Carefully cradling Sunggyu, Woohyun turns to shoot daggers at the lanky male who is responsible for Sunggyu’s current state. Sungyeol whom is the last to come up the apartment in the same dripping wet state after parking the car is quick to speak his point.

“What? I come in; saw a man pointing a gun at you, of course I need to do something to save your !”

Before Woohyun can say anything more, Sungjong kneels down and stares at the unconscious male, matching the current face to the one in his mind.

“It is really Sunggyu hyung.”

“You knew him?!”

Sungjong nods at Woohyun’s question, as he gently sweeps the overgrown fringe covering Sunggyu’s face. Although in his memory, he remembers a sunny disposition hyung and not this pale, sickly looking male but the resemblance is still there.

“Woohyun, I think you better get him off the cold and wet floor. We should change into something dry also. We will talk later.”

Woohyun immediately responses to Dongwoo’s prompt, sweeping the male up in his arms and heads over to the sofa but not before throwing another menacing glare the tallest member of his team. They finally settle down round the sofa after everyone changes out of their wet attires with the still unconscious Sunggyu flat out on the sofa, using Woohyun’s thigh as a temporary pillow. He is not going to let Sunggyu out of his sight until he can explain everything.

“Why are all of you here again?”

Woohyun is impatient to know what is going on; his whole team has turned up without warning. They want to bring Sunggyu back to headquarter and the youngest claim to know the mysterious Sunggyu who he has been unsuccessful in finding any information. He desperately needs to know everything. He looks at the only member who has not open his mouth since arriving. Feeling Woohyun questioning gaze, Myungsoo relates his part in the whole affair.

“You remember someone tried to hack into our headquarter system more than a year ago?”

Woohyun nods his head, recalling the incident that was fazed by Myungsoo but even with Myungsoo’s expertise, they were unable to catch the culprit.

“Over the same month, many prominent organizations were also hacked, resulting in information and money stolen. However, almost all reported the loss as minor or negligible and everyone feared for the next wave. But the hacking completely stops after that and the issue had been forgotten as time passed with no further attacks.”

“Is that what you have been doing all this while during our break, chasing after the hacker? No wonder you are ignoring my calls and messages. Your life is so boring!”

Myungsoo barely spares a glance at Sungyeol, choosing to continue with his explanation, ignoring the interruption.

“Because there is no new attack, the things I can trace is limited. Only recently did I found a very powerful spying program that links to a remote server that I am investigating for the intrusion.”

Woohyun signals for a pause, his attention focusing on the male who is lying in his lap. Sunggyu shivers a little but shows no signs of awakening. He directs Sungjong to fetch a blanket from the room. After ensuring the unconscious Sunggyu is snuggly wrapped in the blanket, Woohyun motions Myungsoo to continue.

“Hackers normally use spyware to gather exploitable information from the infected hardware and use them to their advantage. This program I found only does two thing, it scans name records and monitors CCTV images.”

“Where can it be found?” Woohyun voices.

“Anything it can embed itself to; government ministries, hospitals, shops to general households. As long it links to the internet, the program will be able to access it, which means practically everywhere. For such a powerful program, it is really puzzling why it is not doing more damages. I finally break their code a few days back. The program is looking for a person.”

Woohyun looks down at Sunggyu and back at Myungsoo. There is no doubt in his mind who Myungsoo is referring when their eyes meet. He only has one question.

“Why?”

This time, it is Dongwoo who speaks up.

“There have been rumors these few years that some company developed a powerful program that can access anything online and hack into any system to steal information. The program is rumored to be unstoppable by even the best-written protection programs or firewalls. From what we encountered and Myungsoo’s recent findings, I believe this is no longer just a rumor.”

“What has it to do with Sunggyu?”

Woohyun has to ask the most important question. He distinctly knows he is going to hear the reason why Sunggyu is in hiding. And knowing means he can finally do something to help the male.

“The word out there is that a staff stole the program.”

Surprisingly, Sungjong speaks before Woohyun.

“I already said Sunggyu hyung is not a thief.”

“How do you know? How can you be so sure? As you previously said, he has gone missing for many years. If he is working in such a company, he might have turned into a crook, for all you know!”

This time round, Sungyeol garners two pairs of daggers shooting eyes. Shrugging, he settles back to the comfort of the second sofa, deciding not to pursue the conversation. Mortals are just bad in accepting facts.

“Sungjong, your turn now. Tell me how you know Sunggyu.”

“We were from the same orphanage.”

I am finally early for once. Happy 8^th Anniversary to Infinite, the group whom has brought so much laughter and good music to my life. Missing Infinite so much that all of them appear in this chapter ^^ I am yearning for some real life group activities.

Cannot believe it has been 4 weeks and Sunggyu will finish his basic training in another week. 1 month down! I think I will count by months, seems easier to endure :p Days or years sounds unbearable for me to have Sunggyu missing in my life.

Thanks for all the comments! Especially thankful to the handful of readers who have always consistently commented on my chapters and dropped me encouraging words :) You bring so much joy to my writing!