Chapter 56 - Trust

Only one of the three officers raised his head upon hearing the melody, excusing himself and leaving the trio. I whistled again, pressing myself against the wall of one of the collapsed houses when he got closer. It was the tune of the first Chinese song I had heard together with Yi-en and we had made it our sign to call each other.

“So this is where you've been? I was already worried we might-” Yi-en's voice broke off as soon as he got close enough to have to look up at me through his helmet. “Wait”, he whispered and if I had seen his eyes I swear they would have been wider than you'd think it to be possible. Something was weird about his surprise after he had approached me so carelessly. “Turtle?”

“Who else should it be?”, I retorted, now regretting that I had my back against the wall as his hands reached out to grab one side of the helmet each. My panic kicked in when he took the black thing off without much effort and let it fall to the ground. I shook my fringe to cover my eyes and swallowed. “If anyone I know passes by and sees me talking to a Chinese officer I'm dead.”

Yi-en raised the ventail of his helmet to reveal sparkling eyes that once captivated all of me. But not today, it seemed. “I thought maybe you were Hoseok, we use the same melody”, he said and I frowned.

“Hoseok? Wait, he's out?”

“Yeah, orders from not too long ago. He was very compliant and swore on his life without hesitating, so they said he could go wherever he wanted as long as he'd come back at least once every three days. They believed it to be better as long as he still had his connections to the people of the city.” I chewed on my bottom lip and Yi-en furrowed his brows. “You didn't meet him?”

“I didn't even know he was out”, I replied with a whisper. Where the hell had Hoseok gone if not back to BTS? Had he gone to see his family? Did he even have a family? “But that's not what I came for. I- Yi-en, what's this whole issue about?” I swallowed and switched over to Chinese to keep prying ears away, putting my helmet on again. My eyes darted at the ruins of what once had been houses. “Was it really America?”

He sighed. “You know I can't talk about-”

“Yi-en. It's me. Who can you talk to if not me?” I was digging my nails into the palms of my hands to at least keep my voice steady and I was glad to have the helmet to hide my expression from him. He had often said these words to me and I hated having to go with the remember-what-we-had-technique. It was wrong and disgusting to make him believe I needed him and our memories – I had other friends I was depending on by now. I had Minhyuk.

“It's really difficult, okay? I don't even know much myself”, Yi-en continued in his language and I moved away from the wall only to freeze when he stepped closer, our helmets almost clashing. I inhaled sharply but his hand was on the back of my neck to keep me in place. The helmet will protect you, Hyungwon. He can't harm you. Yi-en never harmed you. He can't- “It was us. Our spies said that the flower you were so livid about is dangerous. I couldn't only believe you when there was other evidence and, well, things just happened. Why the bomb was dropped here, I don't know for sure.”

“Your spies?”, I repeated bitterly, shoving him away with both hands to regain my space. “Who? Yixing again?”

“It wasn't just him...H-Hoseok said we-” He interrupted himself again to throw a glance over my shoulder and close his ventail in a second. “Turtle, you know that guy with crazily white-hair, right? White like snow? I saw him at the convenience store the other day.”

I was still busy processing that Hoseok had readily given out information on the drugs. What had he said that the army decided to drop a bomb in exactly this area? How would he know anything? Had he gone after me without me noticing? Maybe that's how he had found out where we had stored the rest. But then again, why would he betray the Clan in the first place?

It was then that Yi-en's question finally got through to my conscious and I gasped at the description of an all too familiar person. “M-Minhyuk? What's with him?”

“I saw his face just now, he was peeking around the corner and looked really shocked, do you think he might have heard-”

“What?!” I spun around but couldn't make out any white hair. “Where did he go? Yi-en, , where did he run off to?”

“Should we silence him? We can find him if I tell the others-”

“No! I'll do that myself. , answer my question, where did he go?”

“Into the right street”, the older replied in a hurry. “Turtle, was he important for your investigations?”

“He's ing important, yes, okay?”, I almost shouted back with my heart racing. This was beyond bad. “Don't come looking for me. I'm off.”

“Turtle, wait a sec-”

“I don't have time to wait for you anymore!” I turned around and ran off into the direction Yi-en had pointed out, leaving him behind in just a few seconds and pushing through the remaining people on the streets. Some stared after me with confused gazes while others jumped aside thinking I was an officer due to the helmet but I couldn't care less.

I had to find Minhyuk. And I had to find him fast. I knew what he was thinking and it wasn't the truth. I didn't want to lose him. I didn't want to lose him now. I don't want to lose him.

I sprinted past several alleys, suddenly finding it hard to breathe under the helmet, and took a sharp turn when I caught a glimpse of white hair. “Minhyuk!”, I shouted and he flinched but disappeared around another corner a moment later. I kept chasing him through two more streets until he tripped over his own feet, stumbled and fell to the ground, giving me a chance to catch up.

“Minhyuk, for 's sake! Are you alright?”, I exclaimed whipping the helmet off my head and throwing it to the ground before crouching down by his side when he already rolled away with a hiss. I gasped when I saw that his palms were bleeding and tried to reach out to him but he just shook his head and it was only when I looked up at his face that I saw the tears. “Minhyuk, wait-”

“Tell me I'm wrong.” My breath halted at the roughness of his voice, the coldness in his watery eyes, the trembles of his body. “You can't do that, huh? You're still-” He swallowed and his lips with clattering teeth. “You're still one of them.”

“Minhyuk, listen, I-”

“I've been listening to you all this time!”, he interrupted me and clenched his red hands into fists. “I always told you I would listen to everything! But you never once said you- You never...”

“This is a misunderstanding”, I breathed, shifting from crouching to kneeling with my fists resting on my thighs as though I was expecting a punishment. Well, this was one of some sort. “I didn't want you to think I wasn't on your side.”

“Afraid? On my side? Hyungwon, were you ever to begin with? You planned all of this, didn't you?”

“W-what?”

My mouth went dry but Minhyuk wouldn't stop. “From blowing our cover to burning and bombing our stocks it was exactly what you wanted, right? That's how they knew where we had our second base, nobody but Monsta X knew where it was located.”
“No, Minhyuk, you don't understand-”

“Don't give me that and start explaining because I don't want to believe my own damn words!”, he shouted while trembling as though he was freezing. Maybe it's the fever. Maybe it's anger. His eyes were piercing right through me and I took a deep breath.

“I didn't want any of this to happen. I didn't tell them a thing. I don't remember what I did on the day I blew our cover. I was high. I never once wanted to harm the Clan, hell, I-” I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. I didn't think seeing Minhyuk hurt would be this devastating, it was driving me insane. I didn't want to lose his trust after he had worked so hard to make it mutual. I didn't want to lose him now that I had finally accepted that I could lean on him. I didn't want to have to go through this again.

“Why didn't you tell me then?” It was pain and disappointment I could hear and each word was a shot to my chest. How had he managed to change me like that?

“I couldn't”, I whispered with my eyes lowered to the ground now. “It would have been too dangerous. You could have died because you knew too much. And even now they-”, I pointed in the direction we had come from, “-they wanted to hunt you down because you eavesdropped. They could have killed you.”

“I'm a ing drug dealer, Hyungwon, I could have died years ago already. Your name really is Hyungwon, right? Because if you even lied with that-”

“I never once lied to you”, I hissed with my hand darting forward to grab him by the neck before he could retreat. Our faces were about twenty centimeters apart and I stared straight into his wide eyes without giving a damn about the panic growing in me. “There were times when I didn't tell you everything you wanted to know but not a single thing I said was a lie.” Mistrust was visible on his face and I felt my confidence crumble at last, pressing my lips together for a few moments. “What do I need to do to convince you?”

“I don't know, why don't you ask your officer friend, turtle?”

I flinched and let myself fall back as though the skin of his neck had burnt my hand. “Don't call me that.”

“Why? He is allowed to do that, isn't he? Why even turtle?”

“Yi-en has no right to do anything anymore”, I replied with a low voice and I could tell by the way Minhyuk's brows knitted together that the name was familiar so I just nodded. “Yeah, that guy was Yi-en.”

“Your...Your good friend from the army?”

“Friend.” I let out a sneer and looked at the ground for a moment to hide my smile. It was out of place in this situation. “Yeah, that one. I'm trying to hate him ever since he left me on the streets to survive on my own. How long has it been? Five months? Six?”

“He didn't really behave like that.”

“It's a Chinese officer you're defending there”, I growled in reply and Minhyuk hissed before wiping the blood of his palms on his dark jeans and standing up without looking at me.

“That's not it. You were so close. It looked so, I don't know, intimate? Like he was...As though you...”

“Like he trusts me?”

“Like you mean the world to him.”

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