They don't touch you. Not yet.

You remember the hollow sound of the door closing behind Baekhyun and Kyungsoo as they faded into the darkness on the other side of the door. You remember the equally hollow feeling in your stomach as you realised that this time, Seeker wouldn't be there to save you. You remember the way Baekhyun refused to meet your eyes as he dialled the number and listened to the shivery, uncertain ringing of the dial-tone. You remember the way Kyungsoo's eyelids fluttered closed as the blood on his neck began to dry a coppery, rusty brown. You remember the way your hands slowly stopped shaking as the fear drained out of your feet and into the cold, unforgiving ground.

You remember.

And most importantly, you realise that this might be the way the girl called Kim Chaeyeon dies for the second time. For the second time, and as the wrong person.

I wonder if the Seers are still watching. Or maybe I've gone too far this time. You hope, oddly enough, for the latter. The prospect of a visit to the Seers' Court after such an ordeal makes you want to regurgitate your vital organs.

A hand – gritty with dried mud – shoves you into an excessively uncomfortable wooden chair. You can't make out any faces anymore; they've turned the chair so that it's facing the light. The broad outline of a man crouches down at your feet to fiddle with the laces of your boots. The flash of a toothy smile materialises out of the darkness, blinding you, and disappears as quickly as it had appeared. The brittle itch of rope digs into your wrists, jerked backwards to rest behind the backrest; the markings curl languidly around your wrists, burning like red-hot brands. The caramel macchiato from only a few hours before threatens to make a less appealing entrance into the world.

One of the voices chattering indistinctly in the background rings with a sing-song intonation that sounds distinctly foreign. It would have sounded rather pleasant coming from a different mouth, but this time it does nothing to ease the harsh grating of the man's voice. Now it's a pair of eyes that looms out of the darkness, like the Cheshire Cat's wide grin. They squint at you suspiciously. "A bit too calm, don't you think?" the owner of the eyes observes. A finger traces the elegant curve of the red smile stretching across your cheek. "Nobody's coming to save you, little girl. We'd enjoy it more if you begged for mercy~"

You spit a globule of spit at the floor derisively. It lands on the shoelaces of his boots, and you have the absurd urge to laugh. "In your dreams," you hiss, raising your chin defiantly. "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth, you pig?"

It takes a moment for you to register the scorching pain igniting your cheek as someone brings his open- hand across your face. A sickly delighted laugh sends a ripple of goosebumps down your arms, and you find yourself bracing for another blow. "Yah, yah, don't talk like that~ We'll teach you to respect your oppas properly, okay?"

" off."

The words taste delicious on your tongue. It's worth the extra kick to the stomach just to witness the expressions on their faces.

A finger wipes the blood off your lip. You smell someone's rancid breath blow over your nose like a cloud of foul-smelling fog, and lean back in revulsion when you realise that there's a face, just centimetres from yours.

You hope whoever it is doesn't have the nerve to kiss you, otherwise you'd have to do something crazy, like bite their tongue off, and you don't want that.

"This one has a good mouth on her, hyung. Tell me, girl, what's your name?"

You look up.

"My name is Queen."

Before anyone can comment on how strange of a name it is, someone's phone rings.

And a hunch is saying that this phone call is going to be quite the surprise.

And not a good kind of surprise. Oh, no.

The kind of surprise you'd associate with Armageddon, or a flaming comet coming to obliterate all life on Earth.

That kind of surprise.

"Hey, bastard," the man you've identified as the leader of the gang chuckles. He switches the device onto loudspeaker. "Who the hell are you to be calling the leader of the most infamous gang in Daegu –"

"You're in the 7-Eleveon on Waryong-ro, 100-gil, first floor. We've got a SWAT team exactly 100 metres away, on the next block. Put the girl on the phone, or I will blow up the block before you can make the door."

You raise your eyebrows. Whoever that is doesn't mess around. The man's face flickers through a series of emotions – confusion, anger, and then an interesting mix of fear and disbelief – just before he jams the receiver between your shoulder and your ear.

"Where are you? We need you to get out."

You don't recognise the voice. It's deeper than average, and somehow soothing to the ear. The connection is too dubious to make out any of the chatter in the background.

The leader's eyes are on you. Maybe English is the better option here. I hope this person understands. "Are you kidding? I'm in the middle of an interrogation. These morons are giving me everything."

An uneasy murmur ripples around the room as the head of the gang gestures with his hands, a stupidly oblivious frown creasing his brow. "Gi–giffing effryting...?"

You shoot him a look and move your mouth closer to the microphone. "Look, whoever you are, I can't just waltz out of here. Who are you, anyway –"

"Chaeyeon."

You stop, because something in the stranger's voice makes you think twice, and there's no-one in this world who knows your name except for –

"Baekhyun and Kyungsoo have been compromised."

All of the suffocating doubt clouding your mind clears away in the half second it takes for something to switch on inside your brain.

"Let me put you on hold."

You signal for the gang head to take away the phone, and you wait.

You wait until he's close enough, and then you swing the tip of your boot into his calf and slam your forehead into his when he doubles over, groaning – hard enough for you start seeing stars.

Another lackey runs at you; you duck a sloppy punch, plant your foot between his legs and hear him cry out in agony as you spin on your heel and, hoisting the weight of the chair onto your back, clobber a third underling over the head with the corner of the seat. He rolls away with his hands holding the sides of his bleeding skull. You take a momentary breather as the last of the goons runs at you with your knife in his hand, and then you turn around – effectively deflecting the sharp edge of the blade – and jam the chair leg into the toe of his shoe. A gruesome crunch informs you that something is definitely broken.

Only after his entire group has fallen to the ground, concussed, does the leader begin to stagger back into a vaguely standing position. You stride up to the wall, smash the remnants of the chair against the wood, scoop the receiver off the floor, and flex your fingers as you walk over to the hunched over form of the man with the full intention of smashing his nose in – consequences be damned.

But then you recognise the dull matte black of the pistol gleaming purposefully in his hand as he points the muzzle dead straight at your forehead.

He coughs out a whitish-yellow shard of tooth.

"," he gurgles, and then the trigger is pressed and there's an ear-shattering bang.

You wait for the pain that's supposed to come before death to set in, but there's nothing.

Nothing but the limp body of the man with the gun as he falls face-first onto the ground.

You wait for the air to reinflate your lungs – and for the pulsating red to disappear from the edges of your vision – before raising your eyes to greet your rescuer.

"Hey. You must be Kim Chaeyeon," says the panting, one-head-taller-than-you, brown-haired boy in front of you. "Nice to meet you."

Something about the way he's holding the sheet of crude metal – so that's what the 'bang' was – seems kind of dumb and out of place, like an episode of unintentionally awkward comic relief after an entire season of mindless bludgeoning. His hair is ruffled and styled somewhat childishly above his head, so a good portion of his face is a very pale, very blemish-free expanse of forehead. He stands there stiffly, staring at you, as your eyes scan his outfit doubtfully. It looks like he's just come out of lessons; tidily ironed white collared shirt, red-and-white striped tie, grey trousers, and a creased navy blazer. Then your eyes land on the clumsy chunk of metal in his hand. He follows your sight-line to the enormous baking-tray in his hand, and lets it drop to his side with a hasty, "Sorry." 

You look at him like he's crazy.

He smiles awkwardly at you.

You decide that he is most probably mentally unstable, and that you should probably evacuate the premises in case the crazy rubs off on you, but then he catches your wrist in his hand, and says, "Wait. Stay here, with me. The rest should be coming soon." 

Then the realisation that you are indeed of the female race makes him jump and let go of your wrist like he's been electrocuted.

"Right. Uh. I'm Chanyeol. Park. Park Chanyeol. As in, my last name is Park and my first name's Chanyeol. But you'd know that, because you're not stupid."

You can practically see the soul draining out of his mouth as he realises how exceptionally cringe-worthy that sounded, and the whole situation is so painfully awkward that you have to lower your head and cup your face with your hands to cover the self-conscious flush dusting your cheeks. "It's fine," you mumble, clenching your teeth together. "Kim Chaeyeon. Chaeyeon –", here, you need to cough to cover up a snort of laughter before continuing, "Chaeyeon is my first name."

You bite down hard on your lip to stop yourself from laughing. He stares.

"But you'd know that, because you're not stupid."

Chanyeol stops staring and starts smiling like a complete idiot, and the way the smile is – contagious, and all possible kinds of idiotic – makes you feel like you've known him for your entire life. You strip your sweater off, tie it securely around your waist, and hook your arms beneath the first of the gangsters, dragging him to lean against the wall. "So," you start, beckoning for Chanyeol to help you, "who are you, Park Chanyeol?"

He looks around him in disbelief. "I should be the one asking you," he breaths, looking around nervously. "Who are these people?"

You lid your eyes. "They have someone I'm looking for. Your hyungs know where he is, but..." You trail off and lower your gaze to the floor. "They got –"

"Compromised?" Chanyeol finishes. You whip your head up to glare at him accusingly. He holds his hands up in surrender. "Wasn't me. And they're fine; they're resting at Bi-an's place. They should be over in a moment. I was on the other end of that call, you know." He smiles proudly. You roll your eyes. "What? It worked, didn't it?"

You let out a breathless gasp of laughter. "It did, but a SWAT team?" 

Chanyeol punches you playfully in the shoulder. You stick out your tongue and kick a speck of rubble at him. "Look, whoever you are, I can't just waltz out of here," he says, voice pitched high in an impression of you. "You're like a female James Bond!" He throws a few pretend-punches, but blushes when your mouth begins to tremble. "Don't look at me like that. Just... let me put you on hold~" You widen your eyes in mock-outrage as he flaps his hands at you, laughing into his palm.

"Kim Chaeyeon, you're kind of incredible."

This whole time, your brain has been feeling queerly foggy, like there's a steam pipe popped loose and it's clouding your judgement – loosening your screws – but somehow, there's this incredible feeling of liberation and you feel like you could run across the city at full speed with the tangy night-time air running its fingers through your hair and you feel – you feel free.

A mischievous smile turns the corners of your lips upwards. Another smile? "Put the girl on the phone, or I will blow up the block before you can make the door," you mimic, dashing behind the couch with Chanyeol in hot pursuit. He makes a grab at you, all signs of the previous awkwardness reduced to nothing. You slap his hand away, gasping for breath. "Yah! Don't touch what you can't afford!"

Your mouth releases something that sounds embarrassingly like a squawk as Chanyeol's hand grips your wrist like a vice. "I think I deserve a thankyou for saving you, at least. Or a sorry." He shrugs. "Either is okay." A roguish smile lights up his face as you struggle futilely against his hawk-like fingers.

"Damn you, Park Chanyeol," you wheeze, free hand resting on your knee as you struggle to regain your breath. "Damn you and your goddamn giraffe legs –"

You choke on your words as Chanyeol spins you around and plants one 'goddamn giraffe leg' in the wall beside you. "Repeat after me. 'Thankyou, Chanyeol.'" His voice sounds like he's inhaled several balloons' worth of helium. You sure as hell hope you don't sound like that in real life. "'Thankyou, Chanyeol~", he says, again, drawing out the vowel expectantly.

Your free hand grabs his tie and pulls him to eye-level. "You sound like an idiot," you point out.

You turn your face towards his and blink at his closeness.

Silence.

"Yah, Chanyeol. Move your foot."

"Thankyou, Chanyeol?"

Why is he phrasing it like a question?

You consider tugging him closer to teach him a goddamn lesson, but then you smell the detergent on his clothes and you realise that he is way too close, so you release his tie and you think, .

Way, way too close.

"Okay. Fine," you blurt, perhaps a tad too quickly. "Thankyou, Chanyeol." When he doesn't move, instead resolving to survey the flustered scowl beginning to define the lines of your face, you repeat, slightly panicked this time, "I said thankyou, Chanyeol! Now get the hell off me –"

"Yeah, Chanyeollie~ Get off the girl, for goodness' sake."

Chanyeol's head snaps to attention. A tell-tale redness starts to settle down in both of your faces as you both recognise the suggestive undertone in the elder boy's voice.

"Suho-hyung," he stammers, stumbling backwards in a rush to distance himself from you. "I can explain."

HAHAHAHA CHANYEOL HAHAHAHHAHAHA YOU DORK HE'S SO FUN TO WRITE ABOUT I THINK HE AHHAHAHHAHAHA

okay i'll stop i'll stop

(sorry momijichan pls no jealousy queen don't mean no harm. actually i'm kinda curious as to how accurately i wrote chanyeol's character so pls comment kamsahamnida)

Thanks for reading guys~ Your upvotes, views, comments, subscribes; all of them mean a lot to me :3

- Yukarin