6:30 PM.

I am standing at the gates of the Kim estate. The watchmen at the front recognize me the instant I step out of the taxi; the hard looks in their eyes tell me that they know who I am. I am frisked within an inch of my life, passed through metal detectors, escorted through the maze of twisting hallways by a mob of security guards.

I don’t think I ever understood how wealthy Sora was until I saw her house. The place is colossal. Towering white Corinthian columns line the marbled floors, whose starkness is covered by rich velvet Moroccan carpets with ornate patterns that dance out over its gold surface. Wealth practically drips from every facet of the house: the commissioned Maximo Laura tapestries, the koi pond in the middle of the Cordoba courtyard, the sheer Carolina curtains.

This stuff was probably bought with embezzled money.

Disgusting.

I try and imagine Sora here. Her brother is dead, and her father, as she described it, is always working. Which means she would have had to live her practically by herself. Empty rooms. Single seats. Lone dinners.

    My chest tightens and I have to swallow down the anguish rising up in my throat.

    The guards finally lead me to a pair of large oak double doors. “Enter,” one of them gruffly commands. So I do.

The first thing I am hit with is black. There are security guards everywhere, clad in the same black suits with the same black earpieces. In the middle of it all is Kim Sangyoon, sitting on a sofa at the far end of the room, staring at me as I walk in. His daft appearance starkly contrasts with the look of malevolent loathing he is giving me.

“Good evening,” I say evenly.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” he snaps. “What the hell did you do with my daughter?”

He doesn’t know where Sora is either? .

Wait. I can work with this.

I withdraw a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket and clear my throat.

“Kim Sangyoon graduated from Seoul National University in 1964 with a double major in Law and Political Science,” I say monotonously. To my satisfaction, Kim Sangyoon’s expression darkens, and he stands up.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be?” he hisses.

“He has continued to uphold the university’s motto of using knowledge to make a positive impact in the world-,”

“Stop talking!”

“-his work in the Department of Justice has helped millions across South Korea-,”

“Shut up!”

I pause. Mr. Kim has strode across the room and is now standing directly in front of me. To call him livid would be an understatement. His eyes are bulging out of their sockets; his chest is violently heaving; his hand is raised, as if to slap me.

“Do you need something?” I ask indifferently.

“Don’t play dumb with me. Where. Is. My. Daughter?”

I finally look up at him.

“That isn’t how it works, Mr. Kim,” I coolly tell him. “If you want information, you need to give me something in return.”

“How about this,” he growls. “You tell me where you took her, and I let you leave this mansion alive.”

I smile. “Please. I know you’re not going to kill me. I’m the only one who knows where Sora is. And I’m curious as to why you care about her whereabouts, anyway. I was under the impression that you didn’t care for your children very much.”

Mr. Kim scoffs. “Are you talking about Byunghyun? He was a useless idiot whose cockiness and bravado finally caused him to get shot- oh, thanks for that, by the way. He was turning into too much of a liability.”

“He was your son,” I spit out, unable to mask my revulsion. “How can you talk about him like that? And this just proves my point. You view your kids like objects to be used to further your own motives. You married off your daughter to a gangster just so you could get a share of criminal money.”

“She would’ve benefitted in the end! BTS is wealthy, powerful, influential. She could’ve had everything I had and more-,”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you basically sold her away. So tell me, Sangyoon: why should I tell you where Sora is?”

Sangyoon gives me a long, long stare.

And then he utters, “I’ll tell you why your parents died.”

I tense.

“You don’t even have to give me Sora,” Sangyoon continues. “Just- tell me if she’s okay.”

I take a deep breath.

And then I say, “Sora’s in Incheon, with a cousin of my associate’s. She’s safe.”

All a lie, of course.

But I don’t owe Sangyoon anything.

He scans my face with unreadable eyes.

And then he nods.

“You’re dismissed,” he says.

My eyebrows shoot up. “Really? So you’re not going to hold up your end of the deal?” Of course.

“Look into what your father was doing the night that your parents were shot,” he utters. “Take her away.”

A security guard strides up to me, claps a hand onto my shoulder. “Time to go,” he barks. I dazedly allow them to lead me out the door, through the hallways, to the exit. My mind is reeling. What my father was doing? What is he implying?

My blood runs cold. Could my father have been in a gang?

No. No way.

Wait, Hyo, a voice whispers in the back of my head. Wait until you get to the Galmegi. Then think about it.

“Let me see a picture of your father,” Himchan immediately says after I finish recounting what happened.

I pull up a picture on my phone of my father and myself, taken six years ago on New Years’ Eve. My father had managed to get a day off from work for the first time in forever, and him, my mother, and I had attended a street festival a few blocks away from our house. He stands next to me in the picture, dressed in a faded white longsleeve and khaki cargo pants, his jacket draped around my shoulders. Even through the screen of my phone I can see the weariness woven into every fiber of his skin. He was at work more often than he was at home; I would see him two hours a day, right after I came back from school and before he went to his job as a janitor.

“That’s him?” Zelo says. He sounds quite taken aback.  

“Yeah. I know, we look nothing alike. I take after my mother.”

“I’ve never seen this man before,” Himchan says, his eyebrows furrowed. “But we shouldn’t eliminate the possibility that he could have been affiliated with a crime syndicate. Do you know where your father worked?”

I scrunch up my face. “Uh, I know it was a building in the Pearl Complex. You know that cluster of office buildings downtown near Gangyu Park?”

“Okay.” Himchan pulls his laptop over to us. “I’m just going to run an employment check on him. Zelo, look up what companies have offices in the Pearl Complex.”

“Sure.” Zelo hurries away and brings back his own computer. “Uh.... let’s see. The National Korea Bank’s headquarters are there... Posco, Nexen Tires, S&T Motors-,”

And then his face suddenly goes white. He shoots up, and I have to dive to save his laptop from crashing onto the floor.

“What?” I demand.

Himchan rises. He is staring at something on his computer screen in shock.

“Kim Dongjun,” he reads. “Janitorial Worker, 11 years, Korean Construction Company.”

My jaw drops.

“You’re kidding,” I breathe, grabbing his computer. There the words are, plain as day. “He worked for KCC?”

“This can’t be a coincidence,” Himchan says slowly. “Your father worked for KCC, and then your parents are shot?”

Joonmyeon’s words echo in my ears.

To my surprise, we already had ties to each other.

“My father was a night janitor,” I say slowly. “He was cleaning the KCC building... and then he was shot. What if he found something there that he wasn’t supposed to see?”

“Wait.” Zelo’s eyes widen. “Remember at Suho’s apartment, when he said that the CRP started ‘two years later’? That means he actually thought of the CRP when he was 14.”

Oh, no. Everything starts to match up. I rise.

“And Sora was engaged to Taehyung when she was 14,” I say slowly. “And Dad died when I was 14. Which means-,”

“He probably found out about KCC’s deal with Kim Sangyoon,” Himchan says grimly. “Someone found out- he escaped and went back home- and then someone from KCC shot him and your mom.”

Oh my god.

I am utterly still for a few moments. Zelo and Himchan watch me with wide, apprehensive eyes.

And then I pick up a glass sitting on a table near me and fling it across the room. It shatters on the wall, and shards of glass fly everywhere.

“I’m going to kill them,” I growl, upending an entire stack of plates. They smash into a million pieces on the floor. “I’m going to kill all of them!”

“Calm down, Lia!” Himchan shouts, yanking a glass out of my hand. “Throwing things isn’t going to help. We need to figure out how we’re going to take them on.”

“I’ll ing murder them-,”

“Stop it!” Zelo grabs my hands. He looks visibly shaken as he stares at me. “Lia. Listen to me. We’re- we’re going to get revenge, okay? But just take a deep breath.”

I stare at him, my face frozen in an infuriated look, halfway between listening to him or getting out my knives and going ham on these tables.

But I finally pull myself together and sit back down.

“This is war,” I growl.

“That it is,” Himchan says. “But we need an army.”

“What army?” Zelo questions.

Himchan presses his lips together.

“It’s time to reunite BAP.”

My eyes widen.

“What?” Zelo says astonishedly. “How?”

Himchan turns to me. “This didn’t strike me until you met with your CRP caseworker a while ago. But what if we accessed BAP’s files in the CRP, saw where they were reassigned to, and then contacted them?”

“Whoa.” I blink. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s a perfectly viable option.”

“All we need to do is send an email to your caseworker with a keylogging software hidden in its text. When she opens it, we’ll be able to start tracking her keystrokes and we can figure out the password to CRP databases.”

“Let’s do that now.”

I can’t help but feel guilty as I type up a rather extensive email to Officer Hwang. She did truly help me as I was making the transition from the criminal world to the real world; in fact, for a period of time, I almost viewed her as my second mother.

But then I had to cut off all contact with her, according to the CRP guidelines, after I had “graduated” from the program, and it ed me up even more.

I have to do what I have to do.

After Himchan is done affixing the virus to my email, ensuring that it is undetectable by the police servers and antivirus protection, I grab my things and head for the door. It’s almost midnight. I barely got any sleep last night, and my body is starting to shut down from fatigue. My hand reaching for the doorknob- when someone grabs my arm.

“Hey,” Zelo says. “You’re... you’re doing okay, right?”

“Uh, yeah.” I cough. “Perfectly fine.”

“I’m sorry about your parents. That was... really ed up.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “The sad part is, I wasn’t even surprised when I found out. KCC, Kim Sangyoon, and BTS have done far worse. My parents’ murder was just another crime committed in the wake of their quest for power.”

Zelo nods gloomily. “How’re you dealing with Sora not being here?”

I tense. “We’re going to find her soon. So I’m not worried.”

“Okay. Good. Because Himchan’s not taking it very well. He’s been trying to scope out her location nonstop for the past two days. It’s getting to the point of unhealthiness.”

Oh, no. I rub my temples. “Crap. I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.”

I move to the door again, about to leave- but then Zelo clears his throat once more.

“Lia?”

I turn. Zelo is looking at me apprehensively.

“What?”

“Uh...,” He scratches the back of his neck. “That guy- Suho- are you-,”

I immediately stiffen. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say in a hard voice.

“But-,”

“Zelo.” I purse my lips. “I’m fine. Okay?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay at the Galmegi for the night?”

I shake my head. “Thanks for the offer, but I should really get back to my dorm. I have school crap to do, too.”

“Alright. I’ll see you later, then.” He wraps his arms around me in a long, long hug, and for a moment, I don’t want him to let go. I feels secure, safe, comforted.

But then images flit through my head: Joonmyeon tackling me in a hug after we both aced a Physics exam. Joonmyeon clasping me to him as he dramatically suggests we move to the Swiss Alps and never look back on this “cursed student council”. Joonmyeon embracing me beneath a million cashmere blankets as we gaze out at the snowy December night together, his hands laced between mine.

I quickly jerk away.

“Good night, Zelo,” I whisper, and leave.