Warning: double/triple update.  Make sure to go back at least a chapter, maybe more, if you haven't read/logged in over the past 24 hours, possibly less.

A proper sleep was not in the offing that night.  Round about four-thirty in the morning, Minseok was vigorously shaken awake by a panicked-looking Luhan.  Confused, Minseok sat up and looked around, wondering what the issue was, and was answered by the sound of hammering on the door.

“The police are here,” Luhan told him, worried.  “Where’s the best place for me to hide?”

Abruptly alert, Minseok pulled the covers back and got out of bed.  Semi stirred sleepily and reached a hand out towards where he’d been.  The realisation that he wasn’t there apparently woke her up properly.

“What’s going on?” she asked, seeing the two men standing beside the bed.

“Dawn raid,” Minseok told her.  “Hide Luhan, please, sweetheart.  If I don’t answer the door, they’ll knock it down.”  He took his phone from the bedside table and left the room, turning the passage light on as he got out into it.  Halfway towards the door, he met an owl-eyed Jaehwan, who was carrying Jaera on his hip.  The girl’s bottom lip was quivering as though she was about to burst into tears.

“Dad—” Jaehwan began.

“I know.”  He smoothed down the cowlicks in Jaehwan’s hair.  “Go find Mummy and ask her to ring Lay, please.”

Jaehwan looked nervously at the front door, which shook as something impacted against it, and skittered off in the direction of his parents’ room.  Minseok continued to the door and started up the recording app on his phone before opening the door.

“Police,” somebody told him gruffly.  “Stand aside.  We have reason to believe you’re harbouring a criminal.”

Minseok was nearly swept into the wall as people in riot uniform came crowding in, but he managed to put himself in the way and stop them before they’d got far enough down the passage to start opening doors.

“Wait,” he said in his most authoritative voice, holding up both hands.  “I’m a policeman.  Let me see your search warrant.”

They all came up short.  Minseok used the opportunity to scrutinise the uniforms in front of him, and he was irritated to recognise the Busan PD logo.

“Where’s the search warrant?” he pressed, holding up the phone.  “I’m recording this.  If you don’t have a warrant, I can report you all for misconduct.”

One of the policemen lifted his visor.  “The warrant’s with the Seoul police force.  It’s still being processed here, but we were told to act quickly to prevent the criminal from escaping.”

Minseok eyed the man speculatively.  “Where did the order come from?”

“Higher up,” the man told him.

Minseok closed his eyes, resisting the urge to start calling him an idiot.  “I’m assuming this order came in the wake of trying to bug my house and my office and realising that all the bugs had been found and disposed of, correct?”

There was a very uneasy silence.

“And that somebody’s deliberately trying to bypass Chief of Police Zhang,” Minseok went on.  “Okay.  Fine.  You can search the house if you really want to.  I’ll still be reporting this incident, but I don’t like my privacy being invaded and I don’t want my colleagues and family being affected by this.  Of course I’m going to remove bugs in my office and in my home if I find them.  The goons at SPD had better be satisfied by this.”

Apparently, it was worth the prospect of being disciplined in order to search the house for Luhan, because the spokesman gave him an apologetic shrug before pulling his visor back down and waving everybody on.  Minseok stood back to allow them.  It was better to let them search and find nothing that to have the house watched and be subject to further raids.  And this way, when he passed on the recording to Yixing, the man would be able to cancel the warrant with immediate effect.  In all likelihood, the person – or potentially even people – who had been snooping around the office and house earlier would actually be with the group.  Hopefully, they would conclude they were looking in the wrong place and go elsewhere in their search for Luhan.

Irritated nevertheless, Minseok followed the riot squad around the house, deciding it was best not to ask them why they’d tried to batter the door down rather than sneaking in like the bug-planters had – though he reckoned that might have had something to do with the fact he’d made sure to triple-lock it and draw the bolt before going to bed.  He was very tempted to boss them about over where they were and weren’t allowed to go, but figured that would be a very, very bad idea as it might look like he was hiding something.  Which was technically true.  But he had confidence in his wife to suggest a suitable hiding spot, and in Luhan to actually get himself hidden quickly.  Even so, it didn’t stop the nerves every time somebody opened a cupboard or peered under furniture.

There were only two hairy moments.  The first was when he realised that Luhan had been living in the spare room and probably hadn’t cleared up after himself, because the man wasn’t exactly that tidy – but when the door was opened, he found the bed immaculately made and the room looking as though nobody had set foot in it after a spring clean – and then in his own bedroom, where he had last seen the criminal in question.

Jaera, bless the child, burst into noisy tears the second the police came in, while Jaehwan huddled closer to his mother, the duvet bundled around the three of them.

“Minseok,” said Semi, catching sight of him in the crowd of people now in her room.  “What’s going on?”

“Dada!” Jaera wailed pitifully, stretching out her arms towards him.

“It’s fine,” he assured them, making to scoop Jaera up in his arms.  At the last second, though, she changed her mind and shrank into the duvet, clamping her teeth around it.  Minseok tried to ignore the people practically ransacking the room behind him.  “They’ll be gone soon.”

Jaera stopped biting the duvet long enough to give her verdict.

“Bad,” she pronounced with a little glare around her at the policemen.  Then her teeth latched onto the bed covers again.  Semi’s gaze flickered down to them in alarm before her expression became more neutral.

Eventually, the police moved on to other rooms, though a couple lingered in each one just in case, to check that nothing had slipped past them.  It was another half an hour before they became frustrated and ground to a halt, almost everything overturned.

“Satisfied?” Minseok asked them coldly as they began removing their visors, but before anybody could reply, the doorbell rang.  The person closest to the door opened it and Yixing appeared, looking highly pissed off.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.  “The warrant for this house hasn’t been approved for the Busan police department yet.”

A babble of noise broke out as people started trying to explain, and Luhan’s name started dropping into conversation for the first time.  Yixing looked incredibly unimpressed.

“It’s six in the bl**dy morning and you’re all here without a warrant,” he snapped.  “Thirty of you is an annoying number to have to discipline.  Hand over your IDs and I’ll deal with this in office hours.  If you found something, that can mitigate everything; if not, I don’t care what your excuses are.  Now clear out.”

Like chastised school children, the police did as they were bid.  Yixing remained a moment longer to talk to Minseok.

“Why did you let them in in the first place?”

“They were going to remain convinced I was hiding something if I didn’t.”  Minseok rubbed an eye tiredly.  “I’ve got a recording of them admitting to not having a warrant, though.  I might push for a disciplinary hearing.  This is an annoyance.”

Yixing nodded.  “We’ll handle it later.  Get some rest.”

Minseok saw him out of the door and locked up again before returning to his bedroom.  Jaehwan had curled up on his pillow and fallen asleep, but Jaera was still very much awake.

“They’re gone,” he told Semi, looking around.  “Where’s Luhan?”

The duvet lifted to reveal a pale-faced Luhan curled around Semi’s feet, most of his body shielded by the fact that she’d drawn her legs up somewhat as she’d been sitting.  Jaera dived in for the attack immediately, biting Luhan’s wrist instead of the duvet this time.

“Okay,” said Minseok, ignoring Luhan’s yelp.  Jaehwan came awake with a start.  “That was good thinking, but I’d prefer it if next time the hiding place didn’t require you draping yourself around my wife.”

“It was my idea,” Semi put in hastily.

“Luhan bad!” Jaera accused, lifting her head from the bitten man.  “Luhan hide from police!”

“Is your child part animal?” Luhan demanded huffily as he disentangled himself and scooted further down the bed, hair sticking up all over the place.

“Bad Luhan,” Jaera insisted.

“Shush,” Semi told the girl patiently.  Jaehwan let out a loud yawn.  Minseok beckoned to Luhan to join him outside for a few moments.

“Lay should be able to clear this one up,” he said in a low voice. Lu