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Before Jonghyun and I leave to get the money and a rent-car we send Taemin as decoy to draw the camping fans’ attention. It’s pretty easy for him because these days he’s brightly blonde and since he caught up to Minho’s height he stands out most among us. It works so well that Jjong watching from the corridor with a mock-hurt puppy-face says: “Looks like being tall indeed is everything.” He makes me smile and comes back with a toothy grin already rushing out of the backdoor in hoody and coat.

It’s freezing cold, a typical Seoul winter-bastard. Jjong hails a taxi and I jog to my bank that’s just a couple of blocks away. Kibum’s transfer has been successful and luckily they don’t make a fuss about the withdrawal. It’s not all that much money anyway. I put the fat envelope in the inside pocket of my coat and run back to the dorm. The campers must be still hard on Taemin’s heels. I wonder where he dragged them.

When I come in Minho has already looked through our wardrobes. We usually don’t get to keep our stage-outfits, except for the simple stuff we wear beneath expensive and stylish jackets, coats or weirdo tops. But we still have the sleeveless black shirts we wore during SHINee World III tour two years ago.

“Lucky”, I say to Minho when he shows me. But he answers:

“I don’t think so, Hyung. Whoever is behind this probably knows about these shirts. It’s no secret that we wore them, but you still would have to be interested in our activities to remember that.”

He’s probably right and that means that whoever is doing this to Yoogeun is well informed about us. But there are a couple of million people matching this profile.

Taemin arrives rosy-cheeked and panting. He managed to outrun the horde of love-sick girls and is comically proud of it. “They were seriously fast”, he says. Minho laughs out loud and then pats our pouting Maknae’s back in appreciation. “I knew you could do it”, he adds, “that’s my boy!”

Half an hour later Jjong is back as well. He’s in an upbeat mood in spite of the circumstances and I have to admit that there is a part of me enjoying the company. Since Kibum brought us in line with his speech we have started to work as a team again. We still know each other so well. When we have an early dinner it’s a bit like the old times although we are worried about Yoogeun. And somehow we end up talking about other things as well, what exactly we’re working on at the moment, family and Minho even mentions that he is seeing a woman. He doesn’t go into detail like we never do about these things but I feel strangely touched by the fact that he shares this with us.

Jjong looks at his watch. It’s 07:00pm.

“Kibum should be halfway across the Pacific by now”, he says. “If he catches a flight from Tokyo directly he will be here around 4 or 5am tomorrow morning.”

“But he’ll arrive at Incheon, won’t he?” I ask.

“Yeah probably”, Minho agrees, “we’ll have to pick him up.”

“I don’t want to play decoy again”, Taemin says immediately with a frown that makes him look rather younger than more serious, “I want to go too.”

That’s our Maknae: doesn’t want to be left behind.

“If Kibum arrives at 5am then there are 17 hours left of the deadline. But let’s say he needs longer because the flight is late, he misses it whatever. We might be running out of time so I agree with Tae that we should all go and be ready.”

“Yeah”, Minho confirms, “and we don’t know anything about the location for the rendezvous yet. We might have to go a long way.”

So it’s decided that we will pick up Kibum together, bring everything we need and will be ready for delivery.