“B-but––”

“Please, Vixen, there’s no time. We’ll discuss what’ll happen next when you get here, but I don’t want you getting ratted out, much more for a crime you didn’t even commit. Hurry.”

Gripping onto her bag that had her take out in it, Kyungwon makes a sharp turn on her heel, brisk walking past the neighboring apartment doors and back into the flight of stairs, but this time descending. She thinks that, at this point, there should be a barrage of thoughts flooding into her mind, but she draws nothing more but a blank slate– let alone the lone word repeating, over and over again, in her head: Why? Why, why, why?

She goes at a steady pace, not getting any faster nor slower, as she pivots her way through the big city crowds. She’s not quite sure why, but she avoids every single person’s gaze, as if she’s guilty of the crime she’s probably going to get accused of on a nationwide scale in no time. Her palms render sweaty, and that doesn’t even happen even when she’s on a deathly drift towards the finish line. The rain is no more, but she can somehow hear its taunting crash against everything and everyone– an uncontrollable ticking but in threatening multitudes. The worst part has to be how she hasn’t even gotten to smoke the pack she got to buy.

In no time, she’s standing by the garage. She pulls up her collar and lowers her head out of instinct, ducking as she enters the premises. Her gang members crowd around her, asking her if she’s alright– or at least they attempt to. Kyungwon knew where she was headed; she trudges right past doors and offices and people.

Once the glass window of Seungcheol’s office came into view, she looks at him with a piercing gaze right off the bat. She notes at how Eunwoo is seated there, against one of the couches– and right next to her another girl, unfamiliar, clad in Eunwoo’s university’s uniform.

“What the is happening, Cheol?” The door hits the wall that stops it from opening any further, resulting in a loud bang, drawing the attention of everybody in the proximity. “Who put that dead body in my apartment?” Her eyes scan the room, and she pays particular attention to the stranger seated next to Eunwoo, “and who the is this? Are we dragging random civilians– let alone students– into this mess?”

“... Vixen.” Seungcheol stands from his swiveling chair, sending a punch to the wooden table erect right in front of him, causing another loud bang. “Can you calm the down? Everyone’s at a loss, too!”

“Calm down? Calm down?!”

“I’m telling you to calm the down!” Another punch on the table, this time making a bit of the flimsy wood chip off the main structure. Blood draws from Seungcheol’s knuckles, and he’s speaking through grit teeth. “This here,” he shamelessly raises an arm, index finger pointing directly at the student next to Eunwoo, “is Yaebin. She’s somebody Eunwoo took home this afternoon, and inevitably saw the bloodbath. So now we can’t let her go because she might run ."

“I– I p-promise, I won’t, I won’t I-I really won’t…” Yaebin snakes her arms around one of Eunwoo’s evidently scared. One could only imagine the culture shock she was going through– blood, and banging, and shouting, all in a span of three hours time. Eunwoo’s still seemingly dazed from what she had seen– sure, she’s seen corpses before, but never that gruesomely dealt with.

“But we can’t be sure of that.” Seungcheol calms down a little, and he wipes the blood oozing out of the slight cuts on his knuckles onto the worn fabric of his denim jacket. “We won’t harm you, Yaebin.” He takes a few steps closer to the girl who was evidently shaking in fear. She looks anywhere else but into the bloodshot eyes of Choi Seungcheol. “But rest assured I’m going to be doing everything to keep those pretty little lips of yours shut about what you just saw.” He reaches forward, swiping his thumb against the younger girl’s lower lip.

“... Don’t touch her, Choi.” Kyungwon sneers at her superior, and shoves him to the side so that she’d be in front of Yaebin instead. She reaches forth, fingers raking through the jet black locks of her long, silky hair– as if to console the terrified young girl despite herself. “I’ll be the one to make sure of that.”
 

The room assigned to them in the turf was rather shabby and poorly lit, but nothing too different from the apartment they usually resided in. Kyungwon had already calmed down, a smoke sitting against the in-between of her middle finger and index finger. She was trying to be rational, thinking things through.

They had agreed upon their stations for the evening– Kyungwon on the bunk bed on top of Eunwoo’s, and Yaebin stays on a separate couch. Seungcheol tells them they’ll provide better quarters in the coming days, but Kyungwon says don’t bother– and by the tone of Seungcheol, she’s almost sure that they were going to have to stay there for the next few days as the necessary members of their gang do their due diligence of finding out who did this, and what their intentions were.

Kyungwon takes a long whiff from her cigarette, and blows it into the ceiling. She’s sure Eunwoo’s out cold– probably exhausted from the mental stress brought about their situation– and she knows Yaebin is wide awake, still trembling, agitated, confused.

“You Eunwoo’s classmate?” Kyungwon mutters, cigar settled in between her lips. The younger girl turns on her side to be facing Kyungwon, arms around herself protectively, nodding.

“Look, I’m sorry we got you into this, but the stakes are high. I might end up in jail if you mention anything about what you saw– even if you said I wasn’t there before you guys stumbled across the body. Our justice system like that.” She taps the ashes off of her cigarette, watching as they gracefully cascade onto the ground. “‘Sides, the front door guard saw you enter with Eunwoo. You could get in trouble, too. She could get in trouble, too,” she gestures towards Eunwoo. “Wouldn’t want that.”

“A-are you Eunwoo’s sister?”

Kyungwon scoffs at the prospect, takes another sharp inhale of her cigarette, breathing out her response, “you could say that.”

“You’re Kyungwon, aren’t you?”

The older girl pauses for a moment, then nods.

“She talks about you a ton. L-like you’re her partner in crime.”

“Well,” Kyungwon drops what remains of her cigarette onto the ground, then jumps off from the bunk, making sure her foot lands on it so the fire is put off, “it is like that.” She turns to look over at Eunwoo, noting at her soft snoring, laughing a little. Heaving a soft sigh, she lowers herself back to be seated on the spot on Eunwoo’s bed she hasn’t taken up.

“... They…” Yaebin pauses, bringing her hand up, biting on her nails out of habit, “they’re not going to let us out any time soon… What about m-my family? Will Eunwoo and I be able to resume schooling?”

“Not on Seungcheol’s watch.” Kyungwon replies darkly, resting her elbows on her knees and looking directly into the ground. “He’s the big boss here. He calls the shots. If he doesn’t think it’s safe to let you return to your family… then, well, we’ll be your family for now. If it were up to me...”

“W-what…” Yaebin’s voice is thick with disbelief. “Y-you can’t do this to me!” Tears start to stream down her cheeks, and her breathing renders erratic. “Y-you have to let me out! I– You– Y-you have to!” She gets up from previously being on the bed, and takes tipsy-like steps towards Kyungwon, as if the energy was being out of her legs. “P-please… help me get out…” Her fingers curl up into little fists, and she weakly sends punches towards Kyungwon’s knees. “I can’t just leave everybody behind like that…”

“Oh, kid.” Kyungwon reaches forth, hand resting on the distressed girl’s head. “There are some things that we never really leave behind.Think of it this way– if you try anything funny, your family and quite possibly your friends, too, are going to get dragged into this ridiculous, absolutely cliché, underground gang wars of the ty part of Seoul. If we try to escape, the Foxes will try to kill your entire kin. If the Foxes sets you free, and you run your mouth, the Ghouls will come for your throat. It’s better this way.”

“T-there has to be a w-way…” Yaebin was a mess of tears at this point, holding onto the fabric of Kyungwon’s jacket, gazing into her eyes as if there was a solution to their problem embedded in them.

“Not right now, there isn’t. I’m sorry.” A pang on her temple formed, and there was this powerful urge to reach into her bag for another cigarette. She wanted to smoke the stress away, if that were at all possible.

Two knocks on the metal door to their quarters were then heard– but it was rather useless, considering how two people– a man and a woman– came barging in without consent anyway. Kyungwon lifts her gaze from the younger girl, and onto a familiar set of dark brown pupils– sharp and intimidating as always. “Park. Kwon.” She slurs out, causing Yaebin to avert her gaze to the two behind her.

Park Siyeon was the Foxes’ specialist when it came to guns. Looming behind her was a nearly seven foot tall Kwon Hyunbin, who was on top of everything brawns in all matters Fox-related (he sported glasses with the thickest lenses, which Kyungwon always found unconventional).

“Look what the vixen dragged in.” Hyunbin uttered in his baritone tonality, an arm crossing over the other as he looks at Yaebin as if she’s something good enough to feast on. “Is she… who big boss calls trouble, babe?”

Kyungwon holds back the urge to spit directly at the much taller, better built man’s face. “ing hell, Hyunbin. Don’t call me that.” She starts, sneering through grit teeth. “And, yes, I assume that would be her. She introduced herself Yaebin.”

“Woah, how long has she been out cold?” Siyeon interjects, followed by a long, high-pitched whistle. Kyungwon assumes she was talking about Eunwoo, still without consciousness behind her.

“She passed out the second we got assigned here. The stress might’ve caused a sensory overload of some sort. Let her rest for the time being.”

“Poor girl. Always knew she was weak-willed. Jelly-stomached.” She turns to Hyunbin, “I heard she vomited when she set eyes on the gruesome murder of Shin Wonho.” And they share a laughter quite devious, and definitely uncalled for.

“You don’t know what she’s been through, what she’s seen. Give her a break.” Kyungwon tries her utmost to keep her mien of nonchalance, but the duo was just getting on her nerves– even much more than Seungcheol did a while ago. She sports an expression quite vague, and generally unreadable; after all, not one person in the Foxes knew of Eunwoo and Kyungwon’s tight bond. “What were you guys sent here for, anyway?”

Hyunbin’s expression becomes a little more dim, and his stance a bit more square. He raises a hand, pushing up his glasses that had been sliding off of his nose, his dark, abyss-like gaze moving across the room, as though scanning it. “It’s about lil’ miss trouble here. We were sent to make sure she has no communication left with the outside world. If she did, that could foil whatever plan big boss is cooking up to save you two’s asses.”

Yaebin perks up, blinking in profuse, before crawling with arms and legs towards the couch that had been called her bed. Her movements were erratic, and her actions were obviously not given as much thought as they should be. With shaking hands, she reaches into the bag she had managed to bring along with her, desperately patting through the things inside of it, in search of her phone. Once she finally grabbed it, she crawls to the corner of the room, cradling the device in her hands. “You’ll never take it from me. I– I’ll call my mom. I’ll call her r-right now. I-I’ll rat all you crazy people out.”

“Yaebin. Just give it to them.” Kyungwon quips, standing up. She looks at the two Foxes, then the girl who was a mess of tears in alternation. There was a wicked smile that settled on Park Siyeon’s cherry pink-stained lips.

“You’re going to have to comply, trouble.” Siyeon takes a big step towards the cowering girl, and motes of dust emerge from the ground and into the air. From Kyungwon’s perspective, everything seems to have slowed down– the way Siyeon reaches into the scabbard clamped around her leg (the one Kyungwon had failed to notice prior), how she twirls the pistol by the trigger guard against her index finger and eventually holds onto the grip, muzzle pointed directly against the helpless girl. “Hand it over.”

Yaebin shouts, absolutely terrified. But her grip on her phone only tightens even more, as streams of tears continue to flow from her eyes. She chants continuously how she wants to wake up, how everyone there is crazy, how she was going to ing die right then and there. Kyungwon’s senses hadn’t caught up yet, but she sees the devil-like simper forming on Hyunbin’s thick lips. A sight she’s seen before, she’s sure of it– that was the day she first laid eyes on a bloodied corpse, shot through the head by Siyeon herself after Hyunbin had relentlessly beat that person up ‘til they were pretty much black and blue. In a word, they seemed heartless. Recalling that memory renders Kyungwon dizzy, and she’s sure she’s about to pass out cold.

“Are you ing crazy, Siyeon?” Right before Kyungwon loses consciousness, she hears the shriek of Eunwoo from behind her. Her eyes are bloodshot, brows furrowed together, managing to get the attention of everyone in the room. “Put the gun away.” She murmurs, her voice insistent but inevitably faltering.

And then there was nothing else but a crystal clear, high-pitched laughter that could be heard inside that very room. It was from nobody else but Siyeon herself. She places a hand right underneath the pistol she held up, finger smoothing over the magazine release, showcasing how the gun hadn’t been loaded. “Calm down, Nunu. Just trying to get the job done.” She sing-songs in an endearing yet obviously mocking way. After pushing the magazine back into where it had been originally lodged, she heaves a heavy sigh and sheathes the pistol back into the scabbard.

“Yaebin.” Eunwoo calls out for her schoolmate, attempting to seem as calm as possible. “Just give them the phone. The smartest thing to do now is to cooperate.”

And that did the trick– Yaebin set her phone down on the floor, and slid it over to the two Foxes who still stood tall, looks of amusement painted across their faces.

“Good girl.” Hyunbin murmurs, leaning down to pick up the device, and immediately putting it inside the pocket of his jacket. “Seungcheol will be with you shortly. He’ll let you know the most we could find out about the entire situation, and what’re the necessary precautions you guys have to make next.” He pauses, and turns to a still dazed Kyungwon, “by the looks of it, Shin Wonho’s body was planted by the Ghouls themselves to frame you and Eunwoo. But we’re not quite sure yet.”

“‘Til then, behave, kids.” Siyeon says, a smile on her face as she turns on her heel and makes her way to exit the room. “And don’t try anything funny, really. Like Nunu said, it’s for the best at the moment.”