Bzzzzzz.

Shoving a sleepy Baekbaek off her chest, Yoojung d for her phone. What the - who’s calling me in the middle of the night?

“Hello?”

“Yoojung! Yoojung! You won’t believe what I’ve found! I got really hungry and found this advertisement for this new place that serves really good Japanese curry and tonkatsu and -”

“Lay?” Baekbaek’s ears perked up at the name, and Yoojung had to push him off the bed to stop him from lunging for the phone. “Baekbaek, stop it!”

“Oh yeah. Hiya, it’s me.” Just from hearing his voice over the phone, Yoojung could see the sheepish grin making its way to Lay’s face as he scratched his neck.

She rubbed at her eyes and glanced at the clock. 2 A.M. “Um, why are you calling me so early in the morning?”

“Well you didn’t let me finish! Like I was saying, I found this new Japanese curry restaurant that serves curry by the bucketful and five-kilogram servings of tonkatsu. It would be perfect for your next mukbang broadcast, so -”

Although exhausted and still rather confused, Yoojung couldn’t help the exasperated chortle escaping . After that night when she had broke down over the hot chocolate (for the second time), Lay had managed to wheedle her cell phone number out of her with promises to bring food that would make up for the hot chocolate, since, as he put it, “we must have offended the hot chocolate gods in some past life.” (Yoojung rather agreed with that last statement; she had never thought there could be so many barriers to drinking hot chocolate).

Honestly, if she had been in a calmer state of mind that night, she would never have given Lay her number. When she woke up the next morning and realized what she’d done, the feeling was probably comparable to what other people felt after a drunken one-night stand, she decided.

If nothing else, though, Lay had kept his promises. Since the hot chocolate crisis, he’d shown up at her apartment with an entire white strawberry tart the first day, four liters of bubble tea the second day, and six kilograms of Chinese meat buns the third day (he ate them with her, looking like the cat that got the cream all the while, but he still claimed they couldn’t hold a candle to fresh-made buns in China. Yoojung figured he was probably right).

Aside from the food, Lay made great company, even if he was a little odd. I’ve never met such a chatterbox before, Yoojung thought. He’d probably make a great swimmer, with how few breaths he seems to take. And I don’t think anyone can follow his train of thought but him. But it’s alright, because he doesn’t expect anyone to.

“Yoojung? What do you say? Do you want to go?” His excited voice buzzed in her ear, startling her back to the present.

“Eh?”

“Do you want to go with me?”

I still have no idea what he just said, Yoojung realized, feeling awfully bad for completely tuning him out. Ah, whatever.

“Um, yeah, sure.”

“Great! I’ll be over to pick you up in fifteen minutes then. See you soon!” He hung up, leaving Yoojung reeling.

Wait, wait, wait, where am I going? And in fifteen minutes? Fifteen minutes?

Flailing, she shoved Baekbaek off her stomach from where he had managed to clamber back on. “Baekbaek, get off me, quick! I’ve got to change!”

---

“Oh hey, Lu!” Yixing jammed the phone between his ear and shoulder, struggling to search for his wallet with one hand and zip up his jeans with the other. “Mind if I call you back later? I’m going out right now.”

“No, Yixing, I -”

“Can’t talk, there’s a mountain of tonkatsu curry waiting for me right now!”

“Xing, the apart-”

“Dammit, these aren’t my good jeans! Where are my good jeans?” Spotting a heap of crumpled denim on the floor, he brightened. “Aha! Here’s a word of advice for you, Lu -- don’t spill pomegranate juice on your jeans unless you want to dye them pink. I swear, these stains -”

“Yixing! Our cover’s been blown!”

“ - never come out unless you own the Hercules of all washing machines, and even then - wait, what?”

When Luhan spoke again, he sounded more anxious than Yixing had ever heard him sound before, notwithstanding when Xiumin had first gone missing. “I don’t know what the hell happened, but Kim Joonmyun found my apartment in Songdo, and Kris says he’s set up a spiderweb of cameras and bugs all around it and -”

“Lu, where are you?” Jeans forgotten, Yixing abandoned his search for his wallet and clutched the phone, hands trembling. Hundreds of situations, all involving Luhan being captured by Joonmyun and eventually MSS bombarded him, leaving him dizzy and slightly nauseated. “What’s happening? Are you safe? Do you have a place to spend the night? Do you need me to wire you some money? Have you got -”

“I’m fine, Xing,” Luhan interrupted, voice soothing, and Yixing nearly collapsed in relief. “I’m with Tao, we’re in my car, and he’s going to find us a place to stay until things settle down.”

“Thank God.”

A pause. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you quite like that.” In the background, Yixing heard Tao’s muted voice mumbling something, and Luhan sighed. “We’re not in danger, just disturbed by the situation. Something really strange is at work that I don’t understand, and you know how much I hate being disoriented.”

That much was true. Luhan had always been the most frustrated when their team was sent into missions blind back in their MSS days, Yixing thought.

“Why is Kim Joonmyun getting involved in this at any rate?” he asked, slumping against the foot of his bed. “And why now? Isn’t it strange that he showed up at your apartment right after his brother and Im Chaeyoung left?”

Luhan grunted. “I don’t know. That’s what’s bothering me so much. Kris is doing his best to figure that piece out while Tao and I track our two ex-hostages. Honestly, I don’t care what Kim Joonmyun does as long as he does it after we get those letters back and save Xiumin.”

Shame, unbidden and unwelcomed, tugged at Yixing’s stomach. Luhan sounded so exhausted, so world-weary, and here Yixing was, blabbering on about going out on a tonkatsu curry date with the sister of the girl he had failed to kidnap. What a failure he was.

Wait. Date?

He slapped himself. Maybe 2 A.M. really was too early for him to be thinking clearly.

“Can’t I help you somehow?” he asked, returning his attention to the issue at hand. “Kris is busy tracking the letters, watching Kim Joonmyun, and monitoring all our cameras at the same time, and you know how delicate his situation is. And you and Tao have your hands full tracking Jongdae and Chaeyoung."

“Xing,” Luhan said, a faint note of weariness entering his voice that somehow made Yixing feel even guiltier. “Xing, we’ve talked about this already. The best place for you right now is where you are, watching the other Im girl.”

“But what use is it?” Yixing couldn’t help but ask, feeling like a young boy chasing after the older agents again. “Yoojung’s not really involved in this. She doesn’t know anything about the cameras or the true nature of h