Things never really went to plan if a child was involved.  Minseok nearly cursed himself for not remembering that.

The instant Jaehwan had his ice cream in hand, he turned to their tail.

“Hello, Mister!” he said with a bright smile.  “Do you want some of my ice cream?”

The man looked thoroughly taken aback.  Minseok couldn’t deny that he felt much the same way.  He hadn’t informed Jaehwan about their tail for Jaehwan to then talk to the guy.

“No thank you,” the man told him in clipped tones.

“Oh.”  Jaehwan frowned.  “Then why did you follow us all the way from the go-karting place?  Do you not want ice cream?”

The man looked trapped.  The resultant awkwardness lasted a good couple of minutes before he excused himself and bought himself a cone of ice cream.  When Minseok and Jaehwan were wandering back in the direction of the car ten minutes later, Jaehwan’s hand sticky from ice cream but placed firmly in Minseok’s as the child swung it back and forth, Minseok realised that they were no longer being followed.  Jaehwan appeared to have rattled the man enough to get him to back off.  It made Minseok incredibly proud.

Sometime later, after a film Jaehwan had decided he wanted to see, the pair arrived back home.  Minseok halted inside the door, putting out an arm to stop Jaehwan, and frowned at what looked like a gigantic domino trail running down both sides of the hall.

“What’s this?” Jaehwan asked with interest, bending to pick one up.

“I wouldn’t touch that.”

Minseok was proved right a second later by a loud whoop as Luhan careened out of the living room, Jaera on his shoulders and giggling hysterically as they chased the falling domino line around the passage before disappearing into the kitchen.  The faint clatter of tumbling dominoes followed them.

“Not good with children my arse,” mumbled Minseok, shaking his head.  It might be true when it came to being responsible and caring for them, but Luhan could get on the level of a two-year-old even more easily than Minseok could himself, and that was really all that was needed.  He let Jaehwan join his sister and went to find Semi to tell her about the outing.  His wife was sitting up in bed, reading aloud from one of Jaera’s books with a hand absently rubbing over her baby bump, and what was supposed to be a serious conversation quickly descended into soft kisses and caresses, until a breathless Luhan knocked on the door.

“If I’m interrupting, I’ll go,” he said, Jaera draped over his head like a human hat, “but she’s fallen asleep.”

He winced as the sleeping toddler accidentally grabbed a fist full of hair and yanked on it.  Minseok got out of bed to take his daughter back.

“She has way too much energy,” Luhan complained in a whisper.  “Nobody that small should be that active.”

“Weiyi was,” Minseok reminded him, cuddling Jaera close to his chest.  Her tiny fists closed unconsciously around parts of his half-ed shirt.

“Yeah.”  Luhan looked thoughtful.  “She was.”

A storm was breaking over Jeju Island.  Weiyi and Sehun had moved as close to the town as Sehun dared, but he knew that this was weather they should not be out in.  Before the rain had made visibility too poor to see beyond nine feet ahead, they’d had glimpses of a roiling sea, blackened by the reflection of storm clouds, and the waves had been truly humungous.  The conditions were bad enough for ships, but no planes were going to be able to go take off in winds that strong.  Even the helicopters had been forced to abandon their searching for the duo.

Sehun wasn’t sure whether or not the weather was frightening Weiyi, but she snuggled close to him for warmth, pulling his arm around her shoulder, and busily wrapped their legs in blankets as they sat under the rocky overhang they were using for shelter.  The howling wind screeched against the rocks, tearing at trees and whistling through the valley in a real fury.  They were lucky the overhang they’d found was more or less a shallow cave, offering protection on two-and-a-half sides from the elements.  Provided the wind didn’t change direction, which was unlikely in such a wind tunnel of a valley, they’d remain dry, even if it wasn’t at all warm.

“Typhoon,” Weiyi said eventually, finding the Korean word.  Sehun hummed his agreement.  Part of him itched to turn on his phone so that he could look up the weather and see how long this storm was predicted to last, but he knew that he couldn’t risk it.

“We stay here,” Weiyi announced.  “Not a good idea to move, right?”

Sehun shook his head, but then a curious thought stuck him.  “Have you ever been out in or seen one of these storms before?”

She shook her head, apparently unperturbed by the deafening boom of thunder overhead.  “It’s very loud.  Louder than I thought.”

That the loudness was all she really took away from the situation was something Sehun found enchantingly naïve, and he smiled.

“I hate storms,” he told her.  “They’re miserable to be out in.”

“But you don’t look miserable.”  Weiyi wasn’t even looking at him as she said that, but Sehun didn’t bother to point that out.

“Well, I have good company.”

Said company wriggled comfortably in his arms.  “I don’t think I can sleep.  Not when it’s this loud.”

I’m not going to be able to sleep if you keep moving about, Sehun thought to himself.

For several long moments, they both gazed out into the darkness.  Sehun’s thoughts wandered, and before he knew where he was, he found himself puzzling over what Weiyi would do after she met her brother.  It was perfectly possible she’d want to join Luhan for a life on the run, even though he doubted Lay would let that happen, but in the much more likely even of this not being the case and Luhan most likely going back to prison, what would be her next move?  She’d been so sheltered and cut off from humanity that adjusting to reality was probably going to be difficult, even with the limited progress they’d managed in the hotel.  Besides, she didn’t have any proper identification documents and she hadn’t had a formal education of any kind, not to mention other qualifications.  Getting a job would be next to impossible.

He put the question to her softly, barely audible over the storm.  “Weiyi, what are you going to do after you meet your brother?”

He felt her stiffen up.  “Maybe stay with him.  But he hurt you, so maybe not.”

“And if not, what will you do?”

She shrugged.  “Stay with you, of course.”

For some reason, her answer made Sehun’s pulse quicken.  He swallowed.

“It might not be possible.”

“Why?”

Sehun didn’t have an answer for that.  Not a tactful one, at any rate.

The wind roared on, drowning any further words they might have had.

“I’m too old for this.”

“Stop looking d