Yongguk stared up at the stars. It was an exceptionally clear Friday night, so clear the pollution and smog and tall buildings did little to obscure his view. He was in a good mood, happy.

“Yah, hyung!” Daehyun’s whiny voice interrupted his slightly – or more than slightly, if he was perfectly honest with himself – inebriated thoughts of Junhong. It had been a few weeks since they’d come back from their vacation in Jeju, but the thought of their time together still made him glow happily.

He blinked at his friend stupidly. Daehyun, Youngjae, and Himchan were all staring at him expectantly. “What?” he demanded.

Youngjae laughed and clapped him on the back. “We were asking about that girl you were talking to at the club. Daehyunnie thinks she was hot.”

“I didn’t say that,” Daehyun grumbled, punching Youngjae none too gently on the arm. “But seriously, if you’re not gonna tap that, I totally will, hyung.”

Yongguk chuckled, pulling the piece of paper with the girl’s phone number from the back pocket of his jeans. He held it out to Daehyun. “Go for it,” he said with a gummy grin.

Daehyun accepted the paper with an almost reverent smile behind his rice cake. “Really, hyung?”

“I thought you two hit it off,” Himchan said, and, even though he kept his voice light, Yongguk picked up on the suspicion there right away. It seemed that Himchan was always suspicious these days. “You’re not going to call her?”

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything since Daehyunnie is into her, but she sort of smelled like moldy cheese,” Yongguk lied. He felt sort of bad saying it, as the girl had actually been really nice and very intelligent, but he knew it had saved his when his friends started howling and honking with laughter – even Himchan.

“Maybe I don’t want to call her then,” Daehyun grumbles, trying to hand the piece of paper back to Yongguk.

The elder avoided the paper like it was poison. “No way, bro. That’s on you now.” And they all laughed a little bit harder.

Yongguk was still chuckling happily, listening to Youngjae tease Daehyun about having stinky offspring with the newly-dubbed moldy-cheese girl, when his cell phone, shoved in his back pocket, began to vibrate. He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes and checked the caller ID.

The smile quickly faded away. It was Junhong, which in and of itself wasn’t a big deal. Junhong called him often. But it was well after midnight – closer to dawn by now, really – and the kid had never called him at this hour. Plus Yongguk was with his friends; it wasn’t like he could answer a call from his middle schooler without arousing suspicion. And he’d just avoided a potentially disastrous situation! Junhong really had good timing, Yongguk thought with a sigh.

Ever observant, Youngjae noticed Yongguk’s vibrating handphone. “Aren’t you going to answer that, hyung?” he asked.

Yongguk grimaced. He had no choice now. He’d just have to play it cool so his friends didn’t know who he was talking to. He pressed the connect button and held the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he said as casually as he could manage, though anxiety was thrumming through every vein.

“Hyung.” There was something wrong his Junhong’s voice. It was unsteady, shaky…almost like he’d been crying. Then there was a hiccoughing sob and it became painfully clear that Junhong was still crying.

Whatever concerns Yongguk had about keeping his friends in the dark vanished at once. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, stopping in the middle of the deserted sidewalk. His friends stopped walking as well, staring at him in concern. It wasn’t often that Yongguk wore his emotions on his sleeve.

There was no answer, just more sobs. Somewhere in the background, Yongguk could hear yelling.

“Junhong!” Yongguk roared into the phone, feeling his chest constrict in sheer, unfathomable panic. “What’s going on? What’s wrong? For ’s sake, talk to me!”

Junhong let out a little whimper. “Please, hyung…” he whispered, and then the line went dead.

Yongguk stared at the phone in his hand for a long second, hardly registering the call ended screen. Then he was off, racing down the sidewalk, leaving his friends calling after him in surprise and concern.

Though he’d been pretty drunk just a minute before, he sobered up miraculously. His chest was heaving by the time he reached his apart building, a painful burning in his chest like there as a vice grip around his lungs. His legs were trembling as he took the stairs three at a time, too impatient and too worried to wait for the slow elevator.

He wasn’t even sure if he was going to find Junhong in the building but he had nothing else to go on. Maybe Junhong’s parents would at least know where he had gone if he wasn’t there.

Yongguk skidded to a stop in front of the Choi’s front door, banging on it despite the early hour. There was a long pause, so long that he worried briefly about waking Junhong’s parents from sleep, but when the door opened and revealed Mrs. Choi fully dressed, he knew he hadn’t woken her.

Maybe she was as worried about Junhong as Yongguk was. Her face did seem unusually pale, a bit more lined than the last time he had seen her. She smiled at Yongguk, though it seemed forced. “Yongguk-ssi,” she said politely. “What can I do for you?”

Yongguk stared at her. She was trying too hard to sound normal, he found himself thinking. If someone showed up at his apartment at half past four in the morning, beating down his door like it was the end of the world, he would probably ask something a little more what the is wrong with you and a little less what can I do for you.

Then there is a muffled thump from the back of the apartment and something inside Yongguk’s head clicks.

He pushes past Mrs. Choi roughly – she lets out a shrill little cry of protest and surprise but she’s such a frail little thing that she’s no match for Yongguk – and finds his way down the hall towards Junhong’s bedroom. He’s only been there once before, back when he and the kid had first been assigned partners for the mentor program, but the layout of the Choi’s apartment is identical to that of the Bang’s so he doesn’t get lost.

Yongguk has never seen Junhong’s dad before, but there is no doubt in his mind that the great, hulking man in Junhong’s bedroom is the kid’s dad. They have the same unruly curls, the same nose. He’s standing over the unmoving form of Junhong, red-faced, a cracked ceramic lamp in his hand.

His gaze snaps over to Yongguk and his eyes are blazing.

Yongguk may not be book-smart, but he’s sure as hell got a lot of street-smarts and he knows from just one look that Mr. Choi is drunk off his .

“Who the are you?” Mr. Choi demands, words slurring together as he brandishes the blood-stained lamp at Yongguk.

Yongguk is absolutely seething with anger. In fact, he’s pretty sure that he’s never been this angry in his entire life, not even when Yongnam destroyed his favorite toy when they were four or when his last girlfriend had cheated on him with some prick from another part of town. This was something completely different, red spots swimming in front of his eyes, hands balling themselves into fists. But the rage was overshadowed by the fear, the utter and complete terror that the unmoving form of Junhong inspired in him.

The kid was sprawled on his side on the floor, barefoot, one arm slung over his body as if he’d fallen trying to protect himself. The arm above his head was obviously broken, lying at an angle that wasn’t possible for a normal arm. There was a gash at his temple, above his left ear, where his father had hit him with the lamp – repeatedly, it looked like.

Yongguk tried to force all the overwhelming feelings down, tried to stay calm and focused. Time was of the essence here, and him losing his temper and panicking wasn’t going to do Junhong any good.

“Step away from Junhong,” Yongguk rumbled, his deep voice scaring even him.

Mr. Choi glared at him for a long moment, obviously torn between attacking him with the lamp still in his hand and backing away like he’d been told. Eventually his lip pulled up in a sneer. “Who the are you?” he repeated. “How dare you come into my house and-!”

He stopped suddenly when Yongguk sent a textbook flying in his direction – missing him by only a few centimeters.

“Step. Away. From. Junhong,” Yongguk repeated in a deadly voice.

Mr. Choi swallowed and lowered the lamp. He cast one last glance over his shoulder at Junhong before he left, muttering, “He’s certainly no Junsu.”

Yongguk knelt down beside Junhong, automatically checking for a pulse. His shaking fingers managed to find one, but it was very faint and faltering. Cursing to himself, he carefully scooped the broken body into his arms.

Mr. Choi was nowhere to be seen when he left the apartment, but Mrs. Choi was standing in the living room, fretting with her handkerchief. Yongguk didn’t even stop to give her the look of contempt she sorely deserved.

He knew that Junhong had a horrible aversion to hospitals, but Yongguk didn’t see another option here. This wasn’t something he could take care of on his own, not something he could stitch up with his mother’s sewing needle, not something that could be handled by shoved a few painkillers down Junhong’s throat. The kid was almost dead, and that was a reality Yongguk couldn’t ing handle.

The emergency room was nearly deserted when he stumbled in, just a drunk sleeping on some chairs and a woman with a cough. The receptionist jumped up at once upon seeing Yongguk and Junhong, calling for doctors.

Everything happened in a blur.  There were nurses and doctors and interns putting Junhong’s limp body onto a gurney and rolling him back, back into the belly of the hospital, out of Yongguk’s sight. He shouted for answers, shouted at anyone who passed by to tell him what the was happening, but no one had any answers for him. The receptionist pressed a cup of steaming black coffee into his hands and coaxed him into filling out the admittance form to the best of his ability.

“This is mostly blank,” the receptionist said when he returned the form to her.

Yongguk just shrugged, staring off at the double doors that Junhong had disappeared behind.

The receptionist laid a gentle hand on his arm, brow furrowed in concern. “Sir, where are his parents? Shouldn’t someone call them?”

Yongguk’s lip pulled back in a sneer all on it’s own. “His parents?” he repeated, voice scathing even though the receptionist couldn’t have known. “His parents are the ones that did this to him.”

Eventually the receptionist persuaded him to sit down in one of the chairs instead of pacing back and forth like a lunatic, and he pulled out his phone to check it. He had about a dozen missed calls, most from his friends but a couple from his mother. He groaned and called her back.

“Yongguk, where the hell are you?” she demanded, and she sounded downright hysterical. . “I’ve been worried sick! Himchan came by the apartment and said you’d gotten a phone call and run off and you weren’t answering your phone and for ’s sake I thought you were dead!”

“It’s Junhong,” Yongguk interrupted her, voice sounding flat and dull even in his own ears. “He’s in the hospital.”

Despite her earlier suggestion that he stop spending so much time with the kid, she is suitably concerned. “Oh no! What happened?”

Yongguk remained silent. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her. What sort of person beats their own child? Kills their own child? He carded his fingers through his hair and didn’t say anything.

“Did you have something to do with it?” his mother asked next, whispering.

“No,” he was quick to assure her. “He called me for help but then went unconscious. I managed to rescue him, but I don’t know if I got there in time.” His voice cracked. “He’s in pretty bad shape. I-I don’t know if…”

“Oh baby,” his mother said, and he could tell by her voice that her heart was breaking for him. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

And Yongguk was reminded again of just how grateful he was for his mother.