When she opened the door, she was greeted with a panting boy, looking dazed and panicked.

Without even a word of greeting, he pushed his way inside, collapsing on the couch.

Soojin watched him from the doorway, closing the door shut.

“Well, hello to you too. I’m fine, thank you. How about you,” Soojin said sarcastically.

Hoya waved a hand in acknowledgement, only speaking the word “water” in her direction.

She raised an eyebrow at him, but nevertheless went to the kitchen to grab a glass of water.

When she returned, he was looking a little less frazzled while he had his eyes closed, breathing in and out deeply and slowly.

She set the glass of water down in front of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

He shook his head. “I just ran here. Just…just give a minute.”

“You ran here? You didn’t take the bus?”

Hoya opened one eye and looked at her. “It was important that I met you now; I didn’t have time to waste to be waiting for a bus.”

“It must be really important to you for you to rush here,” Soojin observed. She turned around. “Hold up, let me get Myungsoo.”

However, she didn’t have to go far since the person in question was watching the two carefully with interest and distaste, more focused on the boy than the girl. And despite his effort to try and glance from behind the wall secretly, she could clearly see him from where she was standing.

Soojin snorted and called him out from his not-so-secret-hiding spot. “I can see you, Myungsoo.”

He looked startled and hesitantly peered at them, finally stepping out from behind the wall.

He stealthily walked toward them while Hoya looked at him.

“You’re Hoya,” Myungsoo stated with a tinge of aversion.

Hoya observed the person in front of carefully, narrowing his eyes. After a small stare-down, Hoya smiled. “Yes, I am. It’s nice to finally and formally meet you,” he said, putting out a hand.

Myungsoo stared at the outstretched hand blandly, finally putting his hand against his but quickly removing it in a millisecond. “Yes, nice.”

Hoya was a bit bewildered by his reaction but continued on. “No, you don’t understand. I admire you a lot. I’m honored to actually talk to you.”

“Honored?” Myungsoo mumbled, beginning to feel a bit flattered.

Hoya nodded seriously. “Yeah, especially since you stepped out of the group yourself and now trying to stop them.”

“Oh,” Myungsoo mumbled, looking away, abashed and slightly guilty.

Soojin snorted from the side at Myungsoo’s reaction. Myungsoo responded by glaring at her.

Hoya, not really paying attention to their little interaction, spoke up. “But that’s the reason why I came here in a hurry.” He looked them both in the eye. “It’s about my brother.”

“Brother?” they both echoed.

He nodded. “I have this feeling that he might have done something to destroy the organization.”

“Excuse my impertinence, but what makes you think that your brother even have the means to stop them?” Myungsoo asked.

Hoya looked away, hesitating. “I…I… took something from you which I believe my brother has in his possession.

“And that is?” Myungsoo intoned.

“Several pieces of paper… that contained information on N and K.”

There was a long silence as Myungsoo and Soojin let the information sink in.

“It was you?” Myungsoo cried in a fury. “Do you have any idea what you have done? There was some personal information on it and that could ruin my, my, plan of a quiet end to all of this!”

“I know, I know!” Hoya shouted back, frustrated. “I know. That’s why I want to help you. And that’s why I told you.”

“You idiot!” Myungsoo roared.

“You know, it’s as much as your fault as his,” Soojin calmly said from the side.

“What?” Myungsoo seethed.

She shrugged. “Just saying. If you haven’t put down all that information on those papers, none of this would have happened. But nothing we could do now.” She walked over and sat next to Hoya, ushering Myungsoo to sit down as well.

“So your brother. Is this the same one you told me got hurt by the organization?”

Hoya shook his head. “No, it’s my other brother. Taehyung.”

“Taehyung?” Soojin repeated. She blinked at him. “Short kid, messy gold-brownish hair? Quiet but whenever he speaks, it’s actually funny?”

Hoya stared back at her in confusion. “You know my brother?”

Soojin exchanged glances with Myungsoo. “Yeah, he’s my brother’s best friend.”

“Your brother is Jaewan?” Hoya asked in astonishment. “Really?”

“God, these coincidences are making my head hurt,” Myungsoo muttered from the side.

Soojin looked carefully at Hoya. “We believe that your brother is now a part of the organization and even in a high ranking position.”

“What?” Hoya asked in confusion.

“Hold up,” Myungsoo interrupted, putting a hand out, finally relaxing. “Too much scattered info. Let’s put everything together.”

He pointed at Hoya. “Your brother,” he said as he then pointed at Soojin, “And your brother’s best friend is Taehyung.” He dropped his hand. “He is apparently also known as V, and he rose to the top ranks rather quickly. Now, do we know why?”

Hoya spoke up. “The papers I, er, relieved from you. Like I said, I think my brother took them.”

“Why?” Soojin asked in confusion.

Hoya shook his head. “My brother was also affected when our youngest brother got hurt. I think he took it to heart. And I think he’s planning on destroying the organization from the inside.”

Myungsoo threw in his hands up in the air. “Fantastic. How about we let him take care of it, and then I won’t have to deal with them?”

Hoya looked panicked at that suggestion. “No, you don’t understand. If I didn’t think it was a big deal, I wouldn’t have come to you like this. My two younger brothers had a strong bond together. Taehyung would have made sure that nothing would harm our youngest brother again. Taehyung…Taehyung becomes someone else when he gets angry, real angry. He becomes scarier, angrier, vicious. I’m afraid of what he’s going to do, what he might do”

Myungsoo frowned. “And? Don’t you think N and K deserve it? Why should we, why should I, care about what happens to them?”

Hoya nodded slowly. “You know, I thought the same. I hated them; I wouldn’t have cared the slightest what happened to them. But when I heard what you were doing, I realized that I didn’t care about what happened to the other people in the organization. Just about revenge.” He shook his head. “But my brother. He wouldn’t care. Not when he’s like this. ”

Myungsoo looked away, contemplating on what Hoya had just said. He finally looked at him. “So, you’re saying that I should continue with my original plan. Whatever that was. I didn’t have a solid plan either. All I was relying on was a rumor a previous group that maybe, maybe, could help us. Maybe your brother will really be able to stop them. He seems to have a solid plan.”

There was a moment of silence as Hoya looked at him with absurdness while Soojin looked icily at him.

“You’re just going to run away?” she asked in disbelief.

“I’m not running away,” he argued angrily.

“You told me that you wanted to stop them. That you should have stopped them when you had the chance. And now, now that someone else has already taken action and probably has bad intentions for every single person involved, you’re just going to stop?” she cried out, her voice increasing with volume. “It’s almost as you were doing this because you thought you had no other choice and not because you cared.”

“I care,” he mumbled softly.

“Then why are you acting like this?” she shouted back.

He looked away and responded in a frustrated voice. “Because it’s hopeless. What am I supposed to do? I have no leads, and every minute that passes by becomes more and more fruitless. This Taehyung person seems to know what he’s doing. And I don’t.”

“Myungsoo, you know them better than anybody else. You know that there was a reason why they all started this, why they started to become darker than their true intentions. And I know that deep down, you want to help despite your biting words about them,” Soojin said softly.

Myungsoo looked shocked for a second but shook his head. “No, you’re wrong. I hate them. They aren’t my friends. I wouldn’t do anything for them,” he muttered angrily. But despite his words, his voice wavered toward the end as if he didn’t really believe his own words.

He looked up at them with confused eyes. “Right?”

Soojin shook her head lightly in return. “I don’t know, Myungsoo. I can’t tell you how you feel. I can’t even force you to do anything you don’t want to do even if I wanted to. But ask yourself this. Why did you want to stop them in the first place?”

Myungsoo stared at his fingers and looked up, biting his lip in concentration. “Because I ran away when I shouldn’t have. Because I couldn’t bear to see them like this. Because they were my friends.”

Soojin smiled. “You understand how you feel? You want to continue on with your plans?”

Myungsoo blinked slowly at her. “I guess?” he answered questionably. “But like I said, there isn’t much to go on with. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m going to do even if I do find the previous organization.”

She clapped her hands. “Actually, I did find something. Let me go get it. You two stay here.” She quickly walked to the computer room leaving Myungsoo and Hoya behind.

There was an awkward silence between them, both not looking directly at each other.

“Do you forgive them?”

Myungsoo looked up at Hoya who had suddenly posed a question.

“No, no I don’t. I don’t even forgive myself. What we did was horrible. We exploited people’s weakness and used it to our advantage. It makes me sick to think that N and K have expanded greatly on that. I don’t forgive them; but in the end, they’re like me. They were treated as outsiders in society. And we’re all just looking for a place to fit in. Even if that meant creating out own little utopia.”

“But that utopia…” Hoya said before trailing off.

Myungsoo sighed. “Yeah, that utopia wasn’t truly a utopia. It was just a way for us to get revenge to the people who treated us differently. But it more for N and K than me. I simply got a bit luckier. And all I wanted was someone to understand me.”

Hoya stayed silent, slowly realizing that despite N’s and K’s harsh methods, they were still people. That they had their own pasts. That he wasn’t the only one suffering.

Soojin popped back into the room, holding sheets of paper.

She sat back down on the couch with a plop, still holding the sheets of paper, three to be exact.

The other two males leaned forward attentively, so they could hear what Soojin had to say.

“Ok, so when I was looking through Myungsoo’s horribly extensive files on people, I noticed that one of them had limited information. Just a name and birthday. No picture, no home address, no phone number, nothing.”

Myungsoo nodded. “Yeah, you showed me that. And I thought I told you that it was because I didn’t follow up on it?”

Soojin glanced at him. “But why was it so hard to find basic information of them? You don’t even have the year he was born. I’m sure you would have found at least something more than just this.”

“I suppose. But if I stuck with it a little longer, I’m sure I would have found something,” he reasoned back.

Soojin shrugged. “Maybe, but the fact that it was hard to find info that is easy to find made it seem odd.”

She pushed a single piece of paper towards the middle of the table. “Nam Woohyun. He’s the first one.”

“The first one?” Hoya asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Right, the first. There are two more.” She paused. “Honestly, the name Nam Woohyun didn’t strike to me as odd. I mean, I heard plenty of names like that. But it wasn’t until the next one I found whose profile was just like Woohyun’s that I was feeling a bit strange.”

She pushed the second piece of paper forward. “Kim Sunggyu. And just like Woohyun, his profile only says his name and a birthday.”

Myungsoo frowned. “I vaguely remember this one too. N gave me a name to look up as well. But I didn’t find anything much about him too. I didn’t think much of it because once I told N that, he told me to stop.”

“You didn’t find it odd that you were finding people whose basic info was difficult to find?” Hoya asked skeptically.

Myungsoo shrugged. “Back then, I didn’t really care about the people I looked up. And if N wanted me stop, I did. Nothing more to it. Plus, I looked up more people than I can remember. And even if I was slightly curious on why it was so hard to find information, it never crossed my mind to actually continue searching.”

Soojin bit the inside of her cheek. “Well, there’s one more. This one was the hardest to find. It was buried under millions of papers. But it wasn’t until this last one that I was sure of something.”

“And what’s that?” Myungsoo asked.

She released the sheet of paper onto the table where it finally rested on the other two papers. “That I knew all three of them. Personally.”

And there on the last sheet of paper was the name Jang Dongwoo.

 A/N: What’s this? Another cliffhanger? Don’t you just love them?

So guys, sorry for the longer wait. The excuse? School, of course. Seriously, this thing called school is draining me out.  But writing stories are a nice change of pace. Especially cliffhangers. Haha.

Well, joking aside, thanks for waiting patiently for the next update. I’ll try and update as soon as I can, but I don’t know if I’m able to do it weekly. But at least maybe a little over a week wait. Maybe. Hopefully?