It was a little past noon when I woke the second time, forced into an alert state of being by my growling stomach. I yawned and snuggled closer to Jonghyun, who had yet to relinquish his hold on me. He was still asleep, his eyes slightly open, lips parted as he breathed evenly. Even asleep, his expression was troubled. I couldn’t blame him, though.

I ran my finger gently along the worried crease between his eyes, trying to smooth away the anxiety caught there, but he stirred and eventually opened his eyes. He blinked several times as if trying to remember why exactly I was in his bed, wearing his clothes and touching him. Then he sighed and closed his eyes once more.

“Are you hungry?” he finally asked, his arms tightening around me briefly before releasing me altogether.

I felt a bit insensitive talking about food when his father’s life was at stake, but I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime yesterday and I was downright starving. “A little,” I admitted, running my fingers through my tangled locks. I tried to pat my hair back down in place, but unfortunately it couldn’t be tamed.

Jonghyun got out of bed, carelessly throwing back the blankets without bothering to make them up neatly. “Go ahead and take a shower,” he ordered indifferently, throwing a soft-looking robe on over his pajamas. “I’ll go get one of the chefs to make us lunch.”

He left me no room to argue as he swept from the room, leaving me no choice but to get up and do as he said. I found my way into the bathroom and allowed myself a brief moment to admire its elegance. Like Jonghyun’s closet, his bathroom was easily larger than my bedroom back home. It was designed and decorated to resemble something from an Italian palace. The floors were polished marble, the walls an elegant cream-color with intricate moulding. There was an open glass shower and a Jacuzzi tub, and one entire wall was a giant mirror that currently showed me my disgustingly disheveled appearance.

Groaning at how messy I looked, I grabbed a towel from the linen closet and the taps in the shower. The water ran hot immediately, which was a foreign concept to me. Back at my apartment, I had to wait fifteen minutes for the water to warm up, only to get about five minutes of hot water out of the rusty old pipes. There was a plethora of shampoos and conditioners and body washes sitting on a small metal rack outside the shower – sort of like a mini cosmetics store – so I chose something that smelled a bit like lavender.

The shower was heavenly, but a loud knock on the bathroom door dragged me out of my zen moment. “Yah,” Jonghyun’s voice sounded over the steady drumming of the shower. “Lunch is ready. Hurry up.”

I quickly finished showering and turned off the taps, wrapping my towel around myself. All I had to wear were my same clothes from yesterday, so I pulled these back on despite them being dirty and tied my damp hair up in a messy knot on top of my head.

Jonghyun was still wearing his pajamas when I found my way out into his private sitting room. He was curled up on the square-shaped couch, staring at the enormous television screen; there was a drama on, but his glossy eyes told me he wasn’t really watching it. He was absently sipping a cup of steaming coffee.

His eyes flickered over to me briefly before going back to the show I was fairly certain he wasn’t watching. “Sit down,” he ordered shortly. “Eat something.”

I moved cautiously to the open seat beside him on the couch. It felt sort of like I was walking in eggshells, like the tension might make him explode at any moment.

The change in our relationship was palpable, but I had no idea exactly what sort of change had taken place – and I don’t think he knew either.

I sighed, leaning back against the uncomfortable couch cushions and reaching for a piece of toast.

I’m pretty sure that this was the longest day of my life so far. We sat in Jonghyun’s private sitting room, watching hour after hour of shows that neither of us really cared for. Even though I tried to persuade Jonghyun to eat, he never did, and it wasn’t like I could force-feed him. He left my side for about an hour to shower and get dressed, but then he was back, sitting close enough to me on the couch that I could feel his body heat seeping through my jeans. We didn’t speak to one another.

It was dark outside and we’d tried to eat something for dinner – though both of us had only picked half-heartedly at the tray of delicacies Mr. Kang had brought us a while ago – before I broke the uncomfortable silence that had suffocated us all day. “Jonghyun?” I said, my voice sounding dry and cracked after not speaking all day. “We should probably head over to my side of town now. I still have to get ready for tonight at my place.”

He nodded shortly, switching off the television. “Okay.”

Jonghyun disappeared into his massive closet to get dressed in dark, unobtrusive clothing – he’d clearly learned from our last foray into the Gongpo main house. We took the same plain car that we’d used last time and he made the trip to my apartment building without me having to give him directions.

“You don’t have to come tonight, you know,” I told him as I unlocked the front door to my apartment. “You can wait for us here if you want. We’ll definitely get your dad back.”

The flat look he gave me was answer enough, and I sighed. He was just as stubborn as I was.

He changed the subject quickly. “Where’s your dad?”

“ if I know,” I admitted with a bitter little shrug. “Maybe work. Probably the bar. I never really know.”

A warm hand on my shoulder stopped before I could slip off to the tiny closet I called a bedroom. “I’m sorry, Kitten,” he murmured, and his grip on my shoulder was so tight that I couldn’t even turn around to look at him and see his expression. “I’m sorry about your dad and I’m sorry about my dad. Most of all I’m sorry for dragging you into all this.”

I hesitated, then placed my hand on top of his without looking at him. “It’s okay,” I muttered, though for the life of me I wasn’t sure why it was okay.

With no surplus money hanging around, my wardrobe was less than impressive. I had to search around for a bit before I found something suitable to wear for our outing. Eventually I decided on a pair of black leggings and a long-sleeved black shirt that had been Zelo’s at some point. I left my hair all tied up, out of the way, and yanked on my worn black boots.

Jonghyun was sitting awkwardly on our threadbare couch when I came out of my bedroom. It was surreal to see someone like Kim Jonghyun sitting in my apartment, using my furniture, looking up at me like a lost little boy. He stared at me for a long moment without saying anything, so I walked over and sat down beside him.

“Here’s how it’ll go down tonight,” I told him grimly. “I know that you’re the top dog in your elitist world, but this is a totally different world now. Here, you are at the very bottom of the food chain. When we go tonight, you will do exactly what you’re told. This is probably the most dangerous thing that either of us has ever done, and there is a serious chance that we might get killed while doing it. So you have to follow orders. Do you understand?”

He swallowed audibly and nodded, the gravity of the situation evident in every line in his face.

I frowned and used my thumb to smooth out the furrow that was back in the middle of his forehead. “Relax,” I told him gently, though I was trying to convince myself at the same time. “We’re going to get your dad back.”

His hand came up to brush a lone lock of dark red hair off my forehead with surprising tenderness. “Why are you doing this, Kitten?” he surprised me by asking. “Why are you helping me? I’ve never done anything for you.”

I didn’t have an answer and his burning skin against mine was terribly distracting, so I simply shrugged. “I don’t know,” I whispered honestly.

He allowed his hand to fall limply into his lap, leaving my skin burning where he had touched it. “Thank you,” he said simply, and it was probably the first time in his entire life that he’d said those words. I forced a small smile, though it was so uncomfortable that I let it slip away almost immediately.

We still had a couple hours to kill before we were supposed to meet Yongguk and the others and I knew that we needed strength, so I searched around in the kitchen for something that we might be able to stomach.

“I’m not hungry,” Jonghyun said stubbornly, following me into the narrow kitchen nonetheless. It was so tiny in there that there was hardly enough room for one person to move around, much less two. “I’m not going to eat.”

“You have to eat something,” I insisted sternly, finding some instant noodles in the back of a cabinet. “We’re both going to need energy tonight.”

He wrinkled his nose at the sight of the instant noodles – he’d probably never eaten anything instant before, I realized. “I’m only going to throw it up,” he grumbled childishly.

“Well then you can throw it up. But you’re eating it.”

Silence reigned as I finished cooking the noodles and split them evenly into two chipped bowls. Jonghyun took the bowl I handed him and sniffed it rather suspiciously. Then he carefully dipped his chopsticks into the steaming noodles and took a tentative bite.

“This is disgusting,” he told me flatly.

I rolled my eyes, eating my own portion even though I wasn’t hungry at all. “Then you should’ve eaten something your world-famous chef made back at your house. You’ve got to eat something.”

He made another face at me but he at least tried to eat the noodles. He didn’t finish the whole bowl, but he got some down and that was good enough for me.

I washed the dishes by hand and checked the time. It was midnight now. Only an hour left until we had to meet the others. My hands were shaking as I dried them on a dishtowel.

Jonghyun stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist, grabbing my hands and forcing them to stop trembling. “Calm down,” he whispered, his breath warm against my ear. “You said it yourself. We’re going to be fine. Right?”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded. “Right,” I answered, sounding way more confident than I felt.

The last hour was the most difficult. It seemed to take an entire day and yet only seconds at the same time. We sat on the couch in silence. My father and I had no television or radio in our apartment, so there wasn’t even any background noise. We simply sat.

And then it was five til one and time for us to leave.

“Are you scared?” I asked as we walked down the dark block. The street was deserted at that hour even in this rundown and scuzzy part of town. We were walking so close together that it was almost like we were holding hands.

“No,” he muttered defensively. “Are you?”

“A little,” I admitted, hating the way my voice cracked.

His fingers curled around mine then, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Kitten,” he began, but he was interrupted by a too-loud voice.

“Yah!”

We both whirled around to look at who had yelled at us from the shadows. It was my friends. They were all there like I’d known they would be: Yongguk, Himchan, Daehyun, Youngjae, and Zelo. They were dressed in black like we were, all wearing serious expressions. They presented an intimidating group, even to me, and this was my family.

Apparently Jonghyun seemed to think they looked dangerous as well. He roughly pushed me behind him and positioned himself between me and them, almost as if he was trying to protect me. “What do you want?” he practically snarled.

I put a hand on Jonghyun’s shoulder and he jumped. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “These guys are our backup.” I stepped around Jonghyun and approached my boys. Yongguk’s arms came out to draw me protectively to his side.

“So this is your friend?” he asked in a voice so deep I could tell that he already disliked Jonghyun. He looked my classmate up and down with a sneer marring his perfect features.

Youngjae frowned at Jonghyun as well. “I don’t like the looks of this kid,” he whined, and Daehyun elbowed him in the ribs.

Zelo narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Jonghyun. “This is that guy who was with you the other day, right noona? Why was he holding your hand?”

I groaned and pushed away from Yongguk. “God, stop it!” I ordered. “You guys already agreed to help! And there’s nothing wrong with Jonghyun.”

“Jonghyun, hm?” Youngjae glared at him closely. “So what exactly are your intentions with our Narae?”

I gave Youngjae a hard shove. “Aish! Why are my friends all so embarrassing?” I whined. “Just stop it already! We need to get going!”

Youngguk pointed at Jonghyun. “He is definitely not coming.”

I put my hands on my hips and tried my hardest to be stern. “He is if you want to get paid,” I said darkly. “This is father. He deserves to be included.”

Yongguk and Himchan exchanged a dark look, and I knew that they were silently arguing about whether to leave Jonghyun behind or allow him to come. In the end, Yongguk sighed. “Fine, but we better get the money.”

“It’s in my car at Narae’s place,” Jonghyun said acidly. It was clear that he disliked my friends as much as they disliked him. Wonderful. “You’ll get it as soon as I get my father.”

“Fine,” Yongguk muttered, shooting Jonghyun one last icy glare before turning to the rest of us. “We’ll take two cars. Let’s go.”

I ended up riding with Jonghyun, Zelo, and Himchan in his beat-up old car. Yongguk, Daehyun, and Youngjae rode in a car they had borrowed from somebody at the Tagyeog main house. The ride, though short, was excruciating painful for me. The silence stretched out, the tension thick. I sat in the back, squeezed tightly between Jonghyun and Zelo (who had refused to ride up front because he claimed to be suspicious of Jonghyun’s intentions toward me). Jonghyun held one of my hands while Zelo held the other, and my heart was pounding. I was starting to regret the instant noodles I’d insisted we eat; I rather felt like throwing up now.

All too soon we were there and Himchan and Yongguk were parking the cars in an empty lot beside the Gongpo main house, hidden in the shadows. We silently assembled in the darkness, assessing the situation.

“Here,” Yongguk muttered, holding out a Beretta PX4 to Jonghyun.

He just looked at the gun with wide eyes. “I don’t know how to shoot that thing,” he muttered.

I took the gun from Yongguk’s outstretched hand instead, sighing. “I’ll do it,” I said shortly.

Jonghyun then turned his wide-eyed gaze from Yongguk to me. “You know how to use a gun?”

Zelo snorted derisively, crossing his arms over his black shirt. “Apparently there’s a lot of things you don’t know about our Narae. She can shoot better than anyone here.”

“Yah, keep quiet, will you?” Himchan hissed in a whisper. “I’d prefer to get out of this in one piece, thank-you-very-much.”

“Alright, here’s what we’re going to do,” Yongguk said grimly, and we all quieted down to listen to him closely. Our lives depended on it, after all. “Himchan, Daehyun, Zelo, and I are going to go in by way of the roof. We’ll create a diversion to lure as many of them as we can to the upper floors of the building to give the rest of you a clear shot at the target. Youngjae, Narae, and the rich kid will go and rescue the target. Remember, rescue team, time is of the essence here. Get in and get out. Understand?”

We all nodded, the seriousness of the situation weighing heavily on each of us.

“Good. Give us about fifteen minutes before you head in,” Yongguk said. Then he, Himchan, Daehyun, and Zelo were slipping off into the darkness in the direction of the Gongpo main house.

Youngjae folded his arms and gaze Jonghyun another criticizing onceover, his eyes bright even the pitch-blackness of the night. “So how exactly do you know Narae-yah again?”

“We go to school together,” Jonghyun answered through tightly-pursed lips. His hands were curled into fists, fingernails digging crescents into his palms. Even though the night was cold, he was sweating.

Youngjae clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “So you go to that stuck up snob school? Are you one of the ones that makes my Narae’s life a living hell?”

“I used to be,” Jonghyun answered honestly, surprising both Youngjae and myself. “But not anymore.”

Youngjae blinked a few times, not quite sure how to answer that. “Well, Narae is my best friend so if you hurt her, I swear I will-!”

“Shh!” I cut him off quickly, not at all liking where this conversation was headed. “Just be quiet, won’t you?”

So the three of us huddled together while we waited, and I reached out and grabbed their hands. After we’d waited the allotted time, we crept off toward the Gongpo main house.

Yongguk’s group had used bolt-cutters to cut through the chain link fence since there was no way we’d be able to hoist an injured Mr. Kim over the barbed wire without hurting him further, so the three of us were able to slip through easily. I led the way over to the window I had used once before to gain entry. It was still unlocked from my last visit, leading me to believe that my presence had gone undetected. I pulled it open and slipped through easily. Jonghyun and Youngjae followed.

I landed easily in the deserted corridor, my soft footfalls echoing off the damp cement walls. We stayed still for a moment, listening hard. We could hear a commotion coming from several floors up, shouts and the sound of a scuffle, but the basement level was quiet aside from our own labored breathing.

Youngjae pulled out his weapon and headed towards the curve in the hallway, searching for the interrogation room where Mr. Kim was hopefully still being kept. I went to follow him, my own gun held at the ready with my finger on the trigger, but before I could take more than a few steps Jonghyun had grabbed me by my wrist and slammed me against the nearest wall.

“Jonghyun, what-?” I began, but my words caught in my throat as I looked at him.

I had never seen the cool, composed, arrogant Kim Jonghyun look as completely lost as he did now. He was sweating profusely, his hands shaking even as he pinned me to the wall. There was a blind panic in his dark eyes. “Don’t do this,” he said suddenly, his voice thick and husky. “It’s too dangerous. It’s…You should go back. Leave. I can’t put you in this danger.”

“Jonghyun,” I tried again.

This time he silenced me by crushing his lips to mine. There was something desperate and frantic in the way he kissed me, and yet I can’t say that the way he moved his lips against mine wasn’t exceptional.

When he finally pulled away, he had stopped shaking; like by kissing me he had somehow calmed himself down. “Don’t do this, Kitten,” he repeated, his voice hardly more than a whisper now.

“It’s a little late for that,” I answered steadily, keeping my face and voice devoid of all emotion because I wasn’t exactly sure what I currently felt. Everything was a mixed up, jumbled mess in my head and I didn’t exactly have the time to sort it all out at the moment.

“Yah!” Youngjae hissed from the end of the hall, getting both our attentions. “Hurry it up, will you? You heard Yongguk-hyung!”

I stepped away from Jonghyun and he allowed his hands to fall limply to his sides. I followed Youngjae around the corner and, after a few painstaking seconds, Jonghyun came as well.

We found Youngjae crouched in front of the locked metal door, fiddling with the electronic key pad. He wasn’t an electronics expert for no reason, and he had it beeping affirmatively in under a minute. He yanked back the latch while I covered him, scanning the hallway with my Beretta raised, and then the door swung open.

Jonghyun leaped into the room immediately. “Dad!” he exclaimed, throwing himself to the blood-stained cement floor beside the unmoving form of his father. “Dad!”

“Shut up!” Youngjae hissed from between clenched teeth, taking over my position as scout so I could duck into the room and help Jonghyun lift Mr. Kim off the ground. “Do you want us to get caught?”

“You shush too,” I warned Youngjae sharply, giving him a stern look. “Come on, Jonghyun. Let’s get him out of here.”

Jonghyun grabbed one of Mr. Kim’s arms while I took the other. It wasn’t really an even distribution of the weight because Jonghyun was a lot stronger than I was, but we managed to get him out of the interrogation room and down the hallway to the window we’d used to sneak in. Mr. Kim groaned a bit but didn’t regain consciousness; he was definitely going to need a doctor immediately.

Youngjae scrambled through the window first and then reached through to haul Mr. Kim up from the top while Jonghyun and I lifted him up the best we could from down below. It was hard work; he was a heavy man even after being starved for several days.

We’d almost gotten Mr. Kim through the narrow window, all three of us grunting and groaning and gasping from the effort, when someone appeared from the other end of the dark corridor. I didn’t recognize the face, so I knew at once it was a Gongpo member. Neither Youngjae, already outside, nor Jonghyun saw him, and I was too crushed under the weight of Mr. Kim to grab the weapon I’d shoved into the waistband of my leggings.

“Look out!” I screamed, my voice agonizingly loud in the silence of the hallway, echoing off the cement walls.

Jonghyun glanced up just as the Gongpo member pulled the trigger, a silent ‘o’ of surprise on his lips.

Afterwards, I was never really sure how it happened. Somehow I pushed Mr. Kim onto Jonghyun and threw myself forward. Then there was a searing pain in my thigh and I was screaming and crying all at the same time and somehow in the midst of all that pain and chaos I managed to pull the Beretta from my waistband and fire off a few rounds in the general direction of my attacker. I knew I’d hit something only by the curses on the other end, as I was too blinded by white-hot pain to be able to shoot accurately.

Then the Gongpo guy was gone, presumably to get back up. I pressed the palm of my hand over the bleeding wound in my leg, howling at the pain.

“Jesus, Narae! Are you alright?” I had never heard Youngjae sound more scared in my entire life. “What the just happened?! Rae? Narae!”

“Just get him the out of here,” I growled, my face already drenched with tears. I’d never been shot before despite how often I’d been around guns, and it hurt a hell of a lot more than I’d ever expected.

Somehow, Youngjae and Jonghyun managed to get Mr. Kim the rest of the way out without my help and then Youngjae grabbed my arms and hauled me out as well. He gaped at the sheer amount of blood staining my leggings. “Did you get shot?” he demanded hysterically. “Someone ing shot you?”

I nodded, biting down hard on my lower lip. I didn’t trust myself to speak. It hurt so much that I felt like I might pass out any second.

“Come on,” Youngjae snarled at Jonghyun, like it was somehow his fault that I’d gotten shot.

Without waiting to see if Jonghyun obeyed, Youngjae swept me easily into his arms and carried me through the opening in the fence. Jonghyun seemed to be in a shocked sort of daze, half-dragging half-carrying his father after us.

“What the happened?” Yongguk demanded in a low growl when we’d all met up at the cars, his face easily the color of a sheet. “Narae! Narae, what the happened?”

“She got shot,” Youngjae spat, shooting a withering look in Jonghyun’s direction. I was in too much pain to reprimand him at the moment.

The look Yongguk gave Jonghyun then was enough to make a stronger man fall to his knees and beg for forgiveness, but Jonghyun still seemed to be in a state of shock so he only continued to gape at me and the sheer amount of blood I was losing. “Let’s get the out of here,” Yongguk finally snarled.

Youngjae loaded me carefully into the back of Yongguk’s borrowed car, me half-reclining in my best friend’s lap. Zelo followed, too concerned for my well-being to even spare a glance for the spoiled rich kid who took the front passenger seat beside Yongguk. Himchan and Daehyun took Mr. Kim in Himchan’s car.

Yongguk sped like a bat out of hell, but it still seemed to take an eternity to get back to the apartment building he and Himchan lived in. I don’t know if it was because of the throbbing pain in my thigh – which had dulled a bit by now but was still bleeding profusely – or because Jonghyun rode the entire way completely turned around in his seat, staring at me with big, wide eyes and a panicked look on his face.

Yongguk skidded into a parking space in front of the building, Himchan’s car screeching to a halt only a few feet away, and Youngjae had the door open before the car’s engine was even shut off. He scooped me easily into his arms – he was a lot stronger than his lithe build would suggest – and carried me on swift feet into the familiar apartment.

Zelo made it there before him, using a long arm to swipe everything off the kitchen table into the floor. Youngjae laid me on the table unceremoniously, forcing me to lie back. Yongguk and Himchan came in, ashen-faced and grimly serious. They were followed by a still shell-shocked Jonghyun, who came drifting in as if the wind just happened to blow him that way.

It was Yongguk who took charge, as always. Barking out orders, which his men scurried to follow without hesitation, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and proceeded to cut away my blood-soaked leggings. I howled in pain as the wound was touched, my eyes rolling back in my head and my voice echoing off the walls. Jonghyun stopped in the doorway, pale as a ghost, eyes huge.

With his plump lips set in a thin line of determination, Yongguk grabbed a small metal instrument that Himchan had fetched for him. Even though I had never seen it used before, I knew that it was for removing bullets from wounds. They had all learned how to do this, as their profession made it impossible to go to a real doctor for things like this, but never in a million years had I thought they would ever use it on me. I felt myself start to hyperventilate at the thought.

“Hold her down,” Yongguk barked, and Zelo and Youngjae hurried to comply. No longer were they my laughing, joking best friends; they were the picture of obedience and diligence. Youngjae took one arm and leg and Zelo took the others and, using all their strength, they held me still against the wooden table that was already stained with my blood.

Yongguk situated the instrument over my bloody wound and hesitated, shooting a scathing glance over his shoulder at Jonghyun, who still stood like a statue in the doorway. “Get the out of here,” he snapped. “Your dad needs a hospital, rich kid. Daehyunnie, go help him.”

“But-” Jonghyun tried, his voice shaky and not at all certain.

“Haven’t you done enough already?” Youngjae shouted furiously. “Just get out!”

I managed to focus my eyes just long enough to meet Jonghyun’s searching gaze. He was hurt and confused and frightened and horrified, but then another wave of pain washed over me and I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from screaming out loud. When I opened them again, he had gone.

The ‘surgery’ Yongguk performed on me was a blur of pain that I could never really recall later. I knew that Himchan forced bitter-tasting alcohol down my throat to try and dull some of the pain, but it really wasn’t enough. The second the instrument breached my wound it felt like I was going to die, and it took all of Youngjae and Zelo’s strength to keep me pinned to the table. My screams were enough to terrify the neighbors, but, because of the neighborhood we were in, nobody ever called the cops.

I was lucky in that Yongguk was particularly skilled at this sort of thing. I knew that he was the one who performed this same pseudo-surgery on the members of his group, and that he had a steady hand. It took about five minutes but then the bullet was out, both he and I were soaked with blood, and he had to take a long swig of alcohol to calm his own nerves before he sewed me up.

The rest of the night was even more of a blur. I know that at some point Daehyun returned to the apartment, reporting that he had seen Jonghyun and Mr. Kim delivered safely to a hospital and that he’d gotten the reward money Jonghyun had promised them. Zelo and Youngjae managed to get me into the shower, the water running red for ten minutes before they turned off the taps and dried me off. Someone, probably Youngjae, dressed me in some of Himchan’s clothes – because he was slightly smaller than Yongguk – and then I ended up in Yongguk’s bed somewhere close to dawn, his strong arms wrapped around me and his face nuzzled into my hair.

“Never again,” he whispered at some point, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or to himself. When I looked at him with hazy eyes, his eyes were closed and his face worried. “Never again am I letting you put yourself in danger, Narae. Why would you do something like this? What is that guy to you anyway?”

I stayed silent for a long moment, trying to feel only the warmth of his arms around me and not the pain that was still excruciating despite the painkillers Himchan had all but shoved down my throat. “I don’t know,” I finally admitted.

Yongguk sighed. “Do you like him?”

I started to say no, but then I stopped. “I don’t know,” I repeated. “He was just my partner for this stupid social sciences project at school but now…I just don’t know.”

Yongguk sighed again and pulled me even closer. “I don’t like this, Narae. You’re my family. I can’t have you getting hurt.”

His words didn’t wound me like they probably should have considering I’d had a crush on him for years now. “It’ll be fine,” I told him, though it was probably a bit hard for him to believe anything I said when I had a ing gunshot in my leg at the moment.

I don’t think Yongguk really believed me, but at least he let the subject drop. 

So long chapter is hella long. 

My heart was pounding so fast while I was writing this chapter OTL