches over to Yongguk's desk, startling the older man enough to make him stand from the ground, leaving Himchan to stare in confusion at him and Youngjae both. The genius cards through papers and papers, gathering up all the maps that he can find of the locations of the different government bases before tossing them on the ground, spreading them out for Yongguk to see. "What are you doing?" The man roars, scaring Himchan into cowering back, back pressed into the bed's frame, but Youngjae isn't listening.
He thinks he's figured it out.
"Look. Look at the maps," He demands, pointing down to every single map, every single one. And if he's right, some of them, or at least one of them, should be missing. "What maps are missing?"
"What?"
"What maps are missing, Yongguk hyung," He reiterates, feeling a sense of hope in his chest mixed with absolute anger.
Because if he is right, like he thinks he is, Junhong is the most stupidest boy in the world.
And Yongguk looks down, ignoring the confusion and anger bubbling in the back of his brain enough to notice one particular map is gone. His eyes go wide and his mouth drops open to form a little 'o'.
That's all Youngjae needs.
Youngjae marches out of the room, stepping on maps and leaving behind a dumbstruck Himchan and Yongguk to go tell Daehyun and Jongup exactly why Junhong left, saying as he's leaving, "Junhong's looking for Jongup's brother."
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Previous | Next
Author: ivoryroyale
Genre: supernatural, drama, suspense, hurt/comfort
Rating: PG
Summary: in a which a group of six aren't afraid to stand tall because they have each other
Note: 2,719 words. This chapter transitions between present and past each paragraph, so it might be a bit confusing.
-----
[prologue] [chapter 1] [chapter 2] [chapter 3] [chapter 4] [chapter 5] [chapter 6] [ chapter 7] [chapter 8] [ chapter 9] [chapter 10] [chapter 11] [ chapter 12] [chapter 13] [chapter 14] [ chapter 15] [ chapter 16] [ chapter 17] [ chapter 18] [ chapter 19] [ chapter 20]
not afraid to fall
chapter six
It reminds Jongup of his brother, when he makes his way up the stairs of the house looking for Junhong only to find an empty room.
The eerie familiarity of it all scares him. The memories flood his brain, stabbing at his eyes like knives to bring back fresh tears.
He remembers coming home from working at his part time job, aced math test in his hand and smile on his face. Moving to unlock the door only to find that it was already opened, wood slightly peeling away from five deep lines slashed into the surface. (Jongup finds out later that they're claw marks from fingernails, and dies a little.) Stepping inside the house to see all the furniture flipped over, broken glass stuck in the living room rug, coffee table broken through, the lights flickering ominously.
At the time, he didn't know what was happening. He thought it might've been some burglar, and his brother was fine, probably somewhere not too far away from the house. Jongup would just call him later to make sure he was alright and everything would be fine when he hears his voice.
He didn't know his brother was kidnapped until he walks through the debris in the living room through the hallway and to their shared bedroom.
He finds his brother's phone is broken in half on the ground, and there are even more nail marks along the walls and forced through the wood floors.
Jongup pieces everything together soon enough from past experiences of men breaking down their doors when he was twelve and dragging his mother away. Doing the same to his father after he managed to sneak Jongup and his brother out of the bathroom window, giving them enough time to run away. Jongup remembers the same exact nail marks dragged along the floors from his mother and father trying to cling desperately onto something as the men dragged them away.
And he realizes, suddenly, that now he's all alone. He's the only one left.
Felt that way until Himchan stumbled across him when he was sixteen and brought him to the house where he met Youngjae, Yongguk, and most importantly Junhong - his best friend, his second brother.
But now, he's gone too.
"He's not in his room?" Himchan asks, holding Jongup an arm's length away to look into his eyes, turned red-brown from crying. "Are you sure he's not just hiding? He wasn't in your room?" His voice is deathly serious, gaze hardening, trying to figure out how something like this happened. This must be some kind of sick joke. And Jongup shakes his head no, he wasn't in his room and he wasn't in my room, he's gone Himchan hyung, biting back a painful sob, scrunching up his face to keep more tears from falling.
Then where the hell is he? Himchan wonders, running a panicked hand through his hair.
It was amazingly easy to sneak out of the house without anybody noticing.
Once Junhong got out of school, faking sick, telling Jongup that he was going to go home and rest, the rest was easy.
Although he didn't know much about Yongguk and his missions and his searches for other mutants, Junhong knows enough to find out where he hides the maps to every location of every government base out there.
Jongup's brother is bound to be in one of them.
So Junhong runs from his school to his house in a second flat, quickly typing in the passcode then dashing as fast as he can to his room, unnoticed. The clock on his nightstand reads ten in the morning and if the sounds of laughter echoing up the stairs says anything, Himchan and Yongguk are downstairs, eating breakfast.
Perfect, the youngest smiles.
He makes a little to-do list in his head:
One: get enough maps from Yongguk's room without making it look suspicious. Two: decide which one to go to first. Three: leave. Four: find Jongup's brother.
Five: make Jongup happy.
Junhong bites back a smile, thinking about how happy Jongup will be when he brings back his brother as he tiptoes his way into Yongguk's room.
He's been in the man's bedroom before, countless times during lonely nights whenever he was eleven and had a nightmare and needed somebody to be there for him. It's probably one of the biggest rooms in the house, and also, one of the emptiest.
The man doesn't do anything with his walls like the other boys in the house, he just leaves them a boring, plaster white. He has this huge king sized bed that could possibly fit two of him on there, stacked from the headboard to the end of the bed, but other than that that's about it for the furniture except for a desk and a huge, black wardrobe against one of the walls, obviously dusted constantly because there isn't even a trace of filth on it.
In fact, the room would probably be sparkling clean if not for the pile of cook books and scrapbooks scattered at the foot of his bed that Junhong knows right away is Himchan's doing.
Junhong makes his way further into the room, carefully closing the door behind him. His feet move to stand in front of Yongguk's desk, faced business-like against a wall with a window in front of it, conveniently shining sunlight into the room, armchair pushed neatly into the desk. The desk is unbelievably cluttered compared to the rest of the room, displaying stray papers with an array of words that Junhong don't quite understand (Mutants, chemically altered genes, Jongup's brother?, whole family of mutants, none left, where?) and a picture of the five of them, framed, facing the seat at the very corner of the desk.
He's going to have to replace that, Junhong thinks, remembering Daehyun and his newly made appearance. Junhong sort of frowns. He doesn't know what to think about Daehyun.
He made Jongup sad though, so he can't be all good news.
Junhong hears the turn of Yongguk's doorknob and snaps out of his thoughts, swiping the nearest map he sees on the desk before climbing onto the wood and practically flying out the window to dangle carefully on the branch of the tree outside it. The teenager tightens his lips together, careful not to make a sound as he hears footsteps making their way into Yongguk's room.
"Why the hell do you have such a big bed," Junhong hears Himchan's voice laugh from the inside of the room, followed by a sudden soft, thump. Junhong think he must have jumped onto the bed. "It's so bouncy," Himchan points out. The bed screeches quietly as the twenty-one year old jumps, giggling. "Here, jump with me,"
Junhong mock gags.
"Remind me again why we're best friends?" Yongguk asks, gruffly, but Junhong can feel the affection as it snakes its way around the room and out the window to tickle at the back of Junhong's head.
"Cause you love me," Himchan says teasingly, and Junhong rolls his eyes.
They just need to suck it up and realize their feelings for each other already and start dating. Honestly, it's getting annoying to feel all the pent up sexual frustration and confusion from the two men whenever they're around each other.
When Junhong starts to get sick from the amount of flirting the two men are doing, he starts to inch his way down the tree.
He's down from it exactly three seconds later and he dusts invisible dirt off his clothes, studying the only map he managed to snatch.
He guesses he's going here.
Himchan paces the length of Yongguk's room as he runs his hands through his hair, biting his fingernails to a nub. The man looks like he hasn't slept in days, and quite frankly, he hasn't.
Junhong's been missing for two days.
"Where is he, Yongguk," Himchan demands, suddenly stopping in his pacing to look pleadingly at the man sitting at the foot of the bed, head in his hands. "What if somebody has him,"
"What if he's-" What if he's dead, he means to say, but he can't.
Yongguk looks up at him now, through the spaces between his fingers. Sees Himchan standing there in the middle of his room, looking at him but not seeing him through puffy, glazed eyes. Himchan's been crying, Yongguk knows, locking himself inside his own room where he's unseen, trying to figure out how and where and why as the tears fall unwillingly. "Calm down," Yongguk whispers, but he doesn't know who he's telling it to, Himchan or himself.
Himchan scoffs, eyes widening in outrage. "Calm down?" He demands, yelling for the first time in forever. "I am calm! If I wasn't calm, I would be outside of this house, going up to everybody I know and demanding them to give me back my baby!" (Because that's what Junhong is, his baby. The child he's had ever since he was sixteen.
Junhong, where are you?)
"I would be busting down doors, looking for him if I wasn't calm, so don't you dare tell me to calm down!"
(It's been two days.)
Yongguk stays quiet and the silence kills Himchan inside. The brunette breathes, gasping in shallow air through the hitches in his throat, until his anger dies down enough to see the hurt dancing around Yongguk's eyes. And then he loses it, hand pulling hard at brunette strands falling in wiry lines in front of his face. "I'm sorry," He chokes.
He walks up to Yongguk, falling into the man on the ground, wrapping weak arms around his best friend's neck as he admits, voice cracking miserably, "I just want him back home,"
Yongguk shuts his eyes tight and wraps his arms around his best friend's waist, holding back tears, trying to stay strong as Himchan falls apart in his arms.
Junhong gets to the base a day later (a day later because he had trouble reading the stupid map) after running around, ending up in cities he never even heard of before and foreign countries he didn't mean to land in.
The base is incredibly huge and the structure resembles a great, metal dome. It's hidden behind miles and miles of trees, just like Junhong's house, except this place seems far more creepy, eerie, and ominous. Junhong doesn't like the evil intent swirling around the atmosphere, creeping out of the long barbed wire fencing surrounding the place.
He feels fear curling around in the back of his head, but he ignores it, nullifying it to nothing.
He can do this.
He has to do this. For Jongup, he reminds himself.
So he sucks in a deep breath before running behind one of the trees closer to the metal fencing to peek over it, observing the base a little closer. There are thousands of men on the other side of the fencing, carrying guns in their bulky hands, expressions a mask of seriousness. They're trained, unbelievably so, and Junhong can feel the murder seeping out of them like a wildfire, but there's no way in the world they can ever catch him, so the youngest isn't too worried.
He watches as vans, insubstantial and worn-down, make their way through the metal fencing via a gate straight through the middle of the barrier and, quickly, he runs over, making it through with one of the vans as the gate closes narrowly behind him. Junhong runs through the crowd of soldiers, going too fast for them to even see him and stops somewhere in a dark crevice near the dome shaped base, unseen.
He grins.
This is almost too easy.
Youngjae's a wreck.
No, scratch that, he's furious. He won't give Junhong the satisfaction of admitting he's a wreck without him.
(His head is wondering why, why, why.
Why did you leave?
And his head, his super brain, provides him no answers.)
Screw the fact that Junhong's always been closer to Jongup then him. Screw the fact that Youngjae should be comforting Jongup with Daehyun about Junhong's absence rather than wallowing in his room, alone. Screw the fact that Junhong and Jongup act like brothers.
Youngjae and Junhong were brothers, (before this oddball family even started to form) for a brief second in time, when the boy was ten and he was thirteen, but still, brothers (related by files and files of adoption papers) nonetheless.
Junhong was the first person to ever acknowledge him. His brother that magically showed up one day when his parents came home from visiting a foster home. The first person to ever actually talk to him, the first person that made Youngjae feel as if he were actually there instead of invisible. He brought him out of that house and took him here, telling him he didn't have to worry about anybody ignoring him anymore.
And now he's gone.
"Where the hell did you go," Youngjae shouts, cradling his head, forcing back tears and memories of Junhong's ten year old voice telling him don't cry, I can see you, I can see you. "Why did you leave me?"
Youngjae doesn't know. So he gets up from his bed, gets up from his curled in on himself position, and leaves his room to go find out.
There has to be an explanation to this.
Because he deserves to know why.
Inside the base, it looks somewhat like a mental ward, just one big, wide hallway, despite the base's size, with millions and millions of doors leading to unknown rooms that Junhong has no time to look through. It's alarmingly white, and surprisingly, there are little to no people in the hallways.
And it seems familiar in a way.
Junhong runs down the seemingly never-ending hall, wondering when it'll stop and wondering how he was going to find where Jongup's brother is.
And suddenly, the hallway stops and Junhong digs his feet into the ground to stand in front of white double doors. Laboratory is written in black block letters over the two doors and Junhong feels a slight, dull pain resonating from inside along with the curious little screams yelling in his head to open it.
So he moves to push it open, hand shaking as it feels the cold surface of the door, wondering as he does, why does this place seem so familiar?
And something hits him from behind, bashing the back of his neck.
Junhong sees stars as he falls forward.
"You have to let me look through your stuff," Youngjae says after barging through Yongguk's door, unfazed by the sight of Himchan and Yongguk hugging each other at the foot of the bed.
All he's worried about is Junhong.
Yongguk furrows his eyebrows as Himchan tries desperately to hide his face, stained by tears. "Why?"
Instead of answering, Youngjae marches over to Yongguk's desk, startling the older man enough to make him stand from the ground, leaving Himchan to stare in confusion at him and Youngjae both. The genius cards through papers and papers, gathering up all the maps that he can find of the locations of the different government bases before tossing them on the ground, spreading them out for Yongguk to see. "What are you doing?" The man roars, scaring Himchan into cowering back, back pressed into the bed's frame, but Youngjae isn't listening.
He thinks he's figured it out.
"Look. Look at the maps," He demands, pointing down to every single map, every single one. And if he's right, some of them, or at least one of them, should be missing. "What maps are missing?"
"What?"
"What maps are missing, Yongguk hyung," He reiterates, feeling a sense of hope in his chest mixed with absolute anger.
Because if he is right, like he thinks he is, Junhong is the most stupidest boy in the world.
And Yongguk looks down, ignoring the confusion and anger bubbling in the back of his brain enough to notice one particular map is gone. His eyes go wide and his mouth drops open to form a little 'o'.
That's all Youngjae needs.
Youngjae marches out of the room, stepping on maps and leaving behind a dumbstruck Himchan and Yongguk to go tell Daehyun and Jongup exactly why Junhong left, saying as he's leaving, "Junhong's looking for Jongup's brother."
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