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Jisung is late for practice.
It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, though it does grate on everyone’s nerves a bit more than usual during comeback season. They only have so much time to prepare, stress building up steadily as the date of the album’s release and their first music show creeps closer, and they need to make every moment count.
“His phone is going straight to voicemail,” Hyunjin huffs, annoyed. “Minho-hyung, you try. He’ll pick up if it’s you calling.”
He’s not wrong about that, but Minho isn’t about to admit to it. “If his phone is going straight to voicemail, it’s not turned on. He must have forgotten to charge it last night.”
That, too, is not an uncommon occurrence – yet Minho still dials Jisung’s number anyway, just to confirm. It goes directly to voicemail again.
Changbin sighs heavily and leans over to whack a barely-conscious Chan upside the head. “See, this is what happens when you two workaholics stay at the studio until fuck o’clock in the morning.”
Chan looks back at him, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “That’s not true.”
“Yah, it is absolutely true and you know it, you’re always –”
“No,” Chan cuts him off sharply. His tone immediately has the members sitting up straight. “I mean, Jisung headed out hours before I did yesterday. He left before midnight.”
Changbin stares at their leader, as though waiting for him to laugh and admit to making a poor joke. “Hyung,” he says slowly when that moment doesn’t come, “Hyunjinnie and I were up until at least one in the morning. We didn’t see him come home.”
By the time the implication sinks in, all seven of them have turned white as a sheet.
Jisung never made it home last night.
“Let’s not panic,” Chan says, trying his best to sound calm. It doesn’t work as well as it usually does. “Maybe he went to another workroom and fell asleep there, or maybe he went out somewhere and came home after one – none of us checked his bedroom this morning, did we?”
Changbin and Hyunjin both shake their heads. They’d assumed Jisung had stayed late with Chan and would need as much rest as he could get; more often than not, Jisung wakes up ten minutes before he has to leave and rushes to get ready in record time.
“Okay,” Chan nods, squaring his shoulders. “Okay. I’ll go talk to Sung’s manager, see what he knows. Someone should go back to the dorms –”
“I’ll go,” Hyunjin volunteers immediately.
“I’m coming with you,” Minho says. Walking the short distance to the dorms seems like a much more appealing option than staying here and going stir-crazy with worry.
Chan shoots them an appreciative smile. “If the rest of you could go and check the studios and practice rooms, maybe a couple of the offices with comfortable chairs, that’d be very helpful.”
“I’ll stay put,” Jeongin says. “If Jisung-hyung is just running late, he’ll come down here sooner or later.”
“Good thinking, Innie,” Chan says, squeezing Jeongin’s shoulder. “We’ll find him before long.”
“And tear him a new one for giving us an ulcer two weeks before Music Bank,” Seungmin mutters, but there’s none of his usual bite to it. He’s as concerned as the rest of them.
For some reason, that is what has the cold tendrils of dread wrapping themselves firmly around Minho’s chest. Seungmin is the most unflappable out of all of them, the most mature despite being the second youngest, and if he’s worried, if he thinks something is wrong, then…
But no. Minho is overreacting, he has to be, because this is about Jisung, and Minho is always a little unreasonable when it comes to Jisung. The fear churning in his stomach isn’t logical.
It will be fine. They’ll find Jisung passed out on a couch somewhere, laugh at him for it, and go back to practising for their comeback.
It will be fine.
It's not fine.
They don’t find Jisung.
He’s not at either of the dorm buildings, he’s not hiding out in a studio somewhere, he’s not crashing at a friend’s place. His manager hasn’t seen him since dinner last night. His phone is still going straight to voicemail.
Minho wants to tear out his own hair.
He’s pacing the length of the living room, paying no mind to the sounds of the television and the hushed, strained conversations between some of the others. The members have convened in the dorm 3RACHA and Hyunjin share, none of them willing to split up for the night. Changbin, Hyunjin, and Jeongin are seated in front of the television, trying to distract themselves by watching some corny feel-good drama, while Felix and Seungmin are talking quietly in the corner, heads bent over Seungmin’s phone.
Chan is still at the JYPE building, meeting with the higher-ups; they called him in late in the afternoon, after Jisung’s disappearance had been reported to the police. They likely want to discuss how to handle the situation, if the schedule needs to be pushed back, if and when the public should be involved.
None of them envy Chan at the moment.
Minho doesn’t stop pacing, because if he sits still he will scream, and he keeps glancing at the front door in anticipation of Chan’s arrival – or, as unlikely as it seems at this point, Jisung rushing inside like nothing ever happened, rambling out an excuse and a half-assed apology.
Minho doesn’t even think he’d be mad. Not if he could just be sure Jisung is safe.
When the door finally opens, a bit past ten in the evening, six pairs of eyes immediately pivot towards it. Minho is ashamed at the heavy disappointment he feels when the person entering the living room is Chan.
But disappointment quickly turns to horror when he takes in the look on Chan’s face.
Minho has seen Chan upset plenty of times before – probably more often than any of the others, considering he’s the oldest after Chan. He has seen him cry and seen him scream, has seen him despaired and seen him seething with suppressed rage. Worst was the time when Stray Kids went from nine to eight, and Chan spent weeks spiralling because he had broken his promise to keep all of them together.
Yet Chan has never, in all the years Minho has known him, looked as devastated as he does right now.
“What happened?” Changbin breaks the silence as he scrambles to his feet. “Did you find him?”
Chan opens and closes his mouth, a strangled little sound all that comes out. He’s clutching his precious laptop to his chest like a lifeline, knuckles white from the tightness of his grip.
“No,” Felix breathes, eyes wide and round and rapidly filling with tears. “Hyung –”
Chan shakes his head, Felix’ distress knocking loose the words locked in his throat. “Someone took him,” he whispers, voice shaking on every syllable. “Someone took Jisung.”
Minho’s whole entire world tilts on its axis.
He’s only dimly aware of the pandemonium that erupts around him as he slowly sinks onto the couch, his legs feeling unsteady all of a sudden. He keeps his unblinking gaze on the carpet – on a small red stain Jeongin made a few months ago, when they all had dinner together and Jisung made him laugh so hard he spilled kimchi from his bowl. In the low evening light, it’s easy to mistake for blood.
Minho snaps his head back up, and an uncomfortable question pushes itself to the forefront of his mind. “Chan,” he calls, his harsh tone cutting through the noise like a whip, “how do you know someone took him?”
Minho wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Chan’s face crumples even more. “I… they sent a video,” he says. “Sung’s manager got a flash drive in an unmarked envelope. The board is trying to figure out how they smuggled it into the company’s mail.”
“Did you watch it?” Seungmin asks, voice uncharacteristically small.
Chan nods. “Yes. I had to… It’s… I couldn’t… they… fuck.”
It’s rare to hear Chan swear. Oddly enough, it calms Minho – settles the storm sweeping through his mind, though it does nothing to dull the ache in his heart. “I want to see it.”
“Minho-yah, I really don’t think you do.”
“I want to see it too,” Changbin says before Minho can retort. His hands are balled into fists at his side, eyes flashing bloody murder. “Maybe there’s something in the footage that could give us a clue about who took him. Where they took him. Anything.”
“They already have people going over every frame at the police department,” Chan argues weakly. “You don’t have to subject yourselves to this.”
“I’m watching it too,” Jeongin cuts in. His lip wobbles, but he doesn’t cry, doesn’t shy away from Chan’s imploring gaze. “We’re all adults, hyung. We can decide for ourselves.”
Usually, when it’s pointed out that Jeongin is an adult, they make a joke of it – tell Jeongin he can’t possibly be older than twelve, or turn it around on Chan and make fun of how ancient he must be if their maknae is already fully grown. Today, Chan just sighs, accepting Jeongin’s proclamation with a heavy nod, and sets his laptop down on the dining table.
Everyone huddles around the table, no one opting out of watching the footage. Minho stands right in the centre of them, his fingers curled tightly around the backrest of one of the wooden dining chairs. He has a feeling he’ll need it to steady him.
With a long, shaky exhale, Chan pulls up the video and presses play.
The screen shows a man in a police officer’s uniform leaning against a black car, his head turned in the direction of a nearby alleyway. His features are obscured by a face mask and a pair of sunglasses, hair hidden away under a peaked cap – barely any part of him is visible, certainly nothing that could help identify him.
Half a minute later, the laptop’s speakers pick up the sound of footsteps accompanied by familiar humming as Jisung steps into frame, one earbud in and his eyes glued to his phone, still hammering out the kinks in his lyrics despite having left the studio relatively early. He barely takes notice of the supposed policeman waiting at the mouth of the alley, too absorbed in his work – until the guy steps away from the car, directly into Jisung’s path.
“Han Jisung-nim?”
Jisung looks up from his phone, startled. “Who’s asking?”
“Seoul Metropolitan Police,” the man says, taking a threatening step forward. “There is a warrant out for your arrest.”
Jisung’s eyebrows reach for his hairline, and he takes an instinctive step back to match the guy’s forward momentum, eyes darting from the man in front of him to his decidedly civilian car, then to the other end of the street, before landing squarely on the camera filming him. It’s as though he’s looking straight at the members through the laptop screen.
And then he laughs, of all things. “Let me guess, on suspicion of sajaegi?”
The members all flinch in unison – even Chan, who’s already watched this before. Of course Jisung would think this is all in jest, with the camera in full view and the memory of the last time something like this happened still fresh. That stupid prank that nearly made half of the members cry is really coming back to bite them in the ass now.
“No,” the man says. “On suspicion of three counts of homicide.”
It’s absolutely ludicrous, way too strong an accusation to be taken seriously, and it makes Jisung relax in his certainty that this is nothing more than an elaborate joke. “Right, of course. Because of all the hearts I’ve stolen, surely.”
“Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be,” the man snaps. “Turn around and put your hands behind your back, unless you’d like resisting arrest to be added to the charges.”
Jisung just laughs again, but he shoves his phone into his pocket and follows the instructions, resting his crossed wrists on the small of his back and exaggeratingly jutting out his ass, wiggling it for good measure. It would be exactly the kind of thing their fans would find funny, if this really was just a prank.
The fake officer fastens a pair of handcuffs around Jisung’s wrists, his movements oddly gentle. He must know what Jisung is thinking, is playing up the ruse to make this easier on himself – must have planned it this way from the start. Minho tightens his grip on the back of the chair.
Jisung is led to the car and bent over the hood, the man making a show of patting him down, taking Jisung’s phone from his pocket and placing it atop the roof of the car.
As the man makes his way down Jisung’s legs, Jisung makes eye contact with the camera over his shoulder, a faint smile on his lips. “Aren’t you supposed to be reading me my rights, officer?”
The man straightens, taking something bulky and shiny out of a pouch on his belt. “You don’t have any rights.”
Lightning fast, he fists a hand in Jisung’s hair and yanks him up, taking advantage of Jisung’s shock to shove a wad of fabric into his open mouth, instantly stifling his pained yelp. It’s followed swiftly by the duct tape he just pulled from his belt, layer upon layer wrapped cruelly tightly around Jisung’s head, bunching up the flesh of his cheeks and keeping the rag trapped behind his teeth.
Jisung struggles against the handcuffs, all traces of amusement wiped from his expression. His eyes are wide and panicked above the tape, the muffled noises that make their way past the cloth high-pitched and frantic. He manages to jerk his arm out of the man’s grasp, stumbling an uncoordinated step away from the car, but his assailant is bigger, stronger, unbound, and he catches Jisung without any issue, once again grabbing hold of his hair – and then slamming his head into the hood of the car, the sound of it deafeningly loud.
When he pulls Jisung back upright, there’s a trail of blood trickling from his temple down his cheek, staining the silver of his gag with red.
The chair splinters under Minho’s fingers.
Dazed from the hit, Jisung barely puts up a fight when the man takes the roll of duct tape and wraps it several times around his middle, trapping his arms against his torso. He then drags Jisung backwards, uncaring of the way Jisung is tripping over his own two feet, and he pops the trunk of his car, harshly shoving Jisung inside. All that’s still visible to the camera is Jisung’s ankles, which the kidnapper wastes no time binding with tape as well before pushing them down, out of sight.
The trunk is slammed shut. Somewhere to Minho’s right, someone lets out a choked sob.
The man plucks Jisung’s phone from the roof of the car, ignoring the faint thumps coming from the trunk. He walks up to the camera until he’s close enough that his face is out of frame, and he lets the phone clatter to the ground before stomping on it, again and again and again.
No wonder Jisung wasn’t answering their calls.
The kidnapper kneels in front of the camera, its little blinking red light reflected in his sunglasses. He reaches over to turn it off, but not before bringing up his other hand in front of his chest and flashing the camera a finger heart.
The screen turns black.
For a long, drawn-out moment, Minho keeps his eyes on the laptop, hearing nothing but his own harsh breathing, the blood rushing in his ears, the faint sound of sniffling behind him. He keeps seeing the terror in Jisung’s eyes, the blood streaming down his face, that infuriating little finger heart. He wants to rip something apart.
All of the members startle when Changbin slams a fist down onto the table, spitting out a string of curses at the speed of one of his raps. “I’ll kill him,” he growls – or tries to, because his voice cracks on the second syllable, and he can’t wipe at his eyes fast enough to stop the tears. “How fucking dare he – !”
Jeongin lays a hesitant hand on his shoulder, and Changbin pulls him into his arms as though he’s afraid Jeongin will be taken away too if he lets go.
Hyunjin and Felix also cling to each other, both crying; Seungmin has his eyes screwed shut and his hands balled into fists, grinding his teeth harshly enough to be heard over the rest of the noise; and Chan sinks down onto one of the dining chairs, staring blankly ahead as though all the answers to the universe are written on the kitchen cabinets.
Minho, in comparison, finds his mind still razor sharp, his thoughts crystalline. There is no point in crying, in succumbing to his anger, in spiralling. None of that will help Jisung.
He lifts his hands from the chair he’d been clutching, wincing at the strain in his fingers, at the sight of the crack in the wood. He flexes some feeling back into his digits, then taps Chan’s shoulder, waiting until he’s fixed his dead stare on Minho’s face. “You said the police are going over this, right? Did they tell you anything? What leads do they have?”
Chan nods, a bit of clarity returning to his eyes when given something to focus on. “They’ve already found the scene, and they’re investigating it right now,” he says. “They’re looking for the car, too – its licence plate wasn’t visible in the video, but they figured out the make and model.”
He doesn’t say anything more, and Seungmin pipes up, brow furrowed. “That’s it?”
“That’s all they have,” Chan whispers, dejected. “There’s no CCTV in the direct vicinity, and there weren’t any witnesses that late at night in such a remote spot.”
The fact that there were no witnesses at all to the whole assault has to be the absolute worst stroke of bad luck. This is Seoul – it’s busy almost always, everywhere. The shortcut through that particular alleyway is the only possible place for an ambush along their way from work to home, and even then, the members very rarely take that route, usually opting to go around so they can stop by the convenience store. How Jisung’s abductor knew exactly where to lie in wait…
“What about the days before?” Minho muses aloud as the thoughts come together in his mind. “No one could have known for sure that Jisung would be walking home by himself last night. What if he’s been staking out the place for longer?”
“Someone might have seen him on another night,” Chan comes to the same conclusion. “Right, yeah, good thinking, Minho-yah. I’ll make a call.”
Yet Chan doesn’t immediately pull out his phone, worried eyes resting on Felix’ shaking form in Hyunjin’s arms, and Minho understands it’s his job to look after the others for a bit while Chan calls the police department.
He claps his hands together, too harshly. His palms sting. “I’m making ramyeon,” he declares, as though it’s not nearly eleven at night, as though any of them have an appetite after watching how one of their own got taken from them. “Yongbok-ah, come help me with the eggs.”
Felix heeds him without complaint, and Hyunjin flashes him a grateful, teary-eyed smile. Seungmin trails after them into the kitchen as well; Chan slips into the nearest bedroom to make the call in peace.
Seungmin is the one who ends up poaching the eggs, while Felix boils water in the biggest pot and Minho roots around in the cabinets for the stash of instant ramyeon he knows must be around here somewhere. It’s a bit inconvenient, the three of them from the other dorm trying to find their way around this kitchen, but they make do.
Minho reaches for the nearest packet of ramyeon, the same flavour he almost always cooks – because it’s Jisung’s favourite. It’s Jisung’s favourite, and Minho’s knees feel weak, his fingers shaking uncontrollably as he nudges the offending packet aside and grabs a different flavour instead.
“Are you okay, Minho-hyung?” Felix asks, his voice rough from crying. There are still tears rolling down his cheeks periodically, but having something to do with his hands has calmed him a bit.
Minho smiles at him as best he’s able. “No,” he says. “Are you?”
Felix shakes his head. “I’m scared.”
“It’s scary,” Seungmin says softly, and though the words are simple, they seem oddly profound.
It’s scary. They’re scared. They’re not okay.
They’re making ramyeon.
When they put the pot of noodles on the table, no one refuses a serving – not even Chan, though the flavour Minho randomly grabbed from the shelf is on the spicier side. Seungmin overcooked the eggs, probably for the first time in his life. It’s a decidedly mediocre meal, but by the end of it, Minho’s fingers are no longer trembling around his chopsticks.
When the last of them pushes his bowl away and a tense silence begins to encroach upon the table, Chan stands up, shoulders squared and face serious. Everyone immediately sits at attention.
“There are a few things you need to know,” Chan says. “First things first: there’s extra security outside of the dorms, and if any of us want to go anywhere at all, we’re taking an escort. No exceptions. I don’t care if it’s only to the convenience store down the street and back, we’re not going anywhere alone. I’m not losing anyone else. Understood?”
All of the members nod without a word of protest. They have no idea why Jisung was targeted; it could be that the man was after Jisung specifically, but he could just as well be after Stray Kids as a whole, or just any idols in general. It’s better to err on the side of caution.
“Secondly, our comeback is postponed until further notice,” Chan says next, and that’s a relief to hear. Even if they could do it without Jisung, none of them are in the right mindset to perform while one of their own is being held against his will somewhere.
It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since Jisung was taken. Minho doesn’t want to think about everything that could’ve been done to him in that amount of time.
“And because the public will undoubtedly have questions,” Chan continues, “there will be a press conference tomorrow. I’m going to be one of the speakers, but you guys don’t have to –”
“We’ll be there too,” Hyunjin says immediately. “What if… what if Sung sees it? We should all be there.”
His proclamation is met with murmurs of assent, and Chan makes a valiant attempt at a smile. “It’s scheduled for first thing in the morning. You should all be up by seven, ready to leave by seven thirty.”
As if any of them are sleeping a wink tonight.
“Right,” Changbin exclaims once Chan sits back down, “the dishes can wait until tomorrow. We’re all sleeping in the living room tonight, no arguments and no complaints.”
So no one argues, and no one complains. They all spend the night in the living room, Jeongin and Seungmin each taking a couch, Changbin curling up on the armchair, and the rest of them hunkering down in sleeping bags on the floor. Their backs won’t thank them in the morning, but there is comfort in the proximity of the others, the reminder that they’re not alone. If Minho closes his eyes and listens to his members’ breathing around him, he can almost convince himself they’re still whole.
But if they were whole – if he were whole – there would be a hand slipping into his right about now, a head resting on his sternum, a warm body slotting against his side.
Minho has never felt more broken.
The press conference is held at the JYPE building, and Minho is relieved to find it’s not being turned into a spectacle. It’s just the members, several of the company’s higher-ups, and a handful of journalists with a camera crew. The purpose of involving the public, as management explained it, is to hopefully receive a case-breaking tip – and also to appease the abductor’s desire for attention.
Minho isn’t in a very appeasing mood, all things considered. But if it will help keep the kidnapper from doing something drastic, if it will help keep Jisung alive and unharmed, Minho doesn’t think there’s anything he wouldn’t do.
Stray Kids are positioned behind the speaker’s podium in their standard lineup, Minho taking his customary place at the far end. One of the managers tries to shoo him a step to the left, closer to Jeongin, but Minho shakes his head and stays where he is. The spot between him and Jeongin is Jisung’s, and Minho refuses to fill that space.
Let everyone who watches this know that there’s a glaring hole in their group.
In the end, the whole thing takes barely half an hour. Their CEO lays out the dry facts of the matter, including a detailed description of the car the police are trying to find, after which Chan steps up to the podium to appeal to the public, imploring them to call in if they have any information at all.
Throughout the conference, Minho keeps his eyes locked on the cameras in front of him, lets all of the fury he feels show in his expression. If the man who took Jisung from them is watching, Minho wants him to know he’s a dead man walking, wants him to understand Minho will tear him limb from limb for daring to harm a hair on Jisung’s head. He won’t rest until the bastard is as shattered as Minho feels right now.
He only breaks his glare when Chan is nearing the end of his speech, because his closing statement is making it very hard to breathe.
“Hannie, if you’re watching this somehow… I’m so sorry. I should have walked home with you. I should have… I should’ve…” Chan chokes on his next breath, and it takes Felix’ steadying hand on his elbow for him to force the rest of his words out. “We love you, always remember. And we’re going to bring you home, I promise, yeah? I promise.”
The second the cameras are cut, all the members crowd around Chan, and they end up in a group hug that feels so much less warm without Jisung loudly complaining he’s being crushed to death. Chan’s face is buried in Minho’s shoulder; Minho has the grace not to comment on the moisture he feels dampening his shirt.
Minho stays glued to Chan’s side for the rest of the day too, going from meeting to meeting – with management, with the police, with the handful of media personnel deemed respectful enough to be given the time of day. And when they take a quick lunch break in one of the empty studios, he lets Chan cry on his shoulder again, because he knows he’s the only one Chan dares to show such vulnerability right now. It’s why Minho stayed, why he told Changbin to take care of the others for a bit: Chan needs this comfort, and they all need Chan.
And truthfully, no matter how much Minho hates everything about this, he prefers being at the company and feeling like he’s doing something to help, no matter how small or insignificant his contribution is in the long run. He doesn’t want to sit at home with the others and stew in their collective distress, trying desperately to keep distracted so his mind won’t wander to Jisung, to what he’s going through and how terrified he must be and if he’s even still alive –
He’s not thinking about it.
He’s thinking about the dozens of tips the police got in, most of them easily identifiable as fake from the get-go; he’s thinking about the witness statements they’ve been allowed to read through, from people who did in fact see Jisung’s abductor hanging around the alleyway in the days before he was taken; he’s thinking about Chan, who’s swaying on his feet by the time the sun sets, because it’s so much easier to deal with someone else’s pain instead of his own.
“Thank you,” Chan says when Minho pushes a bottle of water into his hands after herding him into the car. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Minho-yah.”
There is an undercurrent of sincerity to the words that Minho cannot deal with right now, so he deflects it with his regular deadpan. “Die, probably.”
“Probably,” Chan repeats with a small huff of laughter. He fiddles with the cap of his water bottle, the weak smile leaving his face as quickly as it came. “Have you been holding up alright?”
Knowing Chan, he’s been wanting to ask that all day. “I’m managing.”
Chan’s hand is warm on his knee. “It’s okay if you aren’t –”
“No,” Minho cuts him off, too sharply. “It isn’t.”
“You know it’s not good to bottle it all up,” Chan says, in that impossibly soft tone of his. “I’m here if you need me, yeah?”
Minho shakes his head – keeps shaking his head, as though that will banish the treacherously dark thoughts from his mind. “If I fall apart now, I won’t be able to pick myself back up,” he says, raw and honest and so vulnerable it makes his skin crawl. “I have to keep it together until…”
Until Jisung is back with them, or until there is no more hope. Only then, and not before.
“Okay. I can understand that,” Chan says, squeezing Minho’s knee reassuringly. “Just promise me you’ll talk to me if anything comes up.”
Minho nods, though he knows he won’t be taking Chan up on that offer, and Chan smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
They’re both too tired to push.
The two of them brief the others on the day’s developments over the reheated takeout Changbin ordered for dinner. There is depressingly little to tell, and the one piece of news they do have isn’t pleasant: the police found the car from the video, the one Jisung was transported in, but it was completely burnt out, any potential evidence utterly ruined. They’re still investigating it, of course, but the chances of anything useful turning up are slim to none.
Afterwards, the members all settle themselves in the living room again, and Felix puts on some movie that had good reviews online, though Minho isn’t really paying attention. He’s focused on the feeling of Jeongin’s head resting against his thigh, of his fingers running through Hyunjin’s hair. The tangibility of the others grounds him; like this, it’s easy to pretend Jisung is simply across the room for a bit, pestering Changbin about something, or fully immersed in the movie with Felix. The absence of warmth at Minho’s side is less noticeable when the other members are here to fill the void.
He thinks he might be able to get some sleep tonight, even.
Or at least, he thinks that until the moment Chan gets up to fetch his phone charger from his bag, and comes back into the room with an ashen face and an unmarked envelope in his hands.
“Guys,” Chan says, but his voice is so hoarse it’s barely more than a whisper. Hyunjin and Jeongin are half-asleep against Minho; Felix and Seungmin are similarly curled into Changbin in front of the television. No one hears.
But Minho sees – sees the haunted look in Chan’s eyes, and the blank envelope in his hands, and he sits up so quickly he unbalances Hyunjin, whose indignant squawk immediately catches everyone’s attention.
It’s Seungmin who connects the dots, eyes flicking from Hyunjin’s prone form to Minho’s tense posture, following Minho’s gaze to where Chan is hovering at the door. “What happened?”
Chan holds up the envelope. His fingers are shaking. “There’s a flash drive inside,” he says, and though his voice comes out louder this time, it still sounds fragile as spun glass. “It was in my bag.”
His bag, which, like Chan himself, was inside the JYPE building the whole entire day. Which means the man who took Jisung…
“He has access to the building,” Felix whispers, horrified. It explains why the first flash drive made its way to Jisung’s manager so easily, too. “He works with us.”
The room explodes.
Everyone’s talking at once. They should look at what’s on the flash drive; no, they shouldn’t touch it in case there’s a virus on there, it could expose their location to the kidnapper; they need to call the police, they need to call management, but what if the flash drive has instructions for the members specifically, it was left in Chan’s possession for a reason, what if they involve the police and Jisung is harmed because of that, what if –
Minho’s head is throbbing.
He puts his hands to his temples, rubbing circles. Takes a deep breath. Two. Three. Clears his throat. Squares his shoulders. Yells. “Yah!”
It cuts through the other voices like a thunderclap, and the ensuing silence is so sudden it feels just as loud as the noise.
“Hyunjin,” Minho says, his voice firm and steady, his body feeling anything but, “get that old laptop of yours, the one you only ever use for watching dramas. We’ll turn off the wi-fi and check what’s on the flash drive, and then we can decide whether or not to call the police and the company. Yes?”
Hyunjin is heading to his room even before the others give their assent, without a single complaint about his computer being used as a sacrificial lamb – which speaks volumes about the gravity of the situation. The rest of them all wordlessly shamble towards the dining table, huddling around it just like last time. Minho’s fingers subconsciously trail over the crack in the backrest of one of the chairs.
Chan tears open the envelope to extract the flash drive, plugging it into Hyunjin’s old laptop as soon as it’s booted up in front of them. There is only one file on the drive, a video format; it’s simply titled PLAY ME. If this was part of one of the horror movies he likes watching with Jisung and Jeongin, Minho would have laughed at the cliché.
But this isn’t a movie, and Minho bares his teeth not in a smile, but in a grimace. He doesn’t want to watch this. None of them want to watch this.
Not watching it would be worse, though. They all understand that. Chan doesn’t even try to dissuade the younger members from sticking around this time; he just sucks in a breath through his teeth to steady himself, and presses play.
The screen is immediately taken up by Jisung. His head is down, chin resting on his chest, which rises and falls too quickly for him to be asleep; he’s held upright by ropes and tape securing him to a metal chair, arms flush against the armrests. He doesn’t look injured, which is a small mercy, and Minho forces himself to look away from Jisung’s form to inspect the surroundings. From what he can see, the room is completely barren, the camera showing nothing but drab grey concrete walls matching the equally drab grey concrete floor. It looks like a basement or a bunker of sorts, which doesn’t help narrow down the location whatsoever. There must be a million places like that in Seoul alone.
His attention is forced back to the centre of the screen when another figure steps into frame, circling Jisung’s chair like a hawk. It’s the same man as in the first video, Minho can tell from the way he holds himself – but just like last time, his features are carefully obscured, body covered in all-black clothing and face hidden behind a mask, sunglasses, and a cap. Careful, calculated, meticulous. Minho has to swallow back bile at the mere sight of him.
The man stops behind the chair, raising a gloved hand to run it through Jisung’s hair in a mockery of gentleness – before tightening his fingers and wrenching Jisung’s head up.
Minho can’t tear his eyes away.
There is dried blood caked in Jisung’s hair from the hit he suffered when he was taken, red sticking to his forehead, his cheek, coating the duct tape still wrapped around his mouth. Minho doesn’t even want to think about when this was filmed, how long Jisung has had to go without food and water. It’s been almost two full days since he was abducted.
Jisung’s kidnapper pushes his head to the side and pulls out a pocket knife, bringing it up to his face to cleave through the layers of tape clinging to his skin. It cuts too deep, carving a shallow gash into Jisung’s cheek; Jisung screws his eyes shut, fingers clutching at the armrests of the chair he’s bound to. Minho mirrors him subconsciously, digging his nails into the crack he’d made in the backrest last time. On his left, Seungmin curses softly.
The tape is roughly ripped off, a soft groan of pain leaving Jisung’s throat when the adhesive pulls out some hairs at the back of his neck. He barely has time to spit out the fabric plugging his mouth before a bottle of water is pushed against his lips, tipping back too fast to swallow. Jisung coughs and sputters, the water spilling over his chin and onto his hoodie, making him shiver violently – but the torrent doesn’t stop until the bottle is empty, more than half of its contents soaking the fabric of Jisung’s clothes.
Jisung’s kidnapper tosses the bottle aside and grabs him by the back of his neck, jamming a thumb into the underside of his jaw and forcing his head to stay upright, facing the camera. “Go on, then,” he says, his tone far too amiable for the situation. “You should know what to do in front of a camera by now. Here, I’ll even count for you. One, two, three –”
Jisung huffs a noise that might have been a laugh under different circumstances. His voice is rough from disuse. “I sure wish I could ‘step out’ right now.”
It’s such a stupid joke, such a Jisung thing to say. Hyunjin’s laughter is too high-pitched to be normal, and he cuts it off abruptly when Jisung’s assailant backhands him with enough force to snap his head to the side. It splits his lip.
“God, Jisungie, please don’t provoke him,” Chan whispers hoarsely.
It’s as if the Jisung in the video can hear him – and purposefully decides not to listen. He spits a glob of blood and saliva onto the floor, then twists his head to try and look at his abductor behind him. “What even is the point of all of this? Just tell me what the fuck you want from me.”
“Ah. That’s simple,” the man says as he steps forwards on Jisung’s left, raising a gloved hand to cup his face, thumb smearing the blood from the cut across his cheekbone – then digging his fingers into the flesh until he elicits a pained whine. “I want you to suffer.”
The pocket knife is still in his other hand, gleaming in the low artificial light of the basement. He rests the flat of the blade atop Jisung’s fingers, gliding it back and forth across his knuckles in a mockery of a caress. “I’ve been wondering where best to start,” he says pleasantly, as though he’s not discussing possible torture methods with his intended victim. “Fingers are a classic, aren’t they? It would make for a decent souvenir. Or maybe a nice little gift for your loved ones, just like in the movies.”
Jisung faces straight ahead, refusing to look down at his hands. “That’s not very imaginative.”
In the blink of an eye, the knife is yanked away from Jisung’s fingers and pressed against his throat. “Would you prefer it if I carved out your vocal cords instead?”
When Jisung swallows, a thin line of red wells at his Adam’s apple.
“I can’t watch this,” Seungmin mutters, pushing away from the table. “I can’t –”
Changbin catches his arm before he can leave the room, and Seungmin all but collapses into him, shoulders shaking.
“Ah, but that might kill you,” the video continues relentlessly, the kidnapper using the flat of the blade to spread the blood across Jisung’s throat. “You can’t suffer if you’re dead.”
“Astute,” Jisung says. It earns him another hit, the hilt of the knife coming down hard against his temple. His eyes go unfocused for a moment, his breathing picking up as he gasps through the pain – but at least the sharp blade is away from his throat.
“Or maybe,” the man all but growls, “I won’t lay a finger on you. Maybe I’ll fetch you one of your dear members and make you watch them suffer in your stead.”
Minho can see Jisung’s breath hitch, chest stuttering for just a second, but his face betrays nothing. “You won’t get to them,” he says, confident in the truth of his statement. “Security won’t let them out of their sight for a moment.”
His kidnapper shrugs. “Sure, not right now. And probably not next week, or next month. But what about a year from now? A decade? Someone will slip up at some point, and I’ll be waiting for that day. And until then, you’re just going to have to stay here with me.” His face may be covered, but the sickening glee in his voice makes it easy to tell he’s smiling behind his face mask. “How long do you think it’ll be before you go mad? Before you start to decay where you sit, muscles atrophied to the point where you couldn’t get up even if I allowed you to?”
Jisung doesn’t miss a beat. “I’ll go mad from having to listen to you talk first.”
The hit he receives for that is lazy, as though Jisung’s continued defiance is starting to bore the man. “Well then, tell me something while you’re still lucid,” he says, leaning close to Jisung’s ear. “Which of your members would you like to keep you company? I’ll do my very best to accommodate your preference.”
“I’d prefer if you left them the fuck alone,” Jisung snaps, the words laced with equal measure frustration and fear. He jerks his wrists against his restraints, uselessly. “I’d prefer if you left me the fuck alone.”
His declaration is met with a derisive laugh. “Not an option, I’m afraid. Either you choose, or I’ll choose for you.”
Jisung purses his lips and resolutely shakes his head.
“No?” the man tuts. “I understand. It’s difficult to choose just one, isn’t it? They’d all make for such entertaining company.”
He begins to slowly circle Jisung’s chair, like a predator waiting to pounce on its wary prey. “Allow me to make a suggestion, then,” he drawls as he passes behind the chair, just out of Jisung’s sight. “How about… your youngest? He’s said before that you’re his favourite hyung, hasn’t he? Let’s see if he still feels that way when I’m done with him.”
Minho glances to his right from the corner of his eye; Jeongin is as rigid and unblinking as Jisung is on the screen, and he’s already surrounded by Felix, Seungmin, and Chan, the three of them each grounding him through touch. It’ll be a cold day in hell before they let Jeongin be taken away from them.
“No comment?” the infuriating lilt of Jisung’s kidnapper doesn’t let up for a moment. “Then what about your fellow vocalist, hmm? I doubt your little group will survive without either of you two in the lineup,” he continues ruthlessly. “Oh, I could practise the art of ripping out someone’s vocal cords on him before I try it on you. It won’t really matter if he croaks in the process, right?”
Jisung still gives him nothing, sitting perfectly still, staring at a point beyond the camera, so the man gleefully trudges ahead. “Your so-called twin, then. Red will look so vibrant against the pale canvas of his skin and hair, wouldn’t you agree? I bet he’d break within an hour.”
“I’ll take that bet,” Felix all but growls from behind them, sounding angrier than Minho has ever heard him before. “I don’t have sixty-three medals in taekwondo for show, you son of a bitch.”
It’s a shame said son of a bitch can’t hear him. “Or perhaps your old rival? I might go easy on him,” he muses, tapping the back of Jisung’s chair as he walks. “He was right to despise you back then. I doubt it would take long for him to realise that, if he were down here with us.”
Minho feels a weight on his back; Hyunjin mutters something unintelligible against Minho’s shoulder, his hands curled into the fabric of Minho’s shirt. Minho lets him cling, though he doesn’t move to comfort him – he cannot bring himself to take his eyes off the screen, even for a second.
“Maybe you’d like to see one of your little producer friends? Ah, no. Both of them. A 3RACHA reunion,” the man tries next. Jisung’s fingers twitch against the chair’s armrests. “They must be ecstatic to be rid of you. I don’t know why they let you join them in the first place – you’ve never been anything but an arrogant, talentless, useless nuisance.”
He stops circling Jisung’s chair, snapping his fingers as though having an epiphany. The sound of leather on leather echoes harshly through the empty basement. “No, I know. I’ll fetch you the pretty dancer you’re always pathetically hanging off of. We’ll see how much you still like him when I’ve remodelled his face,” he says, and Minho feels a chill running down his spine despite Hyunjin’s warm body still moulded to his back. “Or, no, maybe I’ll keep him pretty for you, make you watch as I –”
“Stop,” Jisung finally snaps, the word hissed through clenched teeth. “You don’t get to touch him. You don’t get to touch any of them. They haven't done anything – they don’t deserve this.”
“Wrong,” the man says sharply. “They indulge you. They allow you to do as you please when they’ve always had the power to put an end to you. If they’d denied you from the first, the world would be better off for it.”
Jisung takes a shuddering breath. “You would think that, wouldn’t you?” he says, looking his captor dead in the eye. “Eun– nnnm! Mmmph!”
The man abruptly clamps his gloved hand over Jisung’s mouth, squeezing tightly despite Jisung’s furious attempts to shake his head free. “Shut. Up,” he growls, his breathing laboured as he reaches for his pocket with his free hand. “You’ve run your mouth enough.”
“Fmmck yhhh,” Jisung snarls from behind the leather, but he is barely able to struggle at all with the way he’s tied down, and he can do nothing to prevent another wadded up cloth from being shoved behind his teeth the second the man lifts his hand.
Jisung does his best to push the fabric out of his mouth with his tongue, whipping his head back and forth to buy himself enough time, but it’s a lost battle. His kidnapper grabs a fistful of his hair to hold him still, pushing the cloth back inside with rough fingers. It’s big enough to make Jisung choke on it, to make his cheeks bulge uncomfortably.
Minho usually loves it when Jisung puffs up his cheeks – because it means he’s eating well, or he’s being cute on purpose, or he’s pouting exaggeratedly about something. But this, now… Minho can’t stand the sight of it. His nails dig relentlessly into the groove in the back of the dining chair.
The sound of duct tape being ripped off the roll is so loud it comes out distorted through the laptop’s speakers. The kidnapper presses it harshly over Jisung’s lips, wrapping it around his head an excessive amount of times. The noise is grating enough for Hyunjin to unstick himself from Minho’s back so he can cover his ears, just as most of the others do.
Minho keeps his hands on the chair’s backrest. If he puts them anywhere near his own head, he’ll start tearing out his hair.
“There,” the man huffs, grabbing a hold of Jisung’s chin and lifting his head up to face the camera. The tape gleams dully in the low light of the basement. “This is how you should always be kept.”
“Nnmm mmph nhh hhhmm!” Jisung attempts, but the cloth and tape turn everything he’s trying to say into unintelligible mewls.
His kidnapper laughs. “You’re almost tolerable this way,” he coos, patting Jisung’s cheek. “Head up, Han Jisung. This will be the last time anyone gets to see you in a long, long time.”
He moves away from Jisung, walks past the camera, out of frame. Jisung’s eyes follow him, the sound of creaking stairs barely picked up by the microphone.
And then the screen goes dark.
The screen goes dark, but the video doesn’t stop. The camera’s little red light keeps blinking; it’s the only source of light in the basement, and it’s not nearly strong enough to let them see Jisung again. All that’s there is the soft red hue shifting in and out of sight, and the sound of Jisung breathing harshly through his nose.
Until Jisung makes a noise, a muffled, utterly broken little whine that pierces Minho’s heart like a knife, like a bullet, hurting so viscerally it has bile burning up his throat. Someone to his left chokes on a sob – Chan, he thinks, but he doesn’t look to check. His eyes stay on the laptop despite the darkness of the video, desperate for just one more glimpse of Jisung. He wants to reach through the screen to hold him, save him, to choke the life out of his assailant with his bare fucking hands, to –
The video ends.
He vaguely notices the others talking, moving, touching, but his mind is stuck replaying what they just saw, over and over and over again. The ropes, the blood, the threats, it flashes before his eyes, echoes in his ears. It would be the last time they saw Jisung for a while, the kidnapper had said – which means this video is the last clue they’ll get before the case goes cold. If there’s anything useful in the footage…
Something nags at his mind.
Minho moves his hand to the laptop’s touchpad, rewinds the video, presses play.
“They haven't done anything – they don’t deserve this.”
“Wrong. They indulge you. They allow you to do as you please when they’ve always had the power to put an end to you. If they’d denied you from the first, the world would be better off for it.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you? Eun– nnnm! Mmmph!”
“Shut. Up. You’ve run your mouth enough.”
Minho rewinds it again.
“– the world would be better off for it.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Jisung says, and –
He looks directly at the camera – just for a moment, a split second, but Minho feels his gaze like a physical thing, large and heavy. There’s a glint in his eyes, the same glint he always gets when he has an idea, when he figures out a line for a song he’s writing or thinks of something funny to say during an interview. He knows something.
“Eun– nnnm! Mmmph!”
Minho rewinds.
“– think that, wouldn’t you? Eun– nnnm! Mmmph!”
Rewind.
“Eun– nnnm!”
Re–
“Hyung.”
Changbin grabs his wrist, staring him down with a hard look in his eyes. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Jisung knows him,” Minho says, because it has to be true, because it’s the only thing that makes sense. “I think he tried to tell us his name. Eun… something.”
He’s right. He knows he’s right. He has to be right. But Changbin looks at him with an expression that feels a bit too much like pity, an expression that’s mirrored on the faces of Hyunjin and Seungmin behind him. “There are a lot of words in the Korean language that start with the syllable ‘eun’, hyung.”
“I know that,” Minho says – doesn’t snap, like he otherwise would have. He doesn’t have the energy. “But it’s a name. I’m sure.”
“I’ll mention it when I hand the drive over to the police,” Chan says. It’s a placating gesture; he doesn’t believe Minho either. “I should call about that, actually. Now. Yeah.”
He stumbles away from the table, fingers shaking as he gets his cell phone out of his pocket. His eyes are red-rimmed, bloodshot. He looks worse than Minho has ever seen him.
If Minho looked in the mirror, he wouldn’t find himself looking much different than usual. Stone-faced, apathetic, cold. He cannot afford to break before they reach the end of this.
When he pulls his hands away from the chair, there’s blood underneath his fingernails.
“Hyung,” Felix calls softly. His eyes are locked on Minho’s bloodied fingers. “Do you think we could ask one of the security guards to head down to the store for us? I doubt this dorm has all the ingredients for brownies handy.”
“We don’t,” Hyunjin confirms, sounding stuffed up, like he’s suffering from a severe head cold.
Making brownies doesn’t sound like a bad idea. It was calming to cook last time they suffered through a video, and though Minho doesn’t think he has the stomach for something sweet right now, his hands itch to do something.
“I’ll ask,” he says, because Chan is in his bedroom making a call, and Minho is the oldest of them now.
He washes the blood from his hands first.
Security comes through with the brownie ingredients – off-brand chocolate and too-rough sugar, but Felix doesn’t complain. They bake, and the brownies come out better than the ramyeon had. Everyone has a small piece, though the mere fact that the tin isn’t empty within an hour is testament to the beaten-down atmosphere.
A police officer comes by to collect the flash drive while the brownies are in the oven. Chan dutifully tells him about Minho’s theory; Minho doubts it will make it back to the detectives investigating the case.
They don’t even pretend to go to sleep.
In the morning, at the earliest possible opportunity, Minho heads back to the company.
Aside from the two security guards assigned to him, Minho goes alone. Chan will follow when the police are back on scene, along with anyone who feels like it. Minho is grateful he didn’t insist on coming with immediately.
Because he knows Chan won’t see the value in what Minho wants to do.
He sets himself up in a small, windowless office, security stationed just outside the door. He has a company pc, a notebook and a pen, and a single syllable to work with.
The company has a database of all its employees. It’s nothing but a name and a picture and each person’s working hours, but it’s a start. It’s a lifeline.
Minho starts simple, picking out male employees with the syllable ‘eun’ in their names. He eliminates anyone whose physique doesn’t match the kidnapper’s – the man is slightly taller than Jisung, but not by much, and he’s fit, his build slim. He also crosses off anyone who had a confirmed commitment out of the city on the day Jisung was taken.
It’s a painstakingly slow process, picking through the nearly four-hundred people in JYP’s employ – not in the least because the company database provides only the bare minimum, and Minho spends most of his time hunting down social media pages to try and find more information to cross-reference with what little he knows of the kidnapper.
He’s down to the last dozen or so names when there’s a knock on the door.
Jeongin pokes his head in, waving a paper bag and a plastic cup in Minho’s direction. Sure enough, when Minho checks the time on the computer, he sees that it’s already afternoon. He’s been at it for hours.
He takes the offering of food and coffee from Jeongin with a sincere word of gratitude, expecting Jeongin to leave him to chase down this paper-thin excuse for a lead by himself. Instead, Jeongin takes a look at the mess of papers Minho has spread out across the desk, and he stays.
“Can I help?”
He asks in earnest, and Minho can’t help but raise an eyebrow at him. “You don’t think I’m grasping at straws?”
“No,” Jeongin shrugs, as if that’s a given. As if Minho isn’t starting to doubt his own sanity after hours of combing through dozens upon dozens of social media profiles. “You and Hannie-hyung have always had this creepy telepathic way of communicating. If you say he was trying to tell us the guy’s name, then he was trying to tell us the guy’s name. Simple as that.”
Simple as that. Minho graces Jeongin with the most sincere smile he’s able to muster, resisting the urge to pull him into a hug.
“Here,” he says, tearing a page out of his notebook and sliding it across the desk. It has seven names written on it. “These are the ones I’ve found who could fit the profile. See if you know any of them”
Minho himself barely knows half of the list, and even then ‘knowing’ is a strong word. Aside from their own staff, he isn’t that well-acquainted with the people who work for JYP. They simply don’t have the time to go out of their way to get to know everyone, at least not if they value their sleep – which is probably why Chan is friends with more than half the employees at the company.
Jeongin unfurls himself over the list while Minho keeps sifting through the last few names he hasn’t checked over yet, one hand on the keyboard and the other holding the sandwich Jeongin got him for lunch. He doesn’t taste much of it.
“This guy, Kim Eunsang,” Jeongin pipes up, “he’s one of the higher-ups, right? On the board of directors?”
“Pretty sure, yeah,” Minho nods. He doubts a member of the board would have had the time or the opportunity to stage a kidnapping, but he could fit the profile otherwise. Minho’s not ruling anyone out prematurely.
“I don’t think it’s Eunbin-ssi,” Jeongin says a beat later, pointing to another name. “I’ve met him, he’s on Yeji-noona’s security team. His voice is as deep as Felix-hyung’s, it doesn’t sound anything like the guy in the videos.”
With today’s technology, voices can be altered, but the videos didn’t sound like they’d been tampered with. Besides, security has to move around with their idols too much for any of them to reasonably keep a person tied up and alive in a basement somewhere – unless Jisung’s kidnapper has an accomplice, which Minho doesn’t think is very likely. The persona the kidnapper presented in the videos is too arrogant to work with anyone else.
For now, he crosses Jung Eunbin off the list.
Jeongin taps his finger on the last name Minho jotted down. “This one, Choi Eunseok? What department does he work for?”
Minho pulls the information up on the computer. “IT,” he says. It’s a day job, requiring no travel outside of the city – perfect to combine with holding someone hostage. “Why, do you know him?”
“Maybe,” Jeongin mutters, his brow furrowed in thought. “Do you have a picture of him?”
“Yeah, hang on.” Minho navigates back to one of the million tabs he has open. “This guy posts more selfies on his social media than even you, Iyen-ah.”
Jeongin shoves his shoulder, lips curled into a smile – though it wanes quickly when he lays eyes on the picture Minho just pulled up. “I do know him,” Jeongin says, voice soft and demure like it used to be when Minho first met him, before they got comfortable with each other. “He used to be a trainee, back when I first got accepted by JYP.”
“You didn’t like him,” Minho can conclude easily from the furrow in Jeongin’s brow.
“Nobody did. He was mean,” Jeongin says. “He got jealous when people were better than him at something, and then he tried to bring them down. But only if he thought they were weaker than him. He never dared to say anything to people like Chan-hyung or Changbin-hyung. But he made Hyunjin-hyung cry once. And…”
He gets a faraway look in his eyes, recalling the past; Minho would usually let him be for a moment, but he’s too impatient right now to keep from prompting. “And?”
Jeongin’s gaze snaps back to Minho. “He tried it on Jisung-hyung too. Talking down to him, trying to make him doubt himself. Didn’t work,” he says, a wry, mirthless little smile curling his lips. “You know how hyung used to be, he never backed down from a fight. I saw them arguing once or twice, and then one day Eunseok was gone. Trainees quitting happens so often I never really thought about it much. Never knew he stayed on as staff.”
Minho takes a second to digest the new information, then abruptly turns back to his computer. Jeongin’s story gives the man a possible motive; his localised nine-to-five job gives him the opportunity to keep someone captive long-term. If he also has the means – a house with a basement, like they saw in the video – then they’re looking at a real, serious suspect here.
It doesn’t take Minho long to find what he’s looking for, courtesy of the truly monumental amount of pictures Choi Eunseok uploads to his socials. His home address is listed as an apartment a stone’s throw away from the JYPE building, but many of his photos are taken in a ground-floor home – it seems to be an inheritance from his grandmother, from what some of the captions spell out.
Minho wishes he could say he got an immediate sense of foreboding when he finds the address of the little house on the outskirts of Seoul, but it just looks like any other home in the suburbs. But everything adds up: the house, the job, the past, even the fact that Choi Eunseok posts online so often fits with the way Jisung’s kidnapper has been profiled as an attention seeker. It’s all circumstantial, and it could very well be a coincidence, but it’s the best lead he’s found.
Jeongin seems to think so too. “We need to tell the police about this.”
Minho nods in agreement, moving to get up from his seat for the first time in hours. He doesn’t know if the detectives will listen to them, but they have to try – and if the detectives dismiss him without properly looking into his lead, then Minho will damn well break into Choi Eunseok’s home himself.
If he has to, he’ll tear down every building in Seoul personally until he finds Jisung.
At sunset, Minho once again finds himself in the kitchen of the other dorm with Felix at his side.
He explained everything he found about Choi Eunseok to one of the detectives on duty, and she assured him they’d look into the address. Apparently, if a police dog can pick up Jisung’s scent near the house, it’s enough probable cause to search the premises in life-or-death cases like this.
He’d spent some more time with Jeongin going over the other names on his list, but it amounted to nothing, and Seungmin declined his help to sort through the tips that are still pouring in by the dozens every hour. “Please just make sure we eat something other than takeout or instant ramyeon tonight,” Seungmin had said. “If Chan-hyung eats another high-sodium meal, he might have a heart attack.”
It says a lot about his state of mind that he allowed Kim Seungmin to tell him what to do.
Still, Minho is glad he listened. His lower back hurts from sitting hunched over in an office chair, his eyes dry from peering at a screen all day; it’s nice to stand upright and go through the motions of cooking a simple dish of jajangmyeon. Regardless of circumstances, they do need to eat, to take care of their bodies – they can’t help Jisung if they can’t even help themselves.
So Minho cooks the noodles, sears the pork, and mixes the black bean sauce. Felix dutifully chops vegetables next to him, the rhythmic sound of the knife hitting the cutting board almost entirely drowned out by the noise coming from the living room, where they’re playing a versus video game of some kind. Ironically, the cacophony is calming – makes Minho feel like everything is normal, like it’s just a regular get-together. Like Jisung is at the studio and will come home halfway through the meal, dragging Chan behind him and blaming their tardiness on his hyung before proceeding to inhale his portion of noodles at breakneck speed because he’d gotten so caught up in work he forgot to have lunch.
The thought makes him smile, and he clings to it for as long as he can.
They eat at the table, the five of them, leaving enough food in the pot for Chan and Seungmin to reheat when they return from the company. Changbin does most of the talking, telling Minho and Jeongin about the social media surveillance they’ve been doing from home. Unsurprisingly, Jisung’s name has been trending, and Changbin, Hyunjin, and Felix have been going through thousands of posts, trying to pinpoint anyone who appears to know more about the situation than has been made public.
“We flagged a few accounts with suspicious content, but the police said they’re likely all lucky guesses, sensationalists spinning the wheel and accidentally hitting the mark,” Changbin sighs, idly stirring the last noodles in his bowl. “They’re still going to look into it though, just in case.”
“They’d better,” Hyunjin mutters from the other end of the table. “Some of the shit we had to read through was vile.”
“Like what?” Jeongin asks through a mouthful of food.
Hyunjin falters, sharing a nervous look with Felix and Changbin. The hesitation sets Minho’s teeth on edge. “Like what,” he repeats Jeongin’s question, though he doesn’t ask. He demands.
Changbin takes it upon himself to answer. “Hate accounts saying how glad they are that Sung is suffering,” he says, voice hard as steel, “or lamenting that the guy didn’t take another one of us instead. People going into detail about what they would do to him if they had him locked up in their basement, making a joke of it – and most of those weren’t even hate accounts, they were unironically calling themselves Stay. As if this isn’t the worst thing we’ve ever been through, as if we’ll just shrug and move on as a group if Jisung…”
Changbin cuts himself off with a huff, shaking his head. Minho doesn’t realise his hands are clenched into fists until Felix covers one of them with his own, coaxing Minho’s fingers to relax by rubbing a thumb over his knuckles.
“What about you guys?” Felix asks, looking between Minho and Jeongin. “Did you learn anything new at the company?”
Jeongin jumps in immediately, grateful for the topic change. “Minho-hyung found a suspect,” he’s eager to share, smiling at Minho from across the table. It’s probably the most genuine smile any of them have managed these past few days. “The detectives said they’ll check it out, take a police dog to see if it can pick up Jisung-hyung’s scent around the guy’s house.”
The other three turn to Minho in near perfect unison. “How did you find a suspect?” Hyunjin asks, eyes round and wide. “We have basically nothing to go on.”
He’s not wrong. “We know he works at the company,” Minho explains, “and I know you don’t agree, but I still think Jisung gave us part of his name, so I looked through the employee database with Innie. Found someone who could fit the bill, so…”
He shrugs, trailing off. The longer he’s here, literally and metaphorically distanced from the research he’d been consumed by all day, the less logical it seems. Maybe he’s been suffering from tunnel vision, grasping onto the first straw he found and clinging to it beyond all reason. Maybe he’s sent the police on a wild goose chase, reallocating resources that could’ve been used to investigate better leads. Maybe he’s so desperate to see Jisung safe he’s deluded himself into thinking he could help in some way.
Maybe he’s closer to losing his mind than he realised.
Felix squeezes his hand, gracing him with a watery smile. “Thank you for your hard work, hyung.”
Maybe the people at this table are the only reason he’s still sane.
They finish their meal in stifling silence, nothing left to discuss, nothing at the table to distract them. The others are more than happy to escape to the living room once their bowls are empty, enticed by the promise of a movie or a game or just anything to take their minds off of things.
Minho clears the table, fills the sink with hot water and soap; he’s joined in the kitchen by Changbin this time, who ushers him aside and begins to wash the dishes, handing them over to Minho to dry.
The silence remains between them, not even broken by Changbin, who’s usually humming whatever melody is stuck in his head on any given day. Minho wonders if this is the first time there’s no music to be found in any of them.
He focuses on the faint sound of the television coming from the other room, attention locked on the bundle of wet cutlery Changbin places on the counter. He picks up a spoon, rubs it dry with a dish towel, places it back in the drawer on his right, takes the next utensil from the pile, repeats the process. The work is simple, methodical, soothing. Minho gets why Changbin always volunteers for this chore after a long day.
He’s moved on to cups when the front door is thrown open so forcefully it slams against the wall, the sound of it echoing through the apartment like a gunshot.
Minho shares a startled look with Changbin before they both abandon the dishes and rush to the living room, where the others are also standing at attention, wide-eyed and tense. A split second later, the hallway door bursts open with just as much force as the front door, and a panting Seungmin nearly falls into the room, looking more disheveled than Minho has ever seen him.
But the look on his face –
“They found him,” Seungmin says, and only then does Minho realise he’s not grimacing – he’s just smiling so wide it looks borderline painful. “He’s alive, he’s okay, they found him.”
They found him.
The words don’t quite register. Minho feels nothing but numb as he watches the others react to the news – Changbin lifting Seungmin up and spinning him around, laughing loudly; Hyunjin crumpling to the floor like a puppet that had its strings cut, Felix kneeling beside him and wrapping an arm around his shoulder, crying and smiling at the same time; Jeongin leaning against the wall with his eyes closed and his head tipped back, relief stark in every line of his body.
Yet to Minho, it doesn’t feel real. It won’t feel real until he can see for himself that Jisung is alright.
“Seungmin-ah,” he says, and he must have sounded harsher than he meant to, because Seungmin’s smile has disappeared when he looks back at Minho. “Where is he? Where did they take him?”
“The hospital,” Seungmin answers quickly as Changbin lowers him back to his feet. “Chan-hyung should be with him now. From what we were told, he’s not seriously injured, he was conscious and alert when they found him. They just need to do a check-up to make sure he’s okay to go home.”
Felix looks up at Seungmin from where he’s still kneeling on the floor, eyes filled with tears and hope alike. “They’ll let him come home tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
“I do,” Changbin counters, grinning. “Unless there’s a serious medical reason to keep him at the hospital, Chan-hyung will fight tooth and nail to get Sung home.”
He’s right. They all know he’s right.
“Fuck,” Jeongin says softly, but with feeling. “This place is a mess.”
The place is a mess. The seven of them have been living in a space meant for four these past few days, and cleaning up after themselves hasn’t been anyone’s main concern, all things considered. And it seems like a silly thing to fuss over right now, but Jeongin’s words make them all freeze. Jisung should be coming home to a clean apartment.
It’s not like they have much else to do while they wait, considering they can’t all pile into a car and head for the hospital. The best thing right now is to keep themselves busy and make sure Jisung can come back to them comfortably.
Felix and Changbin make a beeline for the door, likely to ask the security guard to get them some things from the store, while Hyunjin and Jeongin start cleaning up the living room. Seungmin moves to help, but Minho takes him by the elbow and leads him to the kitchen, sitting him down with a bowl of the jajangmyeon he made for dinner. And then he sets to making more noodles, because there’s not enough left now to feed both Chan and Jisung.
“Hyung,” Seungmin calls when he’s halfway through his bowl and Minho is adding some more vegetables to the pot. He’s looking at Minho with big eyes, a little glassy. It makes him look as young as he actually is. “Thank you.”
“It’s just jajangmyeon, Seungmo.”
Seungmin snorts. “Not what I meant. The noodles are pretty mid, actually.”
He’s lying, Minho knows. It doesn’t stop him from chucking a cube of radish at Seungmin’s head.
Seungmin takes the hit and pops the radish into his mouth. “I ran past a few officers on my way out of the company. I heard them ask which floor the IT department is on. It didn’t hit me what that meant until I was already in the car.”
It doesn’t hit Minho what that means immediately either.
When it does, he has to put down the knife so he doesn’t accidentally cut off his fingers, which are shaking to the tune of the ringing in his ears. “I was right.”
“You were,” Seungmin nods, “so thank you, for sticking to your guns. For saving Jisung.”
Sincerity is a rare phenomenon coming from Seungmin, and Minho doesn’t really know how to handle it right now. “I didn’t do it for you.”
His words are too soft, lacking bite, and Seungmin simply smiles at him. “I know. But thank you anyway.”
Minho nods curtly and turns back to the stove.
He should be thanking Seungmin too, for urging him and Jeongin to go home early. If he had still been at the company when the officers came to arrest Jisung’s kidnapper, Minho would be the one in handcuffs – because he’s sure he would’ve beaten the bastard’s skull in before the police could have booked him.
But then Minho wouldn’t be here when Jisung comes home, and that’s unthinkable.
Forcefully stabbing his kitchen knife into a potato will have to do.
Time passes at a cruelly slow pace.
Over the past few hours, the six of them have done everything in their power to prepare the dorm for Jisung’s return. The living room is spotless, most of the furniture shoved aside to make room for the mattresses they lugged off the beds to create a proper place for all eight of them to sleep tonight; some rudimentary decorations adorn the walls, including a set of balloons that spell out ‘Welcome home!’ and some streamers left over from Hyunjin’s birthday live; the kitchen is stocked with Jisung’s favourite snacks, including a fresh batch of Felix’ brownies and a cheesecake that won’t be edible until it has set overnight, but which Minho prepared anyway because he needed to do something with his hands. Everything is ready.
All they need now, all they’ve needed this whole time, is Jisung back in their midst.
Eventually, when the hour is nearing midnight, all of their phones buzz simultaneously. It’s a message from Chan in their group chat, reading simply ‘On our way’.
They wait with baited breath. It’s about a fifteen minute drive from the hospital to the dorm, and that’s during the day when there’s traffic. It shouldn’t take more than ten minutes this late at night, and yet it feels like hours before they finally, finally hear the front door unlock.
Chan enters first, looking exhausted and wrung out and so very happy, his smile as large as the bags under his eyes. Minho only vaguely registers the look on his face, his eyes snapping instead to the hand clutching Chan’s.
Jisung steps out from behind him, dressed in the spare set of practise clothes Chan always keeps in his bag. They’re too big on him, the cuffs of the sweats folded twice, the sleeves of the hoodie covering his hands. His face sports the injuries they’ve seen him receive in the videos, along with a black eye that looks painfully recent – but his lips are curled into a small smile, eyes shining brightly as he takes in the decorations on the walls and his members all standing awkwardly around the room.
He bows to them, deeper than he has in years, and simply says: “I’m home.”
Hearing his voice snaps them all to attention, and it’s Changbin who moves first, folding Jisung into his arms like he’s made of glass, like he can shield Jisung from the whole world with his biceps alone. When he speaks, his tone is gentle. “You had us worried for a bit there, Jisung-ah.”
Jisung snakes his arms around Changbin’s middle, resting his forehead against Changbin’s collarbone. “I had me worried for a bit there too, hyung.”
When Changbin pulls back, Felix is there to take his place, tears streaming quietly down his cheeks. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Jisung pats his back, his chuckle soft and rough in the back of his throat. “Please don’t cry, Lix. You know it’ll set me off too and I’m doing so well looking all cool and collected right now.”
Felix hiccups a laugh into Jisung’s shoulder and lets him go, smiling brightly despite the tears still pooling in his eyes. Changbin steps forward to rub Felix’ back, coaxing him away so Seungmin can hug Jisung instead.
“You’ve never been cool or collected a day in your life,” Seungmin says, attempting to joke. It would’ve been a lot more effective if he didn’t sound stuffed up from his effort to hold back tears, if he wasn’t clutching the fabric of Jisung’s hoodie so tightly his knuckles are turning stark white.
Jisung laughs anyway. “Love you too, Seungminnie.”
They all decide to pretend they don’t notice the tear tracks on Seungmin’s face when he steps back.
Jeongin is next, and he looks so very young when he curls into Jisung’s embrace. “Hyung,” is all he manages to force past his closed-up throat, and Jisung hugs him tighter than he did anyone else.
Hyunjin doesn’t say anything when it’s his turn, just holds Jisung and sniffles into his borrowed hoodie. Jisung cards a hand through his long hair, lips curling into a mischievous smile. “Have you been focusing on your rap while I was gone, Hyunjin-ah?”
It has Hyunjin breaking into giggles, however watery they sound. “About as much as you’ve been focusing on your dance, probably.”
Minho watches it all unfold from his spot in the kitchen doorway, feeling oddly detached from the moment, from his body. The fact that Jisung is home doesn’t seem to have sunk in yet. After the past few days, it just doesn’t feel real.
And then Jisung is right in front of him, smiling hesitantly, reaching for him, and Minho responds on auto pilot, embracing Jisung as he has a million times before.
It’s different, though. The fabric of the hoodie he wears is rougher than his own clothes, more practical than the cosiness Jisung prefers and pays extra for. He smells all wrong, like Chan’s cologne that lingers on his clothes, like dust and blood and antiseptic. His hair is dull and greasy, the feeling of it uncomfortable against Minho’s cheek.
But it’s the same, too. Minho’s arms still fit perfectly around Jisung’s waist. Jisung hooks his chin over Minho’s shoulder as he always does, leaning slightly forward to make Minho carry some of his weight. He sighs contently, and his tone is as warm as ever when he says “Hey, hyung.”
He’s right here.
Jisung is right here.
And Minho breaks.
The first sob that tears from his throat is painful, the sound of it too loud in the quiet of the room. Minho tries to stop himself, tries to at least pull away from Jisung because he should be the last one to deal with this – but Jisung doesn’t let go, merely shifts Minho in his hold so he can bury his face in the crook of Jisung’s neck. Minho thinks he says something, but he can’t hear him over the sound of his own crying.
He couldn’t fall apart until Jisung was back, he’d told Chan. He made good on that promise.
Minho doesn’t know how long he stands there, being slightly rocked back and forth, one of Jisung’s arms securely around his middle, the other hand gently petting his hair. When his sobs taper off into sniffles, he realises Jisung is humming softly, a melody Minho doesn’t recognise. It feels indescribably good to hear him sing again.
He loves Jisung’s voice. He loves Jisung’s warmth, Jisung’s body, Jisung’s smile. He loves everything about Jisung. He’s in love with Jisung, which is something he’s always known but never dared to confront – not with their careers on the line, not when acting on his feelings could spell disaster for their whole group. But now, here, locked in an embrace he feared he’d never get to have again, it suddenly takes considerable effort to hold himself back from pouring his heart out.
He can’t, though. Not when everyone’s emotions are running this high. When – and it’s a when, not an if – he tells Jisung, he doesn’t want there to be any doubt, any notion that it could just be a spur of the moment thing. He wants Jisung to know.
So for now, Minho forces himself to relax, to even out his breathing, to swallow down his remaining tears. This moment shouldn’t be about him. Minho isn’t the one who spent the last three days tied up in some lunatic’s basement, wondering if he’d ever see the sun again. Minho isn’t the one who gets to cry right now.
Yet the person who does have that right doesn’t seem at all inclined to do so. Jisung only smiles at him, soft and sweet and a little melancholic. “Careful, hyung. I’ll start to think you missed me or something.”
He’s teasing, trying to lighten the mood like he always does, and god but Minho really did miss him. Every minute without Jisung was like a physical ache.
“I don’t know what’d give you that idea,” is what he says as he wipes the moisture from his cheeks.
The others laugh, Jisung included; Hyunjin knocks his shoulder into Jisung’s, taking his attention off Minho, and Minho uses the opportunity to duck back into the kitchen. He has to do something with his hands or he’ll start crying again.
He returns to the stove to reheat the sauce and boil more noodles, his attention on the task at hand but one ear always turned towards the living room, towards the sound of Jisung’s voice. Something about a flower reaching for its sunlight, he thinks wryly as he gets two clean bowls from the cabinet. Maybe the meaning of the saying changes when the metaphorical flower has been deprived of the metaphorical sun for days on end.
Minho is so focused on listening to the soft chatter in the living room that he completely fails to realise someone has entered the kitchen until they’re right behind him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
He forces himself not to tense. “I’m fine, hyung. I got most of it out of my system.”
Chan hums softly, squeezing his shoulder. “Do you need any help?”
He doesn’t, but he nods anyway, because he knows why Chan is asking. Chan needs to feel useful in times like these, hates being idle, letting others work while he rests. “Yongbokkie made fresh brownies, they should’ve cooled by now. Could you cut them up?”
“On it,” he says immediately, sidestepping the stove so he can get to the baking pan sitting on the counter.
After that, the kitchen is blissfully devoid of conversation. Minho was afraid Chan would push, considering his frankly embarrassing display just now, but Chan focuses on the task at hand, leaving him be. Minho appreciates that.
It’s because of the grace Chan shows him that Minho decides to speak up. He’ll have to talk to Chan about this sooner or later regardless. “When everything has settled again,” he says, eyes firmly locked on the pot he’s stirring, “I’m going to tell him I’m in love with him.”
To Chan’s credit, he only pauses for a split second before he continues cutting the slab of brownie as though nothing happened. “Okay.”
Minho raises an eyebrow at him. “Just ‘okay’?”
“Yeah,” Chan smiles, looking at Minho with nothing but warmth in his gaze. “Just ‘okay’.”
Minho matches his smile – smaller, less bright, but no less sincere. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
And Minho feels like he could be okay again too, with a bit of time.
When Minho and Chan return to the living room, food in hand, they find Jisung quite literally buried in members.
He’s freshly showered and clad in his favourite pyjamas, sitting on one of the mattresses with his back against the couch; Changbin and Felix are sprawled at his feet, both of them resting their head on one of Jisung’s shins; Hyunjin and Jeongin are tucked into his sides; and Seungmin sits cross-legged behind him on the couch, softly running his hands through Jisung’s hair.
Chan can’t help but laugh at the display. “Looks like you guys have everything covered.”
“Yes,” Seungmin says without looking up. “There’s no room for you old men here. Go away.”
Minho clicks his tongue. “I didn’t realise you were so eager to wear Jisungie’s dinner, Seungmin-ah,” he says, moving as though he means to pour the bowl of hot noodles over Seungmin’s head.
“No!” Jisung immediately exclaims, worming his arms out from under Hyunjin and Jeongin so he can make grabby hands at the dish. “Hyung, please, I’ll die without your food. I’m wasting away as we speak. My body is being sustained by nothing but hospital jello and the protein bar Chan-hyung had at the bottom of his gym bag.”
Usually, Minho would laugh and roll his eyes at such a statement, but right now, he has to force himself not to grit his teeth. Because this time, Jisung isn’t exaggerating as he’s wont to do; he really did go without proper food for days on end, and Minho wants to hit something. Preferably Choi Eunseok’s face. With a brick.
He hands Jisung the bowl and a pair of chopsticks with an only slightly strained smile. “I can make more if you need it.”
Jisung’s bright, grateful smile makes his chest ache. “Thanks, hyung.”
He happily digs in, humming an appreciative noise around his first mouthful of noodles. Seungmin, in an uncharacteristically gracious move, scoots over to the end of the couch so Minho can take his spot just behind Jisung, Chan taking the seat on Minho’s other side with his own bowl of jajangmyeon. Changbin fishes the tv remote from between the pile of blankets spread out over the mattresses, and it isn’t long before the opening theme of Howl’s Moving Castle begins to play.
Anything for Jisung, tonight. They watch Jisung’s favourite movie despite all of them having seen it at least a dozen times already; they let Jisung have the corner pieces of the brownie without a word, even though those are usually so coveted they’ve come close to breaking up friendships more than once; and the seven of them stay huddled around Jisung like a pack of wolves protecting an injured cub, as though he could disappear again if they so much as blink.
Jisung thrives on the attention, the care. He seems no different from his usual self, talking animatedly with Changbin about a rap performance they’ve been thinking about putting on together, taking shameless advantage of Jeongin’s rare willingness to be hugged, throwing his head back against Minho’s thigh and making eyes at him until he takes over Seungmin’s task of petting Jisung’s hair. If it weren’t for the cuts and bruises on his face, the shadows under his eyes, it would be easy to believe nothing ever happened at all.
But when the movie’s credits roll, Jisung goes quiet. Minho thinks he might have fallen asleep, but Jisung proves him wrong by sitting up straight and looking up at the balloons taped to the wall. The ‘L’ in ‘welcome’ is tilting precariously forward.
“Guys,” he says, and though his voice is soft, small, he has everyone’s attention immediately. “I just… thank you, for all of this.” He gestures vaguely around the room, at the decorations and the empty bowl and brownie tray on the table, at the television. “And I’m sorry for worrying you. I wasn’t thinking that night, I should’ve –”
“No,” Changbin interrupts him, loudly. The look on his face is hard. “You don’t get to say sorry for what that bastard put you through.”
Jisung smiles, a hollow gesture that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I was stupid, hyung. We went through all those meetings on safety but I just assumed the whole set-up was harmless. You can’t say that’s not stupid.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” Felix says. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“I would’ve thought it was a prank too,” Seungmin chimes in.
“And you can’t go around thinking the worst of people all the time,” Chan says. “Being careful is important, and after this none of us will be walking home alone ever again, but –”
The rest of his sentence gets cut off by Jisung’s low chuckle. “Well, that’s good, at least. Now we’ll have a way of getting you out of the studio when you’re tempted to pull an all-nighter.”
Chan responds with an indignant noise, which causes the others to laugh, a bit of tension leaving the room – but Minho can still see how stiff Jisung is, how he fidgets with his hands in his lap. And knowing Jisung, knowing how his brain works overtime, Minho thinks he has a pretty good idea as to why.
“Jisung-ah,” he says, and Jisung tilts his head back to look up at Minho right behind him. He looks small from this vantage point, the large bruise circling his left eye seeming worse due to the shadows. Not for the first time, Minho has to squash down the urge to murder someone. “You know that everything he said to you is a lie, right?”
His anger makes the words come out harsher than he means them to, and Jisung’s eyes widen, lips parting in surprise. Minho knows he hit the nail right on the head.
Before Jisung can even think to reply, the others swoop in. “Fuck that guy,” Hyunjin says with a vehemence he rarely employs. He nudges Minho’s knee aside so he can wrap an arm around Jisung’s shoulders. “You belong right here with us.”
His statement is met with a chorus of assent, and on Jisung’s other side, Jeongin cuddles into him. “We love you, hyung.”
“Damn straight,” Felix’ voice is louder than anyone’s. He coils himself tighter around Jisung’s left leg, Changbin following his example and bearhugging Jisung’s right.
For the first time that night, Jisung’s lip wobbles.
He breathes through it, eyes squeezed shut, head tipped back to rest against Minho’s thigh again. It’s clear he’ll need to cry about it at some point, let it all out, let himself really understand just what he’s been through, what he’s survived. But that doesn’t have to happen just yet.
Chan meets Minho’s eye and gives him a reassuring smile. “How about we turn in for the night,” he says gently, “and talk more in the morning? I’m sure we’re all exhausted.”
It’s not a suggestion, despite his phrasing, and everyone murmurs their assent. It’s a few minutes of tidying up and distributing blankets before Chan turns off the lights, and Minho finds himself lying in the living room of the other dorm for the third night in a row.
But this time, moments after he’s settled on his back, a hand slips into his, and a head comes to rest on his sternum, and a warm body slots against his side.
Minho falls asleep within seconds.
The next few days combine into a bit of a blur in Minho’s memory.
Having Jisung back feels like a fever dream after the whole ordeal, and Minho hovers near him as much as he’s allowed to, quickly growing agitated whenever he doesn’t know exactly where Jisung is at any given time. Which, granted, is probably unhealthy, but Minho can’t bring himself to give a fuck about it. He’ll back off when the bruises have faded from Jisung’s body, when he doesn’t jump at every unexpected sound, when he’s comfortable sleeping alone in a dark bedroom again.
Jisung, on his part, is a whirlwind of activity. It’s as though he cannot bear the thought of sitting still, of being alone with his thoughts – which also doesn’t seem particularly healthy, but then it’s not as though Jisung is running away, refusing to confront what happened to him. He is the one who suggests talking to the press while his injuries are still visible, to drive home the point that idols are human beings like anyone else. He also agrees to therapy when his manager brings it up, recognising the need to work through his trauma at his own pace. He’ll be alright, with time.
In the meantime, Jisung is also back in the studio despite their comeback having been pushed back at least another month. It makes him feel like everything is going back to normal, he said, and he likes to write out his emotions into song lyrics. There are probably some heartbreaking B-sides in their future.
He’s at the studio right now, together with Chan and Changbin, which is the only reason Minho is able to properly relax in his room, reading a book he’s been meaning to finish for months now. Out of all of them, Chan is probably the only one who’s been even more dedicated to Jisung’s well-being than Minho is, still feeling guilty about letting Jisung leave the company by himself that night. Minho knows Jisung will be safe with Chan.
It’s still early in the evening, their trio of producers having left for the company only a handful of hours ago – which is why Minho doesn’t at all expect Jisung to burst into his bedroom without knocking, eyes glassy and breath coming in short little gasps.
Minho sits up immediately, alarmed. He can hear Changbin’s voice drift in from the living room before Jisung closes the door, so he knows Jisung didn’t come here alone, didn’t get hurt on the way to this dorm – but he still looks as though he just saw a ghost. “Jagi-yah,” he says, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, “what –?”
Jisung doesn’t let him finish his sentence, doesn’t even let him get up. He crosses the room in two steps, sinks down to his knees at Minho’s feet and takes Minho’s hand in both of his own, looking up at him with an expression so shattered it feels like a vice around Minho’s heart. “Thank you,” is what he whispers, voice rough and low with the effort to keep from crying. “Hyung, thank you.”
Minho is completely lost. “For what?”
Jisung huffs a little laugh, like he can’t believe Minho doesn’t know. “One of the detectives working my case was in today. She told me…” His voice hitches, breaks. “She told me you were the one who pointed them to Eunseok. You were the one who found me.”
The tears are brimming on his lash line now, and Minho shakes his head, keeps shaking it as he speaks. “You tried to tell us. I just put the pieces together.”
“That’s just it,” Jisung sniffles. He’s officially lost the battle with his tears. “No one else thought… Fuck, I didn’t even think I gave you enough to go on. Eunseok didn’t either, or he would have never sent that recording. But you, you just… you still…”
He chokes on his words, head tipping forward to rest against Minho’s knee. Minho uses his free hand, the one not held between Jisung’s as though it’s the only thing tethering him to reality, to stroke his hair. “It wasn’t that hard. You had that look you always get when you’ve figured something out and are waiting for the rest of us to catch on.”
Jisung’s grip on his hand tightens until it’s bordering on painful. “No, you don’t get it,” he insists, eyes round and wide and red-rimmed, so earnest it takes considerable effort for Minho to keep holding his gaze. “There’s no one else in the world who would have gotten that, and you say it was easy. You’ve always just… understood me, knew what made me tick before I even knew myself, and I’m so, so grateful for you.”
Fresh tears begin to well, but Jisung doesn’t pay them any mind. He’s still looking right at Minho when he decides to drive a sledgehammer into Minho’s brain. “I love you, Minho-hyung. I’m in love with you.”
Minho didn’t know it was possible to feel so many different emotions at the same time.
There’s happiness, warm and tingly as it spreads from his chest down to the tips of his toes, sending a shiver along with it. There’s surprise, brief and bright behind his eyelids – not because of the confession itself, but because he always figured he would have to be the one to say the words out loud first, to cross that line between them that’s been blurring further and further with each passing day. There’s love, of course, fond and familiar, tugging at his lips, curling them involuntarily.
But there’s also concern. Fear. Residual anger towards the man who put Jisung through so much.
He feels everything, all at once. “Jisungie…”
Minho doesn’t know what to say first, which of his thoughts to entangle from the knot they’ve formed in his brain, and Jisung squeezes his hand, smiling through his tears. “You don’t have to say anything. I don't… I’m not expecting that from you. I just need you to know how much you mean to me. In case anything happens to one of us.”
The again is left unsaid, and Minho’s mind crystallises. “Tell me that’s not all this is,” he whispers, his hand sliding down from Jisung’s hair to rest on his cheek instead, stroking a thumb across the yellowing bruise sitting high on his cheekbone. “Tell me it’s not just because you’re grateful, or scared, or –”
He stops short when Jisung laughs, low and long. “Hyung,” he says fondly, “I’m pretty sure I’ve been in love with you since that day you gave me your strawberry milk because I was frowning too much.”
“Because nobody can be upset when they have strawberry milk,” Minho hums, remembering the words of wisdom he had imparted on Jisung that day. “Jagi, that was a week after I joined the company.”
“Yeah,” Jisung shrugs.
Minho moves before he fully registers that’s what he wants to do, sliding off the bed to join Jisung on the floor. He doesn’t want to do this while looking down at him. “I love you too,” is the first thing he says, the one thing he absolutely needs Jisung to know. “I don’t know since when. It feels like I always have. And I always will.”
Jisung swallows thickly, smiling despite the tears that stubbornly refuse to stop pooling in his eyes. “Chan-hyung said he’ll negotiate for us when contract renewals come up. He said we could maybe get an apartment together, even. If… if that’s something you’d want too.”
‘Too’, he says, because he’s been thinking about it for just as long as Minho has. “You talked to Chan?”
“Yeah. I – Should I not have? I thought he should know I was going to confess to you, you know, since it could affect the group if anything got out.”
Somewhere, Bang Chan is laughing at him, Minho just knows it. “I also talked to hyung,” he admits – though, really, it was more of an announcement on his part rather than a proper conversation. “Honestly, I can’t believe you beat me to it.”
Jisung barks a laugh, loud and unrestrained. “You did not,” he says, and when Minho looks away, ears burning red, he laughs even harder. “God. Chan-hyung must be having a fucking field day.”
And Minho would usually have a comeback to that, a way to poke a bit of fun at their leader, but all he can think right now is how beautiful the sound of Jisung’s laughter is. He hasn’t laughed this freely since his abduction, and Minho revels in hearing it again. He wants to elicit it every single day for the rest of his life.
Yet he’s also the one to put a stop to it. He can’t help himself. His hand comes to rest on Jisung’s knee, putting pressure on it as he leans forward, and Jisung’s laughter dies in his throat.
“Hyung,” Jisung murmurs.
Minho kisses him.
It’s a soft, chaste thing, their first kiss. Jisung’s lips taste vaguely of iron, courtesy of the still healing cut splitting his bottom lip, the scab of which he’s been picking at too much. It reminds Minho to be gentle with him, at least for a while yet. Jisung is precious, and though he’s strong, he’s also fragile right now. Minho will not take more than he should, even if it’s extremely tempting to stake his claim and probably traumatise the people in the living room in the process.
Thankfully, Jisung seems to share the sentiment. He doesn’t push for anything more, just rests his forehead against Minho’s and smiles a brilliant, elated smile.
Fuck, but Minho adores him. He will never let anyone lay a finger on him again.
Jisung’s breath ghosts over Minho’s cheek when he speaks. “Can I stay here tonight?”
Minho can’t help but snort. “As if I’d let you leave.”
He lends Jisung a pair of shorts and an oversized shirt to change into, and they get comfortable under the covers despite it being too early to go to sleep. They end up watching a few episodes of an anime that’s been on their to-watch list, though Minho will fully admit he watches the boy in his arms a lot more than he watches his phone screen. Whenever Jisung looks right back at him, whenever he smiles as though seeing Minho is the greatest thing in the world, Minho dips in to press their lips together again – because he can, now. He’s allowed.
And before falling asleep, Minho sends a poorly-lit, blurry selfie of the two of them to the group chat, so the others will know where Jisung is at for the night.
At the other dorm, Bang Chan does laugh at them, impossibly fond.
Things gradually fall back into place.
The others barely bat an eye when they learn Minho and Jisung are properly a thing now. It was apparently such an expected outcome they barely even get a congratulations out of their members, but their support shines through in other ways – such as turning a blind eye when Minho emerges from Jisung’s room in the mornings, and shuffling around the car assignments to make sure they can sit together without anyone being the wiser.
They go back to making music as soon as Jisung is well enough to return to practise, and their long-awaited comeback is their most successful one yet. The first time they get back on stage, Jisung is cheered on so much he’s bright red and teary-eyed nearly the entire performance.
Jisung dutifully attends therapy every other week, sometimes through a video call if the group is out of town for their schedules. He tends to go quiet afterwards, processing; sometimes he likes to be alone, sometimes he likes to sit with the loudness of the others, but most often he buries himself in Minho’s arms and hides out there for a bit, usually either falling asleep or getting sucked into whatever show Minho is watching on his phone for the night.
It’s not perfect, of course. Jisung remains jumpy, wary of strangers; he clams up at loud sounds, especially yelling, and he despises nothing more than having to leave home when it’s dark out. He has nightmares sometimes too, and he’s taken to sleeping with a nightlight so he’ll be able to recognise his room quicker when he wakes up from one.
Minho got a nightlight for his own bedroom too. Neither of them have mentioned it.
The most difficult part of the aftermath is, without a doubt, Choi Eunseok’s trial.
Jisung insists on attending, which means all of the members insist on attending – which means the press outside of the courthall go absolutely feral when they arrive. Getting in and out is hell, though thankfully security is tight and no one unauthorised makes it inside of the courtroom, the trial itself remaining a closed event.
Though truthfully, once inside that courtroom, Minho almost misses the chaos from outside. Sitting here in this quiet hall, having to see Choi Enseok up close, watching Jisung’s shoulders hunch and his leg bounce anxiously – it’s a million times worse than the mob of reporters and fans outside.
The proceedings last three days.
On the first day, the case is presented, and they all have to suffer through watching the videos of Jisung’s abduction again, as well as footage Eunseok shot and never sent to them. Jisung gives testimony, his face hard and his voice even, but his hands visibly shaking when he gestures. When he returns to his seat in the gallery, Minho takes his hand and caresses it until it stills again.
On the second day, the defense dares to try and claim temporary insanity, saying that Eunseok was so deeply traumatised by being removed from JYPE’s trainee program that it affected his judgement. Because that was his whole motive – he’d been told of his termination just after having an argument with Jisung, and he always linked the two events in his mind, always assumed Jisung must have been the reason for his failure despite Jisung never having said a word against him, despite Jisung getting in trouble for that fight just as well.
Changbin was one of the people who did report Eunseok to the higher-ups back then – which he makes sure Eunseok knows by yelling it across the courtroom. It almost gets him removed from the gallery for disrupting the trial, though Chan is able to smooth things over.
Honestly, Minho applauds him. The only reason he’s still quiet and complacent in his seat is because Jisung has his hand in a vice grip, and Minho loves Jisung more than he hates Eunseok. Even though it’s becoming a closer and closer call every second he has to see the bastard’s smug face in the defendant’s seat.
On the third day, the judge makes her ruling, and Choi Eunseok is sentenced to twenty years in prison for premeditated kidnapping, aggravated assault, and a bunch of other charges Minho doesn’t even catch because his ears are ringing too loudly, warm relief flooding his veins.
Jisung’s smile is tired, and a bit too sharp, but it’s wide and beautiful and there’s a fire behind his eyes that Minho hasn’t seen since he came home.
Minho is so damn proud of him.
When they’re back home, an action movie of Jeongin’s choosing playing on the television and the coffee table groaning under the weight of too many take-out boxes, Minho tells him as such.
“Thanks,” Jisung murmurs, cheeks tinged pink. “I’m trying. I don’t think I’m really okay yet, but… I’ll get there.”
Minho presses a kiss to his temple and holds him close.
With time, they’ll be okay.
And that’s enough for now.