Misook was awoken in the middle of the night by a hand being clamped over and her beside light being . She didn’t scream, but she did throw a ‘you better explain yourself’ look at Jongin as he stared at her. 

“Jongin! What are you doing here? Where the hell have you been?” She hissed quietly as he removed his hand and took a step back. 

“I need you to do me a favour,” he answered urgently. “I know you’ll listen to my story, and I know Kris will listen to you, so I’ll tell you everything as long as you promise to get Kris off my back.” 

Misook wasn’t aware of what time it was nor how long Jongin had been in her room before she’d woken up, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon. Sitting herself up she took a breath. 

“Jongin, it’s the middle of the night.” She muttered. Keeping Kris off his back would take a lot of effort. Effort she wasn’t sure she had at this hour. 

He groaned, rubbing his head. “Yes, I know it’s the middle of the night, but I couldn’t sneak back in during the day without being seen. Chen has cameras everywhere.” 

“Chen?” 

“Jongdae,” he corrected.

“You know his cameras work at night, right?” 

Misook wanted to laugh at the colour draining from Jongin’s face, but before she got the chance to there was a quiet knock on the door. Both pairs of eyes shot to the door as the sound of someone entering the override code drew their attention. Speak of the devil, Jongdae waltzed in like it was his own room and didn’t even look surprised when he laid eyes on Jongin. 

“You know sneaking in through the emergency exit is both stupid and risky, Jongin.” Said Jongdae. “But what surprises me more is that you know where it is.” 

The room fell into silence as the two boys stared at each other. Misook flicked her eyes from one to the other, waiting for one of them to speak, but when neither did she rolled out of bed and paced to the bathroom. 

She decided that letting the boys talk it out without her within earshot was a better idea than them trying to talk in code, so she remained in the bathroom, eyes falling shut every now and then until one of them knocked on the door a while later. 

“I’ve told Jongin to go back to his room. You might wanna go talk to Kris before he finds out he’s here, no doubt he’ll be in a sour mood about it come morning and I think we’d both prefer it if he wasn’t stomping around the base for the foreseeable future.” 

“What makes you think he’s gonna be in a better mood if I speak to him?” Misook wasn’t entirely sure what superpowers the boy thought she had but she’d sure like to know what he’d been taking for him to come to that conclusion. 

“Something tells me you’re his voice of reason, Sweetheart.” 

Misook wrinkled her nose at him, “Highly doubt that.” 

Jongdae had returned to whatever he was doing before he’d shown up at her door before Misook decided it was time to alert Kris of Jongin’s presence. Jongdae had relayed what Jongin had told him, and she’d gone over it in her head a few times to make sure she had all the specific details and what exactly she was going to tell Kris, but even that hadn’t convinced her that he was going to take it very badly. 

Taking a breath she knocked on Kris’s door three times. Kris answered the door in no time at all, as if he’d been awake for a while and was waiting for her. The only indications that he’d been asleep were his oversized t-shirt and his messy hair, other than that he could’ve walked straight out of an important business meeting with how alert he was. 

“You might wanna sit down,” Misook said as he let her in. 

Kris closed the door and went to sit beside her on the bed. He had a look of curiosity spread across his features, but Misook could sense that it went deeper than that, and something told her that what she was about to tell him was somehow old news. 

“Jongin is—“ 

“Back? I know.” He cut her off. 

She raised an eyebrow. “And you’re okay with that?”

“I figured he had a good enough reason for disappearing, no need to take it further.” He answered in a casual tone. 

Misook didn’t know how to respond. It definitely wasn’t the reaction she was expecting, so much so she had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. 

“Okay…” she eyed him warily. “Is that all you’re gonna say? Can I go back to bed?” 

She didn’t even make it back to her own room. 

Misook slept in a lot later than she’d planned to, not fully rising until way past midday and only when she was woken up by someone knocking on the door to her — wait no, Kris’s — bedroom. Kris wasn’t in the room when she slipped out from