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thirty-four: knight in shining armor

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[It was now about saving her before the others.]

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"You are not who I expected you to be," Juyeon said, slurring slightly as she recovered.

Taehyuk had escorted her in a surprisingly gentlemanly way, setting her down on an old threadbare couch. Someone ed a cup of tea into her hands. Another set a plate of turkey sandwiches down in front of her—real food, not the blobs served to them in the dining hall.

She forgot how appetizing real food looked, and immediately grabbed one.

"Really? Well, uh, thanks?" Taehyuk said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor near her. "You're not exactly who I expected you to be, either. Again, really sorry about all this. Does your head hurt much?"

"Nah, it's fine," Juyeon said, and indeed her headache was fading. She had about a hundred and one questions to ask, but one stood out immediately. "Where are we?"

Indeed, it looked very much like a classroom, only there were no windows and it was free of the usual desks and chairs bolted in place. Suspicious holes dotted the dusty floor and large lumps of what could have been furniture was pushed to the side and covered with tarp, which seemed to explain most of that. The air was also rather stale.

"It's one of the underground classrooms," Taehyuk explained. Even his appearance was unexpected. He was a short, slender boy with gawky limbs as skinny as chicken feet and a small, almost pretty face. Not exactly the type of guy she'd expect to go around threatening people and throwing rocks. "The Academia used to be much, much bigger. We have dozens of extra rooms under the main building, but they closed it off behind one of the lockers. I discovered them in my first year here, and I've been using them since. Fashioning them into a sort of base, as you will."

He gestured to the classroom. It had indeed been somewhat decorated, with patterned curtains and an old chunky radio playing music quietly in the background, as if to give it a more homely feeling.

A small band of students, no more than twelve or thirteen, were milling around the room talking quietly amongst themselves, sandwiches and cups in hand. They must have been his followers, or gang members, or ... whatever the hell this was.

"Do the teachers know about this?" Juyeon asked, slightly amazed. She never expected the Academia to have even more secrets—but then again, she shouldn't have been surprised.

Taehyuk snorted. "Probably. Nothing gets by the staff, not much. They probably just figure we're not doing anything too bad, so they let us scurry like rats beneath the floorboards." There was a trace of bitterness in his voice.

Juyeon couldn't help herself anymore. "Okay, what's the deal here? What's your ulterior motive? You guys have been targeting me, and if this is some sort of—of PC supremacy bull, you—"

"Whoa, wait. Targeting you?" Taehyuk's eyebrows constricted together, puzzlement falling over his face. "What do you mean?"

Juyeon stared. "W-well, there's the rock through the window, and then that branch—"

"Oh jeez, you think we were attacking you? For what, being a normal? No way, we aren't that barbaric. No, we've been trying to attack Exo. Exo has always been our target."

"She's nowhere," Chanyeol said, as he and the rest of Exo regrouped. They had planned on staying out to looking for Juyeon all day, but to their luck Professor Pain found them. Only with a good deal of threats and a few physical scuffles did Pain successfully send them back to class. They were now huddled together under the pretense of working on English homework.

"They couldn't have taken her and just disappeared," Sehun hissed. If the others weren't as tightly strung as him, they would have laughed at just how anxious he seemed.

The usually unflappable youngest of the group was pale and trembling with restrained emotion, fingers twitching, eyes shifting. A cold, hard fury had settled over him, and if it was any usual thing, the others would have picked him apart mercilessly for showing so much weakness, for allowing his feelings to get the better of him and poke holes in his defenses.

Only this wasn't any usual thing. This was Juyeon. A disappeared, kidnapped Juyeon, at the mercy of normal-hating PCs who'd like nothing more than to dump her body in the lake and could probably get away with it.

And it was especially disconcerting how every single one of them pri