Shira takes a swig from her energy drink, clipping a stray lock of hair away from her eyes and scribbling the answers to practice problems on paper. There are midterms this week, and even though she’s been distracted with Jackson and everything that had to do with the ambush, she can’t afford to do badly. The tests are her diversion from her real issues, and she had thrown herself into study-mode, not paying attention to anything else. There’s a dark cloud hovering over her head, but she doesn’t want to think about SHINee or EXO or Super Junior right now.
 

“Do you want-”

“Get out!” Without looking, she throws an empty box of cereal at the door which bounces off the ground and lays pitifully at Seungri’s feet. Seungri just pouts, picks up the box with resignation and shuts the door behind him.

Her desk is a mess, piled with books, papers, empty energy drinks, a half-empty bowl of cereal milk, and a bunch of broken pencils that she had taken out her frustration on. The dim lamp casts her shadow over the keyboard of her laptop as she glances from her equation sheet and back to her book problems from time to time.

The door opens, much softer and quieter this time, and Shira nearly screeches at the intruder again, but the said intruder digs his thumbs into the pressure point in between her neck and shoulder. A deep sigh escapes from Shira’s lips; it feels like at least forty pounds of stress and tension has slid off her back with the simple action.

“Go to sleep. You’ve been doing this for hours.”

“What time is it?” she mumbles, not looking back at Taeyang. If anyone else would have said the same thing, she would have flicked them off and turned back to her book. But Taeyang has a funny way of taking care of her when she least expects it.

“Two. Do you have to be on campus in a few hours?”

“It’s Saturday morning, so no. I can do this for another two hours.” Shira doesn’t bother to look up and his fingers dig a little deeper into her flesh. She is still exhausted from EXO’s ambush on Jackson from a few nights ago, but she has at least a few more problems to finish before she passes out for the night.

Taeyang is having none of that and just reaches over, closing her textbook and taking away her energy drink. “There’s a cup of chamomile on the kitchen counter. Drink it, put on a facemask because you look awful, and go to bed.”

“You really know the way to a girl’s heart,” Shira drawls, shutting her laptop. “No wonder you’re still single.”

Taeyang pointedly ignores her, instead choosing to lightly slap her on the back of her head. “Be in bed in fifteen minutes otherwise I’m sending Seunghyun in here.”

“Not Seunghyun,” she practically whines, gathering her trash into a heap and getting up. “He’ll keep me up and he won’t let me work either.” She finishes with a yawn, eyes watering despite the energy drink.

Taeyang shoos her out of the room and Shira trots to the kitchen obediently, washing out the bowl and dumping her trash before gulping down the warm tea on the counter.

She smiles slightly at the warmth, knowing this was Taeyang’s way of saying that things are okay between them. He would never say it outright, but he understands her reasoning. They may not ever see eye-to-eye on some subjects, but he is still one of her adopted brothers.

Shira turns on the kitchen sink, washing the cup before padding to the bathroom, and catching the glimpse of her skin on the mirror. Taeyang was right, she looked like a mess. And instantly, any warmth she had towards her foster brother vanishes.

you Taeyang.
 

“What do we know?” Sehun spreads open the map of Seoul with a large marking over the location of the warehouse where Minseok and Yixing had attacked a member of GOT7. Minseok is hands-down, one of the scariest strategists that Sehun has ever seen, but even after so many years, he still gets amazed.

Minseok had taken the slight clue that Red had been seen with GOT7 in the previous gang war and put a target on a member’s back. And now, because he had asked for Suho’s help for camera work and recording in the warehouse, he had found out that Wang Jackson has a blood bond thanks to the scar on his arm. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but the man’s shirt had torn giving them a good clue to the next step.

Blood bonds are deadly. There’s a dangerous obligation for his bond to come running to his aid, and not in the way his own gang members would. No, it’s the obligation to be directly in harm’s way, and now, Minseok has the slightest inkling that the initial etched into Wang Jackson’s skin has something to do with the bigger picture of the other side. Maybe it’s a bond with a member of Big Bang, or maybe it’s a bond with a subordinate, such as the man who shot Yixing by mere luck.

But the other side has a stronger connection between the gangs, and if Big Bang gets involved, Red may show up. And if Red shows up, they could fulfill SHINee’s demands.

“We know that they now know Red is the target,” Minseok sips from his cup of coffee, icing his other wrist that had gotten twisted when the metal frames had collapsed on him. He had been lucky that the only think that hit him was a rather light box filled with packing foam and nothing else. Yixing, however, had suffered a graze to the thigh that was healing quickly. Much to his wife’s distress, a bullet had ricocheted off a rafter to give him a minor injury, making him fall and crash into a structure covered in dust and plastic wrap, which had cushioned his fall by stretching and then giving away under Yixing’s weight.

No harm, no foul. But again, Yixing’s wife doesn’t govern herself by the same rules. She’s been catering to his every need, even though Yixing is already up and walking. Sehun still finds himself disliking her.

“We know that Red will probably be hidden away. But we don’t know what would draw Red out.”

“Are we sure that the man that shot Yixing is GOT7’s subordinate?” Sehun twists his mouth in thought, scanning the marked map that holds their knowledge of the other side’s holdings.

“He could be Big Bang’s subordinates.” Minseok nods, swirling the dregs in his mug. “Maybe even 2ne1’s. Logically, he probably has no weight, so I’m not sure why he would have stumbled across a sniper rifle. That takes more skill.”

“Did we have any cameras outside the warehouse?”

“I wish,” Minseok sighs, nodding at Sehun. “We had a time limitation and a technology limitation. As much as I wish Red herself was the blood bond, that’s unlikely if she didn’t show up.”

Junmyeon s