Warnings for this part: blood, language

You eyed Hyungwon who was leaning on to a wall in the hallway while expressionlessly staring at the wall opposite him. He made it obvious that he didn’t want to stay inside any longer than necessary. You were sitting on the couch in the living room of the stuffy apartment.

“Are you sure you can’t let me go?” you asked him, playing with the hem on your - originally Minhyuk’s - shirt.

“I have answered that question enough times,” he said coldly.

“Mind answering it once more? To kill time?” you glanced at him whose eyes were still glued to the wall in front of him.

“Talking with you makes the time pass slower,” he snapped.

You let out a small sigh. For the past four days, the only fresh air you had gotten had been the air coming in from the opened living room window. You hadn’t been able to properly wash yourself and you were still wearing the same pants as four days ago. Minhyuk had reluctantly given you one of his very few shirts because you had pleaded him to give it to you. You weren’t used to the kind of environment you were living in so you felt frustrated and annoyed.

Minhyuk had told you that you couldn’t leave the apartment even with the seven accompanying you. The situation was apparently quite bad and they didn’t want to leave any space for mistakes which is why you had to stay in. That meant that you couldn’t go back to your place to get stuff like clothes. You also couldn’t go to work which worried you a little but since you had a ton of other things to worry about too, you had pushed that source of worry to the back of your mind for now.

In Yuna’s case, she was in the same situation. She couldn’t leave the apartment at all though that didn’t seem to be a problem. She had isolated herself inside the room she had entered four days earlier, on the day Eunkyung died, and hadn’t come out since then. The only one she had talked to at all had been Hoseok who was kind of in charge of making sure she didn’t starve herself to death.

“When are the rest coming?” you asked Hyungwon.

Today was his turn to “babysit” you and Yuna. Every morning six out of the seven had left while one of them stayed at the apartment to make sure no one tried to break in and to make sure that neither one of you ran away.

“Like I’d know,” he hissed.

Hyungwon wasn’t exactly thrilled about spending the long Wednesday with the frustrated you and Yuna who still hadn’t come out of her room. It’s not like you were thrilled about it either: you didn’t enjoy his company any more than he enjoyed yours.

There was nothing to do at the apartment apart from looking out of the window. The seven didn’t own anything else other than furniture. There were no books or anything the like. Your phone had stopped working on the day before so you couldn’t do anything with it either. So, you didn’t have much to do besides staring out of the few windows in the apartment and trying to chat with the “babysitter” of the day. The latter never seemed to work out so you had spent most of your time staring out of the windows. It got boring quite fast but at times you would get immersed in your thoughts and time passed by quite fast. Eunkyung was usually in the middle of your thoughts and you had spent most of your time on the first few days thinking about her. You were having a hard time letting her go.

You were still sitting on the soft couch when the six remaining guys came home. Since you were deep in your thoughts you didn’t at first notice them entering the apartment but when you heard Minhyuk’s voice, you turned your head.

“Did you sit there the whole day?” he asked coldly.

“Before you do, let me remind you that you have no right to judge me. You are the one who got me in to this situation.”

He went quiet and just looked at you with his icy eyes for a bit.

“Just so you know,” Hyungwon gave Minhyuk a slight nudge after entering the room. “I’m never babysitting her again. She’s your human, you should be the one taking care of her or whatever.”

Minhyuk looked at him just before the irritated guy walked to the front door and walked out, closing the door quite powerfully behind him.

“I agree with him,” Kihyun said coldly while passing by.

“There’s not much for you to do outside the apartment anyway,” Hyunwoo pointed out from the kitchen.

“I know,” Minhyuk sighed.

You looked at him. He wasn’t as annoyed as you had expected for him to be.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

“How did you survive without getting killed for the past four days?” Minhyuk asked, sitting on the couch while looking at you with his icy eyes.

“Your friends seem loyal enough to endure my endless questions,” you stated, sitting in the kitchen while looking at him.

It had been well over six hours since you two had been left alone with him - well, not completely alone since Yuna was still inside her room. You had asked him a few questions that had popped up in your mind and he was clearly starting to get tired of answering them.

“I’m going to have to thank them later,” he mumbled quietly.

“You know, I would be a lot less annoying if I had books to read or something else to do. Having something as simple as my phone charger would be nice.”

“I’m not risking my life for a measly book, let alone a phone charger. Deal with it,” he coldly said.

You sighed.

I find myself sighing a lot these days.

The silence of the apartment made you slowly drift in to your own thoughts. Once again, only a few minutes later you were thinking about Eunkyung. The raindrops that kept hitting the window on the wall next to you reminded you of the surprisingly many times both of you had forgotten your umbrellas and had to run in the rain to get to her apartment. Though you hadn’t enjoyed the cold, wet clothes back then, the memories seemed warm now. It was like you were looking at all the memories about her with rose-colored glasses; every single one of them seemed more precious and heart-warming now that she was gone. You guessed what they said was true: you learn to truly appreciate what you have only after it's gone.

“You know,” Minhyuk’s voice brought you back from your thoughts. “Honestly, your friendship was cute.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. “What?”

“The bond you and Eunkyung had was nice,” he said expressionlessly, looking out of the window next to the couch. “I still remember the day you two met.”

“You do?” you asked in disbelief.

“Yes, you were annoyingly happy the day after. You smiled like an idiot the whole day.”

A small smile made your lips curve.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized though his voice didn’t really sound apologetic. “It must be hard to not have her around anymore.”

“I doubt I’m the one who is suffering the most,” you said, thinking about her family and Yuna.

After a brief silence Minhyuk turned his head and looked at you. “Is there anything I could do to make you feel better?”

His question surprised you and you were quite amused by it. “Well, your awkward attempt at comforting me is definitely not something I would like to try again. That’s for sure.”

He shrugged. “I tried my best.”

“No one asked you to,” you pointed out.

“No one had to,” he calmly stated.

“What does that mean?” you asked.

“That I did it out of my own will. I wanted to do it.”

“Why?”

The question made him stop, resulting in a silence during which you looked at each other. His eyes were weirdly soft even though the icy color was still very much present.

“You seemed like a broken plate and I wanted to fix you,” he hit you with a sentence that left you very amused.

“A plate?” you asked, smiling in amusement.

“I tried to glue the broken pieces together. I think I did a pretty decent job.”

You looked at him, still smiling. “You are so weird,” you said and he looked at you.

For a second you thought you saw a small smile on his lips when he looked at you.

“Thank you for the compliment,” he sarcastically said with his usual cold tone and looked away, washing away the image of him smirking in mere seconds.

You shook your head at the sudden change in his attitude and looked at your hands for a bit quietly.

"In all seriousness, though. I'll have to admit that you did an okay job fixing me on the outside but I'm still not completely fixed. I constantly feel like there's something missing. It's like Eunkyung's death left a huge blank space in my heart and that's what really needs fixing. And as unfortunate as it sounds, that's a broken heart is a lot harder to fix than a broken plate, no matter how badly broken the plate is."

He lifted his head but before he could lay his eyes on you, the sound of the doorbell ringing caught his and your attention. He got up and walked to the door. You got up too and walked in to the living room and waited for him to come back. It took a few minutes before he came back. Your eyes widened in pure shock and terror as you laid your eyes on the lifeless body Minhyuk dragged in to the living room. Though his face was badly bruised and had blood on it, you could tell that it was Changkyun.

“What is going on?” you asked Minhyuk whose clothes were starting to become blue from Changkyun's blood.

He didn't say anything and just carefully laid down his friend on the couch.

Your stomach twisted when you looked at the bloody Changkyun. His clothes weren’t drenched in blood but there still seemed to be quite a lot of it and you felt sick when you wondered how he had ended up like that.

“Damn s,” he was somehow able to murmur while cringing at the pain that came when he spoke.

“The higher-ups?” Minhyuk asked with a tone that told you he already seemed to know the answer was positive.

“No,” Changkyun hissed, surprising both of you. “It was the others. The clan.”

While your expression turned confused, Minhyuk’s whole body stiffened.

"As in The X Clan?" he asked with a low voice.

"Do you happen to know any others?" Changkyun snapped, making you flinch slightly. 

“The X Clan?” you repeated and turned to look at Minhyuk with a very confused frown.

“…” Minhyuk hissed.

“What? What's going on?” you were starting to feel somewhat scared.

You glanced at Changkyun and then at Minhyuk. They both seemed very serious and when you looked at Minhyuk you saw something you had never seen in his eyes before. Fear.

“If it isn’t too much of a trouble, would you mind telling me what’s going on?” you asked, starting to become more scared, but no one listened.

Minhyuk didn't look like himself. It was weird seeing him so scared.

“This is not good,” he mumbled.

Is he panicking?

“No , Sherlock,” Changkyun managed to hiss.

“We’re not okay,” Minhyuk ign