Sungmin was about to tell us his life story when I saw a dark figure across the square. His hood was pulled up and his clothes were completely black. He almost would’ve been invisible if it hadn’t been for that little ray of light that the sun pressed into the darkened, little alleyway.

Sungmin’s voice and the splattering fountain were blocked out by my ears and my sole attention was on that dark figure… I couldn’t see his face, I couldn’t see any limp but I just knew that that dark shadow was listening to us and I got the goosebumps because of it. But somewhere deep in my mind, I also became curious. Who in the world would wear such a dark cloth on a warm day? Did he want to have a heatstroke or something?

The curiousness began to grow in my mind. Why did he…? I couldn’t think any further because at that moment I looked into the dark figure’s eyes. He saw me and I saw him.

And then he turned around. Instinctively I knew what he was going to do and I also knew that I couldn’t let him do it. I couldn’t let that dark figure leave!

So I ran, with big steps over the square, my mind wanted to go faster than my legs and a couple of times I almost tripped. Luckily, I saved myself from humiliating myself by planting the other food down on the stones of the square.

In front of me, the dark figure was already gone, he disappeared into the alleyway. And when I eventually reached the alleyway, panting like some kind of old dog, I saw no trace of him.

I whined and stamped with my foot. Disappointed that I had lost my prey. The dark figure had to be even quicker with his feet than I was because this was a long alleyway, though of course I wasn’t sure if there was a corner where he could hide. If he wanted to hide… because when he turned around before I began running he didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

I groaned, I  got a headache from my own thinking!

Suddenly a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders and turned me around. I looked right into the eyes of an angry Donghae. Ehm, no, scratch that, a furious Donghae. His orange hair stood up straight and made him look like a furious lion, his already thin lips were pressed into an even thinner line. And his normally kind of friendly eyes were narrowed on me so much that I wondered if he was able to see through his eyelids.

“HAVE YOU COMPLETELY LOST YOUR MIND, HYUKJAE!?” He shouted right into my face and I cringed under his livid gaze. Even though I was a tiny little bit longer than him, he seemed to tower above me. I felt like a small child but strangely enough it also felt like he cared for me. At that moment I knew that I had completely lost my mind.

Donghae didn’t care about my inner turmoil and just went on with his rage on an even louder tone: “JUST TWO MINUTES AGO, YOU WERE CAPTURED BECAUSE YOU HAD VENTURED OFF ON YOUR OWN AND NOW YOU DO IT AGAIN? ARE YOU REALLY THAT STUPID?!” I pouted, I didn’t enjoy it that Donghae called me stupid. I wasn’t such a bad student at all, my grades were not that bad, okay they were mostly C’s but sometimes I got B’s too!

“DON’T GIVE THAT FACE, MISTER. YOU’RE IN DEEP TROUBLE! DO YOU EVEN REALIZE WHO YOU JUST CHASED?!”

Now Donghae surprised me, ‘did I realize who I just chased’? “Well no, he was just suspicious so I followed him.” I said with a small voice that became even smaller when I saw Donghae’s glare hardening. I looked at my feet as if I was a naughty child. And maybe I was because Donghae was right that I often didn’t really care about my surroundings-

Wait a minute, was I agreeing with Donghae? What was happening to the world? I was supposed to be right, not Donghae!

“Look around, Hyukjae.” Donghae said on an icy tone and I cringed even more. I liked the cheeky Donghae more than this serious and angry at me Donghae. But I did obey him and looked around in the little alleyway. It was completely black except for the little spot where the sun shone stubbornly. I began from that spot and looked a bit better. I noticed that there were places where the already black alleyway was even more black. They were black spots…!

“You don’t say…?” I began and Donghae growled low in agreement. “You were probably chasing the male that locked me in that cage and made all those black spots that made people disappear.”

“B-but why was he staring at us?” My voice now small not because of Donghae but because of the male.

“I don’t know but it can’t be anything good. And you just followed him while we have already enough troubles without you making more!” The end of his sentence was louder than the beginning and I knew that he was forcing himself not to be angry again.

“Are you two alright?” We turned around to Tiffany who was pulling a shivering Ryeowook with her while Sungmin stood next to her with a serious face.

“Care to help me?” Donghae asked Sungmin while pointing at the little alleyway and without saying a word, Sungmin grabbed his brush.

Donghae opened the bag he took from me before we left Sungmin’s house and also grabbed a brush and the king’s paint. He slowly dipped his brush into the paint and it was almost magical to see the paint give in and become liquid. It perfectly embraced Donghae’s brush and Donghae carefully made sure that no paint was spilt before he began working on the alleyway. Next to him sat Sungmin with an equal concentrated expression. And even if his paint wasn’t as good as Donghae’s he was still doing a better job than I ever could’ve dreamed of to do.

Diligently, they both worked on the alleyway as if it was their masterpiece. Tiffany couldn’t stop with staring while she rubbed Ryeowook’s back a bit absentmindedly.

After an hour, Sungmin and Donghae were done. I had to admit that the alleyway looked better than ever. It looked so real that I wouldn’t thought that it was made by paint if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. You could see that there had been two people working on it though, Sungmin had made the stones, he brought the alleyway back to its original state but Donghae had brought life in it by painting grass between the stones and even a little hole for a family of mice. He had also painted the mice family itself. I pitied the human families living here because Donghae had brought a new plague without thinking about it. But he seemed so happy for the mice that no one had the heart to tell him that that wasn’t such a good thing as he thought it was.

And after that hour we were good to go wherever we wanted, the only problem was that no one of us had any idea which way was the best to go.

“If we want to save Jessica and Kyuhyun, we need to find out where they are being kept.” Tiffany said logically.

“We need a way to get them out of there too.” I added.

“I think that it’s best to first go and find out where they are being kept, then it will be easier to determine what we need to get them out of there.” Sungmin suggested and everyone nodded.

Ryeowook gaped after that and the rest of us snickered. “I think that it would be a good thing to find a sleep place too for us because we will be here for a little while.” Donghae was packing the last jars with the king’s paint.

“Wait a minute,” Sungmin mumbled, “I think that I have the perfect idea…”

We all waited for the idea to come but it didn’t came. “And that is?” Donghae helpfully asked.

“Why not go to my father’s house? My brother is probably there and he may be able to find out where your friends are and help us to get the right tools.”

“And there are beds in a house!” Tiffany clapped in her hands when she realized that it was the perfect solution.

Sungmin smiled when he saw that everyone was agreeing to his plan. He helped Ryeowook standing up and he began to lead the way while Tiffany quickly followed him. I wanted to follow them too but I felt something strangling my wrist all of the sudden.

With a kind of stupid move, I looked down at my wrist and then up to the male who held it and then down again. As if I couldn’t believe what he was doing and frankly said, I indeed didn’t believe it.

“What are you doing…?”

“I’m making sure that you won’t necessarily run away again and the only way of doing that is by getting a hold of you.” Donghae answered and his tone told me that he didn’t want to have a discussion about it.

Well that was a shame because I wanted to have a discussion about it. “I won’t run away,” I said clearly annoyed by his behavior, “I’m not a little child nor a dog, Donghae, so let me go.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I pulled my arm a bit.

“No.” He answered again and he began to walk after Sungmin, Tiffany and Ryeowook while dragging me.

“Yes!” I pulled harder.

“No.” How co