Yifan ed up.

He hadn’t realized it at first, just carrying on with his business as per usual. But once he saw his older brother’s glare as the elder boarded the plane with a terrified girl in tow, Yifan knew he made a mistake.

It began as they landed in New York a half day earlier. His brother finally telling him of a few meetings he would make in the city, then letting it slip he would travel up state to a small university. The sound of this perked the younger’s ears, make something click within him. If Seunghyun wanted to extend his global reach to this place, then it must be worthwhile. Yifan decided to follow in his footsteps, doing that the best way he knew how.

By causing a ruckus.

Yifan was in the entertainment business. When it came to his older brother’s assets, the branch that interested him most and the one he ended up taking full control over, still not giving any of it back to Seunghyun, were the dramatics. The elder has ties to several governments and is friends with many media distributors. And when a crisis happens, such as a shooting or an earthquake, it’s simply unethical to have real victims sit in front of a massive camera crew and expect them not to cry and breakdown. While those are valid human emotions to have, they don’t make for good journalism nor do they make for good news.

So instead, news stations employ actors. These are called crisis actors and Yifan, well, Seunghyun, had the east asian branch of these performers under his cuff. It took a special kind of person to be able to not only pretend, but pretend when others thought they were being honest. If one becomes a crisis actor, they can’t book any other kind of job. Imagine you sat down to watch a tv show, happily watching the actors and the characters they portray, knowing it’s all fiction and letting yourself go brain dead with the basic storyline. Then imagine, you watching the news after a tsunami hits and wipes out hundreds of people, seeing someone from a drama use another name pretending as if they’re entire family was killed. But you know damn well from their social media that they actually lived in a different country and so did their still well relatives. Doesn’t seem too convincing, now does it?

Because it took a certain kind of person to give up their entire career to stick only one type of role, not many wanted to do it. Whether it be because of the limitations, or the grimy feeling of lying to innocent people, it was difficult to recruit new actors. On occasion, such as with Joohyun, they came willingly after just wanting to be some kind of famous. Then on another hand, as with Chanyeol, they simply got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Either way, they were fed well and paid a heavy check for their work, so it was pretty clean in Yifan’s eyes.

Seeing as the US is already scared by the thought of college kids turning on each other and the increase of race fueled hate crimes, Yifan started to create a simple set-up. Not only were crisis actors used in place of real people in real situations, they were also used as victims in fake situations. The government is full of liars. Every government in every country has its own secrets and it’s own goal. Even in countries full of freedom and ‘giving the people power’ everyone really knows who controls the behind the scenes: The so-called elected officials who sat on the laps of their ventriloquist mobsters. And when the government wanted to control the masses’ mindset, they’d ask their powerful mafia friends for a bit of aid in exchange for very favorable things.

So, with Yifan knowing through the grapevine that the country was more than happy with the school shootings, Seunghyun mentioning a college gave him an idea. The younger knew his brother was very Asian-centric in his business, even when it came to worldly and foreign affairs. So, if he was going to a small university, there had to be some sort of pocket of use to his brother, making Yifan aware that the college would now be apart of their family's connection. If Seunghyun could use the place to his advantage somehow, then so could Yifan.  

The young man recently did a headcount of his own recruits, separate from the ones his brother already had before enlisting. So far, he had only collected a handful of his own and marked them with his family emblem, a small dragon tattoo on the back of the knee. The back of the knee was the most sensitive place to get inked. It made the man feel the smallest bit at ease knowing his loyals were strong enough to at least show that tiny act of trust towards their employer. Putting two and two together, Yifan decided to stage a school shooting, and hopefully recruit a new actor. Bada-bing-bada-boom, a day trip with his favorite sibling no longer a day of waste. Getting something done seemed perfectly fine in his eyes.

The younger was placed in the high class lounge of the airport, not even allowed to rent a hotel room under Seunghyun’s stern eye. The elder didn’t waste any luxury on Yifan, so it was nothing new. But having nothing to do, the man decided to be part of the set-up as well. Quickly getting Zitao on a plane as well as a young actor who mirrored the same body type, Yifan also picked out two college aged actors who he knew had never done a gig in the west before. When it came to this kind of job, you can’t be recognized twice. Knowing how much most Americans were so self-centered and barely paid attention to foreign affairs, he knew reusing two kids from a few Korean stunts would have no repercussions.

As soon as they arrived, no time to waste seeing as Seunghyun would be done with his own plans soon, they went into action. Yifan had did a bit of research on the school, quickly getting into the private forums and finding that a small group of students would be gathering in a particular room to play games. It’s like the universe wanted him to do this. Judging by the usernames of the posters, which were just the student’s names seeing as it was for a private university, he quickly noticed that there would be a Korean student in the mix.

Things were going so smoothly that Yifan felt like he was doing a good deed. He would be spending his time getting a random college kid a career. He’d bringing them back to a country they probably had visited with family before. And it’d be introducing them to a better life working for a high power that they could get brief glimpses at, maybe even inspiring them to worker harder under his watchful eye. Somebody call the mayor, because Yifan is putting in hours of charity work and should be rewarded with the key to the city for this good deed.

They pulled up to the school, sending out Joohyun and Chanyeol who were both still a bit groggy from the rushed flight over. The girl barely knew any English so she asked the boy if he knew anything, to which he spoke a couple random words, not giving her much confidence in his abilities. Watching from the cars, the soon to be gunman saw the ‘students’ enter the campus. They waited about ten minutes before exiting, Zitao having just purchased and activated a burner phone.

The phone was used to record and post the event online, because that’s what gets press coverage, oh so terrible footage of the evil monsters committing the crime, as the online comments often said. And these days, one could go to a local store and buy a smartphone with a webcam quality camera for less than fifty bucks then upload the footage online directly from the device. And because it was so cheap, simply destroy it afterwards.

As if they would actually get in trouble if police figured out who did it.

They watched the monitor that fed back live footage coming from the small camera disguised as the end of Chanyeol’s drawstring hanging from his hoodie. The fabric being black so the grain of rice sized camera blended in perfectly. The men watched as a Korean girl came into view, talking to the pair, but not knowing what she said since a camera that small obviously couldn’t pick up audio. They observed as the camera went into the building, memorizing what it looked like and how far the boy walked and what turns he took so they knew what path to follow. Once he made it into a room, they headed out.

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