When I got home from school Thursday afternoon, I realized that I had to go to the supermarket. The kitchen cabinets in our apartment were completely bare, and it wasn’t like my father was going to do the restocking. So I took what was left of his paycheck after he’d paid the bills and bought booze and went to see what I could get.

Growing up the way I had, I’d learned early on to be thrifty with what little money I could get my hands on. I could sniff out a good deal from a mile away, and I was something of an expert when it came to getting more for my money. It was easier for me this way than accepting money from my friends in the Hamjeong, who had offered to help me financially more times than I could count. While it would have lightened the burden on me, I was too proud to accept that kind of help.

I was on my way back from the crowded little market on the corner, my canvas shopping bags weighing down my arms, when I spotted a familiar head bobbing along several yards in front of me. I don’t know if it was because I’d been thinking about him so much lately, but it certainly seemed to be Kim Jonghyun.

That was silly, though. Someone like Kim Jonghyun would never be caught dead in my part of town. It must have just been his doppelganger.

But it did look an awful lot like him, I found myself thinking. I walked a bit faster so I could catch up with the mysterious person and get a better look. He was wearing casual clothes and a stylish hat pulled down low to cover his face, but when I got up beside him, I could tell for sure.

“Jonghyun?” I said, shocked.

He looked so started to find me suddenly beside him that he jumped back, knocking into a grumpy-looking ajumma who hmphed and continued on her way. “K-kitten,” he stammered awkwardly.

“Jonghyun, what are you doing here?” I demanded, eyebrows knitting together. “You’ve missed school all week and you haven’t answered anybody’s texts or calls. I even showed up at your house yesterday to have that rude guy who answers your call box tell me to go away.”

He looked around anxiously, pulling his hat down lower as if someone else in this part of town might recognize him. “I haven’t been feeling well.”

He did look like he was under the weather. He was paler than I’d ever seen him, with dark circles under his eyes that indicated he hadn’t been sleeping much. “Well, what are you doing here? This isn’t exactly your neck of the woods, now is it?”

“I…was doing some shopping,” he said lamely.

The lie was so blatant that all I had to do was give him a stern look.

He sighed heavily and gave in. “Okay, okay. If you want to know the truth, I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?” I demanded, genuinely curious. What sort of person would Kim Jonghyun be looking for in a sleazy neighborhood like mine?

He looked around again; his behavior was definitely starting to set me on edge. When he spoke, he had lowered his voice significantly as if sharing a huge secret with me. “My father.”

“Your father?” I repeated incredulously. “Why on earth would someone as rich and important as your father be here?” I gestured to the crowded, dirty street that we were standing in.

“Would you keep your voice down?” he hissed in annoyance, dragging me out of the main avenue and into a deserted alleyway that stank of garbage. He took a deep breath and adjusted his hat. “My father is missing. I’ve been looking for him everywhere, and this is just one of the many places I’m checking.”

Rather than shedding light on this situation, he only confused me further. “I’m sure your father isn’t missing, Jonghyun. Maybe he just got caught up with work or something. Things happen, you know.”

“No, it’s more than that,” he said firmly, expression dark. “He’s been missing since Sunday night. When I got home after seeing you off at the bus stop Sunday night, he was just gone. His office has been calling the house around the clock, demanding to know where he is and what he’s doing. I know something’s going on, and I’ve got a bad feeling about it. I have to find him, and soon.”

I shifted the heavy weight of my shopping bags, thinking hard. “Well, do you have any idea at all where he might have gone? There’s got to be some kind of clue.”

“There is one thing,” Jonghyun admitted, face clouding over. “But I have no idea what it means. It’s a letter from someone named Yang that I found on his desk the night he disappeared. When you first read it, it seems friendly enough on the surface. After reading it a few times, though, it seems like there’s some sort of hidden threat there.”

“Show me,” I said, surprising both of us.

He shook his head, frowning. “It’s back at the house.”

“So let’s go,” I urged. “I’m sort of a genius, remember? Maybe I can help figure it out.”

He looked like he wanted to object, but in the end he shrugged; I was the best lead he had so far, after all. So we walked the short distance to my apartment so I could drop off the groceries I’d bought – I was mortified at having him see the little hovel I called a home, but he was too distracted to be an about it like usual.

We were walking out of my apartment building when we ran into Zelo.

“Noona!” he exclaimed eagerly, face split into a wide grin. He stopped the second he saw Jonghyun with me, Jonghyun whose whole demeanor set him miles apart from the people typical in this neighborhood. “Who’s this?” he demanded, and his voice left no doubt as to what he thought about my well-dressed companion.

“This is one of my classmates from school,” I said quickly, hoping to avoid any scene. Zelo hated rich people with a passion. “Jonghyun, this is my old friend Zelo.”

“Nice to meet you,” Jonghyun said distractedly.

Zelo didn’t answer, only looked Jonghyun up and down with a look of obvious dislike. “What are you doing with my noona?” he demanded curtly.

“Time to go,” I said quickly, grabbing Jonghyun’s arm and dragging him off. “Quit being such an , Zelo!” I shouted over my shoulder, to which he responded with a significant hand gesture.

Jonghyun had parked his car not far from my apartment building. It was a Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren Roadster, and it took my breath away just looking at it. Jonghyun climbed behind the wheel like it was just any old car, giving me an impatient look, so I slid into the front passenger seat. The smell of new leather enveloped me like an old friend.

We drove in silence for a while, Jonghyun navigating his amazing car back towards the ritzier part of town. Jonghyun pulled up to the Italian palace he lived in, punching the access code into the call box and then parking in a garage next to six other cars that probably cost more than my entire street.

“Come on,” Jonghyun muttered impatiently, leading the way inside.

I followed him through more unfamiliar corridors and doorways, deeper into the maze of the house, into a wing I had never seen before. He stopped in front a set of impressive oak doors and, after finding the correct key on an extensive key ring, unlocked them. Beyond the double doors was a finely-furnished office. The furniture was dark, elegant, plush. There were heavy brocade drapes framing the single window. Built-in bookshelves lined the walls, housing hundred of thick tomes.

Jonghyun ignored the exotic surroundings, too used to the elegance to pay it any mind, and instead went straight to the massive desk. After finding yet another key on his key ring, this one tiny and silver, he unlocked the middle drawer and, after rifling around for a moment, emerged with a pristine piece of printer paper folded perfectly into thirds. It looked a little worn, like he had read it over and over again.

“Here,” he said simply, handing the letter to me.

I accepted it, sinking down in one of the plush armchairs arranged in front of the desk to read it. My throat got drier and more constricted the more I read of the neatly-typed characters. When I reached the end, I looked up at Jonghyun helplessly. “Jonghyun,” I said, and my voice sounded tight and pinched even to my own ears. “This letter is from the Gongpo.”

He gave me the blank look of the sheltered wealthy. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re ed,” I answered bluntly, handing the letter back. “You really don’t know anything about anything, do you?”

He didn’t look happy with my unhelpful response. “Talk sense, Kitten, or get the out.”

I sighed heavily, running my fingers through my loose hair. “The Gongpo is a prominent gang in Seoul – one of the very worst. From what I can glean from this letter – which is very cryptic and yet very threatening – your father made a deal with them and it went south. Like really south. The Gongpo is taking retribution on your father for the bad deal.”

Jonghyun’s face paled the more I talked. When I’d finished my little speech, he immediately reached for the phone on the edge of the desk.

“What are you doing?!” I demanded, panicked.

He glared at me even as he viciously punched in numbers. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m calling the police! I have to get to my father before it’s too late!”

“No!” I shouted, grabbing the phone directly out his hand and slamming it back into the cradle.

Jonghyun’s expression grew even darker, if possible. “What the are you doing, Kitten? He may be an old bastard, but he’s still my father and I’m not going to let him become the victim of some gang!”

“Going to the police is not the way to go about saving him,” I assure him grimly. “If he’s still alive right now and you go to the cops, he won’t be alive for much longer. I promise you that. The Gongpo have eyes everywhere.”

Jonghyun’s look was utterly helpless, and it took me by surprise. I’d never seen him like this before. “So what do I do? How can I save him, Kitten?”

I took a deep, calming breath, willing my heart to stop pounding. “Well, first we have to make sure the Gongpo really have him prisoner and that he’s still alive.”

The stare he gave me was completely uncomprehending. “And how do we do that?”

“We’ll sneak in through the basement, of course.”

He eyebrows puckered together, both in skepticism and confusion. “And that’s less dangerous than going to the police how?”

I got to my feet, rubbing my now-sweaty palms on the legs of my jeans. “If we get caught sneaking in, they’ll just kill us. Quick and easy. If we bring the cops into this, they’ll torture us before they kill us. Trust me. This is the safer option. Now come on. Let’s get you dressed if we’re going to do this.”

For the first time since I started coming to the Kims’ mansion, Jonghyun led me past his futuristic sitting room and into his bedroom. This room was enormous and just as modernized as his sitting room, all hard angles and glass and chrome. I didn’t have time to really take in all the details, however, as we were sort of in a time crunch. So instead I followed him into his walk-in closet – which was bigger than my bedroom back at my apartment – so I could rifle through his clothes.

“Put these on,” I finally decided, throwing him a pair of black jeans and a black sweater. “You can’t stand out too much, and we need to be able to keep to the shadows as much as possible.”

He began ing the shirt he was currently wearing, completely disregarding the fact that I was standing right there. “How do you know about all this stuff?” he demanded, shrugging out of the shirt and pulling the sweater over his head. “All this gang stuff and sneaking in and everything?”

I shrugged, sitting down on the edge of his bed to wait for him to finish changing. “When you grow up in the situation that I did, you learn a few things.”

When he’d finished changing, completing his ensemble with a pair of black boots, we went back down to the multi-car garage. Only at my insistence did we choose the least ostentatious of his cars, and even then it was a car that would definitely attract attention in my neighborhood. Still, it was better than the McLaren Roadster.

I directed him to park the car near my apartment building and then we went on foot the rest of the way. Night had fallen by this point and no one glanced twice in our direction.

“Where are we going?” Jonghyun whispered. We were walking close together, our shoulders and hands brushing with every step. We could’ve been mistaken for a couple by someone who didn’t know any better.

I glanced around to make sure that no one was close enough to overhear us. “We’re going to the Gongpo main house,” I explained. “You’ll understand when we get there.”

I’d never been to the Gongpo main house before, but, being the gang-affiliated girl that I was, I of course knew where it was located. From what I’d heard over the years, I also knew that the main house was laid out pretty similarly to the Tagyeog main house – and that I had been to more times than I cared to count.

My plan wasn’t a great one – there were so many things that could go wrong, obviously – but it was the only one that I had and, from what I could make out from the cryptic letter Jonghyun had shown me, Mr. Kim didn’t have much time for us to come up with a better one.

“This is it?” Jonghyun demanded when we stopped behind the house. It was a dilapidated three-story building that had been half-heartedly repaired so many times over the years that it looked like a children’s playhouse more than anything. The whole lot was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. “This is that gang’s base of operations?”

“Shut up,” I muttered distractedly, tangling my fingers in the chain link and hauling myself up easily.

I didn’t get more than halfway up before Jonghyun’s ice-cold fingers clamped down around my ankle. “What the do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, looking around anxiously. “You can’t climb over that thing! Look at all that barbed wire!”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Look, why don’t you just stay here. You’re only going to get in my way anyway. Give me your handphone and I’ll take pictures if I find any proof. Okay?”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone,” Jonghyun growled, not letting go of my ankle. “It’s dangerous, you idiot.”

I shook him off my leg and climbed out of his reach before he could reattach himself to me. I hopped the barbed wire easily – a trick Yongguk had taught me ages ago – and landed nimbly on the other side. I faced Jonghyun through the fence, holding out my hand for his mobile. “Wait here. I’ll be back soon.”

He reluctantly passed his handphone to me through the chain link fence, but before I could go, he grabbed my wrist. “Be careful, Kitten,” he said solemnly, and then he released me.

I nodded, coming across much calmer than I actually felt.

I saw no security cameras as I approached the building, but I didn’t worry that they were hidden. The Tagyeog didn’t use any security cameras at their main house, so there was no reason to think that the Gongpo did. They needed to make their house as unnoticeable as possible, and people tended to notice things like security cameras. They were sort of a dead giveaway. So I simply crouched down low and scurried through the shadows quickly, not stopping until I reached a low window that I could see led directly into the basement.

The window was locked, of course, but Zelo had always been something of an expert when it came to picking and breaking locks. He’d passed his knowledge along to me, so I jimmied the lock easily and pulled it open soundlessly. It was a tiny window, but I wasn’t a big girl. I slipped through easily, landing on all fours on the concrete floor in an underground corridor that was lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the damp ceiling.

My heart was pounding as I looked around for signs of anyone, but luckily it seemed that I was alone. I moved carefully down the dank corridor, holding Jonghyun’s handphone ready so I could snap a picture if the opportunity presented itself. I tugged anxiously on the heavy black sweater I’d borrowed from Jonghyun’s closet – so large that it was practically a dress on me – and forced myself to keep going.

There was a closed metal door at the end of the otherwise empty hallway, just like I’d expected. There were rumors that the Gongpo and the Tagyeog had started out as the same group and split into two separate factions; I didn’t know if the rumors were true, but the two did have similar operating styles. The Tagyeog kept their torture and interrogation room down in the basement so that no one in the outside world could hear the screams of agony. The Gongpo seemed to think along the same lines, because the metal door at the end of the hallway turned out to be heavily locked.

Unlike the torture room door at the Tagyeog main house, this door had a small rectangular window in it, though the shutter was currently closed.

I hesitated before opening it. If a Gongpo member was inside the room when I opened the shutter, I would be caught and most likely killed before they even bothered to find out who I was or what I was doing there. That’s simply how these sorts of gangs operated. But proof was what I needed, so if I didn’t take the chance, then everything we had done up to this point would have been for nothing.

I steeled my will and very slowly slid back the metal shutter, peering into the dark room beyond. Luckily for both me and Jonghyun, the only person inside seemed to be Mr. Kim. Though alive, he was definitely worse for wear. He was lying on the cold stone floor in a rumpled, blood-stained suit. What I could make out of his face was bruised and bloody, and he seemed to be unconscious. I quickly snapped a photo with Jonghyun’s handphone before bolting out the way I’d come.

I shimmied up through the tiny window and flung myself over the chain link fence towards an impatiently waiting Jonghyun.

“Well?” he demanded anxiously as we fled the Gongpo main house. “What did you see? Did you find my father? Is he there?”

“He’s there,” I panted, tossing him the mobile. “And he’s still alive. For now.”

Jonghyun looked at the photograph on the handphone with an unreadable expression before looking up at me. “So he’s still alive. What do we do to keep him that way?”

I chewed on my bottom lip. “Leave that up to me.”

We didn’t talk at all as Jonghyun drove us back to his house in the nice part of town. Mr. Kang was waiting for us at the door. He kept his expression expertly neutral, so I had no idea what he thought about Jonghyun bringing me back to the house so late at night. It was well after midnight now; even the bus that I took had stopped running.

“Jonghyun,” I said when we were safely locked away in his private sitting room once more. “I’ll figure something out, okay? So don’t worry. I’ll go home and work through some things and we can meet up tomorrow and-”

“No,” he said shortly, voice thick. He was standing at the enormous window that took up the entire back wall, looking out into the black night. His back was turned to me, so I couldn’t see his expression. “Stay here tonight.”

I felt my face turn crimson at the ridiculous command, for it had definitely been a command and not a request. “What are you talking about?” I asked, my voice too high for comfort. “We have school tomorrow and I don’t have any clothes with me and what on earth will Mr. Kang think and-”

“You’re right,” he interrupted quietly. “Forget I said anything.”

I gazed at him for a long time. For the first time since I’d met him, I didn’t see him as the cocky bastard who strutted around school like he owned the place. Instead, all I saw was a lonely boy whose father was missing.

I quietly got to my feet and crossed the room to him, casually slipping my hand into his. “Okay,” I agreed softly. “I’ll stay tonight.”

Though it probably would’ve been more prudent for me to make use of one of the dozens of guest rooms in the house, somehow I ended up wearing Jonghyun’s clothes, burrowed under the blankets in his enormous bed.

He took his time in the attached bathroom, brushing his teeth, washing his face, and getting changed. He flipped off the light as he came into the bedroom, bathing the cavernous room in darkness.

My heart was throbbing as I felt the other side of the mattress dip down, as I heard the rustle of sheets and blankets as he settled back against the pillows.

I laid there frozen, my mind racing a million miles a minute. How on earth had things ended up like this? I should never have agreed to stay. I should’ve gone home, home to my empty apartment and an irate Zelo. What would Zelo say when he found out where I’d spent the night? Hell, what would anyone say?

Just as my mind was going into overdrive, I heard a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the bed and just like that everything was gone. I sighed and scooted closer to the warm body beside me, my hand automatically seeking his as it lay on the pillow beside his head. My fingers threaded their way through his, squeezing reassuringly.

“It’s okay to be worried, you know,” I whisper.

“What would you know about it?” he demanded harshly, voice thick, but his fingers closed down tightly around mine like I was the only thing holding him to reality anymore.

“We’ll get him back,” I promised quietly, though I had no idea how I was going to keep such a promise.

He sighed again, and I could feel his warm breath on my hand by his head. “I ing hope so, Kitten.”