“Step back!”

Hyukae grabbed the hem of his mother’s blood tainted blouse with his trembling fingers, as she stood in front of him like a shield. She was bleeding, and she was obviously in pain, so why did she have to get up again? He didn’t want this. He didn’t want to see her getting hurt. Why did this have to happen? Why now?

“Don’t you dare lay your hands on my son!” Her mother yelled and pointed a gun at someone.

He couldn’t see who was there, it was dark and his tears wouldn’t stop flowing out. He was pretty sure there were at least three other men in there, but he thought they were just burglars. So why was this happening?

He opened his mouth to call out to his mother, but the throbbing wound on his shoulder made him unable to move even a muscle, let alone calling out for help. His vision was getting blurry but he couldn’t pass out now, not when his mother was struggling to protect him.

“You sick bastard,” his mother clenched her fists, as she kneeled on the floor and held him close to her. “Why are you doing this?!”

“I have nothing against you, Kyungmi,” a voice suddenly said. “But now that you’ve seen too much, I don’t see any reason why I should let you live.”

“My son has nothing to do with this! Kill me if you want, but let him go!”

“No, he’s already been a part of all this the moment you gave birth to him,” a man then appeared, though half of his face was covered by the cap he was wearing. “You shouldn’t have gotten yourself involved with this family in the first place, my dear sister-in-law.”

“Dongmin, you bastard!”

Clenching his teeth, Hyukjae forced himself to stand on his feet and stood in front of his mother, surprising all of them. If he were to die now, so be it. There was no way he’d let them hurt his mother. “B-back off! Don’t you ing touch my mom.”

“Now that’s my cute little nephew for you,” the man chuckled. “Shoot them.”

“NO!”

Before he realized it, Hyukjae was suddenly thrown aside, and then the loud sound of gunshots echoed in the silent night. His eyes grew wide at the sight of his mother’s body growing limp and falling onto the cemented floor, deep red blood flowing out of her chest, tainting her clothes.

“M-mom?” He called out, but she didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was as white as a ghost. “Mom!”

Hyukjae’s eyes fluttered open, and he immediately winced at the bright light shining in through the window. His body felt sore all over, that he was even struggling hard just to get himself up. He felt like he had a really bad dream, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He slowly scooted to the edge of the bed and looked around his room, strangely feeling bothered by the silence surrounding him.

“Donghae?” he called out, but only silence answered him.

The thought of being left alone in this huge house scared him, and he quickly climbed off the bed, staggering out of his room. But he stopped immediately the moment his eyes caught a figure of a man at the end of the empty hallway, though he seems a little too far for him to recognize his face. He was sure he’d seen him before. The mysterious shadow of a man who’d been loitering around the house, as if he was looking for something.

Hyukjae shuddered, his heart began to beat faster when the figure turned around. He took a step back to run for his life, but bumped into something hard instead.

“!” Hyukjae cursed and turned to look behind him with wide open eyes, only to sigh in relief seeing that it was actually the brick wall Donghae standing behind him. “Can you not scare me like that?!” he glared at the latter.

Donghae glanced behind him, as if he knew what just happened, before asking, “What were you looking at?”

Hyukjae threw a brief look over his shoulder, but the man was gone, and he couldn’t feel any worse than this. Could it be that he was just seeing things? Doesn’t that make him a person with a mental disorder though? But then again, he’d never been the normal one.

“Nothing,” he lied, hiding his trembling hands behind his back. “Where were you anyway?”

“Getting a drink.”

“Don’t just leave me alone when no one else is around, it freaked me out.”

After the incident in the heavy rain on their way back to Seoul the other day, Hyukjae was still feeling the shock, but he was too afraid to ask what all that was about. It must’ve something to do with him, and it scared him, a lot more than he thought. It reminded him of a little piece of memory he could barely remember, something that he knew would break him down if he ever tried to take a peek into it.

“Hyukjae,” noticing that the latter was spacing out, Donghae took a step forward, holding his arm in a gentle grip. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“You’re going to get yourself hurt in the end, Donghae. Keeping me safe might even cost you your life, are you still going to stay?”

“I told you before, I have no reason to leave.”

“Because you’re being paid?” There was a tinge of disappointment in Hyukjae’s voice, and it didn’t go unnoticed by Donghae.

“At first, yeah,” Donghae said. “But now, I hold the responsibility to protect you. Getting paid or not, I’m still gonna do it.”

It wasn’t much, but Hyukjae couldn’t help feeling a little happy hearing those words. It was both comforting and reassuring, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Clearing his throat, he acted like he heard nothing and walked back to his room, trying hard to suppress the little smile that was slowly making its way to his lips.

“My tutor is having a day off today, so take me out somewhere,” he said, trying not to sound too happy.

Donghae quirked an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything an only nodded in return. “As you wish.”

* * * * *

He tapped his fingers on the table, as his eyes scanned through the images on the phone screen. He stopped scrolling when a certain picture caught his eyes, a picture of a red-haired boy and two other guys each on his side, holding a trophy. The redhead wasn’t smiling, but he sure seemed happy, from the look he had in his eyes.

He looked up when he heard footsteps approaching, and a figure came out from the dark, holding a neatly wrapped box with the word ‘FRAGILE’ written all over it. They exchanged a look when a parrot suddenly flew in through the opened window and landed on the bookshelf, which would only mean the other one had arrived too.

“What took you so long, Kyuhyun?” he grabbed the box from the other and pulled the tape in one sloppy move, unwrapping the box in a hurry.

“Calm your , Shin,” the man called Kyuhyun snorted, as he took a seat across the latter and stretched his arms. “I had to drive for two hours to get those. Be grateful.”

“Now this is what I call a real hottie,” Shin brought out a pair of 50 caliber semi-automatic handguns from inside the box, his smirk widened.

“Where’s Minho?” Kyuhyun glanced around, but they seemed to be the only ones who were there, aside from the parrot, of course.

He didn’t have to wait long though, because exactly a minute later, the said man finally appeared, his face looking blank as always. That being said, Choi Minho was the smartest among them, and definitely the most ruthless. Lee Dongmin sure played with fire when he decided to have the devil work for him.

“I have something for you,” Shin grinned and threw the phone he was playing with at Minho, which the latter easily caught. “I took the dancer guy’s phone without thinking after I killed him and I was going to throw it away, but I figured you might want to do something with it.”

Minho raised an eyebrow and took a look at the phone with the cracked screen. It was still usable though. And he could s