Ellie and Kris sat on the hospital bench while Ellie’s parents went over to talk to the doctor about what had happened to Chen. “What if he doesn’t make it?” Ellie worriedly asked as she looked at Kris. “What happened to him? Who would do something like that?”

            “We don’t know,” Kris whispered as he leaned forward and rested his head on his hands. “We don’t know who would do something like that, but it doesn’t seem like it was an accident.”

            “But what if he doesn’t make it?” Ellie quietly repeated. She didn’t like thinking about it. She didn’t like thinking about that kind of thing, but it was a possibility. The state that Chen was in when he was found at their doorstep was anything but ideal, not that getting beaten up anyway was ideal, but Chen was losing a lot of blood and it was uncertain if he had any internal injuries.

            “Don’t think like that,” Kris whispered as he turned to look at Ellie. “Don’t talk like that because it will only bring you even more hurt than before.”

            “But I am hurting,” Ellie said.

            “Ellie, do you like him?” Kris seriously asked.

            “What?”

            “I said, do you like Chen?”

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “Yes you do,” Kris said, getting more serious with every passing second. “Do you like Chen?”

            “How can I like someone like him? Why should I like someone like him?”

            “Ellie…”

            “Kris…”

            “Guys,” Ellie’s mother said going over to the two sitting on the bench before they could say another word to each other.

            “How’s he doing?” Ellie asked as she got up to talk to her parents, Kris did the same and followed suit.

            “He’s holding up,” her father said with a sigh. “He went through surgery and they don’t know how long he’s going to be out, but he’s holding up. They’re going to keep a close eye monitoring him and if anything happens, they’re going to call us.”

            “Guys, it’s getting late and we should all go home and go to bed,” her mother said.

            Ellie sighed, realizing that it was late and she had school the next day. “Alright,” she said nodding her head. “But I want to come back here tomorrow, is that okay?”

            “Sure,” her mother said with a smile.

            Slowly, the four of them left the hospital and piled back into the car to go back home. “So, what are you guys doing back?” Kris asked as the car slowly began to move.

            “We just wanted to see how things were honestly holding up,” Ellie’s father said. “We found a little break in our schedule and we wanted to see how you all were doing.”

            “Oh,” Kris said nodding his head as he took a quick glance at Ellie. Normally she would show some excitement about her parents being back, but she was still upset over Chen. She wondered what he had gotten into after he left that would’ve made him get beat up. He wondered what happened to the little boy that was with him, and that’s when it hit her. Minhyuk.

            “The little boy,” she whispered.

            “What?” everyone asked turning to look at her.

            “The little boy…Minhyuk,” Ellie whispered.

            “Ellie, dear, what are you saying?” her mother asked.

            “There was a little boy with Chen…it was his nephew he said…he was going to take him somewhere…he was going to take him wherever Chen was going…” Ellie said as she attempted to construct her thoughts in an orderly matter.

            “Ellie,” her mother worriedly said.

            “I saw Chen before he ran away, I could’ve prevented it all, but I let him go away,” she began as she thought back to the day that she saw him at the hotel. “He had a little boy with him, his nephew, Minhyuk, but only Chen showed up on our doorstep.”

            “Ellie, you’re not saying,” Kris said catching on to what Ellie was unable to say.

            “I don’t know,” she said as she began shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“Why do you look so tired?” Jiyeon asked Ellie as they walked into the school together.

            “Ah, you know,” Ellie said putting on a fake smile. There was no way that she was going to be able to say what had happened to Chen the previous night. “Just…up doing things.”

            “Were you hanging out with Luhan?” she curiously asked and when Ellie didn’t give any sort of response, she just automatically assumed that they were. “I know what you guys did.”

            “Huh? Oh, yeah, sure,” Ellie said shrugging her shoulders. She figured that it would be better to let Jiyeon think what she wanted to think without actually having to correct her and spill what she knew about Chen.

            “You know,” Jiyeon said changing the subject as Ellie followed her to her desk and stood in front of it while Jiyeon placed her bag down and leaned against the other desk close by, “I was thinking about going to Chen’s house.”

            “I thought you already went through that plan and it didn’t work,” Ellie said in her nicest voice possible to try and talk Jiyeon out of the possibility of her going and doing that.

            “Um…I want to try again,” she said with a smile as she took out her phone. “You know that I have people.”

            Before Jiyeon could even press a number on her phone, Ellie took it out of her hands. “I don’t think that that’s such a good idea,” Ellie nervously said as she attempted to find a reason why it wouldn’t be good for Jiyeon to attempt to find Chen.

            “Why not?” Jiyeon asked as she crossed her hands against her chest.

            “Because…you know…what if he changed his address or something,” Ellie said. “What if he was taken out of the school because he moved?”

            “You know that that doesn’t happen,” Jiyeon said rolling her eyes. “You know that people in this school want to be in this school no matter how far they move. I mean, they even rent apartments for their children to stay in. I mean, my parents are living halfway across the world and you don’t see me complaining.”

            “And so are mine, though,” Ellie said as she attempted to think of another excuse. “What if there was no other way and he had to move? What if there was a family emergency that would just take him out of school so long?”

            “Why are you so concerned about him?” Jiyeon curiously asked. “It seems like you’re making up excuses about everything involving Chen. Don’t tell me, are you secretly dating him?”

            “What?” Ellie asked looking at Jiyeon, and that’s when she heard the teacher come in.

            “Don’t think that our conversation is over,” Jiyeon said giving Ellie a warning glare before Ellie went over to her seat.

            Throughout the whole class, Ellie couldn’t pay attention. She had no idea what was going on in class and whenever the teacher called on her, she was spacing out. It was like she couldn’t keep concentration. In fact, she couldn’t. She didn’t know what was coming over her, it just seemed like it wasn’t right.

            “Ellie, Ellie,” the teacher called again attempting to get her attention.

            “Yes?” Ellie asked as she shook out of her trance.

            “Pack up your bags, you’re going home.”

            “Why?” she questioned.

            “The office will explain to you, there’s someone here to pick you up.”

            “Oh…alright,” Ellie quietly said as she began packing up her school bags. She wondered why she would be getting called out of school, such a rare occurrence to happen. No one got called out of class, no one ever left class early. It was like there was something strange going on, but it wasn’t like Ellie was able to tell since she wasn’t paying attention for half of the day.

            “Ellie,” Kris said standing up in the hallway of the school.

            “Kris…what are you doing here?” Ellie asked at the sight of him. “Why are you here?”

            “To pick you up,” he simply said.

            “Why? Why am I leaving school early?”

            “Just…follow me,” he said as he reached out to take Ellie’s bags from her.

            Ellie had no choice but to follow Kris as he left the school. A thousand questions were racing through her mind involving what Kris might be doing. Do her parents know about him taking her out of school? And why would he take her out of school? Never, not even once, had he ever done something like take her out of school, especially in the morning before the third lesson was even over. It was something that was different…there was something that was different.

            “Where are we going?” Ellie asked as she climbed into the passenger’s seat of Kris’s car.

            “We’re going to go find out where Chen was.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “We’re going to go find out where he ran away to,” Kris said clearing up his previous statement.

            “Why? How? We don’t even know where he went,” Ellie said as she attempted to think back his previous conversations with him. “We don’t, but your mother and father had the police go to Chen’s house to inform his mother about his disappearance, but his mother wasn’t there. It didn’t look like anyone had been in the house for a couple of days. They suspected suspicious activity and got a warrant to search the house, and that’s when they found this phone number.”

            “A phone number? We’re doing everything off of a phone number? And shouldn’t the police be doing this? Why aren’t the police doing this?” Ellie questioned.

            “Because…they don’t know we’re doing this,” Kris said after a sigh.

            “What?” Ellie yelled freaking out. “The police don’t know that we’re going to go and look for where he was staying? Are you crazy? What if we get hurt?”

            “We aren’t going to get hurt,” Kris said sternly looking at Ellie. “I will protect you, I’m your bodyguard after all. You aren’t going to get hurt and I’m not going to get hurt. We’re simply going to scope out the place.”

            “Do my parents know that you took me out of school?”

            “No, but that’s a secret between us two, alright?” Kris asked winking at Ellie before he started driving faster to the location that the phone number was connected to.

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Where are Ellie and Kris going? Will Chen be alright? Where is Minhyuk? What ever happened to Luhan? Will Ellie and Kris ever find out what happened to Chen?

Here's Chapter 23. Hope you enjoyed :D

Hm...I'm wondering...just how long should I make this fanfic? Should it be straightforward with some little drama twists or should it have much more? ...but it probably already has a lot of drama twists, doesn't it, haha.