“What did you do with him?” Xiumin demanded as he kicked the guy in the stomach. “What did you do with my younger brother?”

            “Trust me, he’s in good hands,” the man said through his blood-stained teeth. Without wasting another moment, Xiumin kicked again with greater strength and pushed the guy to the ground in the basement. Seeing as though the guy was no longer getting up, Xiumin left the basement, locked the door, and returned to the ground level of the building.

            Right on time, Lay walked through the doorway and saw the expression on Xiumin’s face. Already he figured that something was wrong. “Did you get any information?” Lay asked.

            “No,” Xiumin said shaking his head. “He won’t tell me anything about what he did with my brother and my son.” Lay sighed as he leaned up against the counter. It was going to be a problem, they didn’t have any leads on either of their missing people.

            “What about Mom?” Lay asked. It felt slightly weird to be addressing her by the word ‘mom.’ “Have you gotten anything out of her?”

            “She won’t talk either,” Xiumin frustratingly said. “Why does everything have to be so difficult?”

            “Xiumin, if things were simpler, then we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Lay said as he attempted to reason.

            “It’s all because of our mother,” he grumbled as he sat on the couch.

            “You can’t blame her for everything.”

            “Yes I can,” Xiumin said nodding his head. “My little brother is in danger and my son and my wife are missing because of her. How am I not supposed to blame everything on her?”

            Lay sighed as he took a seat next to Xiumin. While he wouldn’t entirely understand the pain that Xiumin was going through, Lay knew that they were both angry at their mother and they were just trying to protect their younger brother. After all, there was only so much that they would be able to do, there was only so much that they could protect him from.

            “You know that he’s going to find out sooner or later, right?” Lay said in a soft voice as he stared at the floor in front of him. He just couldn’t bring himself to look over at Xiumin.

            “Later rather than sooner,” Xiumin said. “I don’t want him to be brought into this. I don’t want him to know.”

            “Don’t you think he’s slowly going to figure out? Let me tell you something, Chen is a bright kid. Everything that’s been happening recently, he’s going to know, or at least he’s going to figure out that something isn’t right. He’s not stupid, he has to know eventually. He’ll probably hate us even more for keeping it from him.”

            “That’s something we’ll just have to deal with when the time comes, Lay,” Xiumin said as he looked at his younger brother.

“There’s…no one here,” Kris said as he looked around the property.

            “Are you sure you have the right place?” Ellie asked. She was concerned about their safety. They were gone without people knowing where they were. Everyone in school thought that she had just gone home because of some unnamed emergency and her parents thought that she was in school. If she were to go missing, she figured that no one would actually know where she went.

            “Stop overthinking things,” Kris suddenly said, somewhat shocking Ellie a little bit.

            “Huh?” Ellie asked as she looked at him. “Who said I’m overthinking things?”

            “I know the way that your mind works, you’re overthinking things,” Kris said with a light chuckle. “I watch over you, remember? I live with you, I’m your bodyguard. That’s all I’ll ever be. I’ll only ever be Ellie’s bodyguard.”

            Ellie didn’t say anything as she looked at Kris. She couldn’t. What was there to say? She wanted to comfort Kris, of course she wanted to, but she didn’t know how to go about it. She didn’t know how she should comfort someone in that type of situation if she didn’t return the same feelings. However, she did at one point. At one point, Ellie actually had feelings for Kris, but she always figured that it wouldn’t matter, that in his eyes she would simply be a little sister, that she would be nothing but someone younger than Kris. So, over time, she gave up her feelings for him and only saw him as an older brother, nothing else.

            “Excuse me,” a voice said breaking the somewhat awkward silence between Ellie and Kris. “What are you guys doing here?”

            “Tao?” Kris asked as he turned around and became face to face with his friend.

            “Kris?” Tao asked as he got closer to see his friend. Tao came up and patted Kris on the back as he smiled at him. “What are you doing here? The shop is closed today.”

            “Is it? We’re looking for someone.”

            “Well maybe I could help you, I work here.”

            “Then what are you doing here?” Kris curiously asked.

            “I’m just making sure that everything is alright, I still have to do inventory, I forgot to do it yesterday,” he said with a laugh. “But who are you looking for?”

            “Someone by the name of Lay?” Kris asked as he took the piece of paper out of his pocket and showed it to Tao. “Yeah, Lay.”

            “My boss?”

            “Your boss?” Ellie asked as he looked at him. “So then you know Chen?”

            “Chen, yeah, he came a week ago, why?”

            “Just…wondering,” Ellie quietly said.

            “Well yes, I do know Chen and Lay, he’s my boss. Why are you looking for him?”

            “We just wanted to ask him a couple of questions, but if the shop is closed today, then there’s no point. Just tell me when the shop is opened; you have my number, right? Ellie and I have to get going now, but I’ll see you later, alright Tao?”

            “Okay, see you later, Kris,” Tao said as he gently waved to the two as they left.

“Give me the boy,” the man said as he sat across from Xiumin and Lay.

            “You’re never getting him,” Xiumin said as he stared the man down. “You’re never going to get him. Why do you want him in the first place?”

            “You ask too many questions.”    

            “I think you’re too demanding,” Xiumin said as he rolled his eyes and leaned back in the chair. “There’s no way that you’re getting him. We’re not going to hand him over to you.”

            “He’s the heir, he has to be given to me, he’s my son.”

            “He’s no one’s son, just like I’m not yours. Just because he’s the last one you think that you can have control over him? Just because the two of us have rejected you as our father, you think that he’s going to accept you?”

            “He has to, I’m his father.”

            “We didn’t accept you,” Lay chimed in. “Father or not, we didn’t accept you.”

            “Chen will, Chen’s a good boy,” the man said with a glint on his eye.

            “Once he knows what you and Mom did, I’m pretty sure he won’t accept either of you,” Xiumin said as he took a quick glance at Lay. “I’m sure he won’t want to spend any more time with the family.”

            “I did those things for your own good, I wanted my sons to grow up in a good atmosphere and in a good home,” he said in an attempt to justify his actions.

            “Murdering people? Threatening people, do you think that that’s the life that Chen wants to be associated with? Your people won’t tell me where he went. You think that attempting to kidnap him would also put him on your side?” Xiumin demanded.

            “Well you kidnapped your mother, didn’t you?” he retorted.

            “That’s different,” Xiumin growled.

            “I don’t see anything different with that,” he said with a haunted laugh that sent shivers down Xiumin and Lay’s spine.

            “At least my mother means more to me than you,” Lay spit back.

            “From what I remember, you were the one that we gave away,” he said with a demented laugh as he looked at Lay. Lay didn’t say anything, he simply stared at his “father.” There was really nothing to say. Lay wasn’t going to attempt to reason since he was the child that was given away.

            “Don’t listen to him,” Xiumin said after he had already left and it was only them in the room again.

            “But what he said is true,” Lay said as he rested his head on the table. “I was the child that was given away, I was the one that wasn’t wanted.”

            “Don’t listen to him, he’s an idiot.”

            “But he speaks the truth, hyung,” Lay said as he looked at him. “He speaks the truth. What difference does it make if we kidnapped our mother to him attempting to kidnap Chen?”

            “The fact that we know where our mother is and we don’t know where Chen is,” Xiumin angrily said. He couldn’t believe that his younger brother was using those things as an example and that he was comparing themselves to their disgusting father, even if he was their father.

            “Well then we just have to search even harder to find him,” Lay said, he knew that it was something that they both agreed on. “Where would he have gone?”

            “Xiumin…” a voice said that caused the two of them to turn around and look at the source. At the sight before him, Xiumin was about to break down. He saw the woman in front of him breaking down and he was about to do the same. It had been so long since he last saw her, so long since he last heard her voice, he missed it. “Xiumin…is it really you? It can’t be,” she said immediately shaking her head. “It can’t be, you’re dead…you’re dead…you can’t be here. I saw you die…you can’t be.”

            “Miyoon!” Xiumin yelled as he saw her body collapse on the floor. “Lay, help me, help me here.”

            Lay and Xiumin didn’t waste another moment as they gathered Miyoon into their arms. “Hyung, we should take her to a hospital. Why is she even here in the first place?”

            And that’s when Xiumin spotted it, the note on the floor, but before he picked it up, he looked at Lay as a thousand thoughts went through his head. “I guess we should take her to the hospital. You drive, I’ll be in the back with her.”

            Without wasting any more time, the two gathered Miyoon up into the car. Discretely, Xiumin picked up the note before they left, he would have to read it while they were in the hospital and he would tell Lay about it, too. “Please, please, help her,” Lay said as he ran in front of Xiumin, who was carrying Miyoon.

            “What happened?” a nurse asked as she rushed up to them once she saw the limp body.

            “We don’t know,” Xiumin said shaking his head, “she came and then she suddenly fainted. She came out of nowhere, we don’t know where she came from or anything.”

            “What is your relationship to the woman?” the doctor asked as he brought a bed over for Miyoon to be taken away to get treated.

            “She’s my wife,” Xiumin said. “She’s my wife, please, help.”

            Nodding, the doctor gave silent command to the nurses as they began wheeling Miyoon away. “Sir, we’d like to have you sign some paperwork over here,” the doctor said as he brought Xiumin elsewhere.

            “Okay, just give me a moment,” Xiumin said as he looked back at Lay and walked over to him. “Hey, thanks, you can go.”

            “I want to help, I—,” Lay began, before he was cut off by his cell phone.

            “Answer that,” Xiumin said. “If it’s something important where you have to go, then go, thank you for all of your help, I appreciate it.”

            With a nod of Lay’s head, Xiumin disappeared back to the counter with the doctor while he went to go answer his phone. “Hello?” he asked as he answered it.

            “Hyung,” a very familiar voice said on the other line.

            “Luhan,” Lay breathed as he heard his younger brother’s voice for the first time in a very long time.

            “So you do remember me,” he said with a little laugh. “I was wondering if we’d be able to meet.”

            “Meet? Why do you want to meet?”

            “I think it’s time you know.”

            “Know what?”

            “Just…just meet me at our old high school in half an hour, I’ll be there waiting,” Luhan said before he hung up the phone. 

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What is in the note that Xiumin found? What does Luhan want to talk to Lay about? Where does it go from here? What life was Chen born into?

Here's Chapter 24. Hope you enjoyed :D

So, we find out some more things about Chen and his family and the mystery still grows, but like I said before, the story is slowly wrapping up, but that doesn't mean that there are a couple more mysteries in his world, haha.