“Thank you for telling me the truth.” She said, her voice not as cold as before. I exhaled, relieved that she had decided to once again trust in me. Yuri had left the cell, giving me and Taeyeon some space.

“You deserved to know it since the beginning.”

“So… Ginger is gone?” I gulped, holding her hand.

“I'm sorry.” I said, lowering my eyes.

“See, I told you, Doc… They always go away.” I closed my eyes, my emotional levels just higher than ever.

I sighed, giving her the Jack Skeleton toy. She accepted it. “It was his favorite toy, right?” I asked and I saw the fickle of tears in her eyes. Her right thumb caressing the stuffed figure.

“It was a gift… from oppa.” I didn't dare to say anything else. “Can you wash it? It's dusty…. And…- She didn't finish what she meant. I nodded my head.

“Yes, sure.”

She looked away, leaving trails of tears run down her face.

“Taeyeon?”

…

“Are you okay?”

…

“His name was Heechul." I've never ever heard her sound like that. It wasn't just a sad tune, it was a lifeless one. My heart beat faster as I realized more than ever Taeyeon was trusting me. She couldn’t be lying this time. There's no way she would be lying this time. "Kim Heenim to be precise. I used to call him Heechul-oppa. Or how just girls call older boys…oppa."

After hearing her old-lady giggles, her silly jokes and pretentious remarks, it was excruciating to hear Taeyeon's voice like that. I’d take her calling me Feisty Fanny any day. She stood in silence for a while.

“I met him at Seoul Oran in my first year. He became my very best friend. He liked video games and building blocks just like I did. We started doing everything together.” I wonder where he is now. “We became the Kim Siblings.”

“My first year at that school was only tolerable because I had oppa with me. Then, the following year, a younger boy was being bullied at school. Heechul-oppa decided to stand up for him. That boy was Choi Minho. He was from a poor district and had earned his vacancy by a government scholarship. Some rich snobby students didn't like the boy for the sole reason he was poor. What a bunch of , right?” I was still quiet, aware of my pounding heart as she was telling me that story.

“Then after saving him, Minho joined us in our duo. As he was from a poor district, he had some blokes in that district as friends: Kim Jonghyun and Lee Taemin.”

Oh, so she had more the one friend. That's nice. And by what she was saying it seems all her friends were males. It explains Taeyeon's predominant manly mannerisms and speech.

“Jonghyun was the oldest. Taemin was the youngest. I've met them all when I was 13.”

"Jonghyun at first didn’t like me. I was a girl and he used to say that chicks shouldn’t mix up with blokes. Back then I didn’t understand why he said those things, it didn’t make any sense to me. Why girls can't hang out with boys? I wanted to prove them wrong. They made a trial for me to see if I could take up the challenge."

“What was the challenge?” I asked softly, curious.

"The challenge was to paint the words " You, Dad" on Taemin's father circus' trucks." She grinned as she was reminded of that.

“Circus?” I frowned my brows. I remember the first thing she told me when I met her was that her father was a circus manager.

“He was a bastard. Forced Taemin to perform to the point he had an injury in his ankle. He only cared for money and .” I kept silent, just listening. "So I did. I painted on the trucks, on the stage, on the attendance, on the drapes. you dad was everywhere.” She said, her tone now slightly different. Almost pride-ish. I wondered if the proud she was feeling for ' you Dad' wasn't Taeyeon trying to tell that to her father as well.

"I used to spend my entire time with them. I was with Heechul and Minho during school time and on weekends, we would join Taemin and Jonghyun. I was the only girl in the group so it didn't really take long for me to start behaving like them. I started to talk like a bloke. Like a street bloke. No honorifics, No politeness, no beating around the bush to please old people. There's a little bit of freedom in the busy streets of this dirty town, Doctor. And this little bit of freedom sometimes is all the freedom you'll have in your life." I stood quietly for a while again, respecting her silence.

"But I wasn’t a street bloke. I had school life. School , Doc. School the best of you and throw it to bullies."

"You were bullied?" Only then I spoke. Not that I was surprised actually. Bullying is natural in scholar environments.

"I was a girl behaving like a dude. Of course, I was bullied. But that didn't matter because I had Heechul-oppa there with me. Minho was really athletic and he ended up being a member of the football team. Eventually, many girls became aware I was friends with him. I, the bloke wannabe, was the best friend of one of the most charming guy at school. They got angry. Somehow I was stealing their oppa." Oh, the obsessive behavior of young girls… “He wasn't their oppa!” She gritted angrily.

"One of the girls was rather obsessive over Minho. Seeing how close I was with him, she got jealous. She found out I couldn't swim for life and one day, she pushed me over the pool.” What a prick. “The pool was very deep, and I was very little, you see. I tried to breathe, gasping for air, but all I got was water in my lungs, and as I kept drowning, I panicked. I tried to shout for help but I couldn't. More and more water kept entering my lungs and I remember thinking to myself: I’m going to die."

I realized I was holding her hand as she was telling me that.

"Then I felt arms around me, pulling me up. I felt someone over me, assisting me to breathe again. I opened my eyes and there was Heechul-oppa.” I saw a freckle of tears in her eyes. "It's alright, Taengo.' He said to me. "Everything is alright. I'm here." All I could say was 'you saved me.' He smiled and said 'Of course I saved you. I'll always save you.' Tears were falling down from my eyes. Heechul-oppa... didn’t know how to swim."

My eyes widened. He didn’t know how to swim yet he jumped in the pool to save Taeyeon. He could have died!

"Minho was good at performing. We used to say he would be a great entertainer. I could draw, Jonghyun could sing; Taemin was a really good dancer and Heechul had a psycho face so we assumed he would be a good actor." I chuckled along. " We felt like we could have some tips by busking. And that's what we did for a while."

“On weekends, we would busk in the streets to help Jonghyun and Taemin get some money. By that time, I was already growing distant to my parents, and those boys were becoming my new family. Heechul-Oppa used to call me to spend the Christmas with his parents.”

My thumb was gently caressing her hand. “We stood like that for a while. And that while was the best time of my life.”

And then she sat on her bed, staring at my eyes. Then she raised her index finger. “One bad day, Doc. One bad day... is what takes for you to lose it. One bad day can be the hands pushing you over the cliff of madness. We are alike, Doctor." She said pointing at me."What set us apart is just one bad day."

I gulped anxiously. "What happened?" I finally asked.

"Mobsters happened! They needed pawns to smug drugs. Street rats are the best for the job. They are disposables! At first, we didn’t want to get involved with the mafia. It's a small industry, after all, everyone knows each other. Everyone is a target to each other. But the money we've got was so much more than we had busking. It didn’t take long for us to indulge in it. Jonghyun was the bridge. He used to meet with mobsters and then give us the instructions. We never really met those guys. We were not supposed to. But one day, Taemin couldn’t do what he was told to, the pod came and took him. He was missing for days. We were so scared, we thought he was dead. Minho had a plan so we could go to the mobs nest and save him."

“The plan was for Heechul and I go to their warehouse wearing our school uniforms and talk to them pretending we were snobby rich flower boys looking for some recreational drugs. Minho got us some wigs so we could disguise ourselves. I thought they were having a joke on me...I thought the idea was ridiculous but they made me wear it anyway. While we were talking to them, Minho and Jonghyun were supposed to search for Taemin and save him. Easy-peasy, ain't it?” She scoffed.

My heart was beating insanely faster.

"It was a Thursday morning. Heechul and I skipped classes so we could go to their warehouse at a proper time. We thought that at night, there would be a lot of guys out there and we didn't want to stand out.”

The pause she was making, gave me some serious negative vibes. “So..we were there... standing at the front of their warehouse, sweating like pigs because the weather on that day was unusually hotter for a spring day… Well, guess one can say El Niño was doing its job just fine.” She giggled and it just made me feel more nervous. She didn't look sad anymore. It felt like the sarcastic Taeyeon was back. In other occasions I'd get glad, but this time… it was just…concerning me.

“I remember we stood there for a couple of minutes, just staring at the warehouse feeling numb. What if we couldn't save him? What if he's dead? What if he's long gone dead and just buried at the ground beneath our feet and we didn't know it?”

“'Oppa, let's go home.' I asked him and he shook his head. He said: 'No, Taengo. We gotta do it. We need to save Taemin. He's our friend… and friends don't leave others behind, remember?'”

I didn't know what to say. There was so many feelings inside of me that I was on the verge to ask her to stop telling me that. I knew it was a big thing. And I kinda knew something went completely wrong that day...

“Two men opened up the doors and went outside to talk to us. We did what