I was in the meeting room, sitting on my hands to stop myself from moving too much. Kyungsoo could see how jittery I was, the Director of Operations pressing his lips together as we waited for people to gather. I saw both Kun’s crew, as known as WayV, come in along with Taeyong and Jeno. Jaemin hopped in, excited for a new mission as Renjun followed suit with Tae-il. I saw all of the people I know come in, even Jisung who looked confused as to why he was called. Chenle walked in from class and I thought that we were complete but Kyungsoo glanced at his watch for a second and didn’t say anything.

Doyoung? Was he coming too? What was it that my brother tipped SM? I gnawed on my bottom lip when I saw Chenle’s very own nemesis, V moving into the room and taking a seat in the corner. Two hackers? What was happening? How many people were involved in this mission?

Lastly, I saw Mark and Yuta walk in. Yuta’s eyes flickered over to me as I sat beside Johnny and he gave me a smile, seating himself by the table. The room was cramped at this point and Kyungsoo stood up; straightening his back to begin the meeting.

“First and foremost.” He paused, peering at me through his glasses. “Don’t take this personally, Oh Dana. I know this has something to do with your brother but he didn’t tell us much.”

I was about to say something when Johnny placed a hand on my thigh almost casually, turning to shake his head slightly and I sat back. Right. It was better to hear everything out than to demand answers. Kyungsoo cleared his throat, motioning to Chenle who took his place in front of the laptop.

“We have a tip from Ace,” he stated. “that something will happen to the children of the Ong family.”

Up on the screen, pictures of Ong Seungwoo, Ong Wooseung, and Ong Harin came up. My jaw dropped, trying to figure out why someone would try to hurt them.

“Ace told us that someone in the syndicate will be sent to kill those in the Ong family. He did not specify why, and he did not specify when. His tip was simple—Protect the children of the Ong family because the people who are going after them will try everything to try to harm them.”

“The people who are going after them… Would that be the syndicate?” Taeyong asked, Kyungsoo nodding. “So, D.O.G? After they killed his parents, they are now going after the Ong family? Why?”

“Because my brother was engaged to the Ong Harin.” I found myself saying and for a moment everyone looked surprised that I was talking. I bet that for a moment they forgot that I was related to Sehun. “If they killed my parents then the reason as to why they want to harm the Ong family would be related to whatever he did before.”

“You’re suggesting that they want to threaten him,” Taeyong asked me back and I nodded.

“Or, they think that the Ong family know something of whatever he was investigating. Your brother was investigating a lot of things, Dana. His obsession with YG chemicals was just a small part of it,” Kyungsoo told me and I sighed. There were a lot of things about Sehun I just found out recently.

“Shouldn’t you ask someone to keep the Ong family at home then?” I asked and Kyungsoo frowned.

“The head of the Ong family, Ong Seonho and Ong Joy—the parents, aren’t in Korea right now. Besides, we don’t know if something is actually going to happen. I think what Sehun wants is for us to be around the Ong siblings because he believes someone is after them. He must think that this can be used as an opportunity to catch one of the people from D.O.G.”

Chenle was on the computer, his eyebrows furrowed when he began to talk.

“He also said, check for bombs. Anything that may hurt the crowd. D.O.G has a way of creating chaos and if they are targeting the Ong’s, they may settle for hurting a crowd of people in order to get to them. Do you know the lifestyle of the Ong’s?” Chenle asked me and I nodded.

“We stay in the same neighborhood as Jeffrey. It’s a gated community called Sooman’s Paradise.” I rolled my eyes at the name. When I was young, I used to ask who Sooman was, but my parents told me it was one of the people who sponsored the village. “We call it SP community for short. Her lifestyle is very similar to mine. They go to class, there is a driver and they go home. Though I’m pretty sure she has more friends than I do.”

“I know,” Chenle replied and Harin’s Instagram came up on screen. “She likes ice cream and always goes out with her brothers. However, she stopped posting stories three months ago.”

“Probably exam season,” I told him and he nodded. “Makes sense. Harin is a studier.”

“Do you think this has anything to do with Sehun being involved in YG?” This time it was Jeno.

“The thing is, we don’t know the correlation between YG and Sehun yet. We also don’t know the correlation between Sehun and D.O.G. We only know that Sehun created that gas leak, disappeared and after that, we are pretty sure that D.O.G are the ones who have been actively trying to eliminate those close to Sehun. So it is safe to say that the people who were trying to kill Dana in the police station and the people who are going to try to kill the Ong siblings would come from D.O.G.” Kyungsoo explained.

“Then whatever Ace did to YG must have triggered D.O.G to doing something. They must be scared of whatever he found out,” Jeno concluded and I nodded. That made sense, because once he came back, Sehun was sent to another mission where he was framed for Kim Minseok’s death—his hacker friend.

“How are we protecting the Ong siblings?” Johnny asked Kyungsoo.

“They have class tomorrow in Korea University,” Chenle said, clicking something and the blueprints of the university came up. “What the fuc- Sorry… I mean. How big is this university?”

“The university has many departments,” I told him. “That’s how a university works. All of the Ong siblings are in the business department.”

“This is hard. The area is so big,” Johnny commented and Kyungsoo nodded.

“That’s why I need more than two teams,” he told us. “Doyoung is not going to be around.”

“Again?” Johnny asked and I noticed that Doyoung wasn’t in the room. Thinking about it, Doyoung has never been on a mission with us. But then again, Doyoung was often given one on one missions since he often traveled alone. Taeyong didn’t look surprised.

“Yes. Again. I called Cyborg, WayV, and NCT127 over because of this. We’ll have to allocate everyone very well. There are so many departments and we have to scout out the whole place. Some of you have to go in as students, some as professors, and some on the rooftops to keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior. We can’t miss anything. If we do, there might be casualties. Taeyong, what do you think?”

Taeyong was already thinking, turning to Kun. This was the first time I saw the two strategists work together and it was refreshing to see, Kun and Taeyong’s heads going closer as they discussed something.

“We need people in the vents, we need to check out all the possible places where people may keep a bomb,” Kun said. “Ten and Hendery can do that, they are very skilled in that. It’ll take some time so we should let them go early tomorrow.”

“That’s true. 40% of bombs are put in the ceilings so when it explodes, the structure of the building becomes susceptible to further damage and it’s easier to collapse. Especially if D.O.G is going to make it seem like an accident,” Tae-il said, pushing his glasses up his nose but it slid down again. “We need control of all the cameras. The thing is, we don’t know even know if there is a threat so we don’t know what we’re finding so the strategists will have to allocate everyone equally.”

“What do you think, Tae-il?” Taeyong asked and Tae-il began to point. Taeyong seemed like he listened a lot to Tae-il and I remembered that Jaehyun once told me that Tae-il was one of the oldest in SM. “Two of you must be with Ong Harin and the brothers, at least. You have to divide people. The person may come in as a student or a teacher so—”

He stood up and studied the room. “Dana, stay with the girl. Take Mark with you.”

“Mark?”

“He looks like he could be a university student,” Tae-il said simply, his eyes going to Haechan and Johnny before he looked back at the blueprints. “Haechan and Johnny should be situated in the middle building. That is where the centralized classrooms are. The offices, the cafeteria, the teacher's lounge is all there. What I think is that the person who’ll try something is most likely going to come in as a teacher instead of a student simply because of the age. Then again, it’s just a guess.”

“If that’s true, then we must try to replace the teachers of Ong Harin’s classes,” Kun said. “So, we can keep an eye on her. Crowd, pull up her schedule for tomorrow.”

Harin’s schedule came up and I saw that she had ‘Advanced Freshmen Math’ from nine to twelve in the morning. Next was Ong Wooseung’s who had ‘Physical Education’ for three hours and then Seungwoo who had “Advanced Placement Business English’. Damn, you could see the difference in intelligence between the twins.

“I’ll handle Advanced Freshmen Math,” Kun said, nodding. “I tutored University kids when I was in high school so I know how to teach it. Mark and Dana should come to the same class. I think their target will most likely be focused on the girl since she was the fiancé.”

“I’ll teach AP Business English,” Johnny replied. “Haechan should be in class with me to scout out the students. Lucas—”

“I’ll teach Physical Education. It’s just running around and sports, right?” Lucas asked and Kun nodded. “Though I think I may look a little bit too young to be a teacher.”

“A mask can change that. Are we going in bare-faced?” Johnny asked Taeyong to looked back at him.

“What do you think?”

“I think a few things here and there should make it work. It’s a tedious mission so we need to be as comfortable as possible. Besides, Dana is going bare-faced, isn’t she? Because Harin knows her.”

Taeyong nodded. “Na Jaemin. I want you in the cafeteria. Use what you have learned in your elective profiling class to see if anyone has any suspicious behavior. Is that okay?”

Jaemin beamed at him, asking him if he gets to wear a lunch lady hairnet. When Taeyong said yes, Jaemin whooped.

“Where will Jeno be?” Jaemin asked, batting his eyes at Jeno who simply replied.

“I’ll be on the roof; I’ll move from building to building and focus on higher ground. Jisung should also be in another building. There is so much area to cover.”

“Good. Good to know that all of you can work together,” Kyungsoo said. “It should be an easy mission. Protect, try to keep it low-key. Crowd, change the Ong siblings’ schedules so they can be in one place. Since there are three of them, it’s a bit hard. Jungwoo is not here but we can tell him about the plan later so he can join us. For the rest, just be on standby on the mainland. Is that clear?”

“Yes.” Everyone echoed and Kyungsoo nodded, checking his watch. “We leave soon and we’ll stay in a building by the university. Go back and pack your bags. Someone alert Jeffrey that we’ll need him to come with us too, just in case.”

I nodded, everyone standing up. I saw Taeyong call Jaehyun and before I knew it, we were on our way back to Seoul.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I woke up the next morning in an abandoned building, tired from the travel night before. The building had all of us there and when I freshened up and went down, I saw that Mark was waiting for me. It turned out that the rest had left already to do preparations to make sure that everything would go smoothly. Since Mark was joining me, I saw a black car parked in front of the building and when I got into the car, I saw that it was a familiar face.

“Ahjusshi!” I exclaimed and he turned to give me a smile.

“Miss. Dana. How are you today?” He asked.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, Mark climbing in after me.

“I’m a graduate from SM, Miss,” he replied and my eyes widened. “I was Head of Transportation. I’m retired from the field now, Miss. I drive only cars now,” he told me, his eyes twinkling.

“What? How come I didn’t know anything about that?” I asked and he shrugged.

“There are so many things you don’t know about, Miss.” The old man gave me a smile. “Current Director gave me an order to send you to Korea University. Here we go, Miss.”

And just like that, the barrier was pulled up between the front and back seat and I felt the car surge forward. I quickly pulled the belt over my body and saw Mark smile to himself. He was enjoying the car a little bit too much and it didn’t take long before we reached the university.

When we got down, almost immediately I could hear whispers. I was then reminded of why I hated universities so much—people talked too much. Again, people cared too much. I saw a few fingers point at me and the whispers became louder after Mark appeared beside me.

“So, this is how university looks like!” Mark was saying before he closed his mouth. “Sorry.”

I could hear the crackle of the earpiece in my ear, Taeyong asking us if we were ready. All I had to do now was to go to Freshmen math to see Harin. Mark followed me with his backpack, still in awe at the number of students. He obviously never went to university so he was enjoying it a little bit too much. I glanced at the schedule in hand, going to the auditorium I was supposed to go to when Mark said he’ll follow me.

“I have to head to the bathroom,” he said, Kun’s voice ringing out.

“Oh Dana, I’m in the classroom. Come in,” he directed and I did, stepping in the classroom just to see Kun with his glasses. He was wearing a suit and had an Ipad in hand as he began to prepare the slides. I made my way to the seats in the middle of the classroom casually when I heard people begin to talk about me.

“Oh Dana… She’s in freshmen math? Oh, right. Her parents were murdered.”

“Ugh, I didn’t like her anyway. She was too snobbish.”

“I can’t believe she’s Oh Sehun’s sister. I heard that he was the one who murdered her parents.”

“That family is ed up—”

“Do you have nothing to do other than talk about other people?” A girl’s voice rang out and I looked up to see Harin. From me about to snap at the girls talking, I automatically calmed down at the sight of my friend. She had her hair down and she glared at the women behind us, her eyes spitting daggers.

“Dana,” she said, smiling at me when she paused. “Wait, you’re in freshmen math?” She asked and I nodded. “You’re a year older than me though—”

“I failed.” I blurted out.

“Oh. Makes sense,” Harin said, removing her bag from her back. “How are you coping?”

“Fine.” I didn’t want to talk much about it and I knew Harin understood. “Why are you wearing your hair down? You usually tie your hair up.”

“Just wanted to do something different,” Harin told me, placing her books on the table. “Are you going to focus on studying now? Are you like… back?”

I nodded.

“I have nothing else to do.” I lied and turned to see Harin staring at me weirdly. She shrugged before telling me that it made sense. I saw her homework on the table and slid it towards me, my eyes running over the paper. I could see that there was someone else’s handwriting on it, the two’s written very familiarly.

“Someone else did your homework for you,” I observed and she blushed pink. “That’s very unlike you.”

“You forgot I have two brothers,” she said to me and I frowned at her.

“Wooseung is too dumb and Seungwoo would never do your homework for you. He’s too uptight.” I pointed out and she dragged her eyes away. “Wait, are you dating someone?”

That was the only explanation. Harin choked, fanning herself. She at lying.

“I have a tutor,” she finally said, grabbing her homework from me. The bell then rang to show that it was the start of class and I saw Mark run into the classroom, his eyes searching for me when he spotted me. He