Umji sighed as she leaned her head on SinB’s shoulder. She had just spent the last two hours sat inside Eunha’s hospital room, not getting any responses. She had been trying to get Eunha to tell her what happened, to get her to talk about the weather, was she in any pain, but she got nothing. And she had been getting nothing for the last two weeks.

When they had managed to escape to the city, a majority of the students immediately set off for home, for team one, they couldn’t just go. Sowon was missing, Umji didn’t want to give up on her yet. Eunha had no where to go, they didn’t know if she had a place, and she wasn’t answering to anything. Yerin’s home was in the city, so she had been providing the team a place to stay. But her parents were worried and were planning on moving to a different country, to the one that developed all the magic security tech.

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know, Yerin unnie can’t really just run away from her parents to stay with us.”

“How about you, Eunbi? Why have you not gone home? I know that Yuju unnie comes from a different country and soon her parents are going to arrange her to go home.”

“I…I don’t have a place to go home to anymore. I’ve lived at a school all my life, you could say.”

Umji turned the words over in her head. School? All her life? Realizing that SinB meant an orphanage, Umji closed her eyes and hugged SinB’s arm tighter.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It lets me do whatever I want to. And I’ll just go where you go.”

“Are you sure about that? I’m going to find my sister, maybe run into a lot of trouble.”

SinB grinned.

“Are you hearing yourself? I’m the best troublemaker around.”

Umji chuckled, nuzzling her cheek to SinB’s shoulder. But their temporary happiness faded away as they remembered their situation. Why Yerin wasn’t with them was because of something that happened during the fight two weeks ago. Yuju had tried to heal her, that was the time Umji and SinB were defending them and Eunha had to go find Sowon.

In that fight, Umji lost her sister, Eunha lost her mentor, Yerin lost the ability to walk. When Umji had gone to find Eunha at SinB’s behest, they were waiting on Yerin to be stable enough to walk, having taken a really hard hit by the large beast that Sowon had managed to defeat, she had sustained intensive internal injuries that Yuju did her best to heal. She had managed to restore all the damaged muscles, but even that couldn’t save the connection to her brain.

It had been a nightmare the moment Yerin woke up at the hospital, unable to move her legs. Even now, her eyes reflected a certain emptiness. Still, Yerin cared for them as much as she could, hanging on the hope that her legs would heal. Her parents told them not to tell her, said that they would tell their daughter themselves. So, they didn’t.

“Yuju unnie must be so heart broken.”

“I know.”

Yuju hadn’t left Yerin’s side at all, feeling as though it were her incompetence that resulted in Yerin’s irreversible injury.

SinB shuffled uncomfortably.

“What is it Eunbi?”

“I….read in the news recently, that there was a new invention.”

SinB looked at the ground as she told Umji.

“It…was this metal device, they’d stick it in your spine and plug it into your brain. It let a paralyzed person move.”

“What? That’s great news! Yerin unnie could-“

“That person only lived several months after.”

Umji’s smile dropped.

“Why did you tell me then?”

“Because I want to tell you that there is hope, but not right now. I don’t want Yerin unnie’s parents to try all these just to end her life early you know?”

SinB rubbed her arm awkwardly. She didn’t mean to bring Umji up and make her sadder, it wasn’t her intention. Seeing this reaction, she held her tongue and kept quiet about the other article about a successful mechanical arm working perfectly and no observed side effects.

“I understand. Thank you Eunbi ah.”

“Sorry.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Brian cackled in front of green lit capsule, inside it, a beautiful face, only marred by a single scar over her left eye.

“Man, I didn’t think it would be this easy. Wouldn’t you say so….uh…whatever your name is?”

But even the girl didn’t respond her name.

“Right right, you don’t have a name, and you can’t ever have a name, right. Whatever, as you can see, when you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”

Stalking the capsule for a few seconds longer, Brian looked to the other test cases nearby.

“I’ll be sure to take good care of you, Sojung.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eunha was released from the hospital the day that Yerin and her family were moving to the next country. Although she still didn’t speak, she followed SinB and Umji around, as if not knowing anything else. Yuju, despite having received her summons by her parents, had rejected them in order to stay with SinB and Umji.

“Well, where should we start looking?”

Umji shrugged as SinB pulled out a new phone she bought.

“I guess we could start by heading north.”

“The wilderness?”

“No, a little east of that there’s a village. It’s been recently attacked.”

“Oh, there could be clues.”

They turned to look at Eunha who followed along quietly, the life was slowly returning to her eyes, but she had still yet to utter a single noise. Yuju hoped that Eunha could at least express herself by body language and facial expressions, they were beginning to see the small reactions in their shortest member’s face. The very slight quirk of her lip when they did something stupid, the slight roll of her eyes when they did something worse.

Sojung, we’re coming for you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Yes doctor, that will be no problem.”

“Have you talked this over with your daughter? This is a very big operation.”

“Of course, don’t worry about it doctor, just do your job well.”

Mr. Jung looked over his sleeping daughter’s face. The daughter of the Jung Corp. cannot be seen as a cripple. Mrs. Jung walked into the room, seeing the doctor leaving with a slightly disturbed look on his face.

“What were you discussing with him?”

“Nothing that concerns you dear.”

“What? This is our daughter we’re trying to help, what do you mean it doesn’t concern me?”

“It really doesn’t concern you.”

===============

Spoilers: Yerin's papa in this story is bad. Verrry bad.

oh, and I might be taking a day or two off to set up the next half of the story :P

Yerin will be fine, I promise. Sowon too, of course.