“Good morning every- Oh, it’s just you three.”

“Just us three?” a facetiously indignant Xiumin pouted as he raised an eyebrow at the newly arrived Suho, who shrugged. "Anyway, I’m gonna make some breakfast; want me to make enough for you guys?”

While the other two nodded, with a “Yes, please,” from Lay, Suho shook his head once, slightly settling his messy bed-head. “I’ve got somewhere to be. I just wanted to see if Sehun was out here. Where is he off to this morning?”

Xiumin’s eyes narrowed in thought. “I think he went out with the rest of K to do things before today’s photoshoot.”

Suho shook his head again. “I got a message from Kai this morning asking if Sehun and I wanted to meet up for breakfast.” Lay and Xiumin looked at one another, then back to Suho with shrugs and frowns.

“…Where’re Tao and Chen?”

“I don’t think Tao’s woken up yet, and Chen is exactly where you’d expect him to be,” Xiumin responded, coming out from the fridge with a look that matched well with Suho's he-spends-too-much-damn-time-with-her eye roll.

“Tao’s awake…” a sleepy voice belonging to the man himself came from the hall.

“Oh hey. Do you know where Sehun is?” Suho said as the taller boy in his black wifebeater and penguin-themed pajama pants came walking down the hall, rubbing his sleep-red eyes.

“Mm-mm,” he raspily intonated, continuing blindly until he reached the kitchen. “There’s no food yet…” he pouted in quite the adorable voice.

“Why did you want Sehun?” Lay asked.

“I wanted to talk to him about yesterday.”

“Shouldn’t we all talk to him about that?” Xiumin asked, swatting Tao’s hand away from the leftover kimchi he was about to start using.

“We can all talk to him about it later, but I wanted to chat with him first." This answer seemed to sit well enough by Xiumin, who nodded. "Well, anyway, if you guys hear from him, tell him to text me, okay?”

Three affirmative responses sounded.

“Yo guys! Check it out; Xiumin’s mom sent us this awesome- er…”

It was later in the evening, and the M group looked up, grinning, at the opening dorm door. The solemn looks on the five faces that shuffled through in complete silence stopped Chen mid-sentence, and prompted the smiles to melt right off the faces of the remaining M members.

For a few tense moments, the room was frozen, silent.

Chanyeol was the one who was finally able to open his mouth. “S-Sehun…”

Four hearts dropped, assuming the worst, but holding onto hope that the fact that the guys didn’t come in sobbing was a good sign.

“Sehun never showed up today.”

“…So where is he?” Tao asked. He knew what the answer was going to be, but he didn’t want to be right.

After a beat of silence indicating that Chanyeol was unable to answer, Suho did instead.

“…We don’t know.”

The silence was broken only by the sound of each individual's heart racing in their ears.

Tao immediately stood and rushed out of the common room and down the hall, bursting through the first door on the left.

“Tao?” The other members instinctively followed, wanting to make sure Tao was okay but moreover wanting to see what on earth was going on with him. The first door on the left belonged to Sehun and D.O.

Nothing had ever been sacred enough to be safe from the wrath of Tao’s will, and to D.O.’s dismay, this instance was no different. In the three second head-start Tao’d had, Sehun’s bed covers were already on D.O.’s side of the room, and he was rifling through the unorganized bunch miscellaneous papers that had accumulated in Sehun’s desk. Unsatisfied, he slammed the drawer shut, causing the lamp on the desk to topple over onto D.O.’s recently organized rack of writing utensils. It didn’t stand a chance against the top-heavy lamp, and both were sent to the floor.

D.O. pushed ahead of Kai and Baekhyun, barely able to comprehend the sudden mayhem that his roommate was unleashing. “Tao, what the hell are you doing! Tao-“

“Hyung, shut up and help me look. All of you!” he growled back, already on his knees yanking open Sehun’s under-bed drawers. “Whoever knows his computer password, get on it. He wouldn’t have just left without leaving anything; he wouldn’t have.”

“Tao…” D.O. tried again, trying to hold back his anger in favor of a softer approach. “Tao, hold on just a second-“

“And do what!?” He slammed down the bunch of underwear and bundles of socks he’d been searching through; a few pairs of which bounced away. “Sehun’s out there somewhere; maybe he’s been kidnapped, maybe he’s dead, but if he left on his own, we can still do something about it!”

“Tao, okay, we’ll look, but you have to calm down,” Suho said, knowing by how much deeper and deeper D.O.’s eyebrows were furrowing that he would soon reach the end of his patience. “We’ll start a more organized search of the dorm, okay? Let’s go back out to the living room and talk it out.”

Tao rolled his eyes, but he closed the haphazardly opened drawers and stood to leave the room, which was consent enough for Suho’s concern. The rest of the group all turned and left, save for D.O., who quickly placed the lamp back on the desk and returned Sehun’s covers to his bed before deciding to save the task of regrouping the pencils for later and rejoining the group.

Tao and Suho stood in front of the rest, who were piled on and around the sofa waiting for their tasks.

“Kyungsoo-hyung, do you know Sehun’s password?” Tao asked.

“Uh… I’m not sure, but I do know his Weibo and Instagram password… it might be the same.”

“Go try it out,” the younger commanded, slightly irking D.O. with the lack of a “please.” “Suho-hyung, will you help me look in his room?”

“Sure.”

“Everybody else, uh…” Tao’s earlier adrenaline was beginning to wear off. “Just look around, I guess. Look in your rooms, too. Don’t be lazy.”

Everyone else had a similar response to Tao’s bossiness as D.O. had, but if they'd allowed it to bother them every time Tao was bossy, EXO would have disbanded a long time ago. Plus, as much as their maknae meant to them, they knew how much more he meant to Tao.

That is, everyone except for one.

“Why do we have to spend time looking for a note that probably doesn’t exist anyway?” Chen complained. “I’m sure the managers will find him by tomorrow. You're being stupid."

"I'm being what?" Tao asked in a chillingly calm voice. "I'm being stupid? I'm sorry, but did you miss the fact that one of our members, and my best-ing-friend, is missing?"

"And what are you going to do, search all of Seoul for him tonight? Quit overreacting."

"How can you possibly be so cavalier right now!? Are you forgetting what kind of crazy es are out there, waiting to attack us at any moment of weakness? Don't you remember the time they rented a van identical to ours, and almost kidnapped Luhan? You think this is overreacting, you don't want to see what happens if we don't find him in the next hour-"

“Guys, guys, we’re all hungry and a little tired now, right?” Suho interjected loudly, flipping out his wallet, reaching in to grab whatever money he had on him. “We were talking about getting bibimbap before, so take this and go grab us some, okay? And keep an eye out for Sehun.”

Chen was about to protest, but after meeting eyes with Suho's signature hypnotic, wide-eyed glare that screamed 'Do Not Insubordinate', the next thing he realized was that he was halfway out the door with a handful of won that was far larger than what was necessary.

Suho sighed, and everyone who hadn’t been given a specific task started searching the dorm for clues and brainstorming amongst themselves about where Sehun would likely leave some sort of hint as to where he had gone. Once again, however, there was an outlier in the group.

“Suho, come with me for a second,” Lay said, waving Suho into the room the latter used to share with Kai and Chen until the former had switched spaces with him. He turned to Suho with a look made even more serious by the fact that the only light in the room was coming from the crack in the slightly-opened door and a low-power bedside light.

“Suho, I know now is not the time; I was foolish and I made the mistake of waiting, and now there’s an even bigger issue at foot, but with all due respect, I have to ask you when you’re planning on dealing with the Chen issue.”

"Yeah, I know he needs to be dealt with. And y'know, everyone's been murmuring about how that new girlfriend of his must be bad news; they've been discussing asking him to break up with her. I don't think it's such a bad idea."

“Look… the others are wrong. This didn’t start when he got his new girlfriend a few months back. It did get worse, but that’s not when it started. Something’s been wrong with him, and it’s getting worse.”

Suho finally understood the situation.

Lay was a man whose healing-type powers had rather versatile uses. While normally people from their homeworld had a certain area of expertise (known as a "branch") within their own power type, Lay was a jack of all trades within healing. Unlike the saying goes, however, he was certainly on his way to becoming a master of all of them as well. Not only could he detect and heal injuries, an ability better known as the "restoration branch", he had "spirit branch" abilities as well, which allowed him to detect changes within a person's aura. That was why he'd called Suho away.

“How is his aura changing, and for how long.” This was serious, and when Suho was in this position, he didn't ask questions, he commanded answers.

“It's patchy, but overall it's darkening, and it's getting very dark very quickly now, like, exponentially quickly. I'd have to say it's been… maybe a year now, or a little less?”

“Why didn’t you come to me sooner.” Suho's expectant facial expression didn't change.

"This is me coming to you soon. I've never seen this before, and I didn't want to make a big deal over nothing, but it was darkening so rapidly while he was arguing with Tao that I'm afraid it's going to be a real issue soon.”

"Okay." Suho nodded, tight-lipped, taking in the information he’d been provided. “After we find Sehun, we'll deak with him. We don’t need anything else to argue about when everyone’s already in this sort of mood. Does that sound okay?”

“Fair enough.” Lay nodded back.

A loud, slightly peeved, “Where did Suho-hyung go?” came from outside the room.

“Don’t tell me we have a problem with Tao, too,” Suho said, looking exasperatedly toward Lay.

“No,” he smiled, “Tao’s just being Tao. Go ahead on out. Thanks for talking with me.”

“Anytime. And next time, please try to make 'anytime' sooner,” he replied, reciprocating the smile and taking his leave.