Chapter One: 내 가슴에 불을 지펴봐
(Start a Fire in My Heart)

The police officer looked sceptically at Himchan who only raised an eyebrow.

“Well?”

Disgruntled, the officer followed the orders, unlocking the handcuffs around the wrists of a young man dressed in an orange jumpsuit. With a loud bang, the officer closed the door, leaving Himchan to appraise the man sitting across the interrogation table. They were of the same age, but the other had light brown hair and large, innocent eyes that reflected the harsh lights of the bare room. Himchan watched as the young man’s eyes sidled to the left where a black recording device sat. Upon seeing it turned off, the young man cocked his head at Himchan in a silent question. Himchan only smiled, reaching up a hand to brush his collar.

“The Telekinetic of EXO.” Himchan picked up the only other object lying on the desk, a large manilla folder, from which he slid out some papers. “Luhan. I’ve never known your real name until now. It’s got something to do with deer, doesn’t it?”

“In Chinese, yes.” Luhan blinked at Himchan. “I still don’t know yours.”

Flipping the switch to the recording device and shuffling the papers into order, Himchan lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not allowed to disclose that information. The General of B.A.P is enough.” He grabbed a photo and slid it across towards Luhan. “Do you recognise this person?”

Luhan didn’t even glance at the photo. “I could not have committed treason. There is no reason for me to turn on the government.” 

“Do you recognise him?”

“It’s a false charge!”

“Do you recognise him?”

Luhan fell silent, staring intently at Himchan, with his lips pursed into a thin line. His brown hair was mussed. Under the bright lights the dark bruises beneath his eyes were more pronounced, lending a haunted look to Luhan’s eyes. His skin was sickly pale resulting from a week and a half of solitary confinement without sunlight. With a sigh, Himchan flipped the switch to the recording device, turning it off.

“Isn’t that against protocol?” Luhan asked, his voice doubtful.

Himchan only snorted inelegantly. “What they don’t know won’t harm them.” At Luhan’s still suspicious look, Himchan continued. “Look, you and me, we’re the same. I’m not here to pity you. I’m here to ask you, as a fellow human being under the same circumstances, what the situation is.”

“If you were under the same circumstances,” Luhan’s voice dropped in both pitch and volume. “You’d be sitting in jail too with no idea why or how you even got here in the first place. My record is clean and I have no motivation for committing treason and going behind my friends’ backs.” His voice was dark, bitter even. “And you know, as well as I do, that they’re more than just friends.”

“Family. Blood brothers. The only ones who understand because they were there—physically, mentally, in each and every way.” Himchan nodded as he sighed. “I know.”

“Is anyone on the intercom? Can anyone hear this conversation?”

“No. Because it’s you, top secret intelligence worker and all, the words we speak are only between me and you.”

“And you can get away with this? No recording or anything?”

Himchan shrugged, relaxing in to his seat. “I thought we could maybe fake a recording.”

Luhan was silent. In the bare room, without clock, without furnishing, the silence hung like a presence, thick as velvet curtains and just as suffocating. Trained as Himchan was, it was those silences that made him want to squirm in his seat, to yell for Luhan to just speak, please! Instead he shifted in his seat, the action making Luhan startle back in response. The brunette his lips and exhaled. “Tell me the situation beyond these walls right now.”

The corners of Himchan’s lips twitched upwards at Luhan’s unspoken compliance. “In the past week, members of the government’s opposition groups have gone missing. On Monday, F.cuz’s leader Kim Jincheol, more popularly known as Jinon, went missing. He was last sighted leaving Parliament Greens after the latest censorship demonstration. On Thursday, Mika, or Lee Suhoon, of D-NA was last seen leaving his house, as reported by a neighbour. On Saturday, both Kim Sunggyu and Nam Woohyun of Infinite disappeared. The government believes that the public will perceive it as the government’s doing, after all, their common enemy is the government, and with a group as prominent as Infinite, the government has reason to worry. Today is Monday, so it’s been a full week since we’ve last seen Jinon. 

“Moreover,” Himchan continued, lining up the photos of the missing people in front of Luhan, “you have had previous dealings with all these people. You had investigated F.cuz’s former member Lee-U. In fact, some reports that I’ve received cite you as an indirect factor to Lee-U’s departure from the group. As for D-NA, you were responsible for the arrest of their associate, Open World CEO Jang Seok-woo, for assault charges. You’ve also had an encounter with Infinite’s Sungjong, a misunderstanding I gather, about a charge that has now been dropped.”

“It would be stupid to assume that I am the one behind the disappearances when I’ve been imprisoned during that week.”

“Of course,” Himchan said, offended that Luhan assumed him stupid. He swiped the photos to the side, gathered them into a neat pile and returned them to the manilla folder. “We’re not assuming you are the one behind it, we’re assuming that someone close to you is responsible, or even coordinating the kidnappings or murders or whatever these disappearances will amount to.

“For example,” Himchan slid a photo in front of Luhan, “Someone like the Dragon of EXO-M would have the perfect motive. Because, if it is as you say, Luhan—that it is a false charge, that you are have always been on the government’s side—then it must be the oppositions wanting to be rid of an intelligence worker that constantly threatens their workings. Thus Dragon would want to hunt down said oppositions responsible for leading you into your current predicament.

“Similarly,” Himchan placed a pile of photos next to the one of Dragon, and like a dealer at a casino, with one sweep of the hand, laid the photos in line, “all members of EXO have the same motive.”

Luhan’s wide eyes wandered along the line of photographs of eleven young men, all of whom worked under the same intelligence sector SM, all of whom Himchan knew from his own firsthand experience, would fight tooth, claw and all, to the death for Luhan’s sake. He watched as Luhan paused down the line, lingering a little longer on one particular photo. Himchan pointed to it, letting his finger rest just above the head, directing Luhan’s gaze to the person’s face.

“How close are you to Tornado?”

“Are you insinuating that—“

“I’m not.” Himchan pulled the photo towards him, inspecting the teenager in the photo. “It’s just you were looking so closely at him, I thought you might have missed him the most.” Carefully making eye contact with Luhan, Himchan almost whispered, “A week and a half is a long time to go without human contact, more so when we’re both used to being surrounded by our brothers at all times.”

Luhan only quietly looked at Himchan, his face blank.

“How close are you to Tornado?”

“How close are you to Blackman?” Luhan fired back, turning the question onto Himchan.

Realising that Luhan would merely shift the spotlight back onto Himchan, the interrogator only sighed, “I’m the closest to Blackman.”

“And what would you do for him?” There was a change in Luhan’s voice, a brightness or a spark of an ember.

Himchan wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue. “What would you do for Tornado? Because that’s what I would do for Blackman.”

“I’d go further than end of the world, beyond the veil of death, farther even than the boundaries of the universe.”

“Would you?” Himchan asked, shocked at the sincerity behind the words.

“Wouldn’t you for Blackman?” Luhan tilted his head to the side, challenge lying within the depths of the clear brown eyes. When Himchan was silent, Luhan merely shrugged. “And Tornado would do the same for me. We’re the closest, and we’ve promised each other that we wouldn’t leave the other behind.”

Himchan merely sighed, hands coming up to cover his face.

“Wouldn’t you or Blackman do the same for each other?”

This time, Himchan was silent. And the silence was mocking because, well, shouldn’t he have a definite answer in the affirmative? If it were as just as Himchan had said, a family, why did he then doubt?

“General?”

From behind the barrier of his hands, Himchan merely shut his eyes. Like a sighing breeze, the air escaped from between his lips, gentle yet heavy, forming the answer that, to Himchan, has lost its substance, its tangibility. “Yes, we would.”

This silence, the silence that followed, was the worst. Himchan, with his face still covered, sat in his seat, unmoving. The blackness that existed behind his eyelids, that was all he could see—would see when he opened his eyes and looked around him. Even as he reached out an arm to the black device on the table and dialled the intercom, he kept his eyes closed. Even as he ordered an officer to remove Luhan from the room, even as the door opened and Luhan gladly escaped from the suffocating silence, Himchan kept his eyes closed. The inkiness behind his lids was much preferable to the inkiness of reality.

But being reality, he couldn’t escape from it.

And so, he strode out the room. The scene that greeted him was ordinary and a relief: a man of his height, staring into the one-way window that showed the interrogation room Himchan was previously in, but was now empty. Dressed in a comfortable black shirt and a pair of grey shorts, the man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, face blank.

“Blackman!” Himchan called out, smiling at the other. The man turned to look at him, his face still blank but with bright eyes. When Himchan got closer, he grinned at the other, making sure there was no one with them. “Yongguk!” He greeted when he was sure they were alone. “How did I do?”

“Well enough,” Yongguk answered, a small grin breaking out. He held out his hand and Himchan sighed as he fiddled with his collar, retrieving a small silver device. Yongguk turned it over in his hand, pressing a miniscule button that blended into the metal, turning it off. He pressed it back into Himchan’s hands. “You should get back to the base. Jongup and Junhong must be hungry.”

And just like that, the darkness closed in.

“What about you?” Himchan snapped in annoyance, already knowing the answer.

Yongguk shrugged, already turning away from Himchan. “I need to see Jieun-sunbae. Make sure you go over everything that’s recorded and don’t jump to conclusions like you always do.”

Before Himchan could even get a word in the edgewise, Yongguk left without even a backwards wave.  It had been happening more and more often, Yongguk leaving without so much as a “I’ll see you later” or even a small “bye” and always off to see Jieun, and Himchan could do nothing about it because, despite being called the General of B.A.P, it was Yongguk who was still the leader. He slapped the folder against the wall, gripping it tight, but a few photos fluttered away. Wearily, he picked them up, shuffling across the cold corridor, staring numbly at the mocking way the photo of Tornado landed on top of Luhan’s, as if even in this visual mimicry of life, EXO members would still protect each other.

When he arrived back at the base, he slammed the door shut and threw the folder and his uniform onto the sofa, immediately rolling his sleeves up as he strode into the kitchen. He opened the fridge, glared at its near empty state, a tell-tale sign that Yongguk had, once again, forgotten to do the grocery shopping. He’d have to tell Jongup or Junhong to do it, whoever walks through the kitchen door first. He slammed the chopping board down and grabbed the little amount of vegetables, proceeding to viciously chop them. It was only when Jongup trudged into the kitchen, soaked from working out and with a towel draped over his head, that Himchan relented his assault on the food and breathed an exhausted sigh.

“Hyung, Manager Kang called today,” Jongup said as swiped an apple from the table and bit into it. “He said that the two new additions to our group will arrive today at about 1800 hours.”

Himchan nodded absently as he filled the pot up with water to a line that only his eye could see, sloshing some water out when it went over. Running a dry cloth over the bottom of the pot, he placed it on top of the stove and turned it on, muttering a quick “Okay” under his breath. He grabbed the bottle of oil and dribbled a small amount into the pot. “Can you take Junhong-ah with you and buy some groceries? Yongguk forgot it again.”

“Again?” Himchan heard the younger mutter as he plodded out of the kitchen. “That’s three weeks in a row.”

Three weeks since he started to visit Jieun regularly, Himchan added silently. Junhong’s voice briefly reached his ears before the slam of the front door indicated that the two youngest have gone out. At a time like this Yongguk would have been helping Himchan with dinner, peeling the potatoes or washing the vegetables and talking the case over, his deep voice rumbling a little. Himchan would have been throwing ideas after ideas as Yongguk shot them down, reasoning logically, contrary to his scatterbrained ideas. This was the first case against other government agents that they have been assigned, and as it was against their very own kind, Himchan would’ve liked some support. Even if Junhong was a child prodigy and Jongup was strong and durable, they needed the level-headedness of Yongguk. But right now—and Himchan started as the boiling water spilt froth over the side, making a hissing noise as it touched the hotplate—it seemed like Yongguk couldn’t care anymore for the small family they’ve become since sheltering Jongup and Junhong.

It hurt. The indifference really did hurt.

Uhh, so, I've finished my exams! -parties- and I've finally got around to watching Killing Camp -double the party!-
In case you got confused, Daehyun and Youngjae are the new additions to the group^^ SO ALL YOU DAEWONS AND BRAINBOXES BE EXCITED SINCE YOU WILL SEE THEM NEXT TIME~
Also, I guess you could say this isn't like my other fics that I have out there... in fact I'm finding it really hard to write decent action for the next chapter, and I kinda just wished that I just let it slide... you know just "Oh yeah, and they fought, and Himchan approved and everything's cool now." Can I just stick to the angst? /gets shot.