It didn’t take long for the pretty boy to break down, finally shaking his head and looking off to the side as if to avoid Baekho’s intense gaze. “I didn’t know it would happen,” he said softly, his entire body losing the tension he’d held. “Minhyun asked me for my help and I refused; this is all my fault.”

Baekho felt a bit of pity for the other, but he wasn’t about to let that little bit of information shake him off of his goal. “What did he need help with, Ren? What was he asking you for?”

Ren glared at him as if to berate him for the pressure, but he answered all the same. “He needed money. He said his mom was no longer leaving any money accessible and he owed Aron, there was no way that he’d just let that go. I…” he took a deep breath, and, avoiding Baekho’s eyes, continued. “I wouldn’t give him any, I figured he was lying. He has a habit of that, you know? Lying that he doesn’t have anything so that I’d take pity on him and share mine. I thought this was one of those times.”

His voice had gone quieter and quieter as he spoke, until it finally dropped off and he simply stood there, still and limp as if all the strength inside had leached out of him. Baekho wanted to shake him again, wanted to make him tell him where Minhyun was now, but he was afraid that the other boy would break if he did so. Gently he moved one hand to Ren’s jaw line, turning his head and forcing the pretty boy to look up into his eyes.

“Ren,” he said softly, pausing until the other boy actually focused on him, “Tell me where Minhyun went.”

Ren pulled his face away and shook his head, a light shrug accompanying the movement. “He said he wanted to get out of town, but I know he didn’t have the money for that. He probably went to Aron to beg mercy. That's honestly all I know.”

Baekho’s lips tightened as he straightened up, releasing Ren’s shoulder as he did so. That probably meant that Aron knew where Minhyun was; he’d known the slimy bastard was lying but with those two men protecting him, there was no way that he could think of to shake the truth from the dealer. He couldn’t just give up, though. Not only the years of friendship with Minhyun were egging him on, but the look in Mrs. Hwang’s eyes when she begged for him to bring her son home. Heaving a sigh, he scrubbed a hand through his close cut locks and turned for the mouth of the alley.

Ren seemed to come back to life then, though, and he darted forward to stand in Baekho’s way. “Where are you going?” he asked, his eyes wary as he searched the stocky boy’s face.

“I’m going to find out what Aron did to Minhyun,” he replied, moving to go around Ren. When the pretty boy stepped to block him once again, he simply grabbed Ren’s arm and pulled him bodily out of the way. The other was so light that it was easy, and he went stumbling out of Baekho’s path.

“Baekho, wait!” his hand caught the athlete’s arm once more, this time tightening his grip so as not to easily be shaken off. “Going back there is suicide!”

“There’s nothing else I can do,” his voice was soft but he spoke the truth; the one and only person who might know something was probably the least likely to answer with truth and without violence, but there was nothing else to do. If he wanted to find Minhyun, he had to go to the last known person to see him.

Ren’s hand still held tightly to his coat sleeve, though, his fingers white with the tension and the chill of the air. Baekho turned slightly toward him, intent on wresting his arm free, but Ren saw his glance and shook his head. “I… I have something… to help us.”

“Something?” Baekho asked, and Ren his lower lip inside his mouth to chew on it in worry. He nodded in answer to Baekho’s question, then lifted pleading eyes to meet the stocky boy’s.

“Please… just trust me?”

‘Just trust me.’

The words rang repeatedly in Baekho’s mind as they sat on the bus, Ren once again with his knees pulled up and his arms wrapped around them, his eyes on some faraway fixture. Baekho alternated his gaze between the boy beside him and the view out the window, watching as the bus took them deeper into the dangerous part of town. Part of him wondered if Ren were leading him into some sort of trap, but he couldn’t figure what for. Who would want to trap him, and why? None of that line of thought made any sense, and so he passed over those ideas and tried to focus on what he was going to do when they got back to Aron’s. 

It was almost midnight now, so much time wasted as they traveled around the city, and for a whimsical moment Baekho wished that he had teleporting like the superheroes in the comics. His lips twitched into a smile as he remembered how he and Minhyun had shared their love of comics when they were children, each preferring their own heroes but knowing enough to respect each other’s and enjoy pretending to be them. Minhyun had always had a love of Spiderman, someone who was a geeky kid like him who fought for his friends, family, and good in general. Now Baekho found his smile faltering as he wondered what had happened to make Minhyun change so much that summer; what had he gone through that he had decided to meddle with drugs? 

If only he’d talked to Baekho, told him his reasoning or come to him for help, but the athlete knew that it was his own fault that they’d grown apart. Maybe if he’d stuck around, tried harder to convince Minhyun that what he was doing was wrong, told the Hwang’s so that they could get him help… maybe if he’d done those things, he wouldn’t be sitting here in a frantic search for his once best friend.

“Minhyun looks up to you,” Ren’s voice broke his train of thought and Baekho turned to look at the boy in question. His dark eyes were focused on Baekho’s face, the fluorescent light glinting off of the red tint in his hair and giving life to it while simultaneously bleaching any color from his skin and drawing the life out of it. He looked like a living corpse in that moment, a thought that made Baekho shiver.

“What did you say?” Baekho asked quietly, though his mind already knew the answer. He just needed to hear it again to try and make sense of it.

Ren shrugged and unfolded himself from the seat, stretching out his legs before propping one over the other and crossing his arms over his chest. “Minhyun. He looked up to you, a lot. All he ever did was talk about how perfect you are, how smart and nice and athletic and polite. I asked him once if he had a crush on you and he denied it… but the more he talked about you, the more he made me like you.”

Baekho’s mouth went dry as the other boy finished speaking, and he floundered for a moment as he wondered what to say to such a thing. Ren liked him? They didn’t even know one another! Sure, the actions earlier had gotten Baekho’s blood pumping, but he attributed a lot of that to the fact that Ren was pretty and they were just teenagers. This new knowledge made him uncomfortable, and before he could think of anything to say in return, Ren made a sweeping motion with his hand.

“None of that matters, though,” he said quietly, eyes glancing up at Baekho quickly and then back down to his lap. “We’re in separate worlds. Let’s just find Minhyun and… I guess… you’re going to want to help him and all that lovely. So yeah. Let’s just find him. This is my stop.” His voice was a bit rushed, a bit rambling, and Baekho couldn’t help but once again feel pity as the pretty boy stood and made his way to the front of the bus. He was right, they were in completely different worlds, but if Ren would…

‘Stop it, people don’t just change,’ he told himself with a shake of the head. Besides, he didn’t even know the other; what in the world could they possibly have in common to bond over? For all he knew, Ren and Minhyun had bonded simply over drugs and nothing more. Standing, Baekho slipped his hands inside his pockets and followed the other boy to the front and off of the bus.

The streetlights were almost all broken, the bus stop light being one of the only illuminations in the area that they got off at. It was a residential neighborhood, without the milling people that downtown had boasted, though that did nothing to calm Baekho’s nerves. Anyone could be hiding in those shadows, and as the bus pulled away and left him alone with the other boy, he felt adrenaline spike in his blood as his breathing quickened.

“This way,” Ren said quietly, his arms wrapped around himself like a small shield as he moved forward into the darkness. Baekho had no c