“Where’s Hoya?”

“Hoya—Hoya—” Woohyun ran around the side yard and the backyard of the house, yelling for their friend, but there was no response. He ran back in the house, his eyes watering, and started flipping over more furniture—the TV stand, the couch, the drawers—everything.

“Hoya?” Dongwoo asked. He managed to stand up and move around for a while, but fell right back down, and nearly passed out.

Hyemin clutched her head tightly. “I thought he was fighting outside—he was already gone when I brought out the gun—”

“How did you get a ing gun?” Woohyun asked, glancing at it in his hands before throwing it across the room. “If you didn’t shoot them, they wouldn’t have taken—”

Hyemin stood up and faced her cousin. “If I didn’t shoot them, all of you would be gone, in more ways than one.” Woohyun looked at Sungyeol and Dongwoo on the ground, and gave up the argument.

“Hoya’s gone,” Myungsoo said, walking back into the living room after checking around the outside of the house. Woohyun wanted to make a bitter remark about this, but then he saw Sungyeol slowly waking up, and tended to him.

Sungyeol opened his eyes to this: a bloody and beat Woohyun cleaning blood off of his face with Woohyun’s shirt, Myungsoo putting pressure on Dongwoo’s cut with a towel already red with blood, and Hyemin putting down her phone after calling Sunggyu and Sungjong to come back now, and staring at the dead body in the hallway.

+

“We need to get out of here,” Sunggyu said, upon stepping into the house.

Woohyun, showered but still bruised, set down some bags in front of the door. “We need to get out of here now. They know we’re here, they can come back any time—and I’m sure they’ll be back armed.”

Myungsoo helped guide Sungyeol, who was still dazed, out into the house. Hyemin had to continue to put pressure on Dongwoo’s wound. The rest of them carried bags into the car—Dohwan’s car they used when the circus was on breaks. There were happy memories in the van, like trips to the beach, or to Hoya’s house in Busan, but this was not happy anymore.

Before they left, Woohyun sat in the seat next to Sunggyu, in the driver’s seat, and handed him the handgun.

“Hyemin found it in the garage. I looked back there and there was ammo, too.”

But Sunggyu shook his head and refused to take it.

“Hyung, the world’s not like it was before. Those guys were coming after us. If we’re not careful, they could still be after us—they came in to kill us, or to take us away. You’re our leader. You can’t let that happen anymore.”

Sunggyu hated it, but he took the gun.

+

“Got them. Flight is in four hours,” Myungsoo said, holding up his phone he bought the tickets to Jeju with. “So we should be there in two, three more hours?”

“Dongwoo will be done by then,” the doctor said. He was stitching up Dongwoo’s shoulder. “But what about the rest of you?”

“We feel fine—” Woohyun insisted.

Sunggyu shook his head. “All of you, go get checked, too. And Myungsoo, get your ribs checked.” Sungyeol, Woohyun, and Myungsoo all sighed and sat down on the clinic’s patient bed with Woohyun, in a line to be checked.

“Did you find anything in the storage unit?” Hyemin asked.

“It was empty. The workers said that unit was only visited once a year, but by multiple people at once,” Sunggyu answered. Hyemin caught Sunggyu and Sungjong up to speed with the information they found. But while she spoke, he noticed that her leg was shaking nonstop—something that never happened before.

When she was done talking, Sunggyu put a hand on her leg to stop the shaking. “Your leg—”

“I didn’t notice it,” Hyemin said, surprised with herself. “I’m sorry, I—” Her hands started shaking and she dropped the cup of water in her hands onto the floor, and some spilled onto Sunggyu’s paints.

“I’m so sorry—I’m sorry—”

Sunggyu stood up and led Hyemin out of the room with him. They sat down outside, on the steps going down from the back steps of the clinic. Hyemin’s leg was shaking again.

“Want to talk?” Sunggyu asked.

“No,” Hyemin clearly answered. She noticed her leg shaking again and covered her face.

Sunggyu wrapped one arm around her back, and then brought her into a closer embrace. Hyemin’s entire body began shaking, she clung onto Sunggyu, and the tears came out from her eyes, down her cheeks, onto Sunggyu’s sleeves.

“I sh-shot a man,” she cried, “I killed a man!”

“He was coming after you. If you didn’t shoot him, they would have continued to beat up the other guys, and they would’ve gotten to you and Myungsoo,” Sunggyu said, desperately trying to get Hyemin understand that, “There was no other way.”

“I-I know, but,” Hyemin had no words for the conflict she felt. It had to be done, there was no other way, you did the right thing. Those were the words she’d already told herself, but it didn’t change the fact that she killed a man, a human being, someone with thoughts and feelings and could feel pain and what was his last thought?

As Sunggyu watched Hyemin cry in his arms, and could only think of what he had heard earlier. “The world’s not like what it was before.”

+

Hyemin stood before the mirror in the airport terminal bathroom, staring blankly at her reflection. Other women came through the bathroom, but she didn’t move aside.

She had her long, wavy hair combed out and laid over her shoulders, just like her mom, and Woohyun’s mom, and Sungjong’s mom, and every other mom in the circus had done. She thought of the moms telling her how nice it looked on her, how innocent and pure she looked. And she couldn’t take it anymore.

The pair of scissors in Hyemin’s right hand was slowly raised, from the tips of her hair to above her shoulders, and they made the first snip.