When they get home Jiho peels off with Taeil and Jaehyo, motioning them upstairs behind the backs of the other two, who walk into the living room zombie-like and within five minutes are hard at their studies. Taeil casts one last despairing look at Jihoon's back - he's never been able to leave while the younger is studying, usually having to be immediately on hand to field his frequent pained questions and requests for infusions of food - but after a long day of things not being as they should be the upset is, slowly, beginning to wear off. That won't last for long though, Jiho knows. As soon as Minhyuk and Yukwon arrive, they'll know what's been happening; there's no way the news will be anything but disturbing.

"Maybe we'll be able to figure out how to - you know, switch them back," Jaehyo comments, tucking his lanky legs up under him on Jiho's bed; head lowered, he's picking gloomily at the duvet. "Do you think," and he pauses and swallows delicately, avoiding Jiho's eyes. "Do you think it's - that they've just been scared into it?"

He knows what the older boy means, but gives it only a moment's consideration before shaking his head. "Not a chance. If it was just Kim threatening them, they'd have told us by now. You saw their faces back in the studio - " Jiho pauses and gives a hefty sniff, voice sounding angrier than he really is to cover up his annoyingly persistent teariness, "- they really didn't understand what we were talking about."

"Jihoonie and Kyung are the worst liars anyway," Taeil adds glumly. They sit in an oppressive quiet for a few minutes, each trying to thread the chain of events together in some way that begins to make sense. If it were a film, Jiho thinks, there'd be some convenient clue popping up round about now: a tip off from an anonymous stranger; a newspaper clipping telling of a similar incident a few towns away. With this in his head he almost doesn't believe it when his phone starts to ring, and he stares at it with abandoned bewilderment for a moment before answering. It's Yukwon's phone calling, but the voice at the other end is Minhyuk's, sounding hollow and echoing.

"We're in this big warehouse building," he says before Jiho can say anything. "You know that abandoned shopping complex? It's there. Third building along, used to be a furniture shop I think."

Jiho looks up at his other friends, sketches out confusion with his eyebrows. "The hell are you doing there?"

"Don't know, but it's not an executive's office, that's for damn sure." There's a crackling noise from the other end as Minhyuk shifts around. "I'm in the toilets so I can't really see much out of the windows. Everything's pretty empty that we've seen so far."

"Where's Kwonnie?"

"I had to leave him with Kim to go to the bathroom so I could call. I'm gonna - ," he hisses, and Jiho can hear loud banging from his end. "I think they're looking for me. I'll call again as soon as I can." The line goes dead straight away; Jiho lowers his phone with a lump forming in his throat.

"What?" Taeil prompts.

"They're not anywhere near the label buildings, that's what. They're out in some warehouse on the other side of town. And..." He puts down his phone and begins to pick at his fingernails absently, trying to convey the gist of what he just heard. It wasn't just the words that made this dread begin to creep up his spine; the deserted echo of the bathroom and Minhyuk's low, rushed tone, and the frantic banging that had called him away, all of it seems like something that belongs in a horror film, not here in their everyday lives. Jaehyo's suggestion, as improbable as it sounds, is beginning to look a little more plausible: just the mention of warehouses conjures up shadowy, unpleasant images of baseball bats being swung at knees and ingenious home-fashioned torture devices. Jiho shudders even though he knows that's over the top - and besides, neither Kyung or Jihoon seemed to have a scratch on them. "Minhyuk said they were looking for him - why would they be looking for him if he just went to the bathroom? They think he's going to try to escape, right? So what is it they don't want him to escape from?"

"Blackmail?" Jaehyo ponders; Jiho gives him a fishy look and he hastens to explain, spreading his big hands flat out. "Well, we've been in trouble enough before - maybe this is why they were watching us. Because if we step out of line they can - I don't know, maybe they've threatened their families or something?"

"Why wouldn't they do it all at once then?" Taeil points out. "Why take us in bit by bit?"

"Why didn't I get dragged in first?" Jiho mutters, still with an ugly twist of guilt in the base of his stomach.

"I don't think it explains the way all these other bands are acting either. You noticed this, Jiho," and the eldest turns to him, laying a hand on his arm encouragingly. "I guess we were idiots for ignoring you, but you noticed this happening even before - before Kim showed up."

That makes Jiho feel slightly better. "Yeah. It's exactly the same - not remembering anything, acting like everyone's a stranger, doing what they're told all the time." A hot flash of anger melts the ice flooding his veins, as he remembers the day just passed, and how many times he had turned away, nauseous, from the sight of Kim snapping out orders at them in what seemed like a completely arbitrary fashion just for the pleasure of watching two of them stand to attention and obey instantly. He remembers particularly one step in their dance that Jihoon and Kyung had been struggling with for weeks, and how even these new refined versions of them hadn't quite been able to manage it until Kim had said with peculier emphasis, "You will get it right this time," and how they had performed it perfectly straight away, without a single flicker of pleasure in the fact. This on its own puts paid to Jaehyo's version of events: you could scare someone into doing as you said, but you couldn't scare them into being better at something. Fear would only have made Jihoon more clumsy and Kyung more sullen. It wouldn't have inspired this docile eagerness to please. Jiho hadn't seen Kyung behave like that since they were in eighth grade and he had a crush on their science teacher, would sit straight to attention in lessons hoping to be spoken to - and even that had been an act, to some extent.

There's nothing more they can do but wait until Minhyuk and Yukwon get back, hopefully with some new information, so for the time being they silently agree to put their worries to one side. Taeil is the first to move, shrugging and hopping across to Jaehyo's bookcase to borrow something; Jaehyo stretches his legs out and lays on his back, dragging his laptop over. Jiho gets up to make a cup of coffee, feeling already that this is going to be another long night. He stops at the top of the stairs, peering down with his heart jittering. He can just make out Jihoon's face in the shadows of the hallway, turned up to where he's standing, unmoving, highlighted here and there by a dull shine across his cheekbones. Gathering himself, Jiho takes a couple of steps down, calling out the younger boy's name, but as soon as he does Jihoon steps back and returns calmly to the living room. Jiho finds himself riveted to the spot for a few seconds, pulse chundering at the top of his throat; he forces himself to move and isn't surprised, when he opens the door of the living room, to find both of them sitting innocently on the sofa, bent over their books.

"Did you want something Jihoonie?" he says; there's a forced cheeriness in his voice and suddenly he has to admit to himself: he's not just scared by the change in his friends; he's scared of them now. Their eyes are blank, burnt brown paint on a raw canvas, so much alike that he could swear he was seeing double and it makes him dizzy.

"No thank you, Jiho-hyung," comes the reply. He withdraws and makes his coffee in a cold sweat.

Minhyuk and Yuwkon aren't so late back as the other two had been, and Kim isn't with them either. Jiho takes this as a good sign, hustling them upstairs to where he's still holed up with Taeil and Jihoon and slamming the door firmly after a quick check at the bottom of the stairs.

"Well?" he demands; behind him the other two scramble up expectantly. Minhyuk lets out a long weary breath, shoulders squared in the way they are when he's only just managing to keep himself on his feet.

"Jiho, we're both very tired - "

"This is more important, hyung, just - just tell us what happened, quickly."

"What happened?" Minhyuk repeats slowly, and blinks a few times, while beside him Yukwon is screwing up his eyes at the lamplight with a lost expression. "I don't know what you mean."

The agitation prickling all over Jiho's arms and legs vanishes like it's been switched off at the plug, and he feels his stomach plummet like a dropped rock, all the way to the floor. For a crazy second he wants to laugh: the flat calm of Minhyuk's face and Yukwon's blown wide pupils as he edges away from the bright light and the hollow ringing sound in his ears that inexplicably reminds him of mocking laughter: dear God, this can't be real. His hands open and close uselessly at his sides; Taeil lets out a strangled sound which might have been an attempt at speech.

"You must know," he says weakly. "You called me and said you'd find out..." He trails off, Minhyuk shaking his head gently, almost looking worried were it not that his face seems somehow incapable of forming any expression other than this one of total erasure.

"We had a talk with some people at the label. We just want to work harder."

Jiho's knees crumble underneath him and for a minute all he sees is blackness, with Taeil's voice sounding shrilly above him: "No, you didn't go to the label - you said you were in a warehouse somewhere, you said - "

"We had a talk with some people at the label," Minhyuk insist - or rather, repeats, in the exact same tone, like Taeil hadn't even spoken.

"No you didn't," Jiho manages to gasp, clawing his way back upright; he staggers over to Minhyuk, drunk with confusion and terror, seizes the other boy's coat with both hands, half shaking him and half just trying to stay on his feet. "Why are you lying? You didn't go to the label buildings - you said you'd gone to some abandoned complex, you said they were looking for you," and he all but hisses into Minhyuk's unresponsive face, "you sounded scared."

There's a twitch under the smooth blank skin, almost imperceptible, and Minhyuk inclines his head slightly. "If you say I said that then I must have done," he concedes, and it comes so out of left field that Jiho drops him and stumbles back. "I really don't remember it though, I'm sorry."

He isn't lying. Once again that much is obvious. Yukwon nods, swaying gently back and forth with the motion; his face is ghostly pale and drawn, eyes like hooded tunnels in the strong light of the ceiling lamp. "We just want to do better, Jiho," he says. Jiho is reminded of the backstage area a few weeks ago, of the repeated greetings and congratulations from the other band and the bland hum they produced in his ears, the tone as mechanical and flat as an industrial engine. "We're very tired," he adds, but neither of them move until Jiho turns away and weaves back to the bed. He collapses next to Jaehyo, burying his head in a pillow and flooding his lungs with oxygen. The door clicks shut behind them.

"What now?" Taeil says, tiny and uncertain. Jiho just shrugs, and the three of them huddle on the bed together, listening to the quiet sounds outside of footsteps and taps being and off - perfectly audible because no one says a word.

The night passes in broken and uneasy sleep; Jiho wakes up four or five times to see an unnatural time glowing on the screen of his phone and nothing outside the windows but oily blackness streaked with watery light from the street lamps below. More than once he gets the feeling that there's something standing just behind the door, something that's breathing deep and scratchily and listening. When he wakes - late again, he notices, but can't really find the energy to care - his head is pounding, and he s in the bag at the foot of the sofa for a couple of aspirin which he chokes down before he gets up. He meets Taeil, dressed but bare footed, hurrying down the stairs as he heads for the kitchen.

"Already gone," Taeil says, and true enough the kitchen is deserted, with a nasty note from Kim on the table to the effect that if they don't show their faces soon, there'll be trouble. Trouble won't just mean a talking to now, Jiho knows, and they fumble their way to the car as quickly as possible, Jaehyo tripping in unlaced shoes, Jiho swiping a wet wipe over his face because he hasn't had time to wash.

"I don't want to do this," Jaehyo groans as they enter the building. Taeil says nothing but looks distinctly green already, and it's up to Jiho to clench his jaw and lead them into the practise room again. They don't join immediately; all three stand there watching for a few minutes, their worry abruptly swept away by awe. In this new state, however unsettling it is to them, it can't be denied that their band mates have something new and spectacular surrounding them. Yukwon and Minhyuk are skilled dancers to begin with, and have been working together so long that they have a natural rhythm with one another; now that natural skill seems to have been turned up one hundred percent, and the keen accuracy of each movement is staggering. This is what it could be like, Jiho finds himself thinking, if they all went under this terrifying spell: forever in step, on point, perfectly harmonious. He understands now the seduction of watching those other bands in their blank, perfected performances. The lure of effortless perfection is a hard one to resist.

Then Taeil catches his gaze and makes a sickened face; Jiho watches Jihoon and Kyung execute that step that until a few days ago always had them tripping over one another and ending up in a giggling heap. They hit their mark perfectly, step away from one another, and continue smiling those frozen smiles at an invisible audience. It's more than unbelievable; it's slightly repulsive, and all at once Jiho remembers something his mother had said to him, when he'd been at home during their first hiatus, miserably decrying the way he had been leading his band, letting them be themselves: outspoken and boisterous and carefree. Why, he had cried, hadn't he taken a firm hand like other leaders did with their bands; why hadn't he shown them the right way to act? Why had he shunned that constant conscience which seemed to lead every other idol he knew, even the ones he respected as legitimate musicians? Why had he let them be so different?

"Have you thought," his mother had said, smiling tenderly at his weary sulking face, "that maybe that's why your fans are so devoted to you? Why they're saying they'll stick behind you through this? Maybe that's something they don't see very often either. Maybe they appreciate that you're sincere and honest about who you are. You know," and she had laughed, sitting in their kitchen with the purple paint splatters on one wall where he and his brother had once fought over their favourite colour; the ragged drawings done in chubby crayon and later on slender scratchy pencils; the photos of two round cheeked boys in school uniform: Taewoon with his front teeth missing, Jiho with juice stains around his mouth and his baby hair sticking up above his ears. "You know, it's very difficult to truly love something that seems too perfect."

Jiho thinks about his mother, about the kind fine lines around her eyes and the patches of grey hair blending at her temples, and he straightens out his shoulders, turning away from his band mates. They weren't perfect; never had been, and that was why he loved them so much, why they worked so well together - why they felt so different, but at the same time so essential. Everything is too right - he has to make it wrong again.

"Are you going to join us?" Kim asks eventually. Jiho drops his shoulders and falls into step. He keeps his eyes to the front the whole time.

During lunch, for the first time ever, Kim says something. Up until now, they've maintained silence around him, mostly unable to speak without being rude. Besides, no one wants to say anything that might raise an alarm to him: conversations about girls, nights out, and unusual es are unanimously dropped.  He himself says nothing, eating his meal with an unsettling sort of relish and casting his eyes down the table at them. Any noise they make is amplified in the otherwise silent room, and it makes even them cringe. When the manager speaks, three of them shudder - four of them pause in their actions to listen.

"It's a shame to see that some of you," and Taeil, Jaehyo and Jiho try hard not to look at one another, "some of you can't appreciate the positive changes your friends have been making. Even more so that you feel unable to believe these changes are of their own initiative." Here his voice turns sharp and sour as lemons, the corners of his mouth turning down in distaste. "I am not in the habit of threatening anybody, and I would caution you to be a little more careful about making accusations like that."

Jaehyo chokes on a mouthful of rice and nearly spits it back out onto the plate; Jiho shoots an irate look down the table at Jihoon but of course the younger doesn't even flinch.

"When all the other links have been strengthened," Kim says with a kind of philosophical and deliberate malice, "the weak links become far more pressing a matter." The sun, dazzling through the high windows of the hall, bleaching out the white walls and flimsy tables, sweeps a bright shard across Kim's face so that Jiho can't see his eyes, and his face becomes a smooth blank mask with only a ghastly dash cut across for a mouth.