I don’t remember falling asleep when Jonghyun wakes me up around 05:00 am. I’m on the floor and Taemin is draped across the sofa like a gangly stuffed animal. The TV is still running.

“Took me an hour to get out of the freaking terminal”, Jjong says and helps me up. He is angry and alert but it gives me confidence to have him here.

We don’t wake Taemin yet, instead move to the kitchen to talk and copy the message he received to my notebook. Then we watch both clips in silence.

Jjong’s video strikes me as weirdly amateurish even more so than the one I got, and that I still considered a prank at first. It shows the same room but is obviously filmed by a person moving around. Yoogeun sits on the chair but isn’t tied to it yet and although he is on the verge of tears he does not appear exceptionally frightened, not like in the clip I received. He’s holding up a piece of paper that says “help me appas!” that looks suspiciously like he wrote it himself.

There is no sound recorded here either but Yoogeun is talking to whoever shot the clip and I can read from his lips something like “I want to go home”. I’m even more confused than before.

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I ask Jjong.

“I’m trying to figure that out myself”, he says, “I’ve watched this about a hundred times by now.”

He rewinds to the point where Yoogeun is speaking and remarks: “He’s not intimidated, I think, it’s rather like being annoyed or angry.”

He’s right. We’ve seen the little guy throwing tantrums and although he’s older now his facial expressions are not all that different.

“Yeah”, I confirm, “but he’s used to having lots of people around who aren’t exactly familiar.”

“True.”

Then Jjong shows me the text and it’s about the same as mine except for the “RANSOM DELIVERY BY ONEW, JONGHYUN, KEY, MINHO, TAEMIN”.

The latter enters the kitchen while we are discussing this. He’s his usual sleepy self, wet dream of any mother in law. He takes a look at the text and says: “Must be some kind of SHINee expert to write our names in this order.”

Right, whoever is messing with us here at least knows the age-ranking. Apart from that it’s weird anyway to bother with listing our stage names like this, as if SHINee wasn’t accurate enough.

While we drink tea and Jjong goes out again to get some breakfast, before there are too many people around, Minho calls me again.

“Hyung”, he says, “I’m at Bangkok airport, there’s an early flight. But I won’t be in Seoul before 10:00 am.”

“Okay”, I say, “come to the dorm anyway. We’ll make it our headquarters for now.”

There’s a short pause, then Minho asks:

“Are you really sure we should keep this from the police? You know that they usually say it’s the worst thing you can do in a kidnapping-case.”

Right, he’s shooting a police-drama lately. But of course he has a point there. Still my instinct tells me not to rush things, although I don’t really know why.

“Minho, let’s talk about this, when you’re here. We’ll gather information and if anything comes up. I’ll call you immediately.”

I wonder what I’m talking about ... gather information WTF? But Minho doesn’t ask any further so I guess I’m good for now.

“Any news from Kibum?” Is the first thing Jjong wants to know when he returns with a day’s worth of rice, kimchi and pre-cooked bulgogi, that doesn’t look too good. “I tried to call him”, he says, “but only got the mailbox.”

“Maybe it’s a good sign”, Taemin says, “he could be on a flight.”

“I don’t think so”, Jjong’s shaking is head, “JFK is still shut down and it’s still snowing like crazy.”

There’s an awkward silence for a minute and I guess we’re all thinking the same thing: What will we do, if Kibum can’t make it in time?

During breakfast we talk about the ransom. One hundred million Won is certainly not peanuts but still seems kind of cheap for a kidnapping. Taemin says:

“I have about 10 million that I can get to easily.”

“I can add 30 to that without breaking a sweat”, Jjong confirms and I will be able to put together at least 25.

“Minho is rich”, Jonghyun says with a sly smile and it’s probably true. Right then his phone receives a text from Kibum that’s already 2 hours old and says: “Don’t worry about the money”.

“What does that mean?” Taemin asks.

“His father is in some kind of money-business, so he can probably manage the whole sum easily”, Jjong replies. “Well, whatever, let’s just leave it to him. Kibum says not to worry, that’s good enough for me.”

I tell them about Minhos concerns but both Taemin and Jjong agree with me, that it’s too early to involve the police since we haven’t even compared all messages we received to get the picture. Still none of us is an expert in crime so we’re a bit uneasy and just glad we’re not on our own with the decision.

When my phone rings around 07:00am I realize that already 9 hours have passed. It’s Kibum and he’s furious. I let the others listen in again.

“I took the ing RAILWAY to Boston and now they tell me, they shut down the airport as well”, Kibum rants, “I’ll have to go to Albany and try to get a flight to L.A.. I have no idea though how to go on from there.”

“Okay”, Jjong says, “but keep in touch.”

“Yeah ... and Jinki Hyung, I’ve wired the money to your account. Should be ready this afternoon.”

“But when will you be here?” Taemin asks innocently.

“Taem, Kid, I love you, too”, Kibum says and hangs up again.