The eleven boys met outside Yixing’s door, just as promised, the same evening. Yixing took a look at the group of friends and sighed. He had already planned on how to split the searching up. It wasn’t hard actually, three small groups was all that was needed.

“Let’s split up in groups” Yixing suggested. “Jongdae with Minseok, Baekhyun and Chanyeol”

Yixing followed Jongdae with his gaze as those four formed a small group. “Joonmyeon with Kris, Jongin, Kyungsoo and Tao”

Luhan gave Yixing a suspicious gaze. “You and I will search on our own”

No one wanted to argue with Yixing about how he had splitted up the groups, they all knew that he had his reasons to do that.

Yixing let the two bigger groups walk into the forest at first before he looked at Luhan. “Are you ready?”

Luhan swallowed and nodded. He looked into the forest, it was so dark and scary now compared to how it looked during the day-time. He knew that Sehun was probably in there, scared and lonely. “I’m ready”

~*~*~

“I have a feeling that Yixing knows where Sehun is” Baekhyun muttered as he cleaned his jeans from the mud. “That’s why he wants Luhan to search with him, we are only distraction”

Chanyeol looked at Baekhyun, it was clear that he didn’t agree with those words completely. “Why would he ask us to come with if we were only distraction?”

“He wanted us to find something else, which could be useful” Minseok lightly his Jongdae on the shoulder. “You have been hanging around with Yixing a lot lately, what do you know about all this?”

Jongdae shrugged, he was just as confused as the rest of the group. He only wanted to know where Sehun could be. “I only helped him in the chemistry-lab. He didn’t tell me anything you already don’t know from when you were sneaking around last night”

Minseok nodded; a bit disappointed that Jongdae didn’t know anything more. He looked around and pointed towards left. “Let’s go there”

~*~*~

The door made a creaking sound and a small string of light hit Sehun in the face. He turned his face away and took a few steps back, until he hit the stone wall.

“Who are you?” Sehun asked when he saw a shadow getting closer to him. “Why have you taken me?”

“Your friends are in the forest… why? Have you contacted them?” a hoarse voice said.

Sehun swallowed, a small glimpse of hope woke up inside his chest. They were looking for him! “I haven’t contacted them, how could I? I don’t have a signal on my phone here”

Footsteps were getting closer to Sehun. He couldn’t see the face of the man, who was dressed in all black, but he could see that this certain man was being really well-build with muscles. Sehun didn’t want to get in a fist-fight with that person, that’s one thing for sure.

The man got closer to Sehun and grabbed the collars of his shirt. Sehun didn’t even try to fight against it; he knew that it was pointless. Laughs was heard in the background, they were many more.

“My friends…” Sehun said between his gasps of air. “… Will save me”

The laughs echoed once more through the room. The man laughed a bit towards Sehun as well. His eyes looked straight into Sehun’s, they were red, he had never seen red eyes before. Sehun would remember these eyes for the rest of his life.

“Are you sure that they will find you…” one of the hands loosened its grip around Sehun’s collar and instead moved towards Sehun’s throat. “…Alive?”

~*~*~

Luhan and Yixing walked through the forest. Luhan’s shoes were drenched in mud, it had been raining a bit during this afternoon which had made it’s natural effects on the forest.

Luhan was tried, wet and his feet hurt. He let out a loud sigh. “Will we ever found him?”

Yixing turned around and smiled towards Luhan. “We will find him; I remember that place so well.”

Luhan hurried so he was walking next to Yixing, instead of a few steps behind him.

“You know, Seoul Boy’s Academy opened in October 1950. A few months after the Korean War began. They opened the school so you could send all the boys under 18 there, so they would be safe while their fathers attended in the war. I came to the school in November 1952, which was also when everything began.” Yixing began to explain to Luhan.

“I dreamt about an explosion” Luhan said and looked at Yixing; he was almost unable to see his face due the darkness.

“Jongdae had been doing experiments with another guy in our class. He called you and me inside there together with the six friends of the other guys. That was when the explosion happened. The three of us survived but the other seven guys died”

Luhan’s eyes widened, he didn’t remember seven other guys in his dream. Maybe his brain just sorted out the memory of them; they maybe had been appearing in his dreams as well.

“Minseok disappeared, we found him dead and that was when we began to understand that there was something weird. A few others began to disappear in the same way and when it was only you, me, Sehun and Kris left, we decided to find the people who died. It turned out to be the seven guys who died in the explosion”

Luhan didn’t understand. “So you mean they didn’t die?”

Yixing chuckled. “Oh, they sure did die”

~*~*~

“Minseok! Watch out!” Baekhyun yelled towards Minseok but it was already too late, he already fell into the deep and sticky mud.

“Oh great” Minseok grabbed Jongdae’s hand to get up.

Once Minseok was up on his knees he gave a disliking look to the mud on his black jeans. “I’ll have to wash them tomorrow”

But none of the others listened to what he said; they just walked towards one of the stones.

Minseok, who was curious in what his “group” was up to, followed them and he got just into a big shock as the others. Twelve stones stood there on a line. On each stone were a name and a date written.

Kim Minseok; May 1953

Byun Baekhyun; May 1953

Do Kyungsoo; June 1953

Kim Joonmyeon; June 1953

Huang Zitao; June 1953

Kim Jongdae; June 1953

Park Chanyeol; July 1953

Kim Jongin; July 1953

Oh Sehun; July 1953

Kris Wu; July 1953

Lu Han; August 1953

Zhang Yixing;

“Is this what I think it is?” Minseok swallowed.

Chanyeol nodded. “I think it’s our graves”

Baekhyun walked closer towards the two last stones, Luhan’s and Yixing’s.

“Guys…” Baekhyun turned around and faced Jongdae. “Why don’t Yixing have a month and a year written on his stone?”

“Does this mean…” Jongdae swallowed. “That Yixing survived, while the rest of us… died?”