Minhyun carefully patted Minki’s forehead with a wet piece of cloth, careful not to touch his hair.

“When do you think he’ll wake up?” he whispered, still feeling it would be wrong to make too much noise.

“I don’t know…” Aron slipped his fingers through his hair, sighing with a worried look on his face. He kept walking back and forth between the door and Minhyun, who sat beside Minki; despite him being unconscious he still trembled from time to time as a twinge ran through him.

“You still haven’t told me why you are here”.

“Hyung, you have to help us. Jonghyun is dying”. Minhyun moved his gaze from Minki to Aron, looking more than just ordinary helpless. “No one knows what to do, the doctors can’t do a thing but watch him die… Come back with us”.

“What’s wrong with him?”
“He was poisoned. By Helix-blood. Please…” Tears were starting to well up in his eyes. “You have to do something. You are the only one…”
“Minhyun, how do you even know about Helix?” Aron’s eyes had grown wide when Minhyun had said it. Now he sounded as if was about to panic, yet it still seemed as if he was scolding the younger brunette. “You weren’t supposed to know about it!”

“You knew about it all along, yet you kept it from us!”
“That doesn’t matter, it was better that way! I spent six months trying to hide this from you all for your own damn good, you were better off not knowing! Who told you?”
“Jonghyun did”.

“I’m gone for a few days and that blabbermouth decides to drop? Why now? Everything was absolutely fine, no one had died for years!”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s none of your business, Minki wouldn’t want me to tell you. But for the love of God, you can’t know all of this!” He had sped up in his manic pace to the door and back, and his low voice was rushed and angry. “You have to go back to Korea right now, there’s nothing I can do”.

“Why are you being like this? How can you just stand there, acting so cold?” He got on his feet to look Aron in the eyes, fighting a great urge to either kiss him or slap him; he still wasn’t sure of which one to choose. His sudden reaction made Aron hesitate.

“Look, you… you don’t understand”.

“No, you don’t understand! We have about ten days, maybe even less before our best friend dies of an alien infection and you might be the only one who’s able to help him, so tell me right now why you keep being so ridiculously stubborn and refuse to say anything, even though this is affecting us, too. He’s also your friend Aron, how can you stand by and let him die?! …” His voice broke and he had to wipe his eyes when he found out he was crying. “Minki promised me to stop me if I began to cry…”

Aron bit his lip and slowly placed one arm around Minhyun, whose body immediately became stiff as a board.

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you guys… I just really hate Jonghyun right now…”
“That’s no excuse!”
“Do you even know how ing painful it is to see the one you love only wanting someone else, knowing that whatever you do, they just don’t notice you at all?”

“It feels as if your heart is being pulled apart”. Irritated Minhyun pushed Aron away. “If it was me, I would value my friendship with Jonghyun higher than my love for Minki. I won’t leave until you promise to help him”.

“But that’s just it Minhyunah. I don’t think I can”.

An hour later Minhyun had made Aron explain everything that had happened during the last six months. Aron now looked as if he was ready to shoot himself. They were eating cup noodles, the only food Aron seemed to be able to cook without destroying something, and drinking bottled water as Aron had insured the water from the faucet was dangerous to drink. The only chairs in re-arranged office was, of course, office chairs and they weren’t comfortable.

“I just don’t understand why on Earth you are living in an abandoned industrial area…” Minhyun muttered, swallowing the noodles without chewing.

“It’s safer not to stay on a private address. Out here I’ll be able to escape easier if anyone comes for me”.

“You mean Solum?”
“Yeah. They are regrouping, when they have a team of new assassins they’ll go back to hunting Minki”. He sounded genuinely tired from life.

“How is he going to be safe if you’re not there to protect him?”
“He’ll have another guardian. I won’t be assigned to his case again, I’ve asked to be transferred and anyway, it would be impossible to explain to you guys if I came back. The thing I just don’t get is how you found me here.”
“Fisher”.

“Oh, I am so gonna kill him…” He leaned back in the chair staring at the ceiling for a while. “And one more thing, how did Jonghyun manage to consume Minki’s blood? It’s not really common to drink blood as far as I’m aware”.

“Trust me hyung, you don’t want to know…” Minhyun bit his lip, feeling guilty for no reason.
“I see. , then?”
“More or less…”

For a long time the only sound was that of Minki’s breath in the background. Aron had assured that he was just asleep now, even though he kept frowning every time the headache kicked in.

Then Minhyun cleared his throat, his voice still low and his eyes out of hope.

“Honestly hyung, is there any way we can save Jonghyun?”

Aron shook his head, looking at Minhyun in pity.

“No, I really don’t think so. There hasn’t been developed an antidote to the Helix, the only way to try and cure him would be by a bone marrow transplantation and in his condition it would probably just finish him off for good. The Helix-blood fusions with regular blood-types, which makes it impossible to get out of the body again unless you were to him dry. I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of anyone poisoned by a Helix who have lived to tell the tale… It’s just not possible, the blood is deadly no matter how you look at it”.

Silently Minhyun had started to cry again, staring lost at the floor. Even though he was the tallest one he looked incredibly small at that moment, and his skinny arms where shaking.

“I was so sure… that if we found you you would be able to help him…” he whispered devastated.

“I’m sorry Minhyunah, I really am…”
“Don’t be. As if I could hate you anyway…”

Aron pushed his chair next to Minhyun’s so that he could place his arms around the younger boy who was weeping in silence. Softly he his back, leaning his head on Minhyun’s.

“I swear, if there was anything I could do…”
“Don’t try to make it better when you can’t hyung. It’s not helping!”

“But I want to help…”
“You can’t, you just said yourself that you’re worthless!”

“You still need to punch me… Go ahead, if it makes you feel better”. He pulled away and looked at Minhyun, both of them completely expressionless despite that Minhyun was still shedding tears.

“Are you sure?”
“Seriously, I can’t stand to see you like this knowing it’s my fault. If it will help you to stop crying then give it a go”.

“You are actually asking me to hit you in the face?”
“Whatever you want, really”.

“Then I’d much rather want this…” Before Aron could stop him, Minhyun had pulled him close and with a tight grip around him so that he couldn’t move away at all he seized the older boy’s lips, pressing his body roughly against him.