Silence held the room hostage as all of you stared at one another, not knowing exactly what to say.

“What does this mean for us now?” Jongup finally asked, breaking the silence.

“It means that we’re worse off than we first started,” Changmin grumbled under his breath. There wasn’t even a snarky edge to his tone like there always was; his words had been said in complete bitterness and worry.

“I should have known,” Jaejoong murmured as he ran his fingers through his hair with a distressed expression on his face. “I should have known that it was all too easy; I should have suspected something.”

“We all should have suspected something,” Yunho stated as he placed a comforting hand on Jaejoong’s shoulder. “We were all just too blinded with the taste of victory to actually logically analyze the situation.”

“All?” you scoffed with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms.

Yunho cracked a small smile. “All of us except for Hanmi, were idiots.”

“That sounds more like it,” you grinned. Your bright smile contrasted the somber faces of the others, but you decided to not let that faze you. You climbed to your feet with a loud thump and stretched your arms above your head, causing all the heads to turn to you. “Well, I guess we’re going to have to start training again, aren’t we?”

“What are you talking about?” Youngjae frowned, confused as to how you could be in such a good mood when they were all wallowing in despair.

“Well, now that all eyes are on us, we should prepare ourselves for the possible attacks, shouldn’t we? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not be such easy picking for other corporations. I’d like to at least pose as a bit of a problem,” you grinned. You pouted as you stared at the unenthusiastic faces surrounding you, and reached forward to pull Sehun and Luhan to their feet.

“What are you doing, Hanmi?” Sehun asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Come on, get up!” you laughed as you continued to drag Chen and Xiumin off the couches. “What are we doing wasting our time sitting around for? If there’s a time limit on our lives, then we shouldn’t be letting the seconds tick away. Let’s try to make the best of it, alright?”

A smile cracked against Baekhyun’s lips as he proudly stared at you. He had been a bit jealous when Daehyun had gone after you earlier, but now was glad to see that the BAP member had returned you to normal. He soon realized that he wasn’t the only one granting you an affectionate smile, and his gaze changed course to be met with Kai’s.

The similar smiles slowly slipped off of both of their faces as they locked eye contact. Kai jerked his head towards the door, and Baekhyun nodded his head grimly in the return. The two of them slowly climbed to their feet and slid out of the room one after the other.

The two Exo members continued wordlessly side by side down the hallway until they entered an abandoned waiting room.

The two simply stared wearily at each other, each of them unwilling to make the first move or speak the first word.

Finally, Kai opened his mouth to begin the conversation, and Baekhyun felt his heart freeze in its beats to hear what the other had to say.

“Do you want to fight it out?” Kai asked with a completely serious expression.

Baekhyun nearly laughed. “W-What?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I asked if you wanted to fight it out,” Kai huffed, irritated to have to repeat it once more when he knew the boy had heard it the first time.

“Why would we do that?” Baekhyun asked with a small smile. “I don’t want to fight you, Kai.”

“But it seems like we don’t have a choice in that, doesn’t it?” Kai growled.

“I mean physically,” Baekhyun clarified. “I don’t want to throw punches around with somebody who’s on the same team as me. That’s what I mean.”

Kai raised an eyebrow at Baekhyun’s words, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully,” Then what exactly do you suggest that we do?”

----------------- -----

“We want you to choose Hanmi,” Kai stated firmly with crossed arms as he gazed down at you.

You had been researching information about the foreign groups that possessed the ability to pose as a threat to Two Moons, and was taken by surprise when both Kai and Baekhyun slipped unnoticed to your side.

“What?” you asked without much interest, still typing furiously away onto the laptop placed in front of you. “Do you guys need something, or can it wait till later?”

Frustrated by your lack of interest, Kai grabbed your wrist and spun you around to face them. “Choose, Hanmi.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” you sighed as you ruefully rubbed your now reddened wrist. You finally sacrificed the two a glare, and stared up at their shy faces. Your eyes narrowed suspiciously at the sight of the two boys, looking as if they had done something wrong and were waiting to be scolded. “Why do you look like that?”

“Hanmi,” Baekhyun’s strained voice sounded. He forced his shifty gaze to lock eye contact with you before he summoned up the courage to slowly state, “We want you to choose. R-Remember? We both confessed to you before the MAMA raid, and… and we want an answer. Now.”

Your jaw dropped in realization, and you felt as if your breath had been knocked away from you. “W-What?”

“Your heard him,” Kai shrugged nonchalantly. “Choose.”

Although he might have sounded rather calm in his tone, internally he was about to nearly lose his mind. What if you didn’t choose him? What if you didn’t like him even the slightest bit? Perhaps he should have been more nice to you in the beginning like Baekhyun had. Would that have changed anything?

“U-Uh,” you stated unintelligibly as your eyes shifted from boy to boy. Your heart felt as if it was going to thump out of your chest and your palms began to sweat profusely. This was utterly ridiculous! You were able to look death right in the eye, and had escaped it on several occasions, yet you weren’t able to do something as simple as to choose a suitor?

To be honest, the confessions the two boys had given you had been forced out of your head the few minutes after they had happened. You weren’t able to afford to let your thoughts be corrupt by the ideas of love and other weak concepts like that when you were in process of risking your life. Even after the MAMA attack, you never allowed your thoughts to develop on the two confessions you received, always pushing it out with the insistence that you’d think about it at a later time.

“I-I… I-uhh,” you mumbled again as your eyes darted around the room, as if something in there would have provided a solution to your problem at hand.

Then again, it was kind of their fault. How could they expect you to respond so quickly and suddenly to their confession