Warning(s): blood, violence
Length: 4.8k words

Ange rolls her shoulders backwards to jut her chest forward. With her body arched like that, every inch of her contained flesh presses against the satin blue dress that Baekhyun gifted to her for tonight. The dress, although a bit revealing in areas where she finds insecurity, makes her feel so much…prettier. Looking at herself in the mirror like that makes her want to be handled, to be touched, to be appreciated for being so pretty. And she wants it to be him: Baekhyun, his lips on her neck, her hands on her waist, telling her just how pretty she is.

With her eyes closed, Ange twirls her way into the living room and lays across the sofa. She places her hands, palms up, by the side of her head—and imagines that Baekhyun has pinned them down like that. In her imagination, he’s right on top of her, staring into her eyes, building the tension brick by brick with each blink. His breath would warm her cheeks, make her want him more, and her lips would tremble with anticipation. Somewhere, dancing on her tongue, is a battle: should she kiss him first or tell him how much she loves him? And in her mind, she’s doing both.

I love you, I love you, I love you, she recites dutifully.

The sound of an alarm brings Ange back to her senses, and she quickly opens her eyes to sit up and reach for her phone.

It’s 7:55PM, meaning Baekhyun will arrive in a few minutes to pick her up, so she gets ready by gathering her purse and retrieving her heels. Ange blushes when she stands up with wobbly legs, realizing just how short her dress is. In heels, it’s like she’s more aware of her stature as a woman.

Ange waits inside Kyungsoo’s apartment, twiddling her thumbs, until her phone says it’s 8. At that point, she heads outside to walk the few dozen steps it takes to reach the lamppost where Baekhyun always drops her off and picks her up. Baekhyun is never even a minute late when it comes to their dates, so Ange stands there, silently expecting him to show up any second.

But he doesn’t come.

Shifting her weight from one foot to another, Ange glances at the time on her phone again. 8:03. Baekhyun is only three minutes late, and most people wouldn’t think too much of it, but Ange can’t help but to grow concerned. He’s never that late for a date. Regardless, Ange her breath, rubs her arms to rub the goosebumps away, and remains standing under the streetlamp as she waits for the familiar sight of one of Baekhyun’s cars.

When it’s 8:16, Ange can’t bear the silence any longer. She dials Baekhyun’s number.

Hey, it’s Baekhyun, his voicemail answers. It’s strange to hear because he never even lets Ange hear this automated message; he always picks up when she calls. I hate voicemails, it continues in his jaded tone, so if you’ve got anything important to say, just text me. Don’t leave a message at the beep. Bye.

Of course, the voicemail greeting ends with a BEEP, but Ange doesn’t bother to leave a message like Baekhyun instructed. Instead, she immediately heads to their messages where Baekhyun has shared his location with her a while ago.

Before Baekhyun left for Italy, he the GPS of his phone so Ange would know where he was—to see if he had made a safe flight and all. Ange loved that he did that because he didn’t turn off the feature even after he got back from Italy. She’d find great pleasure in being sleepless at night, checking her phone aimlessly before realizing that Baekhyun was just as sleepless—and driving his car around the city at 4AM. The little blue dot that symbolized his whereabouts gave comfort to her, more comfort than he probably knows.

Ange had always tried not to look at Baekhyun’s location too often because she didn’t want to be the creepy girlfriend, but he’s never this late.

Upon checking for Baekhyun’s location, Ange is surprised to see that he’s actually at the Hyundai Car Factory—the one where Kyungsoo works. Frowning, Ange tries to call her brother too, but unsurprisingly, Kyungsoo doesn’t pick up either, which leads Ange to head straight for her car.

If Baekhyun won’t pick up, then I’ll just go to him, Ange thinks to herself when she hurriedly runs across the street to the parking structure where she keeps her Porsche. She has to pull her dress down several times to avoid it from riding up, and her heels make it difficult to walk across uneven asphalt, so when she does reach her car, she frustratedly kicks them off.

Ange starts up her car, and as she waits for the engine to warm up, she tries calling Baekhyun again.

She gets his voicemail…again.

- - - - -

When Ange pulls up to the parking lot of the car factory, she has to look down at her phone several times to make sure that she’s in the right place—which is perhaps a bit redundant considering that she can read the signs. Hyundai’s bright logo is clearly visible on the factory’s side, yet she doesn’t really believe that she’s there. The parking lot—usually filled with rows and rows of employee cars—is almost devoid of any cars, except for hers and two other familiar ones.

Kyungsoo’s car is present and so is Baekhyun’s Jaguar.

Ange puts her heels back on, parks her car next to Kyungsoo’s. She stops by Baekhyun’s car first and peers through the windows but finds it hard to make out anything through the tint. However, when she tries to place another call on her cell, a light flashes from within the car, signaling that he left his phone inside.

Where is he then? Ange thinks to herself. She then glances at her brother’s car and thinks the same thoughts again. Is Baek with Kyungsoo? But why?

Ange looks towards the outline of the factory and ponders over why Baekhyun would ditch her for her brother, but before she can think too much about it, her thoughts are interrupted by distinct POPS.

POP! POP!

A chill traverses down Ange’s spine when she hears those misleadingly innocuous sounds. Before dating Baekhyun, she would have thought that guns made loud banging noises when triggered. The Hollywood movies always made them sound so threatening, but now she’s wiser; now, she knows that certain guns are more likely to sound like popping balloons—or fireworks. How could she forget when she heard the same sounds on the night Baekhyun killed a man?

Ange can literally feel her heartbeat quicken in pace when she hears a few more POPS coming from within the factory. She doesn’t want to go inside, but why shouldn’t she? If Baekhyun is inside, what if he’s—

The possibilities are much too painful to entertain for Ange. She hesitantly starts walking towards the factory. Thankfully, she brought her purse with her, and she never goes anywhere without pepper spray.

It only takes a few steps inside the factory, and Ange already knows that something is different tonight. Although she has never visited Kyungsoo this late at night and therefore has no precedence to follow, there is something very, very strange about an eerily silent factory that chugs and chugs during the day. Her ears are accustomed to hearing its loud sounds and white noise air-conditioning at the very least. By having it so quiet, it almost feels like the calm before a storm.

Something awful is about to happen.

Ange reaches the main floor and looks as around as far as her eyes can see. There are a lot of heavy machinery and tall shelves filled with car parts that have yet to be assembled that block her view, disabling her from seeing too far. Surely, Baekhyun or her brother would be inside—doing what, Ange doesn’t know—but where else would they be? In his office?

Since there is no other place to look, Ange starts to head for Kyungsoo’s office. She doesn’t get very far before a noise causes her to stop in her tracks. It makes her frown, makes her wonder if she heard what she heard properly, but she hears it again.

The sound of objects cluttering onto the floor. Glass or something shattering. Followed by what seems to be grunts of pain. It’s all very faint from where Ange stands, but the sounds grow disturbingly louder, begging for her to see what the racket is all about. Again, she doesn’t want to, but she’s worried out of her mind.

Has Baekhyun gotten himself into trouble? And where is Kyungsoo?

Ange slows her brisk walk to a careful tread in fears that she might be heard. She takes out the pepper spray from her purse, uncaps the lid, and poises it forward in the case that she might actually have to use it. grows dry at the thought of someone attacking her, but she needs to be prepared. Thankfully, there are shelves of spare car parts to duck behind, giving Ange the comfort that she can hide from a potential attack.

As Ange stays glued to the shelf behind her, the sounds of fighting seem to grow closer. She still can’t make out the voices or what exactly is happening, but then she hears a man scream in pain.

Baekhyun?

Ange doesn’t want to walk past the shelf for a better look, so she tries to make do by peering through the boxes in between. Through the cracks, she can make out movement. She then hears more grunts—there must be two men in engaged in a struggle, Baekhyun and someone else—that decrease in volume, leading her to believe that they’re moving away from her. Again, Ange doesn’t want to follow. In fact, she feels like she’s about to throw up in nervous anticipation of what might happen, but she does so anyways.

“Don’t make me,” says a voice definitely belonging to Baekhyun. Ange stops to listen, pressing her ear to the shelf as if it would make her hear better. “Don’t—” There’s a sharp thud, and Baekhyun exclaims in pain again, forcing Ange to move for a better look.

No, don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him, Ange thinks to herself in anguish. In parts of her mind, Baekhyun is the invincible, unbeatable street racer. Hearing him in pain makes her aware of his mortality, makes her realize that he isn’t so invincible after all.

Ange stops right before the shelf does. She doesn’t want to make her presence known, so she stealthily peers over the edge for a better look. To her horror, it is Baekhyun, standing over another man. The two of them both appear to be bleeding, with the blood on Baekhyun’s silk-blue shirt more distinguishable. A gash—a deep one that causes blood to flow out—stretches across Baekhyun’s chest from his shoulder, slanting downward towards his stomach. In his hand is a gun, pointed directly at the mystery man under his foot.

“Don’t make me,” Baekhyun says again in a lower voice. “Drop the gun.”

The other man says something, but Ange can’t hear his garbled words. Since he’s lying flat on the floor with Baekhyun placing a foot down on his chest, she can’t see much of his bloodied and bruised face either. She just knows that he’s most likely as injured as Baekhyun.

“Drop the gun,” Baekhyun commands, clutching at his bleeding shoulder. The gun that he speaks of is in the man’s possession, just under his fingertips. “If yo