Chapter 5 ~the Blood on White Deer Wings~

Luhan was not sure if the chaos was real or just in his head. But Tao's short ragged breaths made him realise that yes, this had just happened. Tao, the one who felt unstoppable to him. Unbreakable. Was down.

 

Luhan had decided that he would not freak out, not even when Tao’s blood had started dripping onto his favourite t-shirt. Instead, while chaos was still developing in the café, Luhan pulled Tao gently over his shoulder, trying to piggyback him to a different room. Tao was mumbling something to him, but when Luhan strained his ears, he was sure he heard wrong. What normal person who had just been shot would be saying “It’s okay, don’t freak out, it’s okay, everything will be fine…”

The hotel’s bathroom was spotless, and when blood droplets starting falling onto the clean floor, Luhan stood there momentarily feeling lost. They were meant to be on a trip where they had fun and experienced the better things in life, but things like this... were certainly not the better things in life.

“T-Tao…” he trembled, clinging to the taller boy, sitting down with him, a bunch of paper towels clutched in his fist. But then he ditched the paper towels, looking for a cloth instead. He found one, rinsing it with warm water, then Luhan added some soap so he could clean the wound.

Tao's shirt was ripped and bloody in the back, but Luhan still took great care in opening the few buttons and lifting it. But when Tao winced even more from pain, Luhan ditched that idea, and ripped the shirt off instead.

The bullet was still there, oozing with Tao's blood and centered around Tao's pale skin. Luhan cleaned around the wound wiping the blood as much as he could while he attempted to steady his hand.

Tao though, could tell that Luhan had never in his life dealt with something like this. There were tears streaming silently down his face as he nursed Tao the best he could. As Tao watched, the caring look on Luhan's face that he saw in the mirror made him glad he was suffering this instead of the beautiful hearted deer eyed boy.

His vision though was starting to go bleary. He would need to speed things up a bit. His grandfather had showed him how to care for himself in the gravest of times.

“Get me my bag…” Tao whispered to Luhan, trying to hide his own shaking, and dizziness.

Luhan looked around and spotted it near the doorway, it must have fallen from Tao's hand when they entered the bathroom. He ran to get it and quickly handed it to Tao, opening the zipper for him.

Luhan watched in a morbid fascination as Tao sat himself up, albeit the obvious pain on his face, and removed the bullet from his back with a tweezer. As Tao dropped a small part the bloody thing in a metal bowl, he sighed heavily.

"That was sterilised, right?" Luhan asked queasily, his stomach getting a little sick as he watched. But Tao, too focused on his task, ignored him. He had spilled some sort of liquid, that Luhan figured was rubbing alcohol over the wound, but when it foamed,and Tao let out the softest moan, Luhan realised it was in fact hydrogen peroxide.That was to disinfect the hole in Tao's shoulder. Luhan nodded to himself as he watched, trying not to blink. All the while Tao had not made a sound. Luhan decided that the small moan did not count.

“That’s disinfectant, right?” Luhan squeaked a bit, as he stared avidly at the swift movements.  

Tao jerked suddenly, his arm pushing the bowl far from his reach.

"Bowl, Luhan!" Tao choked out, trying to maintain his un-pained expression.

Luhan scrambled to Tao's get the bowl that Tao, gasping a bit,  dropped the rest of the bullet into, covered in Tao's blood. Luhan clenched his stomach. He couldn't puke. Not when Tao so obviously needed him.

Luhan wanted to say a lot of things,  but nothing came out of his gaping mouth. Tao was disinfecting a needle then. It took Luhan a full minute to realise why Tao might need a needle. When it finally clicked, he gasped in heartwrenched anguish.

"You're going to perform self surgery?" Luhan whispered in shock. "On your own body..."

Tao slid the thread into the needle and bit his lips tightly together. No matter how much pain one gets used to, some things just hurt anyway.

Again, Tao did not answer, too busy sticking the needle into his skin with a precision Luhan could not understand.  

"Tao... this is so out of the ordinary..." Luhan tried again. "Don't you need the hospital?"

Tao shook his head. "Luhan can you clean the wound now?" He asked in a much gentler voice, pulling the shaking boy to him and embracing him. Luhan nodded, trying to hide the sudden burst of tears that flowed from his eyes again. Tao Luhan’s back, as Luhan rubbed the disinfectant near the almost professional stitched up job. It was still obvious it had not been done by a professional, and some of the stitches were botched up.

Luhan unraveled the white linen like cloth wrapping it around Tao's strong chest, securing the gauze safely and securely to Tao's shoulder. It was wrapped around a few times so that it looked like Tao was wearing a badly tailored vest.

But as the actual events of what just happened finally hit, Luhan started sobbing uncontrollably, the extra cloth falling from his hand.

"You almost DIED!" Luhan wailed.

Tao put his palm over Luhan's mouth shushing him softly.

"Luhan... no one can know, okay? No one can know." Tao did not have the heart to tell Luhan that it was him that almost died. But with how Luhan was reacting, Tao found that an extremely foolish thing to say. Besides, he wanted to childishly add, almost didn't count. It had hit his shoulder. Nothing serious.

He held Luhan until the sobbing boy had calmed down and even after, when the tears had turned into sniffles and Luhan's exhausted body had sagged into Tao's arms defeatedly.

With a heavy heart, Tao realised that Sehun was almost the least of his worries.

Luhan didn't count how long they had been sitting there, but as Tao had locked the bathroom door earlier, no one had come in since. Luhan's tears had finally dried, and he sat up against Tao.

"Shouldn't we-"

But Tao had passed out and didn't seem to hear him. He gently pressed against Tao again, trying to wake him up. But when he still got no response, he searched Tao's pockets for his phone.

With shaking hands, Luhan pressed down on one.

~~~~~~

Kim Woobin glared at Lee Jongsuk who frowned back at him, not faltering at the glowering look Woobin threw at him.

"You made me miss my shot!" Woobin hissed furiously.

Jongsuk shrugged, playing with his nails unconcerned.  "I told you this was a terrible idea.  I don't see why you have to kill a kid."

Woobin banged his head against the wall, sighing. "This is my mission. I have to do this. How you figured this out is beyond me. But it's none of your business okay? You're my best friend,  but if you get in my way..."

Jongsuk laughed. "Threatening does not suit you, Woobina."

The latter sighed. Jongsuk was going to destroy everything for him. Woobin punched his friend's arm, peeking through the windows with his binoculars.  He jumped back in shock when the eyes of his commander's son stared back at him.

"!"

Jongsuk sighed and sat down against the wall, pulling his fringe from his face.  "You never killed on a mission before, right?" He pressed desperately,  but Woobin ignored him.

"His son saw me. We gotta ."

Jongsuk heaved himself up again, as Woobin stashed his gun away, taking out his knife instead.

"Let's go then," Jongsuk muttered, rolling his eyes.

They scampered up the hill, but Oh Sehun was faster, cutting them off from the other side.

"Looks like my father enjoys keeping tabs on me." Sehun said flatly, his tone deathly quiet and filled with ice.

"Maybe if you did your job right, he wouldn't have to," Woobin cut back, his voice just as friendly as Sehun’s.  Jong suk melted himself against the wall, taking out a cigarette to smoke as he waited. He had plugged his headphones into his ears, as if he did not have two angry assassins sat next to him. Jongsuk knew that no matter how angry Woobin got, he would never hurt Jongsuk. But as he watched the angry flailing motions of both boys hands he figured now would be the best time to intervene.

Without taking the headphones from his ears, Jongsuk gently gripped Woobin’s arm dragging him from the scene after bowing to Sehun. Jongsuk hoped that Sehun would drop the matter, but when he turned to check, Sehun had only gotten angrier. He shoved Jongsuk to the side, making Woobin’s eyes flare dangerously.

“You can fight with me,” Woobin whispered, his arm coming around protectively around Jongsuk’s waist, then pulling Jongsuk behind him. “But hurt my friend, and I won’t care whose son you are. I’ll kill you.”

Sehun did not want to take the other man seriously, because hey, why should he be afraid of some, albeit tall runt that his father brought into the picture. He was just as skilled as the other boy, right?

When Sehun glanced at Woobin, he was fiddling with a knife easily in his hand, his free one, checking over Jongsuk for supposed bruises. He wanted to scoff, he wanted to push Jongsuk again to test Woobin, but then he suddenly realised why these guys were here. They had come to destroy his mission to get the credit for themselves, which meant that Luhan could already have been dead.

Sehun was suddenly running back, his heart in his throat. Had Luhan gotten hurt? How could he have been more concerned about Woobin and Jongsuk? He did not even need to be concerned about Jongsuk, that boy would never even hurt a bug.

He burst back into the hotel, and ran through the doors of the café. After the shock of shattering glass, it seems, everything had calmed down again. Did they not realise someone could have been shot? He almost fell to his knees when he realised Luhan was in fact, not sat by the table slurping on his only half sipped chocolate milk.

“Where’s Luhan?” Sehun asked, attempting not to sound panicky, and failed.

Xiumin jumped up, along with Chen. The others dropped their forks and immediately looked around, their food forgotten.

“Wasn’t he just here like a minute ago?” Kai asked, looking confused.

“He was here. But as soon as he shattered glass happened, he disappeared.” Baekhyun nodded thoughtfully.

“Tao is missing too,” Chanyeol announced.

That made Sehun fall.

“That bastard…” Sehun muttered, but no one heard him.

~~~~~~

“You have a phone call!” Wu Yifan shouted to Zhang Yixing who was sprawled in his bed. The lights were still out, and Yixing, who preferred Lay, but didn’t often correct people, sat up, glaring at Yifan.

“Kris, yah! Are you crazy? Do you want to wake the entire camp? Everyone is still sleeping!” Lay jumped down from the bunk bed, grabbing the phone from Kris. Suho climbed out of his own bed as well glancing at the other two.

“What’s going on?” He asked softly, looking at Kris.

“I’m not sure…” Kris murmured back, watching Lay’s expression as it whitened.

"Alright.  We'll take the guys and sneak out." Lay snapped his phone shut, turning to the other two.

"What happened?" Suho asked again, grabbing for his rucksack, throwing on shorts and a t-shirt.  

"Tao needs some backup." Lay responded,  pulling on a cap over his hair.

"Let's go," Kris said, holding the door opened for the other two.

"How will we sneak out?" Lay wondered out loud to Kris and Suho.

"Forest route." Suho replied, as he scouted the area. "Plus, it's still pretty early. If we can get past the office before 08:30 we can avoid any staff."

The others nodded as they slipped from their cabin room, to the back of the bunkhouse where the forest was.

"What did Tao say?" Kris asked Lay as he jogged to get cover from the trees.

"It was someone Luhan, actually," Lay murmured quietly, glancing behind him to make sure they were alone.

"Luhan?"

"Yeah. Luhan said Tao was shot by a bullet,  and even though they cleaned the wound, Tao was getting unresponsive. Luhan said he took Tao's phone and dialed 1."

“I would have thought his twin was 1.” Kris mused.

They reached the edge of the campground, it was still vacant and silent, just as Suho predicted it would be.

“You guys all have money, right?” Lay asked, as he checked his own wallet, thankful for the couple million won he found in there.

“Of course.” Kris and Suho said simultaneously. They would have laughed except the entire situation was not funny.

Lay remembered how the boys voice had trembled, and how desperately he had begged for help explaining that he didn’t think Tao was really able to do self surgery. Even though they had gone through the entire processes nonetheless. Lay had heard soft murmuring and wondered what it was.

Once they were off the grounds, they ran towards the main bus route, hoping they could flag down a taxi. Lay stood right in the middle of the street, while Suho hopped from foot to foot with worry. Kris had a blank, empty expression, and one would think he had no worries in the world.

It took almost a half an hour for a taxi to finally shortstop in front of Lay, who was stood right in the middle of the street. While the driver cursed at them for being irresponsible kids, they got in.

“Wonderland Hotel, please.” Kris said professionally, hoping the driver would take them more seriously, and not as kids. But the driver just rolled his eyes, muttering about irresponsible teenagers.

Nonetheless they arrived to the hotel sometime later. A boy, assumably Luhan, was waiting there, shifting from foot to foot, a panicked look in his eyes. There was blood on his clothes, but it appeared he was trying to hide it by crossing his arms.

Lay ran over to him.

“What happened to Tao?” He asked quickly, the Mandarin slipping out automatically in his worry.

“He was shot. I told you…”Luhan gestured towards the inner part of the hotel. “I hid him because he kept repeating that no one could find out… I honestly have no idea what’s going on.” He