“I’ll kill them,” Yong Guk growled once Mi Sun explained what had happened as school. The oldest paced the floor, cursing under his breath as he tried to calm down. Everyone else made sure to stay out of his way, watching him and making sure that he wasn’t going to actually make good on his threat of killing the bullies.

“Sorry, hyung,” Daehyun looked down in shame. It was his fault that Yong Guk was so upset right now. I’m seventeen years old for goodness sake, I should be able to protect myself from a couple of bullies, he thought. Even back at the orphanage, he hadn’t been able to protect himself from anyone. Yong Guk, Himchan, and Mi Sun had always done it for him, making sure nothing happened to him.

When he was five, one of the older children had tried to take Daehyun’s teddy bear. Unable to do anything other than cry, Himchan had ended up with a black eye just so he could return the toy to him. When he was ten, Mi Sun had spent most of the day in the closet for a time out because she’d taken the blame for something he did. During Yong Guk’s last year at the orphanage, the oldest had his nose broken by another kid who had pushed Daehyun off the swings at the nearby park. Daehyun had never been able to defend himself no matter how hard he tried and it made him feel useless.

“It’s not your fault,” Yong Guk patted his head, “don’t worry about it. Alright? Looking after the younger ones is what older brothers do, right?” he looked at Himchan and Mi Sun to confirm his words, “that is what good big brother’s do, right?”

“Yep,” Himchan laughed, ruffling Daehyun’s hair himself, “big brothers and sisters look after their younger siblings and we get really pissed off when we can’t. It’s not your fault, Daehyun, so don’t look so upset.”

“I should be able to prevent this stuff, though,” Daehyun argued, “and isn’t a social worker going to come out now? Isn’t that protocol or something?”

“Not sure,” Mi Sun frowned, trying to recall all she knew about this kind of situation, “I think there’s a time limit for it. Like the social worker can’t come in after so many years when all prior visits have shown things are fine.”

“We’re going to get a visit, aren’t we?” Daehyun looked at the three oldest who suddenly looked a bit worried. Truth be told, they’d never bothered to look into situations where an adopted kid got hurt because it had never occurred to them that it would happen. Now, they felt foolish and stupid for thinking such a thing couldn’t happen.

“We’ll just have to deal with that when it happens,” Mi Sun shrugged, “it’s not like it happened at home and we have witnesses to back us up. Kris and Luhan saw the whole thing and can tell the social worker what happened.”

The twelve immortals listened to the conversation from the top of the stairs. They all exchanged looks of worry when they heard the phone in Yong Guk’s office start to ring. Everyone hoped that it was just a wrong number or someone asking in the boarding house had an extra room.

Neither hope was right, but their fear wasn’t right either.

“Who was it?” Himchan asked, trying hard not to look worried.

“The police,” Yong Guk’s confusion was clear and was quickly mirrored by everyone else.

“Why would the cops be calling?” Mi Sun was too confused to be worried, but the more she thought about it the more worried she got.

“They wanted to know about our time at the orphanage,” Yong Guk explained, “the cop wanted to know when she could schedule meetings for all of us to come down to the station and talk.”

“Why would a cop want to talk to us about our time there?” Daehyun asked.

“The owner got arrested!” Himchan grinned as the reason dawned on him, “remember? I took Yong Guk and Mi Sun to see the closed sign on the place a few days ago while you were at school. I heard that the owner was taken down for abusing the kids, so maybe they’re talking to everyone who spent time there.”

“Makes sence,” Yong Guk nodded, “they probably want to know how long this crap has been going on for.”

“So what do we tell them?” Mi Sun asked, “Because if we tell them everything, they’ll probably want us to testify in court. Is that something we want? Because then the lawyers defending the owner will start digging into our lives, trying to find anything to destroy our credibility and make us look bad.”

“True,” Yong Guk nodded, “I’d rather someone doesn’t make us look like unfit guardians for Daehyun and the rest of the boys.”

“But the owner has to go to jail for what he’s done,” Himchan pointed out, “what if what we say is the difference between him doing time and getting away with everything he’s done?”

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it,” Yong Guk sighed, “this cop guy wants us to stop by on Saturday, so we have a few days to figure out what we’re going to do.”

The four humans went their separate ways after that. Yong Guk locked himself in his office while Daehyun headed off to his room and Himchan headed out so he could pick up the youngest three from school. Mi Sun went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, trying to think clearly about everything.

“Are you ok?” Tao asked as he came into the kitchen with Sehun and Kai.

“How much did you hear?” she questioned, not even bothering to look up. Even if they only heard the part after the cop called, then they probably had figured out that her time in the orphanage hadn’t been ideal.

“Everything after the cops called,” Kai told her, sitting down across from Mi Sun after Tao and Sehun beat him to the seats directly beside her. It was a lie, they had heard everything, but she didn’t need to know that. In fact, it might be best she didn’t.

“Then you should know I’m not really ok,” she sighed, looking up at them. The three felt their hearts clench painfully when they noticed the tears starting to form in her eyes.

“What will happen if you guys have to testify?” Sehun asked. He didn’t really understand why telling the truth about what the owner had put them through was bad, but it had to be pretty awful from the way the four had been talking.

“The lawyer for the owner is going to try to discredit us,” she answered, “to make us look so bad that a jury wouldn’t want to believe us. Yong Guk, Himchan, and I are just worried that this lawyer will make us look like unfit guardian for Daehyun, Youngjae, Jongup, and Zelo. They couldn’t really take them away, I don’t think so anyway, but if we look bad then social workers will stop by pretty often to make sure everything is fine.”

“And they’ll take the kids away if they find anything out of place,” Kai nodded, realizing where Mi Sun was going. Now that he thought about it, a social worker or a lawyer could argue that their home was unsafe for the youngest four because of all the strangers who came and went. If either made a big deal of it, them Yong Guk, Himchan, and Mi Sun could very well lose custody of the four youngest.

All twelve demons felt incredibly useless. Their master, their Mi Sun, was facing a major problem and they couldn’t do anything to help her.

A/N: supper sorry that this is so late. i have 2 good reasons, though. 1: i've been super sick all day (like, coughing so hard your ribs hurt kind of sick). 2: i've been halping my family harvest potatos from out veggie garden (got over 700 from just 1 variety). anyway, sorry for the lateness, hope you enjoy, thank you subscribers, and please comment. with that said and done, i'm gonna go back to hacking up my lungs ('cuz i still feel sick)