Things went down the toilet pretty quickly after Minseok legged it out of the office.  Sungjong was busy trying to trace Weiyi for Sehun, giving him instructions over the phone every so often as to which directions she’d gone as he scoured through the street security cameras of the city, but he kept getting sidetracked by things pinging up on his computer.  Yixing and Jongdae heard him cursing distractions and “why now?” and “God must hate me today” and after several minutes of watching him, decided it was unfair to use him as a source of entertainment in case it pissed him off and that it was better to leave him to it.

“What do you reckon Minseok thinks Luhan’s up to?” Jongdae asked.  Yixing shrugged.

“I don’t know, but it’s probably not good if he’s run off to stop him.”

“Shouldn’t we go too?”

“I think Minseok would have asked us to accompany him if that was a good idea.”  Yixing reluctantly trundled his chair over to his desk and looked morosely at the paperwork he needed to finish before they closed up the office for the day.  “He’s the one who knows Luhan, after all.  For all we know, our presence might just aggravate the man.”

Jongdae pursed his lips and fiddled with his ballpoint pen, but before he could think of anything else, his phone started vibrating.  He picked up without a second thought.

“Chen?”  The voice on the other end was young and muted.

“Mmhmm?”  Jongdae raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out who it was and why they were ringing him at work.  He didn’t know very many young males whose voices were on the cusp of breaking.  Yixing sensed a distraction immediately and came scooting over to listen in.

“Chen, Minseok hyung’s not answering his phone.”  The boy sounded frightened.  “And I don’t have Sehun hyung’s number either—”

“Taeyong?” Jongdae guessed.  Yixing propped his head on Jongdae’s shoulder on the other side of the phone so that he could hear better.  Giving an impatient sigh, Jongdae shoved the man’s head away and put the phone on loudspeaker.

“Yeah,” the boy breathed out.  Taeyong didn’t just sound frightened: he sounded downright terrified.  “I did everything Hyung told me to do, but there’s a bunch of thugs hanging around Sehun hyung’s apartment and the door’s been broken off its hinges and it looks like they’re inside the place too.  What do I do?”

Slowly lowering the phone, Jongdae gave Yixing a helpless look.  Yixing opened his mouth, clearly thinking of the best response, but at that moment, Sungjong came flying across the room.

“Get me visual,” he commanded.  “Can you put it on video call?”

“No, that’ll put it on loudspeaker and I don’t want them to hear me,” Taeyong whimpered.

“How close are you to them?” Sungjong demanded.

“Literally just around the corner.”  Taeyong’s voice rose to a whispered squeak.

“Is there enough light for you to make out any tattoos?”

There was silence for several long moments.  Then Taeyong was back.  “I think I saw something that looks a little like a shark on one of them.  Why?”

“,” said Sungjong vehemently before vanishing back over to his computers.

“ indeed,” agreed Yixing.  Jongdae’s heart sank.

“They’ve caught on, haven’t they?” he said.

Sungjong evidently thought so too, because Jongdae could hear him speaking rapidly to Sehun in the background and “apartment break-in” definitely came up several times.  Sehun’s horrified response could just be heard from the other end of the line.  Jongdae eventually tore his attention away from the younger hacker and returned it to Taeyong.

“I’ll ring my niece,” he said.  “She doesn’t live too far from Sehun.  Her apartment’s very small, but I’m sure she’ll be able to put you up for the night.”  He paused.  “Unless you think it’s an option to return to your parents.”

“God, no,” Taeyong replied quickly.  “How do I get there?  I want to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

“Sure.”  Jongdae fished Yixing’s phone out of his pocket, to which the older man made no protest, and started typing Seulgi’s number into it.  “Could you just do us one quick favour – if you think it’s safe enough – and see if you can get a couple of pictures of the intruders?  It would help tremendously.”

Taeyong hesitated.  “I’ll try.”

“If it’s too dangerous, don’t,” Jongdae emphasised.  “I’m going to text you a route and ring Seulgi, and then I’m going to ring you back to make sure you’re still okay.”

“Okay.”  Taeyong’s voice sounded small, even in a whisper.

“Wait,” said Yixing.  “Give me the phone.  I’ll stay on the line with him while you do that.”

Jongdae handed it over and set about looking up the quickest way for getting from Sehun’s apartment to Seulgi’s.  Yixing was speaking calmly and gently to the poor boy, though he knew – and Yixing probably knew too – that Minseok was definitely the best of the three of them when it came to that kind of thing.  He just had much more experience when it came to guiding people through tough or dangerous situations.  Behind him, he was aware that Sungjong had stopped talking to Sehun and was now busy focussing on something else, and then a loud alarm screeched out from the hacker’s pocket.

Everybody jumped, and Sungjong shot away from his desk, looking hassled.

“Not now,” he groaned, tugging out a phone.  “Please not now.  God, why do you hate me?”

“What now?” asked Yixing, his hand over Jongdae’s mobile’s microphone.

“Min’s in trouble,” Sungjong said wearily, checking whatever information the phone was sending him and shutting the alarm off.  “He probably needs backup.”  He glanced back over at his computer and closed his eyes.  “You have got to be ing kidding me.”

“What?” asked Jongdae.  Sungjong reached out and tapped the spacebar.

“We’ve got a hacker as well.  Now is really not the time.”

“Is it Kyungsoo?” Yixing asked hopefully, uncovering the microphone again.

Sungjong’s response was terse.  “No.”

Weiyi was halfway up a mountain and it was beginning to rain.  The path was quickly turning to mud around her, and she stepped off into the lee of a tree to hunker down.  Her short hair was hanging in uncomfortable rats tails around her head, and the weather honestly felt about as miserable as she did at that moment.  Wrapping her arms around her knees, Weiyi propped her chin up and stared blankly into the greyness in front of her.

All she could think of was that Shixun was going to be furious with her.  She’d just run away, and even though part of her was telling her to go back, she didn’t know how.  She was lost; it was getting dark; the weather was awful.  She wasn’t even sure of the name of the hotel.

That, and she didn’t even know what to think about the phone call with Luhan earlier that day.  He was bound to be furious too.

But he was wrong, Weiyi told herself, even though she wasn’t sure whether or not it was the truth.  It’s the first time he’s never answered a question, even by diverting the topic.  He didn’t know what to say, and that means he’s hurt Shixun.

But then, why had her brother constantly been telling her that Shixun was a good man?  And come to that, brother.  It was a word that Weiyi mostly associated with Sangchu’s dead partner-in-crime, Joonsup.  And one or two other people.  She’d been there when Sangchu had been busy planning to kill off one of his brothers, and he’d laughed when Joonsup had died.  He’d also drunk himself into oblivion because Joonsup had died, but Weiyi wasn’t totally sure she wanted a brother.  Not if being a brother meant a person who behaved the same way that Sangchu had done.  It was something she hadn’t really thought about before because Liyin and Shixun had been enthusiastic about her having a brother, and Luhan had seemed over the moon when he’d first spoken to her.

As for Luhan’s relationship with Shixun, the only thing that she could currently equate it to was the relationship she’d seen between Sangchu and some of his underlings.  There was one with whom he’d been incredibly angry on one occasion – so angry that Weiyi had actually taken the risk of hiding behind a cupboard because she didn’t want to be within reach – and he’d had the man beaten to a pulp.  A month later and the same man was in his top chain of command.  Weiyi hadn’t really understood how that had happened, but it still had and she was beginning to wonder if something similar hadn’t happened between Shixun and Luhan.  Granted, Luhan seemed embarrassed or upset or possibly even angry that Weiyi knew about it, and he probably was refusing to answer her questions on it because he didn’t want her to know, but that meant that Shixun and Luhan weren’t different from anything she knew, and that meant that she was still in danger.  Who even knew what Luhan wanted with her?

Miserably, Weiyi sat there in the rain, unable to tell whether or not she was crying because her face was too numb.  Pangs of hunger were gnawing at her stomach, but she ignored them, reasoning that she’d gone for several days without eating before.  The question was what to do next.  She knew a little bit of the language, but not nearly enough to just be able to disappear into a town and hope not to be found.  Jeju was an island, too, and she had no money to get off it.  She also didn’t have enough money to buy food, and she’d even left her phone back in the hotel.  Was grass and tree bark edible?

A su