Minhyun looked as if Minki had hit him in the face with a brick. For a moment he just stood there, too overwhelmed to even breathe, but then reality struck him as a slight shiver and it was his turn to cry inconsolably.

“But that can’t be! There must be something we can do!”

“I’m really sorry, but there isn’t…”
“Don’t say that! Don’t say it…” Minhyun hid his face in his hands. “He has to make it, he can’t leave us alone like that. Not after Dongho and Aron abandoned us, he just can’t!”

Minki stepped forward to hug the other boy; it hurt to think of their former friends. Both of them had vanished without a word, not leaving a trace behind, nor a clue to why they suddenly seemed to be erased from the world.

The rain had them both drenched already and they were freezing.

“Maybe we should go home. They won’t let us see him anyway…” Minki tried, but Minhyun pushed him away, staring angrily at him.

“How can you be so cold? Isn’t he your boyfriend?!”
“Y-Yes, but…”
“How can you even think of leaving at a time like this? He needs to know you’re here! What if something happens and you’re not around?”

Minki’s eyes dilated in surprise. At first he didn’t know what to say, until the taller one started to walk back to the hospital.

“Minhyun, please! I just can’t bear to be near him when he’s like this because I made him this way!”

“What are you talking about?”
“It’s my fault he’s dying, I poisoned him!”

“No way… Tell me that’s not true!” Minhyun had stopped and had now turned to face Minki again. “You couldn’t do that!”

“Yet I did it…” He couldn’t look Minhyun in the eyes anymore. “He was poisoned by my blood, the infection comes from me. If he dies it’ll be because of me. He even said himself that it was because of that”.

“Minki, stop it, hyung is not going to die!”
“How the hell do you suggest we keep him alive then?!”

“It sounds to me as if you don’t even want him to survive!”

SLAM!

“Don’t ever say that again!”

Minhyun wavered backwards, holding both hands to his cheek where Minki had slapped him. The blonde stepped forwards to grab his shoulders, shaking him as he sneered: “don’t act as if Jonghyun means nothing to me! Don’t ever say it again, I would rather get thrown off a ing bridge again than watch him die, and if there was anything I could do to end his suffering, I swear I would do it!”

“I know”. The brunette placed both arms around Minki in a tight grip. “I just needed to hear you say it”.

Minki immediately returned the embrace, clenching his hands on Minhyun’s jacket.

“I’m so sorry hyung…” His voice was trembling, as were his legs. “I’m sorry I hit you, I just couldn’t control myself, I…”
Minhyun hushed at him, cradling him softly while leaning his head on the other one’s white tresses.

“I forgive you. But rather than giving up already, we should think of a way to get to talk to him again. You said that he knew about the… thing with your blood?”

He nodded slowly.

“Yes. He called it something… Helix, I think…”
“That sounds familiar”.

“What?”

“Yeah, I’m serious… I just can’t remember where I heard it”. He started to chew on the inside of his lip, his forehead winkled in concentration.

“Not a single doctor have seen these symptoms before in their life, and now you suddenly say it rings a bell?”
“It does… Think. Minkiah, did he say anything else? Even deliriously, just something…”
“Well… He did mention Aron…”

Minhyun’s face turned pale white in a flash; with a very deep breath he answered, trying to act as if nothing was wrong.

“That’s it, that’s how I know that word”.

“From Aron?”

The brunette had placed his gaze at the ground, a bleak shadow veiling up his eyes as he answered.

“Yes. Remember last Sunday? I went to his flat to confess to him and that’s when I first found out he had left”.

“Yeah, you said that…”
“The place was totally empty. The walls were stripped from pictures, all the furniture was gone. Remember I said that? Well, didn’t you think it was odd that could just walk in when I didn’t have a key?”

“Oh my God, how could we be so stupid…”
“I met a guy there, someone who said he knew Aron. He was there to get the last of his stuff for him. We talked for a while, it sounded as if he knew him well. He must have, since he had a spare key and all… And I asked him what Aron had left behind for him to pick up. At first he didn’t seem too happy about it, but it turned out it was a stack of books. That is where I saw it: there was a bookmark sticking out from one of them, and it had the word Helix written on it”.

He couldn’t help but smile vaguely when he thought of how ridiculous it was for him to remember such things. The youngest looked truly impressed at him.

“Hyung, how on Earth were you able to pick up a detail like that?”

“It wasn’t the only thing I picked up…” Another smile. He drew out a small piece of paper from one of his pockets and handed it to Minki. “He dropped this when he left”.

It was a business card. It didn’t have a name on it, only a picture of a white statue, along with the words Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour.

The back of the card was just as cryptic. A long line of numbers were listed with a tiny font. At the very bottom were the words Seoul Grace Church.

“And this is so incredibly helpful, because…?”

“Well, I guess you never tried to eavesdrop on Aron when he’s on the phone”.

“Hyung!”

“It was an accident actually… But I overheard a conversation once between Aron and someone who sounded as if he was his college or something. They were talking about getting a job done and it sounded to me as if it was really important, so I didn’t interrupt. The thing is, the person Aron was on the phone with was never mentioned by name… Aron just called him Fisher”.

“Fisher… Oh!” Minki’s eyes grew very wide as he looked at the cryptic business card again. “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Saviour, it’s an acronym! An old Christian acronym, right?”
“Exactly. I think that’s the reason for the statue. It’s the Greek goddess Athena. If you put together the first letter in each word it spells out the Greek word for fish. Now, the numbers on the back should somehow have been a phone number, right?”
“I… I guess… But I can tell that they are not”.

“I’ve already thought about it. Look at the way they are written”.

Minki lifted the card closer to his face so that he could see the small letters more clearly.

“356, 14, 99, 741… Is that… pagination?” He looked at Minhyun. “Page numbers”.

“I think so”.

“Hyung, why are we even doing this? So what if we find that number, do you really think that this Fisher-guy is going to tell us anything? Aron left. He got a new number, a new e-mail… We even found out he changed his name! If Fisher knows anything I don’t think he’s going to let it go easily”.

“No, but we have to try! If not, I’ll be morally obligated to push you off the nearest bridge”.

He crossed his arms, looking stubbornly at Minki who turned his eyes up, sighing defeated.

“Fine, you’re right. It’s just… I don’t want to see Aron ever again. I know you like him and all, but there’s just no way I can forgive him for running off like that without saying anything”.

“Are you crazy? I’m going to punch that idiot in the face if we ever find him! But it’ll have to wait until he has told us what he knows about this Helix-blood”.

Once again, Minki had to admit that Minhyun was right.

“Okay, so we have a lot of page numbers… Which book should we look in then? It could be any book, the choices are infinite…”

Minhyun sat down on the ground for a moment, already so soaked by the rain that he didn’t care anymore. One could almost tell how his mind was working behind his passive eyes.

“I think… I think the book Fisher showed me, which had the bookmark was a hymnal”. Slowly he moistened his lips. “He could have taken it from that church, Seoul Grace Church. It’s worth a try, don’t you think?”

“It is. But how many hymnals do you think they have hyung? A hundred? Five hundred?”

“We’re looking for the one Aron had. It had a slight discolouration on the front”.

“How are you doing that?”

Minhyun nervously curled his lips.

“I just notice things, little details… I think it’s what they call a photographic memory”.

“That is so cool…”

“Thanks. But we have to go now, we can’t afford to waste time!”

Minki nodded determined and they started to run from the hospital towards the nearest bus terminal.