“They moved him to Seoul..?” Yunho hissed, staring sharply at the monitor displaying the location.

“Yes, sir. Though we knew Master Jaejoong was put in a solitary cell outside the island, it seemed they somehow moved him to a quiet spot at Seoul.”

“Tsk. I don’t buy this. Someone’s toying with us.” he said, dropping the headphone to one of his men.

Trying to avoid further chaos, Max moved in silence, picking up Yunho’s gun near the bed’s end when a hand snatched it. He looked up, suddenly Amber had joined him on the floor, holding the gun with her good arm. Swiftly, she put her finger in front of the trigger before he could snatch it back.

“What are you doing?” Max said, barely audible, only enough for her to read his lips.

She shook her head, and Max wasn’t even sure what that meant as she lifted the gun towards the ceiling.

“You are not doing anything cra- -“

A terrible crashing sound, and then it was dark. Confused footsteps quickly filled the room and Max tried his best to distant himself from the clacking shoes.

”Max! Don’t play games with me!” Max could hear Yunho screaming at the top of his lung. He could tell Amber was still crouching next to him.

It didn’t took long for Max to find Amber as he grabbed her by the wrist, half-wishing that she wouldn’t take another extreme decision. Max said, waiting for a reply but all he got was the sound of her footsteps.

When he thought the footsteps were distant, he felt cold fingers wrapped around his hand, pulling him up inside the dark.

Not reacting about the grip on her wrist, Amber stood up, forcing Max to move with her. One of the henchmen kicked the door open from the outside and lights came bursting in, blinding all eyes inside the room. Right at that moment Max threw a deadly punch over the guard’s face, making way for him and Amber to squeeze out of the room. Yunho caught up right after, but this time Amber was a second quicker as she threw her arms to the back to shoot him a couple of times. Fast enough, Yunho dropped on his wounded legs and growled, shouting commands to his dogs as the two of them ran further along the corridor.

Still in her hospital gown, Amber drove Max away from the lift, all the way to the emergency stairs.

“Run faster!” she said seeing Max running awkwardly a couple of inches behind her.

“What’s exactly in your mind, huh? You could’ve waited a little more, I’ll handle things with Yunho! This made things worse!” he said, ignoring the glares of the nurses passing by.

Amber let out a heavy sigh as she kept running inspite of her uncomfortable arm sling. “What’s worse than being in the same room with that psycho?!”

“Hey, wait!” Max said, catching up with her with a loud knock on the floor as his prosthetic leg halt to a pause. Amber noticed the excessive action he took with his left leg, but soon distracted when Max closed the emergency door behind them.

“Suzy called me. The girls knew Yunho would come for you, that’s why I came here, for safety reasons.” he explained briefly while cocking his own glock. “Why did you have to do that!? Put a little faith in me!”

She shot him a glare.

“Well I have, and I’m not planning on doing it again. ”

***

[Seoul, 2007]

The sun was almost set. Key knew his mom must be waiting for him worriedly at home, but he didn’t want to leave the boutique display now. Not when those people was setting up a window display for their new summer collection, it was pretty rare to catch. One of the assistants settled a necklace with a peace symbol at the end ot it, to one of the three mannequin. Young Key was staring at them behind the glass out from the street, watching their delicate fingers straightening up the gown, fixing the hair, and arranged the setting into what seemed to be a retro-theme display. How he wished to have his own place someday, arranging a window display like this one, and when people walked by they would stop and stare.

“Oh, hey Key!”

Key was too lost inside his own imagination, he didn’t hear the call. A group of his classmates passed by, and one of the boys called out for him. They were all still in school uniforms, and so was Key. School ended a few hours ago, and at times like this the kids would usually hang out downtown, or visiting a friend’s home to play video games. In Key’s case, he would usually stroll around the fashion district, or when he had time, he could even made a trip to Myeongdong on his own.

“I didn’t know you can have a crush on girls too!” said the head of the boys, and this time Key finally noticed their presence. He didn’t need to turn around to know who was talking. He was one of the bullies Key avoided all the time.

“Too bad your girl is only a mannequin..!” he continued, and that was one of the reason why Key avoided him. He could hear the rest of the empty-headed boys laughed at the ridiculous statement, at least for them it was hilarious. For him it was irritating.

Key pushed his hands deeper into his pocket, unconsiously searching for safety. The display set up was finally done, and the designer in charge was doing a final touch up before they put up the signage. It was an eye-pleasing display, Key could have admired them a bit longer if those boys hadn’t come and ruined his moment. Slowly without looking back, Key started to walk away from the boutique window, wanting to escape the intimidating looks thrown at him.

“What, are you going home now? Come on, I know a cafe where maybe you can hold your own fashion show there. With your gay friends.”

The word ‘gay’ instantly stopped his steps. ‘I’M NOT GAY!’ he wanted to shout that out, but he wasn’t even sure. He was into fashion and ladies clothings. He hadn’t have a crush on any girl at school. He was never into sports, or any other physical activity, except dancing. Maybe those were enough to make him what his friends thought he was.

“If you wanna be a real man, you should spend more time with us. By the time we enroll to high school, you will have a real girl, my friend. Not just mannequins.” he said, and his friends heavily giggled on this one. Key could feel the heat creeping up his face, he knew he was on the verge of crying.

Then he heard a splatting sound and the boy who mocked him suddenly screamed in anger. Key wiped his tears and turned around to find the boy’s face covered in vanilla ice cream. His friends were after the attacker -a boy their age with jet black hair, wearing a neighboring school uniform.

“HEY! COME BACK HERE!” the bully coated in ice cream screamed and ran after him, completely forgotten about Key, who was left speechless of what just happened.

‘Did that boy just.. help me?’

They had a five against one fight right away, and Key panickedly looked around, eyeing for any adults or police nearby, but there wasn’t any. He was scared, but he couldn’t help either as he watched the hero-boy tried to defend himself from his school’s bullies. His backpack was all he got at the moment, and though the idea flashed in his mind, Key bet he wouldn’t win against those boys, not with a stupid backpack in hand.

- - -

[Seoul, 2013]

“Here. Keep yourself warm.” an officer handed him a cup of coffee before going back to his team. Key just nodded numbly, not even willing to take the scent of the coffee in. The monitor beeping in front of the officers kept showing different angles of map and dots moving slowly. An officer told him that the rats were coming to get the cheese. Key wouldn’t understand what that really meant if not for his yelling the next second.

“We’ve tracked the rats! Team A and Team B, get your engines ready!”

“Yes sir!”

Leaving the coffee on the steel desk, Key decided to got up from his seat. “How is it over there? Is she alright?” he said, asking one of the tracking personnels there. “That gun shot, what was that about?”

“For now we can’t tell for sure. We’re working on it, okay?” one of them with the glasses patted him on the back.

Key gave up. That was the exact answer he got half an hour ago. Something wasn’t right there, and he didn’t need to become a professional to know that.

“They’re entering the green zone, sir.” one of them reported to the commander.

”Okay, get into positions!” Commander Jung shouted.

“So that phone call.. leads to capturing these guys?” Key asked, wanted to make sure he didn’t do what he did for nothing.

The Commander nodded, “Thanks to your believable acting, Yunho sent his men to track us.” he said, before pushing him to the side, “Now your job is done, so let us do ours. Stay here, my men will come for you.”

Key almost agreed to the commander when he realized something.

“Wait! I know you guys are finally going to capture the ones here. But how about the rest in Japan? You’re not neglecting Amber to die there right?” he said, hoping to get a reaction from the commander, but he stayed stern.

“The goal of this mission was to see how far Jung Yunho would do for this Jaejoong. We should wait, and the first thing we could do for now is gaining as much informations as possible, especially from the ones coming this way at the moment.” the commander said, firm enough to stop Key from questioning even further. Along with a couple of officers, he stepped out of the cold room to prepare the attack teams.

That left Key alone with a running monitor and a tech support behind it. Watching silently from behind, he could see the dots moving closer to their hiding spot. “Those guys must be thinking that Jaejoong was really kidnapped here, huh?” Key said, simply to break the ice with the tech guy. “Heh.. I can’t believe they’re buying it for real.”

The tech guy nodded, “I guess now I can see why JYP picked you to be our actor.” he said, before warning the teams outside through his communicator.

“Well, actually I still don’t unders- -“

But the tech guys raised his hand to shush him. “They’re here.”

Quickly Key moved closer to the monitor, witnessing the dots finally face to face with the cops.

“Are we.. officially in a kind of battle now?”

The tech guy turned around and pointed at his walkie talkie, “Yep. And please keep that thing on. So you’ll know when and where to escape when the commander or JYP himself contact you.”

“Then what about Amber? What about ther sniper who shot my dad?!”

“Would you stop asking those questions, Kim Kibum-ssi? You know we’re not making magic here! We’re doing our best and hopefully you can cooperate with us in return.” and just like that, the tech guy lost his cool.

With the answer given, Key threw himself back at his seat without a word.

- - -

But before he could even put his idea into action, he noticed something amazing happening before his eyes. One by one, the bullies dropped to the ground. That hero-boy kicked, punched, and spinned like a professional stuntman, and by the end of the show he kicked the ice-cream-coated boy in the nuts. Key nearly laughed and that was then when their eyes met. At that moment, Key witnessed something else about the cool kid that just saved him.

Key couldn’t contain his excitement as he approached his hero and said, “You’re a girl!”

The boy froze by the end of Key’s words. He blinked a couple of times, looking at Key in disbelief. “How.. how did you know..?”

“See? Even your voice shows it all.” Said Key triumphantly, overwhelmed by an exciting feeling he couldn’t explain. He was glad for the help, of course, but he was even more delighted to find out that this random brave boy, was actually a girl. Suddenly, he wasn’t the only one with secrets around the block.

“No one has never found out about that as fast as you did!” said the girl, still looked surprised.

“Tch. Look. The gay has met the love of his life.”

Both of Key and the tomboy turned to find the leader of the bullies rose up on his feet with a disgusting smirk plasted on his face. Feeling confident all of a sudden, Key swung his backpack toward his face, knocking him down to the ground once again.

She gave him a thumbs up, “Nice!”

Key grinned awkwardly, happy that for once he could beat that annoying boy who kept picking up on him from the beginning of the new semester.

He stretched out his hand for a handshake, “Hey, I’m.. Kim Kibum. Do you go by a boy’s name or a girl’s...?” without a shame he started an introduction. He felt like finally someone was on his side and he didn’t want to lose any chance of getting to know this person. Especially since she just saved him.

The girl chuckled and took the funny handshake, “You can call me Amber.. and I think it’s a girl’s name.”

- - -

When the signal was fired and the squad outside began to move, all Key could hear was nothing but her boyish voice that day.

***

Hi guys :)

Sorry it was a short update~

I've written the flashback part and actually was about to post it waaaay back on chapter 36, but since then I've been holding back until I think the time is right~

Hope you guys enjoyed it ^^