The Daegrent snarled, shoving the weight off of him and taking a mad swing at the creature’s face. The creature stumbled back, hissing at him.

  “You punched me!” she screamed.

  “I’m not starting anything with you,” the Daegrent growled, wiping off the blood on his face, “But if you weren’t such a damn  cat, then maybe you would’ve knocked me out by now.”

Her furry face screwed up in horror at his words before hissing again, running on all fours with her long nails reaching out for him. The Daegrent found it too easy—she jumped up at him, and he punched her in the gut, letting her whine out as she hit the back of the wall. The lights brightened and Minho straightened up, looking around the back walls for an opening.

  “Enough for today,” the announcer called, “Daegrent wins.”

  “What?!” the feline screamed, picking herself off of the ground, slinking forward, “I’m not done with him!”

  “Demon J-seven-eleven, Rinapture,” the announcer warned, “Back down.”

Her yellow eyes locked on Minho, and Minho started letting himself get worked up again because he was clearly going to have to fight her once more.

  “Jessica, back down,” Minho warned, “We can do this next time—”

She pounced, ice fog coming off her fur, but Minho jumped up, using his wings to stay too high for her. She had a fit, trying to shoot blue lightening at him, missing constantly, still losing.

  “Demon M-six-oh-nine, tame J-seven-eleven.”

He hated taking orders from them, making himself look like an obedient little rat. But if he wanted to keep his face, he had to.

Heat poured from his hands, filling the room with harmless fire, trying to only heat the room. Feline creatures couldn’t stand heat and forced themselves to sleep if they couldn’t get away. It was basically Jessica’s only weakness.

  “Cheater!” she screeched, walking around aimlessly, scratching at the walls, “Cheater!”

The fire filled the room as fog, Minho could see the black figure woozily walking in the gray clouds. She finally stopped, falling over to her side, her body growing smaller. Minho brought the fire back into his hands, feet touching the ground and changing back, turning away as the feline became a bare woman.

  “Exit opened. Daegrent exit.”

Minho saw the brick wall in front of him open up, walking through, met with chains surrounding him as his body heat hissed against them. He shouted at the sudden contact before immediately lowering his temperature back to human.

He could hear Jessica groaning from the room behind him incoherently as he was led out of the battle zone. In a way, he felt really bad. For the past week, she hadn’t beat him, and her ego was damaged from that. He wanted to let her win just once, but whenever he tried talking to her to tell her the plan, his face was almost cut in two.

He sighed in relief as his room came into view not long after they exited the battle zone. He’d been there all morning and all he needed to do was just lounge around. He hadn’t gotten a break all week.

The door slammed behind him and Minho was surprised to see Jonghyun was there on his mattress, doing summersaults from end to end.

  “What are you doing and why are you here?”

Jonghyun stopped, smiling at Minho and sitting up, crossing his legs, “Waiting. It’s your turn to talk, dude.”

Minho sighed. He already told Jonghyun about his life—except Taemin, that is. Telling him was an essential to get Jonghyun into the whole escape plan, but it seemed too hard to share. He sat down next to Jonghyun, head in his hands, “I have a boyfriend . . .”

Jonghyun scoffed, “Of course you do, I know that much.”

  “Okay . . . well, I’ve never really—no, I seriously never changed in front of him or even told him what I am. We went out of Namwon for the week, it was only day one when trouble turned up.

  “This guy—some Intellude—he . . . he was going to kill Taemin if I didn’t change. He was still going to kill him when I did. So I figured . . . I’d fight. I didn’t kill him though, SangJung did. I wasn’t going to hurt Tae, but . . . he kept screaming.”

Jonghyun put his hand on Minho’s shoulder, shaking him a little, “Most humans wouldn’t accept us. I’m sorry for . . . losing him.”

  “No,” Minho cut in, “I didn’t lose him. When they were taking me, he reached out for me. He was getting up to get me. He didn’t . . . he didn’t give up.”

Jonghyun had moved to one of his hands, taking it, forcing Minho to look at him, “I get it. But what can you do now, Minho? Not even I could do anything.”

Minho turned to him, hope shining in his eyes, “He still wants me and that’s all I care about. I don’t care how I’m getting out as long as I do. I have to escape, Jonghyun. You’re coming with me. We can plan this out—we can bring Onew and Luna . . .”

Jonghyun’s brows furrowed at the names, “You’ve already met Onew?”

Minho looked at him strangely, confused with the question, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Why haven’t you mentioned him earlier? I though he hadn’t met you yet. He meets with a lot of the innocent ones.”

  “I haven’t seen him since I met you, so I didn’t know if I should’ve brought him up.”

Jonghyun stood, pacing around the room, “He hasn’t been here in weeks . . . You haven’t seen him and I haven’t. He couldn’t be in trouble. No, he couldn’t. Maybe they sent him out on a scourge. He’s not always stuck here.”

Minho agreed, nodding. Of course Onew had many jobs outside the prison—or at least Minho would’ve never met him in the first place.

And, didn’t he say Taemin was coming . . .

  “Wait!” Minho gasped, “He could be getting Taemin—or at least would have him settled. He said they were bringing him here.”

Jonghyun sharply turned to look at Minho, realization plastered all over his face, “Wait—they’re bringing Taemin here?”

Minho nodded his head, questioning Jonghyun sudden concern and went on, “They want to erase his memory . . . But I might see him again before that. They’ll want to confirm it right? Taemin won’t cower away. He’ll beg for me to come out with him!”

Jonghyun’s jaw locked staring all over the room, pacing once more in thought.

  “Jonghyun, what’s wrong?”

The elder shook his head, waving him off, stuck in his brain, leaving Minho out of whatever was wrong.

Minho sat on the mattress, wondering what possibly Jonghyun could be thinking about. More or less, it was most likely something bad, and Minho would’ve dearly appreciated it if he decided to share.

  “We need Onew,” Jonghyun sighed, rubbing his face as he sat back down, “We need him now.”

  “Care to share?”

Jonghyun’s eyes sharply turned to Minho, cutting through his sarcasm. Minho held his hands up, showing he wasn’t picking a fight, “If it deals with Taemin, yes, I would love to know.”

  “I’ve got nothing,” Jonghyun huffed, “I think we need to start planning on how to get out rather than Taemin, though. We can’t just be concerned for his safety, you know. I would love to tell you I know the prison inside and out, but hey, I’ve only been in certain areas for the past two hundred years.”

Minho agreed, thinking for himself how they could possibly escape. They need to make it past any possible technology problems, guards, possibly even other creatures, but most of all, just SangJung.

It’d only been at least a month and that was too little of time to be able to map the place out. They needed to start working as soon as they could.

They were both interrupted as the door started unlocking, catching their attention as the door opened, shut rather hastily by a guard who had two claw marks on his neck.

  “Pardon us, why are you here?” Jonghyun growled at the guard.

The guard stiffened a little bit before once more hastily removing his helmet and letting it fall to the ground, showing his face to the two of them, breathing rather heavily.

  “Onew!” They chorused, feeling it was rather a cliché coincidence he’d come now.

  “Jonghyun!” Onew widened his eyes, pointing at him as he crouched on the ground, still catching his breath, “When did you two—like—how long was I gone?!”

Jonghyun grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him on to the mattress, holding on to his shoulders, “Just about a month, man! Where have you been?!”

Onew combed his hands through his hair, grasping the time span Jonghyun said, gathering his words as best as he could, “Out of the prison, catching other things. It goes on and whatever. I’ve been trying to get back here as fast as I could, but they insisted on going out further a beyond Seoul. Met a very nice Ritro there, too. Didn’t give me any trouble whatsoever,” he rushed, moving his hair back up to show the angry claw marks, “You think these are claw marks? Hell no, he has two long fangs on both sides of his front teeth. Wanted my blood . . .”

Minho hovered over Jonghyun’s lap to get a good look at his neck, seeing little black dotting inside the bite slashes, “. . . Shouldn’t you have gotten that checked before coming?”

  “I’ll see Luna later,” Onew backed his head to the wall, sighing out, “They wanted to give me another shift, but I ran before they found me. I want to sleep.”

Jonghyun and Minho looked at each other, not sure what they were supposed to do at this point.

  “So, nothing about Taemin, then,” Minho noted, leaning back and running a hand through his shaggy hair.

Jonghyun put a tense hand on his shoulder sympathetically, “Soon.”

  “Not soon enough, though,” he complained, “Not that it’s your fault, Onew.”

Onew shifted in his seat, fingers running over the teeth marks, shaking his head.

  “But really,” Jonghyun shifted his attentions back to Onew, examining his injury, “You should go see Luna about that. It’s infected, I smell it.”

Onew groaned, hitting his head on the wall in reluctance.

Minho looked at him forlornly, debating to reach out for him or not. Onew was so stressed for only one person and asking him to see Taemin—to keep tabs on him and everything, seemed too selfish now. Onew was now injured and Minho knew he needed to take it easy on him. Or maybe he should do everything on his own . . .

  “You should go down to Luna,” Minho repeated the suggestion, “She needs to look at that ASAP.”

Onew looked at Minho, furrowing his brows, “I was going to go see—”

  “Taemin can wait,” he interrupted, “Your neck needs more attention.”

Jonghyun nodded, helping put Onew to his feet and guiding him to the door, “Don’t get caught.”

Onew pushed himself away from Jonghyun, completely confused with both of them, “But I have to go see if Taemin’s here or anything. I need to make sure things are okay and I can—”

  “Hyung,” Jonghyun cut him off, “It can wait. We need you alive and well to do these things. So do yourself the favor and don’t die.”

Onew tried to get in another word, another excuse to not go see Luna—because it was most likely going to be a painful visit—but Jonghyun kept shoving him at the door and Minho backed him up with words.

  “We can talk about Taemin another time,” Minho said between his teeth, not liking the words, “I don’t want you to have an infection. Go, please.”

Onew sighed, slapping Jonghyun’s hands away with a small glare, hand on the door. He paused for a moment, staring into Jonghyun’s eyes and froze.

  “Onew?” Jonghyun asked.

  “A couple weeks ago,” Onew shook his head, putting a hand on Jonghyun’s shoulder, “I’m sorry.”

Jonghyun said nothing as Onew headed out the door quickly, listening to the door lock to signal he was gone.

Jonghyun then sighed, tousling his hair and sitting back down, a hand over his mouth as he thought.

  “Jonghyun? What was that about?”

Once more, he said nothing, staring at the floor.

  “Jonghy—”

  “He missed my whole epidemic. The one you saw,” he sighed, swiping his eyes, “He’s usually there to control it. Now he feels bad and thinks I suffered all day.”

Minho mouthed an ‘Oh’, nodding his head and putting a hand on his shoulder, looking around his dull room in thought, “Well, we just have to make sure he knows it wasn’t long, yeah?”

Jonghyun nodded.

They were left in silence—in the most awkward way. Minho didn’t know what to think about or what to even say to Jonghyun. He was a little lost for words, but he knew he had to say something.

But right now didn’t even feel right.

  “So,” Jonghyun perked up, clapping his hands, getting out of his thoughtful state, “Wanna wrestle?”

Minho double-took his words and stared at him, caught completely off guard with his question, “Excuse me?”

Minho had no idea what the hell could’ve been in Jonghyun’s head anymore.

----Note~----

Sup.

Another really uneventful chapter, but I'm getting it all worked out.

I really need to spice things up; I'm trying to write the next chapter but there's nothing to really add, so it's getting uneventful fast. I WILL FIX THIS. YUP.

I just need to stop getting distracted by this heat and The Last of Us. >.<

Here's the BTS I've talked about.

And yeah.

I'm off to the 'nother chapter.

Thank you to all views, subs, and comments. <3

~FlaMinhoe