“What are you looking at?” Lay asked as he sat next to Xiumin who was intently staring at a piece of paper.

            “Look at this,” Xiumin sighed as he handed the piece to Lay while Lay handed the drink that he had just purchased over to Xiumin. Lay took the note from Xiumin and started to read. “You see?” he asked as he pointed at the note. “Someone knew about us all along.”

            “But who? Surely not him,” Lay said as he threw out the word, he never liked to mention their father, neither of them did, but in the situation that they were currently in, there was no other way to get around anything without mentioning him a little bit.

            “Maybe, maybe he knew about us all along, maybe he knew what we were trying to do,” Xiumin said as the thoughts traveled through his mind.

            “He knew that we were attempting to help our younger brother? But how in the world did he know that you were still alive? How would he have known that you faked your death? I mean, you were sacrificing everything to help. You threw away your life, your wife, your son, your brother. How in the world would he have figured out?”

            “I have absolutely no idea,” Xiumin said as he laid back on the chair. “And I have no idea where my son is either. I have people looking for him, but so far they say that nothing has come up. I bet he’s holding him as bait for something. I know that Minhyuk would follow anyone that seemed like a good person, and I know that we never told him the danger of his grandfather. And why was Chen leaving with him in the first place?”

            “Because he thought that he shouldn’t be around anymore. He thought that maybe bad things would stop happening in his life if he escaped,” Lay explained. “It took a while, but I finally got the truth out of him. He said that he wanted to create a stable life for Minhyuk, that he didn’t want Minhyuk to grow up how he did, in a broken family with a mother who was an alcoholic who beat him and a father who never showed his face.”

            “You got all of that out of him?” Xiumin asked mildly impressed. “I thought he only worked with you for one night before he did things to him.”

            “It was a short time,” Lay said with a nod of his head, “but I was able to have him open up to me pretty quickly. I showed him that I wasn’t that bad of a guy and that I had gone through my own tough troubles. He seemed really earnest to help Minhyuk.”

            “That’s because Chen is an earnest kid,” Xiumin said as he looked at Chen lying in the hospital bed in front of them. “He’s a really good kid. I’m just sorry for him that he had to be born into this family.”

            “Do you think that girl is going to come around here again?”

            “I don’t know, she seemed like she wanted to help Chen,” Xiumin sighed.

            “What if she does? What if he gets a hold of her? Then what are we going to do? She’s innocent, she can’t have any part in it. I know that I told her to stay away, but who’s to say that she’s going to follow through and actually stay away from him?”

            “I don’t know,” Xiumin said with a sigh. “But do you think that they’re dating? Or that they at least like each other?”

            “I don’t know,” Lay said letting out a little chuckle at the thought of his younger brother having a girlfriend. “You know, I don’t think that they would actually make that bad of a couple, either.”

“They did what? Ellie, we have to tell someone!” Kris said as he immediately stood up from the couch.

            “Shh,” Ellie said as she grabbed Kris’s hand to sit him down. “Do you want someone to hear? Jiyeon will start asking questions and so will Mom and Dad. We have to keep things quiet for now.”

            “Quiet? I don’t know how we can keep someone telling you to stay away from Chen quiet.”

            “Why can’t we?” Ellie reasoned. “I mean…that guy, he said that the other guy knows what I look like, that I should stay away. What if I do stay away? I mean, it’s not like we actually know anything about Chen that we could help him. We’ve done all that we could, there’s nothing else that we can do.”

            “You’re saying that there’s nothing else we can do? Ellie, do you hear yourself? We can go to the police,” Kris attempted to reason. “We can tell them that there’s suspicious activity going on and they could possibly look into it.”

            “But there’s probably so much to the story that we don’t know,” Ellie said. She understood where Kris was coming from, but she didn’t see the need to endanger her life if someone told her to stay away. There was only so much she was able to do. She didn’t know anything about Chen, she barely knew anything about him. Of course she wanted to help, but there became a point when helping wasn’t enough anymore. “Maybe it’s best to just let them handle it.”

            “But you have no idea who ‘them’ is,” Kris said.

            “Who is ‘them’?” Jiyeon asked as she walked down the stairs.

            “Hmm?” Ellie asked as she looked at Jiyeon.

            “What were you guys talking about?” she curiously asked.

            “Nothing,” Ellie said shaking her head. “So, what shall we do this afternoon?”

            “I don’t know…let’s do some shopping, we have some girl gossiping to do,” Jiyeon said with excitement as she ran over to the couch and began pulling Ellie’s arm along. Ellie took one last look at Kris before she made her way out of the house and followed Ellie to the mall.

            “What’s this girl gossiping that we have to do?” Ellie asked Jiyeon once they were finally at the mall.

            “You have to tell me about you and Luhan, duh,” Jiyeon said. It had been a while since the two of them talked. Ellie always found a reason to not hang out with Jiyeon, so Jiyeon made sure that she would find a way to convince Ellie to go along with her, even if it was by force. Recently, Jiyeon felt as though she was missing out on Ellie’s life, like they were no longer friends, but were slowly becoming distanced from one another and she didn’t like that feeling. In order to get their friendship back, Jiyeon wanted to hang out with Ellie more and just talk, like old times.

            “There’s nothing going on with me and Luhan,” Ellie said as she positioned herself on a chair outside of the dressing room while Jiyeon went to try on various outfits.

            “What do you mean?” Jiyeon asked as she stuck her head out the door. “Of course there’s something going on between the two of you. I mean, you two are dating aren’t you?”

            “We never were,” Ellie said with a light laugh as she remembered that day. “We were never dating just like how you and Chen were never dating.”

            “Really? I could’ve sworn that it looked like you guys were.”

            “We weren’t. A couple of days ago we had a talk with one another and we just thought that it wasn’t right to pursue the feelings that were on the table.”

            “Your feelings or his?” Jiyeon asked from inside the changing room.

            “Huh?” Ellie asked slightly taken aback

            “Were they your feelings or his?”

            “You know, it was even on both parts,” Ellie said.

            “Sure it was,” Jiyeon said sticking her head out once again and giving Ellie a stare before going back in. “So, what do you think of this dress?”

            “I think it’s fine,” Ellie said with a smile.

Once Jiyeon and Ellie had left the house, Kris began to do some research on his own. He wanted to know why people had come into Chen’s hospital room and why they told Ellie to stay away, although they were two different groups of people that came in. Kris was still curious, there seemed to be a lot about Chen’s lifestyle that they had yet to know about.

            As Kris began typing things onto the computer, his phone rang. “Hello?” he answered.

            “Kris,” Tao said on the other line. “You wanted me to call you when my boss was in, well he’s in.”

            “Okay, I’ll be there right now,” Kris said as he hung up the phone and quickly dashed out to his car.

            It didn’t take him very long to reach the shop where he saw Tao already standing outside. “Hey, he just came in, sorry for the late notice,” Tao said with a chuckle.

            “That’s alright,” Kris said with a smile. “Thanks for telling me when he was coming anyway.”

            “No problem,” Tao said. “I told him that you were coming, so he’s expecting you. I would be prepared, the boss takes you as someone that looks nice in the beginning, but they have a hidden side that no one knows about.”

            “Thanks,” Kris said as the two of them walked into the shop. “I’m sure I’ll do fine on my own, though.”

            “Come in,” Lay said on the other side of the door once he heard the knock. Tao had already told him about the person that had wanted to speak with him, and honestly, Lay was curious about what type of person would want to speak with him, why would they want to speak with him? “Hello, you must be Kris,” Lay politely greeted once his eyes laid on the person standing in the doorway.

            “Hello, I’m sorry for suddenly intruding,” Kris apologized.

            “There’s no reason to apologize,” Lay said with a smile as he gestured for Kris to sit down. “Please, I’m up for helping everyone. What can I do for you today?”

            “I’m sorry that this may seem sudden, but I was just curious about a person.”

            “What type of person?” Lay asked, he was growing more and more curious by the second.

            “His name is Chen, I actually don’t know his real name because I’m pretty certain that that’s not his real name. I only know him by Chen, but I was curious about him.”

            At hearing his younger brother’s name, Lay froze momentarily before he began speaking. “What makes you think that I know someone by this name?”

            “Because this is the phone number that was given to him, this place, so you’re the boss, you must know something about it,” Kris said. “I believe you do, you tensed a little when I mentioned his name,” Kris said as he brought his bodyguard skills to life.

            “It is true that I know him, and it is true that that was the phone number,” Lay said. “But I don’t think I can tell you anymore.”

            “Why not?” Kris curiously asked. “I mean, my friend…well she’s more of a younger sister than a friend, was at the hospital room and she was telling me how people told her to stay away. Were you one of those people?” Lay looked at Kris. He didn’t know what to say, he was at a loss of what to say. What would one say in that situation? How would one go about doing that? “Okay, so you don’t have to tell me anything,” Kris said as he started talking again, “but I want to help, and so does she. We want to help you guys.”

            “I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s anything you can help with, and especially something that you don’t want to get involved in.”

            “Who says we can’t help?” Kris asked. “Sure it’s dangerous, but we’re friends with Chen. Ellie…I can tell you that she probably likes him more than a friend and just not being able to help him breaks her heart. So please, let us help.”

            “Trust me when I say that you don’t want to get involved,” Lay repeated. “Just trust me when I say that it’s not good to get involved in this type of world, it’s something you don’t want to be in.”

            “What is it, drug smuggling?” Kris asked.

            “No, it’s not drug smuggling, at least I don’t do that, but I have no idea what he does.”

            “Who is he?”

            “My father…our father…Kim Changwoon,” Lay said as he let the name roll past his lips.

            Kris’s heart stopped for a moment at hearing that name. “You…are you serious?”

            “Do you see why you don’t want to be involved now?” Lay asked. “It’s dangerous, I advise you stay away.”

            “You can’t be serious, though, right?” Kris repeated.

            “I’m serious. My father, my hyung’s father, and my dongsaeng’s father is the Kim Changwoon. Of course none of us involve ourselves in his lifestyle, the youngest of us three doesn’t even know his father, but my hyung and I are attempting to stop him. That’s why you shouldn’t get yourself involved in this business. It’s bad enough that I told you his name.”

            “But I can help,” Kris attempted to reason. “You need help, don’t you? I’m willing to help. Against him, you need all the help you can get.”

            Lay looked at Kris, there was no way that he was going to get Kris to leave him alone. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Lay sighed as he leaned forward in his chair. “So, what do you propose?”

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Who is Kim Changwoon? How is Kris going to help them? What is going to happen to Chen? What happened to Minhyuk?

Here's Chapter 26. Hope you enjoyed :D

And this fanfic is wrapping up soon...I can't give an exact timestamp, maybe before 30 chapters? Maybe a little after, but I would say no more than 35 chapters, which means that within 10 more chapters, this fanfic is going to come to a close. How do you think the ending is going to turn out?

And for those of you that voted in the poll for Daehyun as the main character and for time travel as the theme. This is the new fanfic that my mind has brought to you:

The Waiting Period

Check it out if you're curious, but you don't have to.

Anyway, have a good morning, afternoon, or night! :)