He smiled at the younger boy, as he opened his eyes.

”Did you sleep well?”
”Of course I did hyung. I had the craziest dream!” He managed to lean on his elbows as he rose halfway from the bed to get a better look at Aron, who smiled.

“Really? About what?”
“I dreamt that we were in an idol group! Can you imagine that? You, me, Dongho and Jonghyun, and Minhyun too. It was so cool, we were popular as hell”.

“Of course we were”, Aron giggled, stepping closer to the bed. “But don’t you think it’s time to get home?”
“Oh…” Minki looked around, startled as if he just now realised where he were. “For how long was I asleep?”

“For a few hours. It’s like 8 p.m. now…”
“You’re joking! I should have been home half an hour ago! Jesus…” With fast movements he jumped out of bed and grabbed his shirt, which he struggled to get on, then his jacket and his shoes. He didn’t care to lace them. “I have to go now, thank you for letting me stay here… I’ll see you tomorrow!”

He was out of the door and gone before Aron could say a word. With a reluctant smile on his face he watched from the door as Minki ran down the street with his long dark brown locks of hair swaying in the wind. Just a few metres more, then he would be able to follow from a distance to make sure he got home safe.

A quick look around assured him that he was absolutely alone in the empty school yard. Fervently he pressed his mobile phone to his ear.

“What do you mean, “he’s in danger”? I thought no one had noticed him!” Small pearls of sweat began to show on his forehead as the husked voice in the phone answered:

“Apparently someone has. We have reports saying that a guy from Solum got his hands on one of the records from that Sawyer girl in Oklahoma, a report you failed to destroy in time. It shows that she tried to get a donation from Choi Minki four days before she died…”

Aron cursed, staring furiously at the ground.

“Damn it! They know about him then… Every bloody member of Solum must be on their way to get him!”

“Aron-sshi, please relax, it doesn’t help to panic now. Yes, all six of them should be on their way to Seoul in this very moment, but rather than a threat, we should be seeing it as an opportunity most welcome”.

“What do you mean?” Aron asked slowly. He had a bad feeling about the direction of the conversation.

“They know that someone is watching over him, therefore they wouldn’t be so stupid as to send one or two… All six members will be going after Choi, which means you will have a rare chance to slay them all at once”.

“And use him as bait? Are you insane?! There’s no way I’m risking his life, that’s against my traditions, and you know it!”

“But Aron-sshi, wait…”
But he hung up before the voice could finish. Shaking in anger he turned off the phone and put it back in the inner pocket of the jacket of his navy school uniform.

So they had found him.

Solum had found Minki, despite his desperate attempts to cover up his tracks. And just because that freaking American girl had been stupid enough to try and contact him directly, not even trying to conceal the fact that she needed his blood.

He shook his head and tried to put on a normal expression as he entered the class room almost ten minutes too late.

“Tell me, Aron-sshi… are you deaf?”
“No sir” he answered meekly, trying not to look directly at the teacher.

“Then tell me why you waited so long to join us? Was there something more important that you had to do?”
“No sir…”

The teacher crossed his arms, leaning slightly backwards as he studied Aron’s bland looking eyes.

“Sit don Aron-sshi. As far as I recall this is far from the first time that you have been sloppy about coming to class in time. Since low grades doesn’t seem to have any effect on you… I think I’ll have to keep you here for a few hours longer, so that you’ll learn the importance of being on time in the future. Detention”.

Aron stared at the teacher with eyes wide from panic as he sat down on his chair next to Minki and Dongho, trying not to make things worse by complaining about his punishment, but as the teacher turned to the blackboard again and continued the lesson, the despair started to grow inside of him.

If he had to stay at school for hours, how would he ever be able to follow Minki around as he was supposed to?

There was no way he would be able to protect him if they weren’t together, and as a guardian of the Helix-blood he just couldn’t let Minki out of sight anymore.

When the rest of the class left the class room at the end of the day, he felt completely helpless, seeing Minki wave at him with a bleak smile, before he left together with Jonghyun. The class room was now empty, except for him, the teacher, and Dongho, who apparently had looked “too sloppily dressed” in the eyes of their teacher, and therefore had to stay, too.

None of them spoke a word for two hours. One terrible scenario after the other unfolded inside Aron’s mind as the seconds went by, and when the teacher finally let them off, he almost ran out of class, apologising to Dongho on the way for not sticking around, and rushed to Minki’s house. He had no idea of what to say when he rang the doorbell, he just knew he had to see if Minki had come home yet. For almost five minutes he tried to come up with a reason for him to be there, then he realised that no one was home. He had been staring at the door for five minutes.

With his heart pounding painfully fast inside his chest he took out his phone and tried to call him instead, but no one answered. He could feel his body become numb as he tried the call again. This time he was in luck.

“Hey, Aron, it’s you right?”
“Jonghyun… Why do you have Minki’s phone?”
“We’re at the hairdresser, Minki has all sorts of chemicals in his hair right now, so he is not really in any position to pick up the phone himself. What did you want to say?”
“Uhm, nothing, I just… I just wanted to know if the teacher had said anything important before I came, you know” he lied as fast as he could.

There was a lot of noise in the background, probably from a hairdryer.

“Nope, you didn’t miss a thing. He just told everyone that our latest tests , as always”.

Aron laughed, trying not to let Jonghyun hear how relieved he felt.

“Okay then. See you tomorrow then, bye”.

“Bye”.

As soon as he had hung up, he went to the hairdresser. Standing outside on the other side of the road, neither Jonghyun nor Minki noticed him, not even when they left and almost walked right past him.

Minki was wearing a stylish hat, hiding all of his hair inside it. No doubt he had done something crazy and wanted to leave his parents unaware of it for as long as possible.

He said good bye to Jonghyun at the bus terminal and walked on alone in the twilight. Aron drew a sigh of relief when Minki went inside his house and locked the door. It had been too close this time. Without Aron watching over his every move it would be too easy for Solum to get to him.

Speaking of whom…

As he was about to head back to his flat, his eyes caught a sight of something moving across the lawn in the garden of Minki’s family’s house. Quickly he hid in the shadows of the veranda,  trying to see the moving figure more clearly, but it was impossible in the growing darkness, so he made a rash decision to attack in the blink of an eye.

Begging that Minki wouldn’t hear a thing, he ran forwards and grasped the stranger’s arms and forced him on the ground. Judging from his strength he would have to be at least five years older than Aron. Too old to be an assassin then, just a scout.

He fought helplessly to free himself from Aron’s tight grip, but Aron refused to let go. Holding him down with one hand, he took out his phone with the other and called his boss in Beijing.

“Aron, finally. What do you have to tell me?”
“They have found his house. I just captured a scout outside… But I don’t understand, they never send anyone inside their houses, they always makes it look like accidents”.

“I don’t think we have any reasons to believe that they have changed their methods. It’s quite possible that they just wanted to find out where he lived so it would be easier to find him and kill him”.

“Yes sir”.

The scout tried to free himself from Aron’s tight grip, but he hit him in the face as hard as he could, feeling his nose break beneath his fist, and the man turned silent.

“I’ll keep watching over Minki for now. If they have sent one scout, it’s likely that there are other spies around”.

“Yes. Keep your eyes open, we don’t want to lose another one of the Helix”.

“Of course not. I’ll protect him with my life”.

“I know”.

“By the way, what do I do with the scout?”

“Get rid of him”.