Super Junior AU; Various Pairings; Love/War
Title: Love/War (18/?)
Fandom: Super Junior AU (Mafia)
Pairings: Siwon/Hankyung/Heechul (Hankyung/Heechul), Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, Kangin/Eeteuk, Tablo/Eunhyuk
Pairings in Chapter: Hankyung/Heechul, Yehsung/Ryeowook
Word Count: 3,317
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The Kim family and the Choi family are the two oldest families in Seoul: where other families have been born, grown, and then fell apart, they remain strong. Unfortunately, they are mortal enemies, and where one lives alongside the law, the other is beyond any control. It's up to the new generation of members to destroy the violence between them - even if it means destroying one family in the process.
A/N: You know what, I really can't see the end. I feel like I'll be writing this for forever >.>
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter 13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter 15 / Chapter 16 / Chapter 17 / Chapter 18
“No,” said Heechul firmly.
Zhou Mi’s face fell. “But hyung-” he began.
“I don’t care,” said Heechul. “What the fuck, Seasoning! He’s the enemy - he’s the son of the guy who would quite like to kill you, in all honesty! And you’re asking me to help you rescue him?”
“I’m asking you to think about it!” said Zhou Mi desperately.
“What makes you think he needs rescuing?” asked Heechul. “He will be getting treated like a hero over in the Choi estate - the guy who showed how easy it was to infiltrate the Kim family! The guy who won the trust of their enemy, and managed to fucking seduce two of their members! Oh yeah, he’s in need of rescuing.”
“Hyung!” said Zhou Mi loudly, to interrupt his ranting. Heechul looked at him shock - Zhou Mi never raised his voice to Heechul. “Hyung, would you just think about this? Reasonably, please? Think about everything that Siwon did for us!”
“He didn’t do anything for us!”
“He did, hyung. He - gave us information - correct information!”
“I don’t give a damn about that! He’s our enemy, Zhou Mi, and that’s all there is to it.” He strode to the door and pulled it open, before he glanced back. Zhou Mi was shocked at the venom in his glare - just like he never shouted at Heechul, Heechul was never angry at Zhou Mi. “I never want to talk about it, Seasoning,” he said, and he left the room.
He stormed back to his bedroom, where he found Hankyung lying on the bed, reading a sheet of paper, brow furrowed. He slowed down a little before he climbed onto the bed and lay down on his side next to him, brushing his fingers over his forehead. “What are you reading?” he asked, voice a little soft.
Hankyung looked at him with shock. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked. “You sounded almost gentle.”
Heechul punched him in the shoulder. “I just had an argument with Seasoning,” he said, and sighed. “He wants us to-” He broke off as he caught a glimpse of the letter that Hankyung was reading - more specifically, the name at the end of the letter: Han.
“What are you reading?” he asked tensely.
“It’s a letter from the woman who claimed to be Siwon’s mother,” said Hankyung. “It’s not - Han, it’s not that family.”
“I know,” said Heechul, still tense. “Why are you reading something from that woman?”
“It was sent to me,” said Hankyung.
“So you throw it out,” said Heechul, and Hankyung shut his eyes, aware that Heechul was angry. There was a difference when Heechul became truly angry and his usual annoyed phase - he was quiet and tense when he was angry, before it overflowed, and then he began breaking things, and he wasn’t above breaking bones if it was a person who had roused his temper.
“I had to know if she knew why,” said Hankyung softly. “If she explained why Siwon had done what he did.”
“I don’t want to know,” said Heechul, scrambling back off the bed to get away from the piece of paper that was calling out to him. “I don’t want to know why, I want to just forget about him and that it ever happened.”
Hankyung didn’t say anything, just lay on the bed, watching thoughtfully, as Heechul stormed back out of the bedroom. Heechul didn’t expect Hankyung to come after him, at least not straight away, but something akin to anger pricked at the fact that Hankyung didn’t move when Heechul left, and after a few minutes it became apparent that Hankyung wasn’t going to follow to try to calm him down.
He made his way to Donghae’s bedroom and burst into the room to find it empty. He stopped before the sound of running water reached his ears, and then he pushed open the bathroom door - not locked, Donghae didn’t like locked doors - and pulled himself onto the counter to look at the glass fogged over with steam. “Hey, hyung,” said Donghae, completely at ease with Heechul being in the room with him. Only Heechul could get away with this. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
Donghae spat out a mouthful of water and then stood on his tip-toes to look over the glass to grin at Heechul. “Because you look like you could break my mirror if I said the wrong thing,” he said.
“Everyone around me has gone mad,” said Heechul.
“You always think everyone around you has gone mad,” said Donghae, and although Heechul could no longer see his face, he knew that Donghae was laughing. “Who exactly, this time?”
“Hankyung,” said Heechul. He saw Donghae’s hands pause in his hair for a moment before he continued scrubbing shampoo.
“Hankyung?” he asked mildly, but he knew as well as Heechul that Heechul rarely considered Hankyung to be going crazy.
“He was reading a letter written to him by the woman who claimed to be Siwon’s mother,” said Heechul, playing with Donghae’s hand wash. “He said that he had to know why he did it, but fuck Donghae, I don’t want to know why. I want to just. Pretend that it never happened.”
“That’s called running away, hyung,” said Donghae, rinsing his hair. “I never thought you’d do something like that.”
Heechul went still, glaring at him. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, voice almost a hiss.
Donghae didn’t answer straight away, choosing instead to finish washing his hair and wrapping a towel around his waist before he stepped out of the shower and came to look in the mirror next to Heechul. He glanced at Heechul before he turned back to the mirror and said; “You can’t lie to us, hyung, we all know you too well for that. I know that you want to know why Siwon did that.”
“He betrayed us, Donghae,” said Heechul, staring at him. “He lied to us and made us think that he was someone we could trust. He lied to us. That’s more important than any sort of - it doesn’t matter what he was to Hankyung and I, the fact is that he was never that person anyway.”
Donghae shrugged. “Maybe that was the person he wanted to be,” he said. “Do you even know what’s happening to him right now? Does anyone know how his family is treating him?”
“We don’t know anything about him,” said Heechul. “Why are you being like this? Why is everyone being like this? Zhou Mi just asked me to think about rescuing Siwon, like the guy who managed to infiltrate an enemy family would need rescuing. And then Hankyung seems like he’s all prepared to listen to reason or something, and I don’t want to listen to reason. Reason will-”
“Reason will put you in a position of forgiveness. I’ve got it, hyung. I understand. You don’t want to forgive him, but hyung, I do.” Donghae looked Heechul directly in the eye, gaze unwavering. It unnerved Heechul a little, to see Donghae this serious. “I was the one who spoke to Zhou Mi about rescuing Siwon,” he said. “We need to get reasons, hyung.”
“You were?” Heechul was honestly shocked. “You want to rescue the heir of the Choi family, after all they did to you?”
Donghae lifted a hand to brush his fingers over the meshwork of scarring across his chest, thin lines of pale skin standing out against tanned, marks of whatever he had gone through during his three years of being in the Choi residence. Heechul averted his gaze, gave Donghae privacy that wasn’t needed, because Heechul already knew the scars on Donghae’s body; the thin ones of whipping, the wider ones of knives. He had seen them in those early days, when Donghae was in hospital. He only didn’t know the scarring underneath - the scarring on his mind.
“You know me, hyung,” said Donghae with a light smile (not forced, however much Heechul wanted it to be). “I’d rather forgive. One person did this and the others had nothing to do with it.”
“He lied to us, Donghae,” said Heechul, slipping off the counter. “We can’t just forgive that.”
“We all lie,” said Donghae, voice a little far-away. “I lie to Sungmin every time he asks me if I’m doing okay. You lie to everyone when you act like you’re too high and mighty to care. We all lie to protect something.”
“That’s not the same,” muttered Heechul.
“How do you know?” asked Donghae. “What if he was lying to protect something? How would we ever know, hyung?”
***
Heechul quietly re-entered the bedroom, but there was no need for the caution - Hankyung had disappeared somewhere, the only signs that he had been in the room half an hour previously the way the sheets were slightly rumpled, and the letter that had been left on the desk. Heechul shut the door quietly behind him and sat down behind the desk, looking blankly at the letter, trying to work out whether he wanted to read it or not.
He couldn’t work out whether Donghae had a point or not - Donghae so rarely said anything worth listening to (in Heechul’s eyes at least) that he didn’t know whether to take Donghae seriously this time. He loved Donghae and all, thought of him as a brother, but Heechul was perfectly aware that sometimes Donghae didn’t exactly think things through.
Hankyung, on the other hand - how could he ignore what Hankyung thought? If Heechul hadn’t fallen in love with Hankyung back then, if he hadn’t been intrigued the second he laid eyes on the Chinese man, Heechul knows that he would not have been able to trust Hankyung as deeply, as inherently as he did. Hankyung is such a contradiction - the Kim family trusts him with so much, they seem to have just overlooked the fact that once he betrayed his own father for something that he believed in. Yes, it was the correct thing to do, but loyalty should have come first.
But then Heechul could forgive Hankyung anything, could reason away anything for Hankyung. Heechul had so much resting on Hankyung that he couldn’t do anything other than trust him with his life - and he did, he trusted Hankyung. If Hankyung told him that the only way forward was to jump without knowing what was below, Heechul would believe him. He’d bitch about it, but he’d jump.
So perhaps now he had to jump forward, metaphorically.
Dear Kim-shi,
I realise that you are not a Kim in name, but you have always been Kim-shi to me - just like every member of the Choi family is the same to me, every member of the Kim family is the same. What do I know of the mafia world that rules our lives? Nothing. I have never been part of that world, I have just been the person funding that world.
I don’t pretend to understand why Siwon-shi did what he did. He has spent most of his life in the shadow of his father, a man who’s reputation will be as notorious to you as it is to me, so for him to want to go from being under the thumb of the Choi family to under the thumb of the Kim family seemed strange to me - but that was what he wanted.
Siwon-shi is important to my family. My son was his playmate as a child, but while Siwon grew up strong and healthy, my son passed away from cancer at the age of eleven. My husband was forced to borrow money from the Choi family to pay for my son’s treatment, but everything failed to save him. We were left with our grief and an undeniable, irrepressible, unbelievable debt.
Siwon-shi stepped in. He spoke to his father, pleaded for us, and managed to get our debt cut; I think he used his friendship with our son to claim a service from us. We had already paid part of it, he may have said. I do not know. Siwon-shi managed to cut our debt and then he took part-time work to help us pay off the rest. I hated taking money from him, but there was no other way. Without Siwon-shi, my family would have gone under - my husband killed by the Choi family, my two younger sons left without a father or a home.
When Siwon-shi came to us and said that he needed a fake family, but couldn’t afford to answer questions as to why, what could we do? We owed him so much, too much to refuse him, even when we realised what was happening, that he was planning to join the Kim family. We still don’t know why he did that. We still don’t know what he saw in your family to cause him to betray his father like that. My family and I are now living on borrowed time - if it comes out that we helped him in his misadventure, we will be killed in cold blood.
And yet we feel no fear, because we trust that it will not come out. Siwon-shi will not give us away like that. Siwon-shi will take our secret to the grave, that much we are certain of - and I don’t write to you to plead for him - because I know that now that he has been found out and that his father has him, there is nowhere for Siwon-shi to find his own salvation - or to plead for our family.
I write in the hope that somewhere, somehow, you find it in yourself to forgive Siwon-shi for what he did. I don’t know why he did it, but Siwon-shi is not the type to do something for half-hearted reasons. He knew what he was getting into, and he knew what the consequences would be if it ever came out. Perhaps if you think about it, you will be able to come up with your own reasons - perhaps you will be able to forgive him for something that he did not from malice but from, perhaps, a desire to free himself from family bonds and let himself into the world to do what he wanted to do.
Yours,
Han EunSae
Heechul was asleep at the desk when Hankyung came back from his walk around the nearby streets to clear his head. Hankyung took off his jacket and lay it on the bed before he bent over Heechul to see if he was so far asleep that it could be dangerous to wake him. Heechul stirred a little, mouth and hair lit by the soft light from the lamp, and when his fluttering eyes saw Hankyung, he was still for a moment or two, waiting for Hankyung to make the first move.
“You read the letter,” said Hankyung softly.
Heechul sat up, nodding slowly, fingers rubbing at the stiffness in his neck - Hankyung took over and Heechul was quiet for a few more minutes. Hankyung watched him, the unusual silence not even registering. Heechul was working things through in his mind.
Heechul reached up and took his hands and pressed his mouth to his fingertips. “We need to talk,” he said. “About Siwon.”
“I know,” said Hankyung. There would be no way to say ‘no’ now.
***
“Seasoning,” said Heechul lightly the next day at breakfast, reaching over to grab a piece of toast. “I need to talk to you. About the conversation we had yesterday.”
Zhou Mi choked and knocked over his cup of tea; Kyuhyun was forced to quickly snatch it back up to stop too much hot liquid staining into the expensive wood of the table. He looked at Zhou Mi like he’d just gone completely mad. “What conversation yesterday?” he asked. He remembered that Zhou Mi had seemed upset about something but he refused to talk about it - Kyuhyun would never have thought it would have anything to do with Heechul.
“Seasoning asked me to find some information on someone,” said Heechul, casually buttering his toast. “I think I’ve managed to dig something up.”
“Oh,” said Kyuhyun, but then he noticed Donghae looking curiously at Heechul, smiling slightly before he started his own breakfast. That was incredibly weird, as Kibum was talking audibly with Ryeowook, and that was usually enough to cause a completely still, silent Donghae for the mealtime.
It took Zhou Mi a couple of minutes to compose himself afterwards, and Heechul seemed tense, eating his food almost mechanically. Hankyung was too casual; it was obvious that something was up. Kyuhyun frowned.
He would bring it up with Zhou Mi later.
***
“Ryeowook,” whined Yehsung, chin on the table in a mock show of petulance. “Come on, it’s only a small request.”
Ryeowook turned to look at him with steely eyes. “You want me to make you dinner,” he said. “What do we have a chef for, hyung?”
“I know,” said Yehsung, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “But he doesn’t make anything as well as you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” said Ryeowook, though he blushed across his nose as he started pulling a packet of rice out of a cupboard. He must have felt Yehsung’s triumph radiating off him because he said, in a light voice; “I’m making rice balls for Henry, he’s training with Shindong.”
Yehsung slumped down on the table, muttering under his breath about dongsaengs that didn’t show him respect and hyungs who made fun of him and he really thought Wookie would be different, you know? Ryeowook was singing to cover the muttering when the intercom buzzed.
Yehsung leant over and picked up the phone rather than let whoever it was speak out over the kitchen. Yehsung never liked letting the content of his telephone calls be known to anyone else, even if that other person was Ryeowook. Ryeowook stopped singing but continued to make the rice balls.
“Yeah?” asked Yehsung, and then was silent. “What? Are you su - who? Give me the name again?”
Ryeowook glanced back to check the source of the call - it was the guard tower at the front. He was just about to ask what was going on when Yehsung cursed under his breath and then he was running out of the room. Ryeowook blinked a little, and then followed him, grabbing a towel on his way out to wipe his hands. Ryeowook wasn’t exactly the fastest in the household so it wasn’t until Yehsung slowed down on the end length of the driveway that he managed to catch up. He opened his mouth and then paused for a moment when he realised that Yehsung had drawn his gun.
“Hyung?” he asked, eyeing the metal held in Yehsung’s hand. “What is it, who’s at the front gates?” He made to draw his own weapon, but Yehsung glanced at him and shook his head.
“Put it away, Ryeowook,” he said, in a serious tone. Ryeowook hesitated - Yehsung speaking seriously usually meant that something serious was happening - but followed the instruction. They reached the guard house and Yehsung pushed open the door; a man stood up, dressed in a grey suit - and Yehsung pointed the gun directly at his forehead.
“Hyung!” gasped Ryeowook, and tried to pull his arm down. Shooting someone without even finding out his name first - that was unlike Yehsung. Yehsung just shook his head and glared at the man who had frozen, eyes staring at the gun held between his eyes - but strangely, there was no fear in his gaze.
“Tell me your name,” said Yehsung coldly. “I need to hear it face-to-face.”
The man, still staring at the gun, inclined his head. “I’m Tablo,” he said.
There was a click - Yehsung had primed the trigger. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t put this bullet in between your eyes,” he said.
Tablo raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have one,” he said softly.
Fandom: Super Junior AU (Mafia)
Pairings: Siwon/Hankyung/Heechul (Hankyung/Heechul), Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, Kangin/Eeteuk, Tablo/Eunhyuk
Pairings in Chapter: Hankyung/Heechul, Yehsung/Ryeowook
Word Count: 3,317
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The Kim family and the Choi family are the two oldest families in Seoul: where other families have been born, grown, and then fell apart, they remain strong. Unfortunately, they are mortal enemies, and where one lives alongside the law, the other is beyond any control. It's up to the new generation of members to destroy the violence between them - even if it means destroying one family in the process.
A/N: You know what, I really can't see the end. I feel like I'll be writing this for forever >.>
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9 / Chapter 10 / Chapter 11 / Chapter 12 / Chapter 13 / Chapter 14 / Chapter 15 / Chapter 16 / Chapter 17 / Chapter 18
“No,” said Heechul firmly.
Zhou Mi’s face fell. “But hyung-” he began.
“I don’t care,” said Heechul. “What the fuck, Seasoning! He’s the enemy - he’s the son of the guy who would quite like to kill you, in all honesty! And you’re asking me to help you rescue him?”
“I’m asking you to think about it!” said Zhou Mi desperately.
“What makes you think he needs rescuing?” asked Heechul. “He will be getting treated like a hero over in the Choi estate - the guy who showed how easy it was to infiltrate the Kim family! The guy who won the trust of their enemy, and managed to fucking seduce two of their members! Oh yeah, he’s in need of rescuing.”
“Hyung!” said Zhou Mi loudly, to interrupt his ranting. Heechul looked at him shock - Zhou Mi never raised his voice to Heechul. “Hyung, would you just think about this? Reasonably, please? Think about everything that Siwon did for us!”
“He didn’t do anything for us!”
“He did, hyung. He - gave us information - correct information!”
“I don’t give a damn about that! He’s our enemy, Zhou Mi, and that’s all there is to it.” He strode to the door and pulled it open, before he glanced back. Zhou Mi was shocked at the venom in his glare - just like he never shouted at Heechul, Heechul was never angry at Zhou Mi. “I never want to talk about it, Seasoning,” he said, and he left the room.
He stormed back to his bedroom, where he found Hankyung lying on the bed, reading a sheet of paper, brow furrowed. He slowed down a little before he climbed onto the bed and lay down on his side next to him, brushing his fingers over his forehead. “What are you reading?” he asked, voice a little soft.
Hankyung looked at him with shock. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked. “You sounded almost gentle.”
Heechul punched him in the shoulder. “I just had an argument with Seasoning,” he said, and sighed. “He wants us to-” He broke off as he caught a glimpse of the letter that Hankyung was reading - more specifically, the name at the end of the letter: Han.
“What are you reading?” he asked tensely.
“It’s a letter from the woman who claimed to be Siwon’s mother,” said Hankyung. “It’s not - Han, it’s not that family.”
“I know,” said Heechul, still tense. “Why are you reading something from that woman?”
“It was sent to me,” said Hankyung.
“So you throw it out,” said Heechul, and Hankyung shut his eyes, aware that Heechul was angry. There was a difference when Heechul became truly angry and his usual annoyed phase - he was quiet and tense when he was angry, before it overflowed, and then he began breaking things, and he wasn’t above breaking bones if it was a person who had roused his temper.
“I had to know if she knew why,” said Hankyung softly. “If she explained why Siwon had done what he did.”
“I don’t want to know,” said Heechul, scrambling back off the bed to get away from the piece of paper that was calling out to him. “I don’t want to know why, I want to just forget about him and that it ever happened.”
Hankyung didn’t say anything, just lay on the bed, watching thoughtfully, as Heechul stormed back out of the bedroom. Heechul didn’t expect Hankyung to come after him, at least not straight away, but something akin to anger pricked at the fact that Hankyung didn’t move when Heechul left, and after a few minutes it became apparent that Hankyung wasn’t going to follow to try to calm him down.
He made his way to Donghae’s bedroom and burst into the room to find it empty. He stopped before the sound of running water reached his ears, and then he pushed open the bathroom door - not locked, Donghae didn’t like locked doors - and pulled himself onto the counter to look at the glass fogged over with steam. “Hey, hyung,” said Donghae, completely at ease with Heechul being in the room with him. Only Heechul could get away with this. “What’s wrong?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
Donghae spat out a mouthful of water and then stood on his tip-toes to look over the glass to grin at Heechul. “Because you look like you could break my mirror if I said the wrong thing,” he said.
“Everyone around me has gone mad,” said Heechul.
“You always think everyone around you has gone mad,” said Donghae, and although Heechul could no longer see his face, he knew that Donghae was laughing. “Who exactly, this time?”
“Hankyung,” said Heechul. He saw Donghae’s hands pause in his hair for a moment before he continued scrubbing shampoo.
“Hankyung?” he asked mildly, but he knew as well as Heechul that Heechul rarely considered Hankyung to be going crazy.
“He was reading a letter written to him by the woman who claimed to be Siwon’s mother,” said Heechul, playing with Donghae’s hand wash. “He said that he had to know why he did it, but fuck Donghae, I don’t want to know why. I want to just. Pretend that it never happened.”
“That’s called running away, hyung,” said Donghae, rinsing his hair. “I never thought you’d do something like that.”
Heechul went still, glaring at him. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, voice almost a hiss.
Donghae didn’t answer straight away, choosing instead to finish washing his hair and wrapping a towel around his waist before he stepped out of the shower and came to look in the mirror next to Heechul. He glanced at Heechul before he turned back to the mirror and said; “You can’t lie to us, hyung, we all know you too well for that. I know that you want to know why Siwon did that.”
“He betrayed us, Donghae,” said Heechul, staring at him. “He lied to us and made us think that he was someone we could trust. He lied to us. That’s more important than any sort of - it doesn’t matter what he was to Hankyung and I, the fact is that he was never that person anyway.”
Donghae shrugged. “Maybe that was the person he wanted to be,” he said. “Do you even know what’s happening to him right now? Does anyone know how his family is treating him?”
“We don’t know anything about him,” said Heechul. “Why are you being like this? Why is everyone being like this? Zhou Mi just asked me to think about rescuing Siwon, like the guy who managed to infiltrate an enemy family would need rescuing. And then Hankyung seems like he’s all prepared to listen to reason or something, and I don’t want to listen to reason. Reason will-”
“Reason will put you in a position of forgiveness. I’ve got it, hyung. I understand. You don’t want to forgive him, but hyung, I do.” Donghae looked Heechul directly in the eye, gaze unwavering. It unnerved Heechul a little, to see Donghae this serious. “I was the one who spoke to Zhou Mi about rescuing Siwon,” he said. “We need to get reasons, hyung.”
“You were?” Heechul was honestly shocked. “You want to rescue the heir of the Choi family, after all they did to you?”
Donghae lifted a hand to brush his fingers over the meshwork of scarring across his chest, thin lines of pale skin standing out against tanned, marks of whatever he had gone through during his three years of being in the Choi residence. Heechul averted his gaze, gave Donghae privacy that wasn’t needed, because Heechul already knew the scars on Donghae’s body; the thin ones of whipping, the wider ones of knives. He had seen them in those early days, when Donghae was in hospital. He only didn’t know the scarring underneath - the scarring on his mind.
“You know me, hyung,” said Donghae with a light smile (not forced, however much Heechul wanted it to be). “I’d rather forgive. One person did this and the others had nothing to do with it.”
“He lied to us, Donghae,” said Heechul, slipping off the counter. “We can’t just forgive that.”
“We all lie,” said Donghae, voice a little far-away. “I lie to Sungmin every time he asks me if I’m doing okay. You lie to everyone when you act like you’re too high and mighty to care. We all lie to protect something.”
“That’s not the same,” muttered Heechul.
“How do you know?” asked Donghae. “What if he was lying to protect something? How would we ever know, hyung?”
***
Heechul quietly re-entered the bedroom, but there was no need for the caution - Hankyung had disappeared somewhere, the only signs that he had been in the room half an hour previously the way the sheets were slightly rumpled, and the letter that had been left on the desk. Heechul shut the door quietly behind him and sat down behind the desk, looking blankly at the letter, trying to work out whether he wanted to read it or not.
He couldn’t work out whether Donghae had a point or not - Donghae so rarely said anything worth listening to (in Heechul’s eyes at least) that he didn’t know whether to take Donghae seriously this time. He loved Donghae and all, thought of him as a brother, but Heechul was perfectly aware that sometimes Donghae didn’t exactly think things through.
Hankyung, on the other hand - how could he ignore what Hankyung thought? If Heechul hadn’t fallen in love with Hankyung back then, if he hadn’t been intrigued the second he laid eyes on the Chinese man, Heechul knows that he would not have been able to trust Hankyung as deeply, as inherently as he did. Hankyung is such a contradiction - the Kim family trusts him with so much, they seem to have just overlooked the fact that once he betrayed his own father for something that he believed in. Yes, it was the correct thing to do, but loyalty should have come first.
But then Heechul could forgive Hankyung anything, could reason away anything for Hankyung. Heechul had so much resting on Hankyung that he couldn’t do anything other than trust him with his life - and he did, he trusted Hankyung. If Hankyung told him that the only way forward was to jump without knowing what was below, Heechul would believe him. He’d bitch about it, but he’d jump.
So perhaps now he had to jump forward, metaphorically.
Dear Kim-shi,
I realise that you are not a Kim in name, but you have always been Kim-shi to me - just like every member of the Choi family is the same to me, every member of the Kim family is the same. What do I know of the mafia world that rules our lives? Nothing. I have never been part of that world, I have just been the person funding that world.
I don’t pretend to understand why Siwon-shi did what he did. He has spent most of his life in the shadow of his father, a man who’s reputation will be as notorious to you as it is to me, so for him to want to go from being under the thumb of the Choi family to under the thumb of the Kim family seemed strange to me - but that was what he wanted.
Siwon-shi is important to my family. My son was his playmate as a child, but while Siwon grew up strong and healthy, my son passed away from cancer at the age of eleven. My husband was forced to borrow money from the Choi family to pay for my son’s treatment, but everything failed to save him. We were left with our grief and an undeniable, irrepressible, unbelievable debt.
Siwon-shi stepped in. He spoke to his father, pleaded for us, and managed to get our debt cut; I think he used his friendship with our son to claim a service from us. We had already paid part of it, he may have said. I do not know. Siwon-shi managed to cut our debt and then he took part-time work to help us pay off the rest. I hated taking money from him, but there was no other way. Without Siwon-shi, my family would have gone under - my husband killed by the Choi family, my two younger sons left without a father or a home.
When Siwon-shi came to us and said that he needed a fake family, but couldn’t afford to answer questions as to why, what could we do? We owed him so much, too much to refuse him, even when we realised what was happening, that he was planning to join the Kim family. We still don’t know why he did that. We still don’t know what he saw in your family to cause him to betray his father like that. My family and I are now living on borrowed time - if it comes out that we helped him in his misadventure, we will be killed in cold blood.
And yet we feel no fear, because we trust that it will not come out. Siwon-shi will not give us away like that. Siwon-shi will take our secret to the grave, that much we are certain of - and I don’t write to you to plead for him - because I know that now that he has been found out and that his father has him, there is nowhere for Siwon-shi to find his own salvation - or to plead for our family.
I write in the hope that somewhere, somehow, you find it in yourself to forgive Siwon-shi for what he did. I don’t know why he did it, but Siwon-shi is not the type to do something for half-hearted reasons. He knew what he was getting into, and he knew what the consequences would be if it ever came out. Perhaps if you think about it, you will be able to come up with your own reasons - perhaps you will be able to forgive him for something that he did not from malice but from, perhaps, a desire to free himself from family bonds and let himself into the world to do what he wanted to do.
Yours,
Han EunSae
Heechul was asleep at the desk when Hankyung came back from his walk around the nearby streets to clear his head. Hankyung took off his jacket and lay it on the bed before he bent over Heechul to see if he was so far asleep that it could be dangerous to wake him. Heechul stirred a little, mouth and hair lit by the soft light from the lamp, and when his fluttering eyes saw Hankyung, he was still for a moment or two, waiting for Hankyung to make the first move.
“You read the letter,” said Hankyung softly.
Heechul sat up, nodding slowly, fingers rubbing at the stiffness in his neck - Hankyung took over and Heechul was quiet for a few more minutes. Hankyung watched him, the unusual silence not even registering. Heechul was working things through in his mind.
Heechul reached up and took his hands and pressed his mouth to his fingertips. “We need to talk,” he said. “About Siwon.”
“I know,” said Hankyung. There would be no way to say ‘no’ now.
***
“Seasoning,” said Heechul lightly the next day at breakfast, reaching over to grab a piece of toast. “I need to talk to you. About the conversation we had yesterday.”
Zhou Mi choked and knocked over his cup of tea; Kyuhyun was forced to quickly snatch it back up to stop too much hot liquid staining into the expensive wood of the table. He looked at Zhou Mi like he’d just gone completely mad. “What conversation yesterday?” he asked. He remembered that Zhou Mi had seemed upset about something but he refused to talk about it - Kyuhyun would never have thought it would have anything to do with Heechul.
“Seasoning asked me to find some information on someone,” said Heechul, casually buttering his toast. “I think I’ve managed to dig something up.”
“Oh,” said Kyuhyun, but then he noticed Donghae looking curiously at Heechul, smiling slightly before he started his own breakfast. That was incredibly weird, as Kibum was talking audibly with Ryeowook, and that was usually enough to cause a completely still, silent Donghae for the mealtime.
It took Zhou Mi a couple of minutes to compose himself afterwards, and Heechul seemed tense, eating his food almost mechanically. Hankyung was too casual; it was obvious that something was up. Kyuhyun frowned.
He would bring it up with Zhou Mi later.
***
“Ryeowook,” whined Yehsung, chin on the table in a mock show of petulance. “Come on, it’s only a small request.”
Ryeowook turned to look at him with steely eyes. “You want me to make you dinner,” he said. “What do we have a chef for, hyung?”
“I know,” said Yehsung, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “But he doesn’t make anything as well as you.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” said Ryeowook, though he blushed across his nose as he started pulling a packet of rice out of a cupboard. He must have felt Yehsung’s triumph radiating off him because he said, in a light voice; “I’m making rice balls for Henry, he’s training with Shindong.”
Yehsung slumped down on the table, muttering under his breath about dongsaengs that didn’t show him respect and hyungs who made fun of him and he really thought Wookie would be different, you know? Ryeowook was singing to cover the muttering when the intercom buzzed.
Yehsung leant over and picked up the phone rather than let whoever it was speak out over the kitchen. Yehsung never liked letting the content of his telephone calls be known to anyone else, even if that other person was Ryeowook. Ryeowook stopped singing but continued to make the rice balls.
“Yeah?” asked Yehsung, and then was silent. “What? Are you su - who? Give me the name again?”
Ryeowook glanced back to check the source of the call - it was the guard tower at the front. He was just about to ask what was going on when Yehsung cursed under his breath and then he was running out of the room. Ryeowook blinked a little, and then followed him, grabbing a towel on his way out to wipe his hands. Ryeowook wasn’t exactly the fastest in the household so it wasn’t until Yehsung slowed down on the end length of the driveway that he managed to catch up. He opened his mouth and then paused for a moment when he realised that Yehsung had drawn his gun.
“Hyung?” he asked, eyeing the metal held in Yehsung’s hand. “What is it, who’s at the front gates?” He made to draw his own weapon, but Yehsung glanced at him and shook his head.
“Put it away, Ryeowook,” he said, in a serious tone. Ryeowook hesitated - Yehsung speaking seriously usually meant that something serious was happening - but followed the instruction. They reached the guard house and Yehsung pushed open the door; a man stood up, dressed in a grey suit - and Yehsung pointed the gun directly at his forehead.
“Hyung!” gasped Ryeowook, and tried to pull his arm down. Shooting someone without even finding out his name first - that was unlike Yehsung. Yehsung just shook his head and glared at the man who had frozen, eyes staring at the gun held between his eyes - but strangely, there was no fear in his gaze.
“Tell me your name,” said Yehsung coldly. “I need to hear it face-to-face.”
The man, still staring at the gun, inclined his head. “I’m Tablo,” he said.
There was a click - Yehsung had primed the trigger. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t put this bullet in between your eyes,” he said.
Tablo raised an eyebrow. “I don’t have one,” he said softly.