"Okay, yes, the IDs might not be official," he finally admitted. "But look, the slave papers are real. The damn Korean government stamped them and if you don't believe me, ask them. I'm sure they still have him in their records. Piao, no wait, Park Chanyeol. See, it's written here. Look him up! I legally purchased him. If you want me to pay a fine, okay, whatever, I don't mind. But the papers are real."
A person didn't exist unless they had something to prove their identity. A proof always had to be acknowledged by an authority. Fake identities were always a danger, no matter how necessary they were to some individuals.
"Listen, Mr Wu, my hands are tied here. They're both foreigners, they both have forged IDs. And now you're giving me the papers for only one of them. You should be thankful that we're charging neither you nor that third one. Bring me the papers of the second one and I'll see what I can do. Until then we will have to keep them both in custody."

The mess was complete and no matter how thankful Kris was that it was the bribable Chinese police who caught his two semi-legal immigrants, it still was a real hassle. The real irony was that the problem wasn't Canlie, the obvious foreigner, because Kris still had his papers. No matter how fluent Xiumin was and how much he managed to assimilate, the moment he was uncovered as foreign, he had nothing to prove his identity, because Luhan apparently had not thought to bring his slave papers as he had left his family.

"No, really, I get it. You have your reasons and I have no right to meddle. But honestly, Luhan, do you even listen to yourself?" Kris snapped. Sometimes he just couldn't help but think that life would have been a lot easier if everyone was more like him. No matter how many emergency plans he had, nothing would ever work if everyone else just kept being in his way. "If you don't find a way to get those damn papers, we'll lose both Xiumin and Canlie. Seriously, I had no idea you cared so little, that you'd prefer that over talking to your family."
Luhan still looked at him with a blank expression, like a statue that wouldn't budge. Kris knew him enough to be able to tell that he was in a moral dilemma, but it didn't make the situation less annoying.
"I told you it's not that easy," Luhan sighed again and Kris felt like throwing something. They were moving in circles and everyone seemed to expect him to solve the situation. It would have been so much easier to quit. If not even Luhan cared about Xiumin any longer, why should he have to bother? He could just go back to his family and beg for a job because he failed that grand business of his. But it wasn't that easy for him either. He did feel responsible because it was his crew. He had hired them, so he couldn't just throw them away. So maybe it was inevitable that some things had to end but this was much too early. There still was a way out, a way that depended on Luhan's cooperation.


If he had been completely honest, he would have had to admit that the whole misery was partly his fault. His business had flourished, everything worked perfectly and everyone got along, so he had been taking on some quite risky jobs. He felt invincible because he trusted his abilty to get the most out of any deal, Lay's to patch everyone up whenever there was an emergency and those of Tao, Xiumin and Chanyeol to handle dangerous situations. They were the perfect team and even seemingly hard jobs like the one in Sinuiju went extremely well. There was nothing they couldn't do. Or so he had thought.
What he had completely disregarded were the small human problems that had occurred lately. Some of their relationships had been somewhat unstable to begin with. Luhan's occasional air-headedness still bothered him for example, and Tao never really stopped believing that Xiumin was dangerous. He thought they had found a way to cope, but in the end it wasn't the most obvious conflicts that made the ultimate difference.

There were a couple of minor issues that had sprung up lately, most of which seemed to be connected to their two powerhouses. Lay complained that Xiumin and Canlie weren't more careful and always returned from a job with the most ridiculous wounds. Tao noted that they had a temperature problem and that Xiumin sometimes obviously misinformed Canlie about some things. Every now and then Xiumin made negative comments about Canlie's heritage and Canlie still seemed lost about many things.
They were great workers and it took some burden off the others because they did most of the scouting and fighting, never really worrying about getting hurt. Canlie easily gained other people's trust, Xiumin seemed impossible to overpower. That there was some friction between them Kris realized, he wasn't that blind, but he had never thought that it would create any actual problem.
So honestly, Kris had never thought that it was anything serious when Xiumin started to ignore Canlie and made Luhan do most of the translation work. It probably just was an argument around the different opinions on Special Citizens, or anything minor like that. Ultimately it also was Xiumin who convinced Kris to bring Canlie to Special District 3 to give him a chance to visit his family. That Xiumin might have wanted to get rid of Canlie, Kris didn't even consider. They had always got along well after all. Canlie was the only person next to Luhan Xiumin had ever seemed to care about.
Part of the blame maybe really was to put on Kris. He was the one who had miscalculated the power of Canlie's and Xiumin's relationship, even though he also noticed the temperature mess Tao had been talking about for weeks.


In his defence he had to say that he never meant to take on the challenge, not because he didn't think they could win but because it was immature and ridiculous. A buyer who ignored their achievements just because they 'looked kind of weak' and who literally told them to prove their strength, he could have easily shrugged off. They hadn't lost their credibility just because someone supposedly claimed that they 'barely pulled their together' and 'almost killed all their slaves'. They were among the best, so technically they didn't need the job a security company specializing in training bodyguards for rich people offered them, especially not when they treated them like trash right from the start. He had meant to decline, when Xiumin intervened.
"I can prove that we're strong enough," he had said. "If we can secure this job, it'll help the business on the long run."
Kris had of course found it a little risky. Xiumin had been even less stable for a while at that point and he still barely talked to Canlie, so it was questionable whether he was in his right mind at all. But he had been right in a way. Word-of-mouth advertisement was important in their line of work and although Kris' pride barely allowed it, he agreed. Because he was arrogant and believed in the strength of his crew. Because he was blind and forgot that his crew was made of living individuals, not machines. Because he thought that he had a decent back-up strategy for any possible situation.

The plan was for Xiumin to fight one of the bodyguards provided by the security company  to show that would have been capable to overpower the kind of person their buyer was looking for. Lay threatened that he wouldn't heal Xiumin if he did anything stupid and Canlie seemed as though he wanted to argue but was blocked off.
Kris really should have trusted his gut feeling then. He should have stopped it but instead he tried to look calm when they stood in that shabby training hall and watched Xiumin who already involuntarily wasted his energy before it even started. It was summer but everyone's breath formed clouds in front of their faces, showing in what tumult Xiumin obviously was.
It couldn't possibly go well. One was a trained fighter who mastered wind to a degree that he could use it to cut through bodies, the other was reckless and blind like a force of nature. Before Xiumin had a chance to land any hit at all, he already was on his knees, blood coming from his leg like a bizarre fountain. And the whole room immediately became an inferno as Canlie ran to him.

They were taken in by the police, mostly for property damage and it turned out that the old hag who had sold them their IDs apparently wasn't such a genius after all. Her forgery had fooled Korean authorities and Chinese merchants often enough but the Chinese police was probably a step too high. But Kris had of course taken that possibility into account before, so he just had to get Canlie's papers and enough money to bribe. Luhan got free immediately because they were relatively close to Beijing, so all it took was for Kris to mention Luhan's real home address and his family. Everything was in perfect control.
It would have been manageable, really, if not for Luhan meekly admitting that he didn't have Xiumin's slave papers, a possibility that had never actually occurred to Kris.



A servant brought a small envelope, eyed Kris suspiciously and said, "The Young Master wants me to tell you that these are the correct papers."
Luhan didn't come back after all. Whether it was temporary or not Kris didn't know and the servant immediately hurried back inside, so there was no way of asking. With his questionable background Kris probably wasn't allowed into the house either. But there had been no way around it. No matter how much Luhan dreaded to see his family, the consequences of staying with them were less dire than those for Xiumin and Canlie if they were classified as illegal immigrants.
So Kris sighed and opened the envelope to have a look at Xiumin's slave papers before he was going to head for the immigration office. The papers were old. And obviously wrong. Yes, the picture somewhat resembled Xiumin and both date and place of birth seemed about right but the rest just didn't make any sense at all.
Unless...
Unless of course he was even more blind than he had thought.

Xiumin and Luhan had a secret. Luhan left his family and didn't bring anything to prove Xiumin's identity. Kris suspected that one of them might have had an illness.
"It's not that easy," Luhan had said and indeed, it wasn't. And Kris maybe wasn't the smart and calculating leader he had always meant to be after all. He got fooled by a stupid lie he could have easily uncovered if he had just used his brain.

Yes, another double update! I have four days off and at least right now I'm pumped, so I might finish the story within the next couple of days but I can't guarantee anything...

Anyway, the next chapter will finally include the twist and ugjhtgjhngthgrth, please don't expect too much. There's a really lame trope standing behind all the secrets and I really hope that it won't be too off-putting..