Chanyeol couldn’t believe what he had just read: at three a.m. in the morning that day he had received a mail from her partner full of encrypted files and money transfers’ records. A brief message was attached to those files and those few lines were enough to make his veins freeze.

“Chan, if you got this mail it means they got me. Please don’t call the police, they are in this too. The information I’m passing onto you are encrypted and only them know the passcode. I’m probably already dead meat already, so find it for me and reveal how those bastards really are. Exo must be destroyed. Farewell”

A wave of resurging black hate had filled his body up to the throat, so powerful he had to punch the wall, leaving crack on the old wallpaper. Exo, the illegal organization that had their city in the palm of their hands, the worst mafia that existed on the planet. The thing with them, and in particular their boss Kai, was that they had no moral and no soul: everything was possible, because nothing really mattered, nor lives nor feelings. They were like dolls, dragged by what seemed amusing, but also insanely clever. After the loss of his father, Kai had rebuilt the empire in just one year, founding a kingdom of terror and blind obedience; he didn’t trust nobody outside Exo and legends had it that he could see through lies like you were made of glass and that he showed no mercy for those who tried to deceive him.

When Chanyeol was a kid he didn’t believe in any of this, of course nobody had ever seen a member of the infamous Exo, but then his best friend Hari had called him one day to show him his new house: it was grandiose, with wide open rooms and furniture made of clear material, just like his mother had always wanted, but something was no right. Chanyeol knew that Hari’s family could never afford even an apartment with more than three rooms, so how did they get all the money?

He discovered it two days after: Hari’s father and mother had been offered a chance at the Exo Planet Club to borrow some money they had to return by playing and winning at poker. Needless to say, they had lost. That night someone broke into their house with a loaded gun, smashing every little piece of glass furniture around their bodies. It was the most beautiful thing Chanyeol had never seen: three corpses covered in blood, surrounded by crimson-stained shards, like inside of a cruel kaleidoscope, except they were not moving as he was rotating his face to change his prospective. Hari was never going to wake up again, he could never finish his lessons and go play with his friend again, he could never… there were so many never in his thoughts he had started to lose it.

Every day after that was torture and anger, gnawing his body and breaking apart. He had sworn on the dead body of his old friend he would avenge his family, he had sworn to himself never to feel the pain of loss gain if by Exo’s bloody hands. And now they had taken his partner.

That was an act that screamed for vengeance.

Suho was his first recruit: an ex-cop, expelled from his order because he had fired the wrong bad guy in action. Not only the wrong guy, but Kai’s right arm. He was still so young and came from a city where the mafia is only of the invisible kind, the one that doesn’t cause trouble and doesn’t ruins people’s lives as long as the people in it were making money. A nice place, as healthy as a city can get nowadays, but he had decided to move to follow his beloved fiancé and to find a job.

Now he had lost both: not a penny in his pockets and not the woman he loved at home. Exo had taken everything from him and he wanted to burn every single banknote they had stoked up. Literally.

The not-by-blood brothers Sehun and Lay were Suho’s friends and when he asked them for help, they didn’t hesitate to come to the rescue. They were the best actors on the market, especially for infiltration missions such as the one they were about to pull off.

Once born in two separated families, they had come together as one when both of their mothers died while attending a fund-raise charity event. A mass shooting, carried out by Kai’s father and his men. They had murdered more than twenty people to stop the event from gaining followers, so that they could rule without obstacles and sleep serenely in their beds full of bones, tenders and blood.

Someone once said that things we hate bring us together tighter than the things we love. Sehun and Lay had that phrase engraved in their hearts.

The plan was simple: once a year at the Exo Planet Kai held the biggest and most important auction out of all, where they would sell the most expensive pieces they had in storage for the pretentious and greedy rich affiliates of the club and they would have the craziest gambling game you could ever imagine where everything had to be put in the line, everything you had and everything you were.

Thanks to the little information Chanyeol had been able to decipher, he now knew where the elusive Exo Planet club was, but they had to elaborate a strategy, or else they would be captured and killed. Or worse, sold out.

The heart of the once reporter was so full of hatred he could barely stay still while Suho was listing the possible tactics they could use to enter. His fingers were trembling like they did the day Hari had died: they lived in a cruel world that had forced him and so many others to grow up faster than the other kids, making them clueless adults with only a semblance of a matured soul. They had been left on the side of the road to rotten while never being able to experience the full blooming and he was going to take everything back.

One way or another.

D.O. was looking at the ceiling of this new room. It was so high he could not only stand up and walk, but even jump, never reaching its surface. That was entirely new for him. There was a single bed, soft and clean, which was scented like a flower whose name he had forgotten and a wardrobe full of clothes. He had touched almost fearful the white silk, so soft against his raw skin he had almost thought it was the material angels’ wings were made off.

He had wanted to feel the fresh air outside and someone had opened the windows for him. It was an act of kindness he didn’t see the meaning of. Kindness was the first of the things he had forgotten, followed by motherly warmth and paternal respect, by peaceful days and flowers’ names. He had forgotten so much he almost had lost the way to remember, but he had dragged himself until that day, because he wanted to live, despite of everything, despite of the trail of blood behind him and the sound of broken white bones under feet.

He now had shoes, so comfortable he was on the verge of fainting. Could life really be that beautiful outside of his indestructible bubble? Was the sky really that blue? He remembered it being crimson and sable.

He didn’t know the meaning of belonging to someone, but he had nowhere else to go. Every day in the old barn he had mourned his parents and his lost youth, every day he had driven himself even more into madness, but now there was only the placid sound of the wind howling through the trees’ branches. It was as if he had entered another world and had left his mortal remains in the old one.

“Are you having fun?”

D.O. almost jumped when he heard Kai’s voice in his room. He had been so quiet.

He didn’t know how to address him: owner? Sir? Kai?... he once had been a very polite boy, but he had learnt otherwise, so he remained silent.

“I knew what you must be thinking, but there was a very practical reason why I bought you: I need an assassin who can do my dirty work without being killed, at least not soon, and I want you to be that man. My offer it is not negotiable; it’s either do it or get shot right this instant. I can’t have anyone to weight me down”

Kai was a mysterious person. Most of his life D.O. had remained silent and observed other people, in a constant effort to understand them, but he was different: his pose, his eyes, his whole everything… there was something wrong about it, something ephemeral, almost meaningless to the eye. He was still trying to search for that something when the young men got suddenly close to him, pressing the end of his gun to his temple.

“I said do it or get shot”

He was so calm about death, like if she was just one of his friends, walking along with him. He was not fearful, that was the disturbing sensation D.O. had felt, he was not scared of anything, he didn’t perceive the smell of gunpowder, nor the screeching of the bullet inside that infernal machine.

“Than shoot me if that makes you happy” he finally said, his voice so low and smooth Kai was almost taken aback “You need me more than I need this life. I’ve gotten my vengeance, there is no residual meaning for my existence here. Sure, I wish to live and be free, but wish and purpose are very different things”

Kai had to think about his response, because his brain had frozen for a moment. That short kid was too grown up for his own good. Just like him.

“I have the power to make your wish come true, why can’t you simply say yes?”

“Because it feels like one of the promise you end up regret making” whispered D.O., looking directly into his eyes.

“Life is full of regrets, one more it’s not going to make a big difference. You had no future, now I gave you one. Kill for me and you’ll see the sun rising tomorrow. Wouldn’t it be nice?”

It would, D.O. thought, looking at the window and even further into the distance. He was not innocent anymore, he couldn’t even pretend to be anymore, but he could always walk. Walking was nice, the wind was nice, spring was nice… he could live for nice things.

“OK”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Ugh, back to school season does nothing but bad things to writing, especially because we have to get up early. Anyway, I hope this is interesting enough, but don't worry, I'll bring some more action once I figure out how to write it ^__^