“Oh god, I can’t believe this,” Kibum moaned for the fifth time in a row, his face still hidden in his hands.

The moment the glass had broken and shards had been everywhere, Jonghyun and Jinki had jumped at the same time, the younger to pick up the sharp pieces from the floor and the older to assist Kibum.

“Take your hands away from your eyes, Bummie, what if there’s glass stuck in your skin,” Jinki quietly pleaded, his voice thick with despair as Jonghyun pushed the shards around with his glove-covered hand.

Taemin, who had just been sitting and watching without a word, appeared to be completely frozen, his eyes huger than ever. When he glanced up, Jonghyun briefly wondered how the maknae hadn’t started to tear up yet after staring at Kibum for almost a minute without blinking once.

But Taemin wasn’t about to cry – he just looked scared, incredibly scared and helpless as he watched his hyungs clean up the mess Kibum had made.

“There, there.”

Jinki had carefully pulled a tiny shard of glass out of Kibum’s hand, rubbing the injured skin which was only a little red and not even bleeding.

“That could have gotten into your eye and we’d have been in big trouble.”

“We are in big trouble, Jinki. Minho is gone.”

Kibum’s tone was so icy and void of affection that hearing it pierce through the walls of his head made shivers run down Jonghyun’s spine. The short man quickly got up from the floor, standing in front of the pile of glass to keep anyone from accidentally stepping on it.

Meanwhile Kibum had started to run his hand through his carefully styled hair, his fingers messing up the strands he had brushed and blowdried with so much care that day, though the diva couldn’t care less. There was only one thing on his mind right now, a boy whose name was Choi Minho and who hadn’t returned home today. Kibum felt sick.

“He’s probably fine,” Jonghyun quickly said, masking his own worry by pushing it to the very back of his mind and trying to think positively instead, something that didn’t come to him easily even on good days. “Maybe- He’s sleeping over at a friend’s place! He went to school earlier.”

“Oh god,” Kibum groaned, face in his hands again, “he would’ve told us. Something must have happened, we have to look for him, I have to-“

Before anyone could move a muscle the boy with the usually perfect attire had stood up straight, clothes wrinkled and makeup messed, yet Kibum looked ready to storm out of the apartment and search the streets for a trace Minho had left.

“Stop it, Kibum, right now!”

Jinki had grabbed Kibum’s arm in a swift motion that Jonghyun hadn’t even known the oldest was capable of, being the slowest of them all usually. However, now his hands were grasping Kibum’s wrists tightly, fingers easily digging into the skin layer of skin that covered and protected the younger boy’s bones.

Kibum hissed at the feeling of fingernails piercing into his flesh, yet Jinki never let go, his eyes as fiery as Kibum’s voice had been cold just now.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he spat, his words leaving no room for arguing. “There is no ing point in looking for Minho out there, where are we even supposed to start? I haven’t seen him since he went to school at noon and-”

“But we need to do something!” Kibum was hysterical now, his voice higher than usual and on the verge of breaking.

Jonghyun watched with a slack jaw as the younger boy glared at Jinki, his deadly gaze piercing through the oldest not making him yield. He had never seen Kibum more upset, in all three years of knowing him and almost two of living with him – and Jonghyun knew for sure that an angry Kibum was capable of many things.

Jinki seemed to be a good match for him, though, which he kept proving now, despite his normal quietness. In this exact moment, he was staring Kibum down like he had never known any fear, the skinny boy almost visibly shrinking under Jinki’s strong gaze.

“We don’t even know what happened,” the oldest said, keeping his voice absolutely calm and void of emotion. “For all we know, it could be like Jonghyun said. Minho knows how to survive, Kibum. Maybe he just needed some time away. Maybe he needed freetime.”

Kibum wildly shook his head, his face white like a sheet except for the tips of his ears, which were flaming red.

“He would have told us!” he insisted and everyone could tell he was panicking by the shrill tone of his voice. “I can’t keep sitting here and doing nothing when I know Minho may be somewhere out there, hurt or lost or whatever. What if someone mugged him? What if we’re losing precious time right now? We need to-“

“Would you ing stop already? Taemin is crying!”

Jonghyun’s angry shout effectively shut Kibum up as everyone’s eyes landed on the maknae. What Jonghyun had said was true. Silent tears had started to leave Taemin’s eyes and roll down his cheeks, dripping onto the shirt he was wearing without a single noise.

The youngest’ eyes were weirdly empty and even when Jinki ran over to pull him into a hug, worried that he had scared Taemin with his uncharacteristic behavior, the small boy hardly reacted. It took a lot of quiet whispering from Jonghyun’s side until the maknae’s head fell against Jinki’s shoulder and he broke down, sobs racking through his frail body.

Only an hour ago, the dancer had been on top of the world but now his thoughts were whirling inside his head, worry gnawing at his soul.

Kibum didn’t say anything after Taemin started crying and he didn’t try to escape either. Instead he started to bite down on his bottom lip, an action he usually scolded Minho for at least once a day, his face still pale. Hadn’t Jonghyun been so focused on Taemin, he would have noticed that Kibum’s face was covered in cold sweat and that his heart was racing, but right now the second oldest only saw the distraught maknae in front of him.

Over and over, Jonghyun and Jinki assured Taemin that they had exaggerated before, that their reaction had not been appropriate in this situation. They told him that there was no reason to worry yet – unlike the four of them, Minho did have a home he could return to – and that they would wait until the morning.

Of course they had to wait – even Kibum knew that. The boy seemed to have given up on the idea of looking for Minho outside, but when Jinki tried to coax him into going to bed with Jonghyun after Taemin had finally cried himself to sleep, he refused.

“I’ll keep sitting here till he’s back. There’s no way I’m moving.”

His voice sounded weirdly pressed so Jinki let him be, only glancing at him once before returning to his couch. That night it was hard for the oldest to fall asleep but surprisingly easy for Jonghyun, whose insomnia had been terrible lately.

However, the initial panic about Minho’s whereabouts and the exhaustion that came afterwards made him pass out the moment his head hit the pillow. Of course he had to pay the price when he awoke at four in the morning and immediately knew he wouldn’t get another minute of sleep.

Getting up to fix himself a cup of coffee, Jonghyun’s gaze wandered around the dorm only for him to find everything the same as before. There was no sign of Minho anywhere, Taemin was still curled up around the missing boy’s pillow looking incredibly tiny and sad, and Kibum’s slumped figure was sitting on the carpet by the door, his head leaning against the wooden frame.

Quietly Jonghyun tip-toed over to him to find the boy asleep, his face beautiful yet ghostly and blank. Without hesitating, Jonghyun scooped Kibum up in his arms and carried him over to their bed, a frown appearing on his face when he noticed how cold the younger’s skin felt against his own.

Kibum really must have sat there the whole night, Jonghyun realized while brewing his cup of coffee. He had always worried too much.

His heart ached at the thought, but he barely noticed it, too used to the sensation to be surprised by it.

Jonghyun spent the next hour before Taemin and Kibum were supposed to get up sipping his coffee while trying to keep his body still. While he hadn’t made it as clear as Kibum yesterday, he was still more than worried about Minho’s sudden disappearance. They all knew it wasn’t like the tall boy to vanish just like that.

Jonghyun himself had quite a history of running away and Kibum sometimes left for a few hours to cool down after a fight, but Jonghyun did not recall Minho ever disappearing, especially not so out of the blue. The short boy kept thinking and wondering, his head almost catching fire from the countless questions.

At five Jinki joined him, but it was clear to Jonghyun that the older had been lying awake for a while. The two boys were truly a sad sight this morning, their slumped over figures sitting at the table, their gazes devoid of hope. None of them had the slightest idea what to do and they knew it would only get worse when Taemin and Kibum got up.

It seemed that the maknae’s inner clock still woke him right in time for him to get ready to school, or he simply couldn’t sleep anymore. The young boy silently got out of the bed that had felt too big for him last night without the space-consuming yet familiar body lying next to him.

When Taemin turned up at the table, his eyes were red and mascara splotches were scattered all over his cheeks that hadn’t even lost their baby fat yet. Without a word, Jonghyun offered Taemin the chocolate cereal Kibum had been against buying and the youngest reluctantly accepted it, picking up little pieces straight from the package.

Suddenly he stopped eating.

“What’s gonna happen now?”

Both Jonghyun and Jinki jumped – however, they were not surprised. Taemin had simply voiced out what the two of them had been thinking and now the maknae was looking at them with big, empty eyes as if they knew the answer to his question.

“I don’t know,” Jinki truthfully responded, sounding much less confident than last night when facing Kibum. “We need to find out why Minho didn’t turn up yesterday. It’s possible that he left because he was upset, but I have no idea why.”

“He’s been really irritable lately,” Jonghyun slowly added. “I didn’t dare to ask him what was going on, though, he seemed like he’d snap at me.”

“I feel sick.”

Taemin had turned even paler than before, pushing the cereal away from his body. Jinki instinctively looked around for a bowl or something similar in case the youngest was going to throw up, but although Taemin looked terribly unwell, nothing happened.

They didn’t dare to continue their conversation afterwards and chose to get ready in silence instead. Kibum, who was also up by now, didn’t utter a single word before leaving the flat, which had never happened before. After him, Taemin left, his hand clutching the strings of his backpack so tightly as if it was the only thing keeping him upright.

Both Jinki and Jonghyun felt sick to their gut as well by now, but they had no choice but to open the coffee shop like any other day. The last thing they needed were more financial problems on top of their personal ones, and the oldest two were too responsible to risk the financial safety they were currently living in.

Half of the day passed by without any strange occurrences. Jinki tried his best to provide the customers with his usual warm smile, but the atmosphere in the shop still stayed strangely negative all morning, especially when Jonghyun clumsily dropped two coffee cups in a row.

At school, Kibum could hardly hear what the teacher was saying, his hands shaking too much to hold a pen. He felt so nervous that he feared he was going to have a panic attack before lunch if Minho didn’t magically re-appear. The fact that his hysterical reaction had made Taemin cry last night didn’t soothe his anxiety in the slightest, especially as he knew the youngest could only be doing worse than him.

In his own classroom, Taemin just tried to endure his lessons somehow without thinking. He couldn’t think as his brain would immediately come up with the cruelest scenarios and most horrible reasons why Minho hadn’t come home, so Taemin refused to think even if he got detention for it.

Although he had refused to eat breakfast, Taemin still felt sick at lunchtime so he decided to wander around the school grounds instead in an attempt to distract himself. He kept strolling for a while, feeling more like a tumbling leaf than a human in charge of their own body, but suddenly he saw something that made him freeze on the spot.

Taemin blinked once, twice before looking again, narrowing his eyes to slits like he wasn’t sure if he was seeing the right thing. When the sight in front of him didn’t change after three seconds, his heart stopped.

Minho was standing in front of him, tall and handsome as ever. However, something was still different about the boy and the expression he was wearing was one Taemin had never seen before. Minho looked terribly upset, like something bad had just happened, and Taemin immediately wondered if it was his fault.

He opened his mouth only to close it again in fear of throwing up his dinner from yesterday. His legs felt weak from the shock of spotting Minho so suddenly and he didn’t trust his body anymore when he heard the older boy call his name.

“Taemin.”

His voice sounded rough and scratchy like Taemin’s had this morning, but the maknae had been crying all night so it was no wonder. Oddly enough, Minho’s eyes looked a bit red, too, but most importantly they filled up with a dangerous fire as soon as the boy had been noticed by Taemin.

“Taemin, come with me, quick!” Minho hissed. “I need you right now!”

Without giving Taemin time to make his own decision, let alone protest against his plans, Minho had reached out and grabbed Taemin’s wrist, pulling the perplexed boy along with him. The younger was too thunderstruck by the bizarreness of the whole situation to do anything other than run, even forgetting to cry like he wanted to the moment he spotted Minho.

The two boys were hurrying, running, their two athletic and muscular pairs of legs carrying them far away from the school. Minho didn’t let Taemin pick up his bag from his homeroom and the younger didn’t ask either, his tongue tied as he sprinted alongside the previously missing boy.

It was only when Taemin’s lungs were burning and he was gasping for breath when Minho abruptly stopped in front of a tall house with multiple stories. When he looked around with a frown, Taemin realized he had never been anywhere around here before. The street didn’t look familiar in the slightest, the young boy immediately noticing that the people who lived here were a lot wealthier than he could ever dream of being.

“Hyung-“ Taemin started, but Minho cut him off by placing a single finger on his lips.

The maknae became silent. He had understood that he was in no place to talk right now.

After glancing around as if to check if he was seen by anyone, Minho took a few steps towards the door and, to Taemin’s surprise, the tall boy pulled out a key the next second, creating a way for them to enter the building.

The two silently made their way up the stairs, Taemin’s only worry being that the others would think he went missing, too, and after two storys they stopped in front of a wooden door which Minho opened as well.

Taemin had to swallow down the lump in his throat when he stepped through the door and into the unfamiliar apartment which he now assumed belonged to Minho’s family. He still had no idea what he was doing here, but Minho seemed to know and that was enough for now.

The older casually slipped out of his shoes and advanced into the hallway while constantly keeping an eye on his surroundings. At first it seemed like no one was home, but then a shrill and unpleasant voice rang out to the two boys, making them stop on their track.

“Choi Minho, what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at school? Who did you even bring here, god, I really can’t believe you! Didn’t we talk about this just yesterday?”

A second later a middle-aged lady emerged from one of the rooms to the boys’ right, disappointment and anger written all over her face as she hurried towards her son.

“How dare you leave school again, Minho?!” she questioned harshly, making her son’s neutral expression morph into a scowl.

“You wouldn’t listen to me yesterday, so I had to show you!” Minho tried to defend himself, yet his voice wasn’t as stable as it was whenever he fought with Kibum in the kitchen. “You don’t even know my side of the story and-“

“I don’t need your side of the story, Minho!”

The woman threw a wary glance at Taemin but then decided not to let his presence bother her, going on with her scolding.

“I am your mother and I make the rules! Yesterday, your father and I had to find out that you’ve been lying to us for over a year, that instead of living with your cousin like you said you would you decided to leave school and do whatever-“

“I’m working at a coffee shop!” Minho interrupted her, his voice lighting up with anger. “I’m helping my hyungs and we worked hard to build it up on our own! Don’t you dare belittle what we did!”

The lady huffed, quite obviously unimpressed by what her son was saying.

“I don’t care that you work there, Minho, you’re not even 17 yet, your place is at school! You need a decent home! We talked about this yesterday, we will not let you live with some runaway delinquents and-“

“ing listen to me already! Look, see this little guy here? That’s Taemin!”

Without a warning Minho pushed Taemin forward, using so much force that the younger boy could hardly avoid stumbling and falling right in front of Minho’s enraged mother. He tried to make himself look as small as possible under her penetrating, cold glare, curling into himself and looking at the floor instead of her.

“So? Please elaborate, son. Tell me why you brought this child here.”

The lady’s tone gave away that she was judging Taemin by his wrinkled clothes and the fact that his uniform was a little too short, since he was currently in the middle of a growth spurt and Kibum refused to fix his sleeves before he had stopped growing. She eyed Taemin suspiciously, obviously not willing to trust him after he had made her son leave school early again.

“That’s Taemin,” Minho repeated and he sounded younger than usual, as if he was afraid to expose such an important part of his life to his mother. “He’s fifteen and he lives with us, too. He’s never had much and neither has Kibum, or Jonghyun-hyung, or Jinki-hyung. But they’re still working so hard to make the best out of it and to survive and I just- I need to help them! I need to stay with Taemin and the others, they need me and I am happy when I am with them, I-“

“Now you’re making me laugh, Minho!”

The piercing sound of the woman’s cruel laugh resounded with the white walls surrounding the three people present at the scene, but even though her face showed a smile, the cold look in her eyes made her seem like a maniac.

“What could you ever do for this boy? He’s a child and so are you, you are not supposed to take care of him! There are professionals out there who specialize in caring for kids in his situation.”

The complexity of the conversation between mother and son as well as the lady’s undoubtedly intimidating aura had Taemin frozen in shock still so that he hardly registered her remark on the authorities that had failed at taking care of him. Minho, however, was ready to hold an hour-long monologue on Taemin’s past and the way he was helping.

The tall boy definitely would have defended himself and the maknae if his mum had only let him talk.

“You lied to us,” she repeated, returning to the point in the conversation where Taemin had suddenly felt like he was missing important bits of information.

From what the young boy had been able to gather so far, he could tell a lot had gone down in these halls and it hadn’t ended well for Minho, but the older was still willing and ready to fight. What Taemin didn’t know, though, was what had brought Minho back home in the first place.

Fortunately, Minho’s mother was about to grant him the much-needed answers to his questions.

“When your teachers called us days ago, saying you weren’t coming to school anymore, we were shocked,” the lady said in an accusing tone, glaring daggers at her son. “So we asked them to call us as soon as you turned up and that you did.

“Do you even know how stupid, how disappointed and betrayed we felt when we had to find out our son had been lying to our faces? Every time I hear you talk I can’t help but think that you’re a completely different person now.

“When you told us you wanted to leave this house during the schoolyear and move in with your cousin because it would help you, we agreed only because we hoped it would help you grow up and realize what’s important. You have a long history of being truant, Minho, and we never liked that, but we thought a change could help you.

“But now, it seems like you shamelessly abused the trust we put in you and went behind our backs, living a wild life without us knowing about it. You were absent more hours than you spent at school, Minho! But that’s going to stop now – all your skipping, all your lies! We are your parents and as long as you aren’t legal, you will do what we tell you to do!

“If you want, I can inform the authorities about this boy here-“ she didn’t even glance at Taemin, “and he will get help, but you won’t help him anymore. Those times are over now, Minho! You will go to your room right now and tomorrow, you’ll stay at school the entire day. Got it?”

“No.”

Minho’s voice had turned quiet, the volume lowering so dramatically all of a sudden that his mother leaned towards him.

“What did you say again?”

“I said no,” her son repeated as he gripped Taemin’s hand tightly despite the cold sweat gathering the inside of his palms. “No, I won’t ing do what you said. You don’t care about me at all. You never listen to what I have to say and that’s why I won’t listen to you now! Taemin and I are leaving now!”

Before his mother could take another step in their direction, Minho took off, pulling Taemin along who just let himself be manhandled by the older. The two of them sped down the stairs as fast as they could, both desperate to flee the house that seemed so menacing in retrospect, towering over the two young boys threateningly.

Minho ran on and on, his heart racing in his chest, and Taemin stumbled along behind him, almost tripping over his own feet. They passed more and more houses, trees, fences that didn’t look familiar and that they would only remember in a blur a few minutes later.

It was only when they finally slowed down after at least seven minutes of frantic sprinting that Taemin noticed Minho was crying. Huge crystalline tears were rolling down his reddened cheeks and staining his skin with their salty tracks, soaking the collar of the dress shirt he was wearing.

How it had slipped from his mind before, Taemin didn’t know, but he also realized he had never seen Minho in such fancy attire before, his flannel neatly ironed and his trousers stain-free. Now, though, the tall boy seemed all too set on ruining his clothes as he pulled his top out of his pants with a little too much force, almost ripping the thin white fabric.

“God, I hate this so much,” Minho choked out and the fact that he had never seen the older so close to sobbing his heart out left Taemin frozen, unsure of how to console him. “I-I hate that she never listens to me, she doesn’t care if I’m happy… She just- She just wants the best for me and t-that’s the worst.”

Minho angrily wiped over his eyes with one hands, only spreading his tears more yet he didn’t seem to care.

“I’m sorry, Taemin-ah,” he then said, his voice shaky. “I’m sorry for dragging you along like that. I wanted to show her why I couldn’t leave you but- I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Taemin finally got out and hesitantly leaned in to wrap his arms around Minho’s broader frame. “It’s okay, Ming-hyung. Don’t be sorry. Let’s just go home.”