*for now Woojin is still in the story but I am writing him out. I was so blindside by what came out that I wasn't prepared which is why at the moment he is still here. 

The next day Chan and Woojin arrived at her apartment. Mijoo wanted to talk with them out in the living room, but it quickly became apparent to her that she still wasn’t able to move without being in a lot of pain. Mijoo wondered if she would ever be able to again. As the two men stood in her bedroom Mijoo couldn’t help but compare their expensive looking outfits to her somewhat shabby bedroom. They looked like they should be standing in an expensive loft or on the cover of a magazine, not in a room that she had decorated when she was 19 and just moved out. Her hand ran over the fabric of her flowered bedspread nervously.

“So, I think it’s fairly evident there are going to be some changes because of this,” Chan started off after a couple moments of awkward silence.

Mijoo couldn’t find the courage to look up and meet his eyes. Woojin spoke up then, “Obviously you can’t go off on your own anymore, or do I need to explain to you why that's a bad idea?” Mijoo could hear the condescension in his voice and frowned to herself as she looked at her hands, not saying anything. What could she say in her defense anyway? Sure, Hyunjin had told her they would have tried something, even if Seungmin had been there, but that didn’t change what had happened.

Chan crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at her. “I was going to reassign Changbin but I changed my mind. Instead you’re going to have Jisung watching over you.”

Mijoo looked up in surprise, “What about Seungmin?” She asked. Oh please why does it have to be him? He would rather watch me get killed before he would ever help me.

“Seungmin will still be with you attending classes acting like your cousin, but he can’t be with you all the time, can he?” Chan asked pointedly. “Jisung is going to be your silent shadow,” Chan seemed to think that was funny and let out a laugh… well, it was more like a breath than a laugh. “Think of him like a bodyguard.”

Mijoo shook her head, “But why does it have to be Jisung? He won’t want to protect me…”

“Because Jisung’s been an lately and you need to learn there are consequences to your actions,” Chan barked back, clearly lacking patience today. 

“I’m not a child,” Mijoo mumbled, feeling a bit too much like she was being scolded and punished, even though she had been the one kidnapped and tortured. 

“Oh really? Do you want to get kidnapped again? Did you like being tortured? If you did, then please, by all means ignore what we’re trying to tell you,” Woojin spoke up. Mijoo winced at his voice and resisted the urge to curl in on herself. “Next time we won’t bother to come ‘save’ you.”

Mijoo felt a lump starting to grow in the back of . She desperately did not want to start crying in front of the two men. “Fine, whatever. Is that all?” Mijoo muttered around the ache in and chest all the while chanting in her head please just leave, leave me alone, leave so I don’t start crying in front of you, leave, leave, leave.

The sound of a ringtone filled the room as Woojin’s cell began ringing. He looked at the caller id before turning to Chan, “I need to take this, it's… it’s important.” Chan and Woojin shared a tense look before Chan nodded toward the door. Woojin nodded towards Chan, completely ignoring Mijoo, before exiting the room and leaving the two of them alone in her room. A few seconds of silence passed, the muffled sounds of Woojin’s voice barely coming through the door as he answered the phone. Mijoo could feel the lump in getting larger as it became harder and harder to hold back the tears. Please just go away. 

“How are your injuries?” Chan asked, ignoring her silent plea. 

“Painful,” Mijoo answered, still refusing to meet his eye. 

“I’m planning on having a little… meeting with Zico about what his men did to you. ...Anything you’d like me to pass along?” Chan looked at her like he was analyzing her, looking for some sort of response. 

Mijoo clenched her fists tightly, as she thought of Jaehyo and Jihoon, who had done this to her, and of this Zico person who had ordered it all; of their laughter and joy at her tears and pain. Her small body shook with a rage she had never before experienced as she glared at the bandages covering her arms. “I want you to kill them all.” She grit out through clenched teeth, the tears she had been trying to hold back breaking through and running down her cheeks.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Chan replied. The sounds of yelling came from the other room as Woojin began to raise his voice at the person on the other end of the call. “I need to check on this,” He said motioning with his head towards the door. 

“Yeah, you do that,” Mijoo pressed out, her voice betraying her. 

The tears didn’t stop after he left; if anything, they only worsened.  Even though she had wanted them to leave her alone to cry in peace, now that they were gone, it was all somehow worse. Mijoo curled up as best as she could in her current condition and cried into a pillow until she fell asleep again; the sounds of muffled yelling and angry discussion continuing in the background.   

The next time she awoke was to the rough shaking of her shoulder. She opened her eyes slowly, eyelids heavy after crying for so long. Looking at the person who woke her she was greeted by the sour face of Jisung looking down at her. 

“Congratulations, we’re stuck with each other,” He stated, frowning. “I’m going to have to babysit you now.”

Mijoo sighed to herself and sat up. “It’s your fault for being an ,” she muttered, not really meaning for him to hear, but in the small room there was no way he wouldn’t. 

“My fault?” Jisung sputtered in disbelief, “MY fault?! Excuse me, how is this MY FAULT?! I’m not the one who lied her way into a club, I’m not the one who is pretending to be a gang leader’s girlfriend all the while ignoring the rules which are there for your stupid safety! I’m not the one who went out without protection and got myself kidnapped and tortured! That’s all on you, sweetheart!” By the time Jisung finished talking, he was almost yelling and looked slightly red in the face. 

That same anger Mijoo had felt earlier began to sweep over her again. Why was everyone getting angry with her? She was the one who had been kidnapped and tortured! It’s not like she wanted any of this to happen. “It is your fault! You’re an and I hate you! I hate you and I hate Chan and I hate Stray Kids! I hate all of you! I hate everything about this! I hate these stupid gangs and their stupid rules! I! Hate! You!” Mijoo was screaming at him now and in a blind fit of rage she grabbed the nearest thing she could reach, her empty water glass, and threw it at him. Jisung ducked out of the way just in time as it smashed against her wall and shattered on the floor. The sound of the breaking glass quickly cooled the anger that had flared up in her and she realized what she had just done as Jisung looked at her with a mixture of shock and anger. “Oh my god, I’m sorry… I didn’t, I don’t-”

She was interrupted by her door opening and an angry looking Hyunjin stepped inside, “Jisung, what the are you doing in here? I told you she was asleep!” He quickly spotted the shattered glass. “What happened,” he asked, his brow furrowing. Jisung brushed past him, ignoring his question, and left the room.

Hyunjin turned his gaze onto Mijoo who was looking at the broken glass in disbelief. “I didn’t mean to- I don’t know why I did that…” She said quietly.

Hyunjin moved carefully around the broken glass and sat next to her on the bed. “What happened,” he asked again, softer as if she was the one made of broken glass.

Mijoo looked down, “I just, I just got so angry,” She replied, clenching and unclenching her hands. The action pulled at the wounds on her arms but she ignored the pain. “He was saying this was all my fault but I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this. Why is everyone so angry at me?”

Mijoo felt Hyunjin rest his hand on top of her head and lightly pet her hair as if she were a child. “I’m not going to make excuses for Jisung, but he’s very protective of Stray Kids. I know you haven’t gotten to see the good sides of him yet, but believe me they do exist. It just takes him a while to warm up to people. When I first joined Stray Kids, he and I fought like cats and dogs, but now I trust him with my life.”

Mijoo’s eyes strayed to the broken glass that littered the floor. No one is listening to me. “Where’s Seungmin?” Mijoo asked, ignoring what Hyunjin had said. Mijoo felt Hyunjin take his hand off her head.

“He’s across the hall. Would you like me to get him?” 

“Yes.”

Mijoo felt Hyunjin stand up and leave the room, but her gaze never wavered from the broken glass on the floor. They’ll probably just say I had a temper tantrum and tell me to clean it up myself. They’re treating me like a helpless, spoiled child. That’s not who I am, that’s not who I want to be. I’d rather take the glass and shove it up-

“What happened in here?” Seungmin asked as he entered the room, interrupting Mijoo’s thoughts. 

“I threw a glass as Jisung’s head,” Mijoo answered blandly, turning to face him. 

“Oh cool, did you hit him?” He asked. 

“He ducked.”

“Shame,” Seungmin shrugged, putting his hands in his pockets. “How are you feeling?”

Mijoo bit her lip and looked down. She cursed the fact that she couldn’t seem to keep her emotions in check. “I don’t know. I’m still hurting,”

“That’s not surprising, you probably will for a while,” Seungmin replied, then after a moment continued speaking. “Chan told me you wanted him to kill Zico.”

Mijoo shrugged, as she started to pick at one of the bandages wrapped around her arm, “You guys are a gang right? That’s what gangs do, I thought. Kill the ones you don’t like.”

Seungmin let out a half laugh at her statement, “If we killed everyone we didn’t like we’d have no one to work with. We can’t just kill anyone we don’t like for no reason.”

“Well, I’d kill Zico and his gang and my reasoning would be I don’t like them and they’re evil,” Mijoo replied.

“As much as I agree with you, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Chan doesn’t just kill anyone we ask him to.”

Mijoo fell silent, the words she was wanting to say tugging on and yet refusing to come out. Seungmin seemed to see that she was wanting to say something else and stayed quiet, waiting. 

“I-,” Mijoo started, “I feel like I should apologize.” That was apparently not what Seungmin was expecting her to say as his eyebrows raised toward his hairline at her words. “I shouldn’t have gone out on my own and since you were the one tasked to look after me I feel like I- like I owe you an apology.” 

Seungmin blinked at her a few times before opening his mouth, “You don’t owe me an apology. If I was in your position I would have done the same thing.”

“Oh,” Mijoo was left wordless at that. “But-”

“No ‘buts,’ you don’t ever apologize to me about this again. Got it? In fact I should apologize to you. I shouldn’t have left you with no backup that day. This is on me.”

Mijoo looked up at him in shock, “What?! No you don’t-”

Seungmin interrupted her, “Yes I do. Mijoo, I’m sorry.” Mijoo opened and closed like a fish. She didn’t know how to respond to what Seungmin had just said. “I need to get back to what I was doing across the hall, but give me a call anytime. I’ll come right over.” 

Mijoo simply nodded, her voice escaping her. Seungmin tilted his head towards her before opening her bedroom door to leave. Brian took that opportunity to dash inside past Seungmin’s legs and up onto the bed. Seungmin paused, turning back to look at Mijoo, “You know when you’re up to it, and all healed up, you should see if Changbin will teach you some self-defense techniques. I know that we don’t want it to come to that, but you might have some fun learning how to beat someone up.” With that he left the room leaving Mijoo and Brian alone.