Kim Tarin had been away from his main office at the institute for a long time. For almost two months, he had been in China trying to seal a deal with another institution CEO in hope of making Happy Endings into a larger international franchise. He had left his chairman and sister, Kim Heiryung, in charge of keeping the institute in order while he was gone. 

    It was difficult trying to get Heiryung to keep an eye on the institute on top of her everyday duties. Tarin had seemed to persuade her with a deal in the end. 

    “How much is the boy bid for?” Heiryung said casually sitting on the corner of her brother’s desk. He brushed her off of it, placing papers in her previous spot. Tilting his glasses on his nose he folded his hands together.

    “Which boy?”An open file landed on his desk, spewing a few of his documents onto the ground. “Ah, Soonyoung. He’s worth more than I pay you,” Tarin laughed, putting the photo in the garbage. 
Heiryung was quick to pull the photo from the trash and wipe it clean with her hand. “How much?” Tarin raised his eyebrows. “Just tell me how much.” Tarin growled slightly, opening the drawer at the bottom of his desk. 

    The drawer he opened was heavy and held all the records of the top trainees. He flipped through the alphabetical order, found Soonyoung’s file and tossed it in front of Heiryung. Heiryung dived onto it, pulling a chair right to the end of Tarin’s desk. She skimmed all the papers and background information until she came across the bidding log sheet. The sheet had twenty one rows and three columns. One column for the date, one the bidder’s name, and one for the bid.

    “The last one to bid was some rich descendant of an emperor with a bid of one million or somewhat Canadian dollars. That’s far more money than you will ever have,” Tarin explained kicking up his feet onto his desk. 

    “This boy isn’t even legal yet and he had bids that high?” Heiryung muttered, reading specific pages carefully. “Give him to me.” The woman pleaded, “I’ll do anything you ask and you can take away my pay for as long as you please. Let me have him.” 

    Tarin tapped his foot in the air. “Why do you want him?” he asked curiously. 

    Heiryung composed herself slightly, not that she had to in front of her own brother. “Simple reason, he’s a good looking young man, that’s what a woman in her mid twenties wants.” 
    
    Heiryung smiled as innocently as she could, but Tarin could see past it. His sister was the kind of girl who would get smashed Friday night only to have until Saturday morning. She wore makeup so thick it could decorate several cakes, her hair was ratty and always thrown in a curly messy bun on top of her head, and there were occasions when Tarin would catch her groping the trainees.

    The CEO knew of trainees that had been sold off to horrible people, but he had never stopped them because of the money he received in return. The worst people always bid the highest. For some reason now, he was hesitant. Maybe it was because his sister and he were close that he wouldn’t be able to stand seeing the barely legal boy be molested by her. Or maybe it was because the last bidder was offering an obscene amount of money just for Soonyoung.

    “First of all you are not in your late twenties, you are in your thirties. And secondly, I don’t know if I trust you with my most prized possession.” Tarin paused, looking to his sister’s face, thinking some more. “But if you keep the institute in order while I go on a business trip, as well as uphold your own responsibilities, I’ll only make you pay half the price.” 

    Heiryung giggled excitedly like the teenager she wasn’t, clapping her hands together. “Promise?”

    “Promise.”

    “Thank you brother!” she piped getting up and dancing towards the door.
 
    Tarin stopped her before she could leave. “And stay away from Soonyoung until I say so. I don’t trust you.” 

    Heiryung bowed her head with a smirk on her face. “Of course you don’t. I wouldn’t either.”

    
    When Tarin returned from China, he never could have guessed that his star pupil was missing. He was inspecting his sister’s work with the trainees, drilling them with international languages. Once he was satisfied, he looked her way and gave her an approving look. He began to call the trainees out by name to congratulate them on their ability to be sold.
    
    Soonyoung’s name came up and Tarin was left looking among the trainees for his youngest face. He turned to Heiryung asking why he wasn’t present.
    
    “You told me to stay away. So I rounded up the rest of them.”
Tarin rolled his eyes. “Let’s go pay him a visit then. Dismissed.”
Tarin came up to Soonyoung’s dorm room and knocked waiting patiently outside. Another trainee had come to the door, one whom Tarin had been familiar with for quite a while now. He had been a trainee for four years with the inability to be sold due to his poor Korean language skills.

    “Ah, Tao.” Tarin slipped into Mandarin, “Where’s your roommate?” he asked, peering his head around the other’s slim body. 
“He’s not here. He hasn’t been around the dorm at all lately; maybe he’s spending too much time at work.” Tao knew very well where Soonyoung was. The younger had told all the trainees where he was going before disappearing a month ago. All of the trainees swore they wouldn’t tell anyone on their lives.

    “Thank you, Tao.” CEO Tarin said, politely bowing and letting Tao go back to his own business. Tarin turned to Heiryung, “Return him to his dorm. I told you to leave him alone.” 

    Heiryung cocked her head forward in disbelief. “I didn’t touch your kid. You told me not to.” 

    “And who are you to listen?”

    “I went out of my way to avoid him, Tarin. Don’t blame me for losing him when you told me to stay away from him.” 
    
    Tarin rolled his eyes, “So then where’d he go, Heiryung? Just get up and leave the institute? He can’t do that. He has nowhere else to go.” 

    Heiryung crossed her and tossing her hair out of her face.“Go check the security cameras if you want to see, I didn’t touch him! Call the trainees and ask.” Heiryung yelled.

    Enraged by his sister’s stubborn personality, Tarin called all the trainees to the institute's auditorium. He looked amongst the large group of men, scolding them from thestage. He picked up a blow horn from center stage and turned it on. “If anyone has seen Kwon Soonyoung recently, please come forward.” 

    Not a single person dared move from their spot. They would not betray their brother. Tarin laughed bitterly, nodding his head with a very annoyed look on his face.He altered it into a very tight-lipped smile. “So that’s how it is, during your training this week, expect me to talk to each of you individually. Kwon Soonyoung must be found sometime, someway.”

    All the trainees, even the older ones in their twenties, were struck with fright. Their CEO wasn’t a person who delivered an easy punishment or interrogation. Each one of them had at least one scar as proof of that. Throughout the week, they watched their friends and roommates be pulled away from training, one by one, and come out with bruised arms and legs. Each took their turn lying for the sake of Soonyoung, the only one who had managed to escape. 

    And then new trainee, Junghan, decided to become public enemy number one. 

    “He ran away!” Junghan cried having a wooden stick cracked down across his legs.

    “Where?!” CEO Tarin yelled over the young trainee’s sobs.

    “I don’t know. He never told me. He just said he was leaving.It was last month. I don't know anything else, I swear!” Tarin picked Junghan up off the ground by his shirt, putting him onto his feet and pushing him out the door. 

    “I want Soonyoung found. Now!” Tarin yelled at his sister, who was standing in the corner of the sealed room. “Check all through his dorm for evidence. We need to find him before the bidders find out he’s missing.”

    Heiryung puffed out her lips sourly, “I won’t be looking for him, since I didn’t lose him. You better find him soon, brother, or else I’ll do something that will ruin you forever. I want that boy.” 

    Tarin glared as Heiryung left the room. 

---
    “What have you done!?” Tao roared, shaking Junghan’s shoulders. 
Trainees gathered around the two boys when they heard his yelling. 

“You’ve killed him, that’s what you did! If the CEO finds Soonyoung he’s dead! No one’s ever made it out of the institute.”

    Junghan was still wiping tears from his eyes and felt sharp pain 
in his legs. Around him, he could hear the other trainees muttering their sympathies for the missing boy. “Poor Soonyoung" and"I hope he stays safe”passed over him. He gritted his teeth.

    “Why is it always poor Soonyoung!?” Junghan spat through tears with a croaking voice. “That’s all anyone ever talks about here. Soonyoung this, Soonyoung that. Was he really all that great? What did he do? Was he your ? He signed up for this like we did.” 

    Tao pointed a finger an inch from Junghan’s face. Even though he couldn't speak korean very well, he managed to hiss out his anger. “We don’t say that stuff about our brothers. You didn’t know Soonyoung and that’s a shame because you would understand so much more if you did.” The other men around them mumbled their agreements.

    Junghan laughed, “Brothers. Is that what we are? Why did we sign up for this anyways? None of us had any other place to go, all of us were worthless. And we're gonna find a wife, or anyone who decides to buy us; we don’t even get to pick who we are sold too. I bet you that Soonyoung guy just sold his body off to some random on the street just to get out of this place.”

    Tao pushed Junghan back forcefully.“Don’t say about Soonyoung.”

    “He gets all the attention around here; he must have done you real good.” 

    Tao didn’t think twice before clenching his fist and swinging it across Junghan’s jaw. Everyone froze in shock as Junghan hit the ground. Tao was never anyone who'd resort to violence.

    “We don’t-“ Tao started throwing punches in between his words, “Say that about brothers.”

    The shock was shaken from the crowd. Two other trainees peeled the enraged Tao off of Junghan who scrambled back on all fours cowardly. 

    “If I ever hear you say something about Soonyoung again, I’ll hit you so hard you’ll wish you were never born.” Tao barked, wiping the corner of his mouth with his bruised knuckles. He continued shouting out curses in Mandarin while he was being pulled away by the other trainees.

---
    Tarin was going crazy. It had only been two days since he’d know Soonyoung was missing, at least a month since Soonyoung had actually disappeared, and he couldn’t think of any place the boy could be. He had every person on his staff search every PC room, club, bar, school, convenience store, everywhere. But there was at least a month's worth of footage to go over.

    He was in the middle of checking Soonyoung and Tao’s room for the third time that day when he came across something he didn’t notice before. He had looked for something hidden, some kind of secret that Soonyoung would have hid in the room.Tarin spotted something on Tao's bed.

    A small yellow folded square of paper poked out from underneath Tao’s pillow. Tarin fumbled it open, reading as much of the messy writing as he could. He couldn’t make out many words, but he could read that the note was originally to Soonyoung from Kris. Maybe this was his 
clue. Kris and Soonyoung had been closer than family while in the institute; maybe Kris would know where Soonyoung was.

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A/N: I am sooooooo sorry that I haven't updated in months! I've been very busy with school and after school activities. I promise you in the new year there will be plenty of updates and a clean finish.