Sanghyuk glared at them, pursing in lips in irritation. “I don’t believe I know what you’re talking about.” He pointed at the door. “Please leave.”

“Sanghyuk, we know that this is the person you referred to before,” Soojin said softly, looking pointedly at the boy lying in the bed. “That he was the one who you said you almost killed.”

“And?” Sanghyuk scoffed back. “What does it matter to you? Why do you keep bothering me? If it’s because you pity me, then I don’t want it.”

“It’s not like that,” Hoya started to say. “We just want to know what happened, help you move on, and we’re done here. Simple, isn’t it?”

“Simple? Simple?” he growled at them, glaring at them with dark and angry eyes. “It isn’t simple at all! Everything was my fault anyways. I deserve to be hated, to be ignored, to be thought badly of. I don’t have the right to be here when Hongbin is lying lifelessly like this. If I wasn’t here,” he muttered as he stared back at the boy in the bed, “then Hongbin wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Myungsoo said. “From an outsider’s point of view, perhaps. But if you simply tell us what really happened…”

“I just told you that it wasn’t simple!” the boy screamed at them, straightening up in a fury. “How would you, someone who is completely uninvolved in my situation, could possibly understand! You would probably blame me as well! Hongbin probably blames me as well. He probably wishes that I was stuck in a coma instead of him. He hates me! I would hate me too if I was him. It’s all my fault. Everything’s my fault,” he mumbled out in a rush, as he slumped into the chair nearby.

Myungsoo and Hoya looked at the boy in worry, knowing full well that this boy has completely integrated a mindset that made him believe that whatever he did before caused the person next to him to become hurt. And that without knowing what really happened, they wouldn’t be able to get through him.

Soojin was giving the younger boy an annoyed look just from hearing his victim speech. “We’re not here because we pity you or anything,” she muttered irritably. “We’re here for ourselves, so stop giving me this crap.”

Myungsoo and Hoya stared in shock at Soojin’s sudden change in demeanor.

“What?” Sanghyuk replied, becoming riled up, giving the girl an annoyed look.

Soojin snorted at the boy. “That’s right. We’re only here because someone asked us to help you, not because we felt sorry for you. Hell, we don’t even know you, so why would I. Get your head screwed on straight because it’s making me sick.”

Myungsoo side-glanced Soojin with a nervous look and whispered softly to her, “Soojin, I don’t think that’s the best…”

“Shut up, Myungsoo. This kid needs to know that he’s not the center of the universe.” She glanced at him briefly and mumbled, “Maybe you should take notes on that too.”

Hoya grinned and roughly patted Soojin on the back. “You tell him, Soojin! That’s my girl!”

She glared at him and said through narrowed eyes, “You shut up too. Your arrogance won’t help you here.”

Sanghyuk coughed loudly and purposely to attract their attention to him which immediately brought all three pairs of eyes to him. “It’s obvious that you don’t care to be here, so the door is to your left.”

Soojin rolled her eyes at him. “You’re right, we, well, I don’t care to be here. Looking at you makes me sick.” She glared at the boy. “That’s right, your ‘friend’ here hates you. He hates that you put him the hospital. He despises that you’re up and walking around while he’s stuck in a comatose state.”

Sanghyuk’s lips began to quiver and muttered very quietly, “If you understand, then get the hell out of here.”

“Not until you tell us what the hell you did. That’s why we were here in the first place, isn’t it?” Soojin stated back. “What you do?” she mocked, “Beat him up? Push him down the stairs? Bullied him? What exactly did you do to make him in this state?”

Sanghyuk grew furious with each word before spitting out, “I got him sent to hospital because I was a troublemaker! Because he asked them to stop involving me in dangerous ! Because I was doing horribly in school, in life, that he cared for me, his pathetic friend, too much that he was worried about me! And because he was the weak rich kid, those people didn’t give a ! If I had just listened to him, if I just at least talked to him instead of ignoring him completely, then Hongbin wouldn’t have been in this state!” he let out in a cry.

“Oh yeah, he definitely hates you. With a kid like you, he probably hated you from the beginning. He probably pretended to be your friend because he was scared that you were hurt him. And look what happened,” Soojin smirked.

“That’s not true!” he shouted. “What about the times where he visited me when I was sick?”

Soojin snorted. “Please. I bet all he did was leave some cough drops at your front door.”

Sanghyuk didn’t say anything, confirming her guess.

“See? He didn’t even want to see you and probably only gave you those so you wouldn’t get angry at him,” she smirked at him.

“Then what about when he would give me a birthday gift?” he shouted back.

Soojin rolled her eyes. “Hello? Isn’t that obvious? You give presents on birthdays. Don’t ‘friends’ do that anyways?”

“Then when he treated me out to eat even when I didn’t ask him to?”

“Just courtesy; you must have done that to him too, no? He’s was probably repaying a favor he never wanted to get.”

Sanghyuk finally had enough and glared at her with wild eyes. “Shut up! You don’t know Hongbin at all! He’s not like that at all! He really treasured our friendship. He told me himself. He said to me, ‘Hyuk, I’ll always here for you no matter what. Because no matter what, we’re…friends’,” he let out slowly, tears forming in his eyes as he dropped down to his knees, “He said, ‘Even if everyone tells me not to be friends with you because you’re a bad person, I know that you aren’t’.”

Soojin approached him slowly. “So, you think he hates you still?”

He shook his head with his hands in his face. “Hongbin,” he gasped out, “Hongbin would never think that of me. He trusted our friendship too much. Stupid idiot.”

Soojin knelt down and embraced the boy in a warm hug. “See, if you stopped and thought about it, your friend wouldn’t want you to think such thoughts. He wouldn’t blame you, so you shouldn’t blame yourself. Don’t try and carry your burden on your own because there are people who’ll help you with it.” She pulled out of the embrace and smiled softly at him. “Didn’t I tell you that someone sent us to help you? Surely that means that person cared and worried for you enough.”

Sanghyuk nodded with tears streaming down his face while Soojin let him cry on her shoulder.

And Hoya and Myungsoo could watch as the boy cried out his pain.

After he finally calmed down and relaxed, Sanghyuk told them his story.

“Hongbin has been my friend since childhood. We were complete opposites. He was the quiet obedient child, the ones that parents liked. And I was the rebellious bad-mouthed kid, the ones that parents told their kids to avoid,” he started, focusing all his attention on his friend.

He sighed at the memory. “Even I didn’t like Hongbin at first; I thought he was some rich kid who had nobody to play with.” A small smile began to form on his face. “He always followed me and bothered me, never letting any time to my own. He was a pest, really. But after a while, I sorta got used to him. And I don’t even know when, but somewhere along the line, we became friends.”

A frown replaced his brief smile instantly as he stared at the ground. “But you know, old habits die hard. Even in high school, I hung out with the ‘wrong people’ as you would say. I ditched school, got into fights, went against authorities, pretty much what you would expect from a kid like me, right?” he chuckled.

“But Hongbin would always be there, smiling like the idiot he is, unbothered by the rumors that swarmed around me. He always said that were simply tasteless rumors. He knew what I did, who I really was. And even though I did all those stuff, he didn’t care. But he also didn’t involve himself in my world.”

A more intense frown with a furrowed brow embedded itself on his face. “But after one particular bloody fight, Hongbin decided to step in. I came back with a dislocated shoulder on one arm and a broken wrist on the other. I had fractured my foot and my face was a bloody mess. One of my worst fights. Hongbin found me like first like that, and I guess after that he couldn’t take it anymore. So while I was recovering, Honghin went to tell them to stop involving me in such dangerous fights. He said something about how I could still hang out with them, but if they would please stop involving me in their fights.”

He looked at Hongbin and grimly smiled. “But the thing is, he went to the wrong people. People I never associated before.”

“What do you mean?” Myungsoo asked cautiously.

He laughed bitterly. “I mean that the people I usually hang out with are a bunch of harmless cowards. We’re a bunch of harmless cowards. They do some petty things, but honestly, we’re nothing to be afraid of. But those guys that Hongbin talked to, no, they were different. They already had some nasty rumors going around them. Things like they were involved in one of the biggest underground organizations. I’m pretty sure you guys heard of them too; they’ve been around for a while. The one with the single letters.”

Myungsoo widened his eyes at his words. “You mean N?”

Sanghyuk frowned. “N’s the leader, right? No, the one these guys were under had a different name.”

“What do you mean? Don’t all the top ranking people in that group manage the group together? I mean N’s the one who calls the shots, but still,” Hoya murmured. He looked at Myungsoo. “Right?”

Myungsoo silently nodded.

Sanghyuk looked at them in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. From what I heard, the top leaders manage a different section. There are so many people in that group that they had to sort the people under one of the top ranking individuals. The people under them then follow their rule. I think N calls the final shots though. Or from what I heard.”

“Was it K, then?” asked Myungsoo.

The boy shook his head. “No, it was something else. Something closer to the end of the alphabet. Z? Y? W?”

“V,” Hoya let in a small whisper.

“Yeah! That’s right, V! I heard he’s the most ruthless out of them all,” answered Sanghyuk. “And that’s why those guys under his division are known to be ruthless as well. I’ve heard that the group once ago used to have set morals, but now…”

He trailed off and sighed. “Hongbin asked the wrong people to stop getting me hurt. They probably knew he was rich and tried to bully him out of money. I overheard them talking about beating up that ‘rich weakling’ and that they were disappointed to find out that he didn’t have a lot of money on him. I had a feeling that they were talking about Hongbin, and I confronted them. And once I knew, well, let’s just say that I went a little crazy.”

“I thought you were in recovery?” Soojin asked with a frown.

“I was,” he answered. “But I was fine enough to attend school still. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t in full health.”

“So you beat them up while you were still injured,” Hoya mused.

The boy nodded sullenly.

“That’s impressive knowing that you injured them pretty badly while being hurt yourself,” Hoya said as he nodded in acknowledgement.

Sanghyuk scoffed. “I wasn’t in the right mind at the time. I didn’t even feel the pain then.”

“So after that, Hongbin was found and sent to the hospital,” murmured Myungsoo.

He nodded. “He’s been stuck in a coma ever since,” he mumbled as he looked at his friend. “I know that Hongbin has been worried about me since the beginning, and he’s dropped hints about how I should stop hanging out with the wrong crowd. So I can’t help but to wonder that if I had listened to him, would all of this happen?”

“Sanghyuk,” Soojin slowly said.

He shook his head. “Don’t worry, I’m not blaming myself anymore. It was only a thought. I can’t do anything anyways except to hope that he recovers quickly.”

“So why don’t you listen to him?” Hoya asked.

“What do you mean?” he questioned back.

“Well, you’re still hanging out with those guys. Don’t you think you owe it to your friend to stop hanging out with them?” Hoya wondered.

“How do you know I was still hanging out with them?” Sanghyuk asked with a suspicious look.

“We, uh, might have followed you here,” Hoya said with a grin.

The boy gave them an unsurprised look knowing these people’s tenacity before shaking his head. “Who said I wasn’t? I don’t ditch school anymore, and I also refuse to stay out too late with them. It’s a hard process for me. As much as I want to listen to Hongbin, I’m friends with them too. They’re like me. I understand what they’re going through.” He looked up at them. “But hey, at least I’m trying.”

“I have a question,” Myungsoo piped up.

The boy nodded for him to continue. “Why were no records of Hongbin being sent to the hospital? It was like someone erased them.”

“Huh, really?” Sanghyuk mused. “It must have been his parents. They’re rich. His dad involved in the government or something. I don’t really know. But it probably looked bad on them, so they hushed it up.”

Myungsoo nodded. “Makes sense.”

Feeling that the conversation took a silent change in direction, Sanghyuk turned to look at this friend.

Hoya looked at the boy and his unmoving friend and couldn’t help but to feel that he was once in a similar situation. That his youngest brother was like Hongbin and he was like Sanghyuk. It struck a chord in him as he stared at them, that he was lucky enough that his brother came out in a better condition than Hongbin. He knew how Sanghyuk felt. Old habits do die hard, but he had to wonder, was he really trying, like Sanghyuk was? Or anybody else in that matter?

He had willingly and excitably took Soojin’s invitation to be back and involved with something he had sworn he would never go back to. He had respect and admiration on his shoulders from his brothers, yet he broke those expectations easily. All for what? Himself? Revenge?

Ah, but wait. There was something else. Something that still would have made him become involved no matter what.

Taehyung, the brother he never would have thought would start such a stir. And was becoming more dangerous by the second. And right then, Hoya made a resolution. After getting his brother back and scold him to no end, he would stop looking for trouble even if it came looking for him.

But then again, old habits die hard, so it was alright if he went looking for it once in a while, right?

Myungsoo also had his eyes on the two boys in front of him. He wouldn’t be able to understand Sanghyuk’s position as much as Hoya, but he was able to relate to it slightly. Because he had also blamed himself once. If he had the sensibility to stop N and K before, than perhaps none of this would have happened. If he had the guts to talk to N when he first started to worry, then perhaps no one would have suffered as they did. None of this would have dragged on as long as it did.

He looked at Soojin who was deep in thought herself. But he wasn’t condemning himself anymore. He was long past that. He now on the path of fixing it. He didn’t have the courage to do it back then, but now he was willing to try again.

But in the end, Myungsoo realized that what Sanghyuk said before was right, about his friends. He was friends with N and K. He was like them, and they were like him. He understood them the best. Which meant he also knew that he had to stop them. And this time he wasn’t alone.

Soojin felt like the air was getting chillier by the second. Mostly because she right underneath the vent on the ceiling but also because she knew that it getting closer. Once they gotten the information on where the organization was located, she was sure that they were planning on infiltrating it and confronting N and K and possibly V.

She never expected that in her regular routine of life that she would have encountered a situation like this.  Completely concerning herself in something she knew was dangerous. To a person she once thought was an annoying prick who had nothing but time on his hands. But she was wrong. About everything.

Not only did the annoying prick have another whole life behind him, he was bringing it back to end it. She had the option of leaving it be and moving on to live a peaceful life or stepping into a world that she had no place in. And she took the road less taken.

And all for what?

For him. Because she couldn’t just leave him behind. Because those shoulders carried a burden too much for him to handle. And she was going to help him all the way to the end.

The end. That was where everything would finally take place. Whether or not she was staying after everything was done. And she would only know her answer at the end.

Sanghyuk suddenly gave them a small flash of a smile after thinking on his own as well. “So who sent you here anyways? You said that this person told you to help me with my problem? Honestly, after hearing the whole story, there really wasn’t a problem.”

“I think that person was concerned about your well-being and mindset,” Myungsoo responded. “She vaguely told us that you had a problem, and we had to decipher that and take it as ‘make him stop blaming himself’, to put it bluntly.”

“She?” Sanghyuk asked with a of his eyebrow.

Hoya looked up at the ceiling. “Your aunt, bro. Your aunt. Scary woman. That she is.”

At that moment the door flew open with a bang, giving the four people in the room a shock.

The woman, who looked completely different from when Hoya, Myungsoo, and Soojin last saw her, rushed towards Sanghyuk and hugged him. Gone was the elegant dress and full make-up and styled hair, and instead she was adorned with a plain T-shirt, jeans, and a simple pony-tail.

“Oh, Sanghyuk, my poor child. It must have been hard for you.”

“Auntie Kwon?” Sanghyuk managed to let out with his aunt’s cheek pressing against his. He scrunched up his face in confusion. “You were the one who asked to them to check up on me?”

She smiled cutely at him. “Of course, I heard everything from my brother. About you being more depressed than usual. And how I can just sit still when my favorite nephew is being tortured like this?”

Sanghyuk frowned. “I didn’t think Dad would spill everything to you. He always disliked talking about you.”

She grinned at him. “Ah, there was a reason for that.”

“So, miss, about what we wanted in exchange,” Myungsoo brought up, getting down to business.

The woman shot him a chilling gaze, the image of her when they first met flashed before them, but turned to look at her nephew with a warm smile. It was obvious that she didn’t want her nephew hearing about what she did in private. “Sanghyuk, wait for me while I talk to these children for a moment.”

Sanghyuk gave her a suspicious look but nodded as the rest of the people began to file out the room.

Once they all left the room and gathered outside the door, the woman pulled out a small piece of paper held between her index and middle finger. “I appreciate it if you kept quiet about our little transaction here. I would hate for my little Hyuk to hear about this.”

Once she had their agreement, she handed the paper over to Myungsoo who delicately took it from her fingers. “Follow the star, and that’s where you’ll find them. You didn’t tell me that you were looking for them.”

The three peered at the note which was a detailed sketched out map with a star placed at the top right corner. “Them?” Soojin asked.

The woman smirked. “Sure, they are well known in my area. A bit too well known that the word ‘dangerous’ has become synonymous with that group. Rumors, darlings, rumors have been flying around.” Her eyes narrowed deviously. “Rumors of a mutiny. It’s all very hush-hush though.”

The three gave each other wary glances.

She turned away from them as she headed back into the room. She put a hand up in farewell and took one look back at them. She smirked and said, “This is where we part ways. I do hope I won’t be seeing you in the future. I hate to see little loves like yourselves be corrupted by the evil in this world. Even though I am part of that corruption, I do believe that there’s still good in the world. I wish you all the best, L.”

And with that she entered back into the room.

“Did you tell her?” Soojin asked after a moment of silence passed between them.

Myungsoo shook his head no. “Honestly, she probably could have solved her nephew’s problem all on her own.”

Hoya snorted. “You’re kidding. Did you see how she acted around him? It was obvious that she wanted to keep that part of her a secret.”

A loud and upbeat song began to play into the quiet air. Myungsoo and Soojin turned to look at Hoya who looked down as he began to fumble inside his pocket.

He pulled out his cell phone and held it up his ear. After a moment of listening to the caller, he shouted, “What?”

The other two looked at him with his outburst, curious on what the conversation was about. “Now? He called now? Ok, thanks.”

With that, he hung up and looked at the other two.

“My little brother called,” he said, biting his cheek.

“Taehyung?” Soojin asked, “Or…”

Hoya shook his head. “No, not him. My youngest brother. But it’s about Taehyung.”

“What did he say?” questioned Myungsoo urgently.

“Apparently, Taehyung called him,” Hoya said while furrowing his eyes deeply. “He said that he was sorry and that it was all going to end tonight.”

“Do you mean?” Soojin mumbled hesitantly.

Hoya looked at her and nodded. “The rumor of the rebellion is true. I think he’s going to try and bring them down. Tonight.”

Myungsoo gritted his teeth and looked at them. “We have to go. We have to stop him before he does anything rash. I’m worried that N will do something to him.”

Soojin’s eyes flashed with worry. “Now? But, but we don’t even have a plan!”

Hoya grinned. “Well, I for one was always a spontaneous kind of person. Sounds like fun to me.”

Soojin shot him an angry glare. “Well, Mr. Hot-Shot. Tell me this, how the hell are we going to get in unnoticed. It sounds like your brother has something big planned. No way in hell are we able to waltz in so easily.”

“Actually, we might.”

They looked at Myungsoo who had spoken up in a quiet but steady voice.

He looked at them and grinned sheepishly while rubbing the back of his head. “I never told anybody, but I still have some fellow devoted followers in the organization.”

Hoya stared at him with hollow eyes. “You’re joking.”

Myungsoo chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. There’s not a lot, but these few really liked me and told me that they would always be loyal to me to matter what. Of course, I told them to forget it once I left, but they wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So how we going to get in with that?” Soojin asked.

Myungso nodded. “Right. To tell the truth, I had already contacted them beforehand that if something like this happened, they would help us get in.”

“You already had this planned, didn’t you?” Hoya grinned.

Myungsoo smiled back. “I couldn’t let you have all the fun, now could I?”

“I like how you think,” replied Hoya with a smirk. “I would gladly give back the title of leader to you.”

“Now that we all realized who the leader is now, we better get going,” Soojin murmured.

Myungsoo’s smile fell of his face and was replaced by a grim one. “Yes, tonight is going to be end of it all, whether it’s for them or for us.”

A/N: Sorry this took longer to update than usual. I had one part that I kept revising over and over again, and even now I’m not satisfied with it. Plus that and school starting up again makes life for me even busier. Hopefully it’s good enough. Plus, it’s a little longer than what I usually put out. So, yay?

And Happy New Year! I’m a little late, but still, I hear it’s good until the end of the month.

Thanks for sticking by with me and thanks for reading!