MINHO

I woke up with a start. Looking around, I saw that my alarm clock read 3:04 am. I sighed and sat up, stretching my arms above my head languidly. Next to me, Taemin stirred slightly in his sleep. I smiled as I looked down at him, leaning down and pressing a quick kiss to his forehead before getting out of bed completely, making sure not to jostle the bed too much to avoid waking Taemin.

After about a five minutes' walk through the mansion, I arrived at the kitchens, where I found a few apples in the fruit bowl on the counter. I searched the drawers for an apple slicer, but I couldn't seem to find one. Cursing under my breath, I opened the next drawer.

"Looking for this, sir?" a small voice asked from the doorway. I looked around to see one of the newer maids--she had only been hired a few weeks prior if I was remembering correctly--standing there with the apple slicer in her hands.

"Ah, yes," I said, smiling and coming forward. to take it from her. "Thank you, Luna."

The maid bowed deeply. "It's no trouble, Young Master. It's just my job."

I laughed a little, running a hand through my already-messy hair as I walked back over to my apple, which still sat on the counter, gleaming red under the flourescent lights of the kitchen. "There's no need to use such overly formal terms here, Luna. It's almost three-thirty in the morning, and I probably won't even remember this later. You can just call me Minho."

Luna smiled and nodded. "Whatever you say, Minho-oppa. Speaking of which, it is pretty late, isn't it? Why are you up at this hour?"

"Oh, I wake up in the night a lot. Sometimes I can't get back to sleep unless I get up and walk around a bit or eat something, so I guess this is one of those times," I answered, biting into an apple slice and gesturing for Luna to take one.

She did so, chewing and swallowing before speaking again. "I understand. A similar thing happens to me, but for now I'm just up cleaning a little bit. Sometimes doing a bit of work helps me calm my mind down so I can go to sleep. You know what I mean?"

I nodded, picking up another apple slice. This was the first time a maid had ever actually talked to me like a person rather than 'Young Master Choi,' and I kind of liked it. 

We kept talking and eating, but at one point, when we still had half of our second apple left, a loud bang came from above our heads. I jumped and looked up, and the slice that had been halfway to my mouth fell to the floor.

"What the hell was that?" I demanded, moving towards the door, but Luna stopped me with a firm hand on my shoulder. 

"Oppa, it was probably just the cats playing. They must have knocked something over," she said. I figured that made sense, but Taemin was up there, and I couldn't help but worry, glancing back up towards the ceiling and taking my bottom lip between my teeth. "And anyway," Luna said, drawing my attention back to her, "we still need to finish that apple."

I quickly forgot about the noise as we talked and joked around over apple slices. When the third apple was finally gone, Luna's phone beeped with a text message. "Oh, it must be my cousin. Excuse me," she said, pulling her phone out of her pocket and checking it. "I'm sorry, my uncle is in the hospital. It's nothing major, just a car accident, but he has to have surgery," she explained, typing a reply before pocketing her phone once more.

"Your uncle's having surgery? Luna, why don't you take today and tomorrow off? You'll be paid for it. You shouldn't be working while your family is in the hospital," I said, my eyebrows coming together in concern.

Her eyes widened. "Really? Are you sure?" I nodded, and she grinned. "Thank you, Minho-oppa! Really, thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means."

I smiled. "Go on, you can go now. You'll be able to get yourself to the hospital, right?"

Luna smiled again and nodded. "Yes, I have a car," she said before bowing lowly. "Thank you again, really."

"No problem," I answered, smiling as she turned and hurried down the halls, presumably to her quarters to collect her belongings before leaving for the hospital.

After cleaning up the leftover crumbs from our apples, I went back upstairs, but as I walked down the upstairs hall to my and Taemin's shared bedroom, I saw that a bookcase which had previously been lining the wall was knocked over, books spread everywhere on the floor. There's no way the cats did this, I thought before running down the hall, my head emptied of all thoughts but those of Taemin as I stepped on the books, feeling their pages tear and spines break under my weight.

I threw my bedroom door open, a strangled cry wrenching its way from my throat at the sight of the empty bed. "Taemin!" I shouted, running to the bathroom. No Taemin.

"Taemin!" I checked under the bed and in the closet. No Taemin.

Jinri's room--no Taemin.

My father's room--no Taemin.

The library--no Taemin.

Running back into my room, my eyes fell on the empty bed, and I saw a lone piece of blue stationery on Taemin's cream-coloured pillowcase.Picking it up, I read the messy handwriting silently to myself.

Choi--
With some help from the inside, we've taken your of a son's little sweetheart. We will give him back, but only for a random of 10,000 US dollars. Until you give us the money, we're gonna have some fun with our little toy. You have one week to pay us before we kill the little .

-G

I clenched the note in my fist, my knuckles turning white as tears rolled down my cheeks. This couldn't be happening. Taemin had to be here somewhere. He couldn't be gone. This couldn't be real. I pinched my arm as hard as I could, and I winced and closed my eyes in pain, but when I opened them, I was alone on my empty bed, clutching my boyfriend's ransom note.

Grabbing my phone from the bedside table, I called my father, knowing that it was mid-afternoon where he was, so he would definitely pick up. I could only hope that he wasn't in a meeting.

Fortunately, he picked up on the first ring. "Choi Taesun speaking."

"Appa, Taemin's gone," I said quickly, trying to keep my voice from cracking.

"Gone? What do you mean, son?" My father asked, and I realized, not for the first time, that no matter how professional my father was, he would always be able to be a loving, caring appa when I needed it.

"He's been taken. Kidnapped. I got up to get a snack and when I came back, he was..." I trailed off, trying to choke back a sob. 

"Minho, calm down. I know that's hard right now, but you need to think rationally. Is there a note or anything?"

I nodded as I answered, even though the gesture was pointless. "Yeah, I've got it here. Appa, they want ten thousand US dollars. And we only have a week before they..." I trailed off again, unable to voice what the note said so bluntly.

"It's okay, Minho, I'm going to take the first flight I can back to Seoul. It's, what, almost 4 there? I'll be there by noon. Send one of the maids and a guard to get JInri, and let the head of security know that I"ll be talking with him when I get there," he said, his professional CEO voice coming back.

"Appa, we're getting him back, right?" I asked quietly, knowing that even for a family like ours, they were asking for a lot of money.

My chest tightened as I heard my father hesitate. "Minho, I promise I will try my best. But I can't do something like give away ten thousand dollars without consulting my advisors first."

"But Appa--"

"Minho, I know how important he is. I want to get him back just as much as you do, but we need to convince the company officials. It's their money, too."

I sighed. "Okay. Okay," I repeated, trying to calm myself down. "I'll see you when you get here."

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

I almost said yes, but I knew that lie would be too big. "No, but I'm not going to be okay until we get him back, so that's that."

"Alright, son. I'll see you soon. I love you."

"I love you too," I replied before hanging up the phone. I tossed the phone and the ransom note aside and buried my face in Taemin's pillow, inhaling the intoxicating scent of his strawberry shampoo, tears running down my face and staining his pillow until finally, the sobs that had been building in my throat ever since I had found the empty bed escaped. I cried Taemin's name for hours, different images of him tied up, tortured, dead popping into my mind. When the maids came in to draw the curtains as they always did in the morning, I managed to calm myself down enough to tell them to send two guards and another maid to pick up Jinri.

The maids asked what had happened, and I explained as well as I could before politely asking them to leave me alone. Once they left, I put my face back into Taemin's pillow and fell into a fitful sleep where I dreamed of him, my sweet, innocent Taeminnie, bound and gagged in some empty grey warehouse with faceless, greasy strangers hurting, torturing him as they waited for their money.

Needless to say, it wasn't an extremely restful sleep.

Yeah sorry I disappeared for a while oops.

But I'm back! I've actually had this written for, like, ever. I just haven't typed it up because laziness and procrastination are magical, horrible things.

My friend reminded me of this story, and I started typing this up earlier, but when I tried to open a new tab I accidentally closed the AFF one instead, and yeah I got frustrated and went to tumblr and freaked out and then I started watching a bunch of youtubers. That is, until the same friend who initially reminded me of it texted me and made me finish this. (thanks, chika.)

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~AA