Taemin turned her eyes up to him, blinking in bewilderment. “Hiding...?” she repeated, confused. “How do you...”

“It's easy,” Minho said. It was easy. “You're here, as a girl, in an all-boys boarding school. You're not here for some stupid shallow motivation, so you must be hiding for some reason. The reason you and Jongin became friends at all is because you have something in common, which is Thailand and that you both speak Thai. When he said you couldn't be friends any more, it must have had something bad to do with that common ground. So you did something bad, and you did it in Thailand, and you're here to hide from it.”

Taemin still had that look on her face. Minho experienced a sudden, intense temptation to lean down and kiss that expression away, but this wasn't the time.

“You just worked that all out on your own?” she asked, dazed.

“Deductive reasoning is the simplest form of logic,” Minho said, chuckling a a little inside. He had never said anything so stodgy in his life. In reality, he had spent hours thinking the problem over. The solution, of course, was simple, but it took him days to arrive at. “I just put everything together and came up with the answer that made the most sense.”

She'd been so careful. “How could you know...”

He was intensely aware of every place that their skin was touching – his wrist against her neck, his other hand lying across her arm, her hair tickling his ear. “You've worked hard to make sure no one finds out,” he said. “You're so desperate. You must be hiding from something, otherwise what reason could there be?”

She had more to fear. “Then Jonghyun...”

Minho shook his head, resolute. “He won't figure it out. I'm going to talk to him.”

“Don't do that,” Taemin begged him. “Don't go to Jonghyun. He only knows how to fight.”

“He won't fight me,” Minho said. He smiled a little at a cheerful memory of kicking Jonghyun's in soccer, then later kicking his in reality when Jonghyun jumped him for gloating about the win. They might have been friends if they weren't both so competitive.

After this, there wasn't a chance for their friendship. Not that Minho cared.

~~~

He made sure the door to their room was locked when he left a few minutes later. Taemin wouldn't go anywhere – she was scared out of her wits – so he didn't worry. All he needed was to find Jonghyun before Jonghyun found anyone else.

First he went to the guest locker room Taemin had said they'd been in, but it was locked and empty. Then he went to Jonghyun's room, but only his roommate was there and he hadn't seen Jonghyun for hours. Increasingly anxious, Minho went to the cafeteria, but he wasn't there either.

He spotted one of Jonghyun's cronies in the hallway on his way to the principal's office, and collared him before the boy could get away. By the look in his eyes, he knew what this was about. So this was one of the boys who'd been there.

Minho raised his hand to threaten him and the boy flinched away, unable to hide the terror on his face.

“Where's Jonghyun?” Minho growled, tired of looking and already daunted by the task of silencing multiple boys at the school whose IQs hardly amounted to that of a normal person when they were added together.

“H-he just went to the principal,” the boy stuttered, trying to get as far away from Minho as possible even though Minho was gripping his collar firmly. “Just now. That way,” he gulped, pointing as though Minho didn't already know where the principal's office was.

Minho shook him. “What have you said?”

“Nothing!” the boy shouted quickly. “Nothing, I swear! Jonghyun made us swear!”

At least Minho could be sure that they would do what their leader said. He shoved the boy away and sprinted down the hallway.

He burst into the principal's office and looked around wildly. There was a small hallway leading past the secretary's desk to the principal's office that held a few chairs for waiting until the principal was finished seeing whoever he was seeing at the time. Jonghyun was pacing the hallway feverishly.

The secretary glanced up at Minho, then uneasily to Jonghyun.

“Principal Kim is in a meeting at the moment,” she said. “It'll probably only be a few minutes.” She gestured to the chairs, but Minho stalked past her, grabbed Jonghyun's shoulder and steered him out the door.

Minho was significantly taller, but once they were in the empty hallway Jonghyun twisted out of his grip easily and backed away, breathing heavily, every line of his face showing how upset he was.

“What the hell, Minho?!” he exclaimed. He'd already adjusted his stance to a lower center of gravity as if he expected Minho to tackle him at any moment.

“Let's talk,” Minho said.

He knew what this was about, but he still acted belligerent. “What for?”

“Taemin.”

Jonghyun grimaced. “I'm ready to talk,” he said. “To the principal.”

Minho took a step closer to him, menacing. “You're going to regret that.”

“What?” Jonghyun laughed, even though nothing was funny. “Regret letting the proper authorities know that Taemin is a... Taemin's a...” He couldn't even say it. He pointed down the hallway toward their dorm, finishing in an angry whisper. “...that he is a girl?”

“I don't think you've really thought this through.”

Never accuse Jonghyun of acting rashly. His eyebrows drew together angrily. “I've thought it through,” he hissed. “Besides, what is there to think about? Why would Taemin be here pretending like that anyway? It's sick.” His nose wrinkled in disgust. “She's got some kind of twisted justification, right? And you...” he paused, looking Minho up and down, calculating. “You're sleeping with that , aren't you?”

Minho's blood was on the point of boiling. In his mind all he could see was the bruises and scrapes Jonghyun had inflicted on Taemin, but he tried to calm himself down. He couldn't fight Jonghyun about this. That would only make things worse. “If you do this,” he said as calmly as he could, “other things are going to come out. How you pushed Taemin out of a bus, for one thing. How you almost broke her ribs when you kicked her. Want to know why she stuck around even after that? Go ask Jongin. But don't expect a stupid answer.”

Jonghyun raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Jongin? He... what does he know?”

Honesty. Honesty was best. “More than I do,” Minho said, shrugging his shoulders with practiced indifference. “But he hasn't told anyone yet, has he? You're friends, right? Don't you think you should talk to him before you go off... like this? Telling everyone? The whole school's going to suffer for this, Jonghyun, you know that. It's been months and only one or two people figured out this whole time. The repercussions are going to ruin the school's reputation. So you should think a little more before you go off throwing the truth around indiscriminately when you don't know half the truth.”

Jonghyun sneered. “Don't try taking the moral high ground here, Minho. You're just afraid that you'll get kicked out after everyone finds out you've been rooming with a girl this whole time.”

God, Jonghyun was an idiot. Did he think he wasn't going to get expelled for physically absuing other students after this all got out? “You owe it to Jongin to at least talk to him before you put all this out into the open,” he persisted. “He hasn't told anyone yet, has he? He's got his own reasons not to, even though he's not friends with Taemin any more.”

At least that made Jonghyun think. Minho breathed an internal sigh of relief when Jonghyun huffed in frustration and turned away, thinking on it.

“Fine,” he snapped finally. “I'll talk to Jongin. But don't think this is the end. I'm going to tell the principal, and there's nothing you can do to stop me.”

“You're right,” Minho said, hardly able to keep in his relief. “I can't stop you. I just hope you'll do the right thing for this school.”

Minho watched him stalk away, knowing that he'd done all he could do short of strangling Jonghyun in a broom closet somewhere (God knew he wanted nothing more than to do so). Now all that was left was to wait.