Happy birthday to Kei_Ma!  And happy birthday also to another one of you who said it's sometime next week - I'm so sorry - I was on my phone at the time and didn't write it down and I can't find your name in the comments.  But happy birthday to you as well.

Sehun woke up a little bit after lunch.  Pronouncing herself well enough to get out of bed, Semi ended up sitting in his bay with him for the rest of the afternoon – Minseok had gone home around when the police had left because Semi wanted alone time with her brother.  Sehun was horribly confused and disoriented and didn’t make much sense when he spoke, though Semi was unsure whether that was painkillers speaking or concussion.  He was happy to see her nevertheless, and Minseok had at least left her with her phone as well, so she was able to contact her university friends when she left.

In all the chaos after the New Year, she’d completely forgotten the semester had already started, and she’d missed the best part of a week already.  Tao and Wendy between them had managed to take up all her storage space with a barrage of texts and missed calls and messages, though she did spot two from Seulgi that really made her laugh.

Tao says you’ve gone missing!  Are you okay?

It was followed – about half a day later, according to the time stamps – by one which read wait – you wouldn’t be missing if you had proper access to your phone, so I’m guessing it’s off, broken or not with you.  Forget that last message because you’re clearly not okay.

She sent Seulgi a quick text to assure her that everything was now fine, and then one to Junhong, who had also expressed concern, but rang Tao and Wendy because she felt it would be better to face the hysteria over the phone than in person.  By the time she arrived back at the apartment, she was surprised she could still hear anything.

Delicious smells wafted out from the kitchen as she got in through the front door, and she paused by the shoe rack for a moment to savour them.

“Semi?” Minseok called out.  “Can you come in here a sec?”

Semi could see absolutely nothing wrong with following the divine smell into the kitchen, where she found Minseok at the kitchen table kneading what looked like cookie dough.  It took a few moments for her to tear her gaze away from the sight of the muscles and sinews flexing in his arms as he worked.

“Can you turn the soup down and check on the cake?” he asked without looking up.  “It should be nearly done.”

Shrugging, Semi crossed over to the oven.  The soup was coming to the boil on the hob, so she lowered the heat before opening the oven door to look at the cake.  She was assailed by a rich scent of chocolate and breathed a sigh of satisfaction.

“The cake’s done,” she said.  “Do you want me to take it out?”

“Give me a moment.”  His footsteps sounded across the tiles.  “Want a taste?” he asked, holding out a doughy hand as he the other clean.  Semi just stared at him.  He shrugged.  “Your loss, then.  I think it tastes rather nice.”

“You’re twenty-seven,” she pointed out.

He gave her a funny look as he proceeded to his other hand clean.  “And this is cookie dough.”

She moved out to the way to let him get at the oven gloves and take the cake out.  “I could have done that, you know.”

“Er.”  He gave a pointed look at her left arm.  “Physically, yes, but I think not.”

“I’m not made of porcelain.”

“No, but flesh injuries need to rest.  You’re talking to somebody who has much more experience of them.”

Semi’s mood began to turn sour.  “What did you even call me in here for?”

Minseok slid the cake onto a cooling rack.  “We need to have a chat.  For starters I’m not sure why you sent me off when you were talking to Chen and Lay.  It might have been two years since I’ve had any direct involvement with anything going on in Suho’s gang, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a better functioning knowledge of them than the police because Luhan’s been keeping me up to date.”

“There were some things I didn’t want you to hear,” Semi muttered.

“Really?  Are you forgetting that you’re dealing with criminals here and that I’m the only criminally minded person you know?  I would have been able to help.”

“Would you, though?  That would be working with the police.”

He produced some rice cakes and prodded Semi into one of the chairs.  “Yeah.  Suho’s gang is our biggest rival.  Playing dirty to bring them down is allowed.”

Semi nicked a rice cake off him, wincing when pain shot up her left arm, and started nibbling on it.

“And more importantly, you never told me you had a brother.  It would have been easier to help protect him if I’d known in advance.”

“Would I really have been able to trust you with that information?”  Semi gave up on nibbling and shoved the rest of the rice cake into .  Xiumin seemed to consider for a moment.

“No,” he admitted bluntly.  “I would have told Luhan.”

Semi pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow before reaching for a second rice cake.  He chuckled.

“Would you have believed me if I said yes?”

“No.”

“Then you’re accusing me unfairly.”

Semi sighed.  “What do you want to know, then?”

“Everything.  What happened from the moment you were kidnapped until the moment you woke up in hospital.  I was scared out of my mind when I realised you’d disappeared.”

“Scared for me or for yourself?”

“A combination.  You’re pleasant company.”  Xiumin snorted to himself, muttering something that sounded like so caustic.  “So tell me.  What was Byun Baekhyun doing in the same building as you and why was there a microchip in your back?”

He took a seat opposite her as she began to talk.  She got as far as the panic attack Youngsaeng had helped her with, in graphic detail in part to spite Xiumin because she knew he was proud of his ability to calm her down and in part to emphasise how nice the doctor had been to her, before he interrupted her.

“Youngsaeng?” he repeated after she mentioned the doctor’s name for the second time.  “Heo Youngsaeng?”

“I don’t know about his full name, but he’s an unlicensed doctor and his codename is Otter.”

“Oh, I know all that.”  Xiumin scoffed.  “I lost twenty-three good men to him and five girls when they were in hospital for various reasons.  Used to sneak in as one of the hospital staff and quietly prescribe the patients something lethal.”

Semi gaped at him for several seconds.  “But he seems so… gentle.”

“Yeah, and I look like a hamster,” Xiumin pointed out.  “Appearances can be deceptive.  He’s Suho’s sort of pet assassin.”

“But he’s good at looking after people.”

“If you know enough about the human body to heal it, you probably know enough to damage it pretty severely too,” Xiumin said flatly.  “Anyway, continue.”

Semi told him about her meeting with Suho (“the b*stard has blond hair now?  He must look like a total creep”) and the video call with Luhan, at which Xiumin interrupted with a bunch of inane questions about whether Luhan seemed well.

“I was paying more attention to my watermelon because I was scared,” Semi admitted, and he burst out laughing.

His next comment was on the stupidity of not giving her a guard as she slept, and he raised an eyebrow at her eavesdropping.

“Suho’s almost as cautious as Luhan,” he muttered.  “But Lay runs too many risks.  I’m impressed he played the stakes correctly, but a wild card like Baekhyun could have screwed everything up.”

“Oh, speaking of Baekhyun,” said Semi, “he caught me rooting through that Jungmin person’s office.”

“I’m beginning to wonder how you made it out of the building alive.”

“He thought I was going to jump out of the window,” Semi remembered.  “I was probably scared enough to try, but it was like his gaze paralysed me.”  She shuddered.

Xiumin shuddered too and took another rice cake.  “I can’t imagine he reacted too well to seeing you there, since you’re his only living target.  It will have ruined his perfect record.”

“He wasn’t happy.  Didn’t say much, though – just that eight million won a day thing – and then I kind of passed out.”

“Can you remember exactly what he did and said?”

“He didn’t really do much.  Just stood there with a lighter in one hand and syringe in the other.  He made me put down the weaponry thing I wanted to give to the police, said it was a bad idea to jump out of the window – oh, wait!  I totally forgot to give this to the police.”  She dug around in her bra, ignoring Xiumin suddenly choking on his rice cake, and fished out the list of names she’d taken off the floor.

“Let’s see.”  Xiumin tugged it out of her hand and scanned the paper.  “This looks like a hit list.”

“How can you tell?”

“They’ve been profiled.”  He pointed to the random assortment of letters and numbers beside each name.  “The one pretending to be an age underneath the photos is the offer in millions of won.  The ones that have been crossed out are already done—” he pointed, “—and this combination here is a zip code for where you’re most likely to find them.  These are all pretty important people, too.”

“Suho said something about getting rid of people in important positions.”

“Then he probably has no more use for them and doesn’t want to keep paying out bribes.  That or they’re threatening to speak.”  He paused with his finger hovering over the picture of a middle-aged man.  “Isn’t this the national defence secretary?”

Semi leant across the table to look.  “Yeah.”

“And this one was in the news just a couple of weeks back.”  He pointed to a pretty-looking woman in her mid-twenties.  “They said she overdosed on sleeping pills because of depression – I bet that was Youngsaeng’s doing.  God, this is a mess.  Suho’s going to freak out if he finds a half-completed hit list is missing.”

“Jungmin’s office was a tip.”

“This is a list of really important people.  They’re going to notice if it’s gone.”

“I thought the place got burnt?  Won’t they have a…?”  Her eyes widened.  “Oh my God.  The reason there was so much paperwork was because Jungmin’s computer died, so everything that could be printed was so he could continue working.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Baekhyun was contracted to kill some of the people on that list either.”  Xiumin sighed.  “You’ve already given the police a lot of information that could only come from you or if Suho’s mole, who they have apparently caught, confesses.  But Lay was mentioning somebody in the team assigned to your case being the mole, so I’m guessing that this person was being bribed for information rather than planted.  Chen’s the most junior person apart from Jongin, who doesn’t know the details, and it’s hard to get your own person into a senior position during peacetime.  If the mole is being bribed, then chances are they won’t know anything, which shifts all the blame back to you.”

“Suho has men in the police?”

“We all do.  It’s the easiest way to make sure we can get off lightly if we’re ever caught.  But what happened with Baekhyun?”

“He greeted me as his only living target, told me to put down the finance sheets I was reading through, said something like eight million won a day and then knocked me out.”

“Why was he bothered about the finan— wait a second.  Eight million a day?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah.  He said eight million won a day, nodded, and then he tried to inject me with whatever was in his syringe.  Did inject me.  And his smile was evil.”

Xiumin stared at the table for a good long moment, ceasing to chew on his rice cake as he frowned.  Then he clasped his hands behind his neck, leaning his elbows on the table, and groaned.  “Oh my God.  This is even worse than I thought.”

Semi just looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Why?” she prompted when he didn’t.

It was another long moment before Xiumin tilted his head to look up at her.  “I’ll need to check with him, but I think Luhan might be paying him not to complete that hit he commissioned on you.  Byun Baekhyun never fails to complete a hit.  That will have been a huge blow to his pride.  It would be enough to make the psychopath come after you.”

Semi blinked at him.  “Why would Luhan pay to keep me alive?”

“So I don’t get hung.”  He let out a long breath.