8.

He was drowning.

The wind pulled at his hair as icy tendrils of harsh whispers and sorrow caught his skin.

Fire raged beneath his flesh, running deep into the crevices of his inner being.

And yet, he found that he could still smile.

A laugh bubbles in his throat, but before he finds himself near hysterics, something snaps at his consciousness--

"Jongin... Kim Jongin!"

Startling awake, wincing when his ribs ache with a dull throb, Jongin rubs at his eyes as he sits up on the chair. He frowns slightly; trying to remember how he had gotten back in their apartment. Dawn was breaking near the horizon of Shanghai; faint traces of sunlight trailing into the otherwise dark living room.

"Baekhyun?" Jongin mumbles, getting to his feet and stretching his arms over his head.

"Nice to see you alive and well," Baekhyun greets, sitting on the loveseat across from him, "although, I'm surprised that you could be heartless enough to leave SeHun groaning in pain by himself." He grabs the laptop on the table, and connects a hand-held device to it.

"I did my best to treat him. I'm not a medic."

Baekhyun raises an eyebrow, eyes trained the computer screen.

Jongin grunts, "your eyeliner is smudging."

And heads for the bedrooms.

∞

"Damn it, hyung. That hurts!"

Ignoring SeHun's hiss of pain, Kyungsoo sets his lips in a grim line as he removes the last fragment from the boys abdomen. Being a size of a person's smallest fingernail, the blood covered metal clatters onto the table.

"A U7600A-Pistol," Chanyeol murmurs, uncrossing his arms to hand Kyungsoo the bandages, "judging by the bullet, it looks like it was an older version." He looks to SeHun, who laid on the bed, torso bared and skin covered in a thin sheen of sweat. His complexion was paler than normal.

"If it was the newer model, you would be dead right now."

SeHun finds enough energy and consciousness to roll his eyes, jerking with a gasp when Kyungsoo's fingers ghost over his wound. "Thanks, Captain Obvious," SeHun mutters, groaning with a relieved sigh when Kyungsoo murmurs, "You'll live," before wiping SeHun's body with a damp towel.

Tired and pained eyes flutter close as the ragged breathing calms down extensively. Sleep overrides SeHun's system before any anesthetics are injected into him.

"Kyungsoo?" The door creaks open. "How's he doing?"

JoonMyun walks over to the duo near the bed, patting SeHun lightly on the forehead and wincing as he sees the tightly wrapped bandages on his stomach.

"It's a rather shallow injury, surprisingly." Kyungsoo replies, getting to his feet and taking off the bloody medical gloves. "He dodged the bullet quick enough so that it wouldn't embed itself any deeper than needed," he sighs, "but a wound is a wound. He needs rest."

"And food," Chanyeol pipes in.

Kyungsoo leers at their Chief Technician, fully aware of the tall man's implied intention. "Are you volunteering yourself to go get take-out? Because, if you and your black hole haven't noticed, the fridge is empty."

Chanyeol's bottom lip pulls out into a dejected sigh.

"Um. Knock knock?"

Jongin slides his way into the room, moving to stand at the foot of the bed. He eyes his injured friend with an apologetic gaze, finger tapping his lips in thought.

"For a child prodigy of combat fighting and such, you surprisingly lack a lot in the medical side of things," Kyungsoo comments, cleaning up the tools and blood. Not a drop of red was present on the white bed sheets under the sleeping boy; Kyungsoo took pride in his work.

Jongin shrugs. "And that's why you're here."

"What happened anyways?" JoonMyun asks, sitting on the edge of the bed and running careful fingers through SeHun's damp hair. He wanted make certain of the living heat that radiated off the younger boy.

Sometimes, JoonMyun didn't know why he was the leader; he was too easy, too soft, too thoughtful.

"A random Chinese man started shooting at us."

Jongin frowns with a shrug when he's given three identical pointed looks. He grumbles in distaste; he wasn't a man of many words.

"We were near the dance floor when these thugs, I think they were the club guards, started attacking us-- and no, we didn't start it." Jongin rolls his eyes when Kyungsoo gave him a suspicious stare. "We didn't break a sweat taking them down, but all of a sudden, the two guys that were fighting that lunatic," a shudder ran through the room at the mention, "turned their gun on us and started shooting."

Jongin purses his lips, mind drifting to that small stranger. But he quickly shakes it away before it could find a place within his thoughts. He didn't need such mundane distractions.

"I think they said something to us, but we didn't hear it."