Super Junior AU ; Various Pairings ; Love/War
Title: Love/War (13/?)
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: Siwon/Hankyung/Heechul, Yehsung/Ryeowook
Word Count: 3,228
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: I had to go back and insert this chapter a week or so ago because I hadn't written it during November when I should have done - I wanted to get onto the 'exciting stuff' or smth idek. I regretted it like whoa.
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
Siwon looked so excited that Heechul wondered when he’d been replaced by a puppy dog. “What’s got into you?” he asked from the landing that overlooked the front doors, as Siwon raced through, apparently heading for the grand doorway that opened onto a series of meeting rooms, and Eeteuk and Kangin’s office. Siwon stopped at the sound of his voice and looked up, grinning widely.
“Hyung!” he said happily. “Hyung, I found something out!”
“Really?” Heechul lay his arms across the banister and leaned over to smirk at him. “Worked out your times-tables?” Siwon rolled his eyes at him. “Hey,” said Heechul sharply. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m the heir to this family!”
“Sorry,” said Siwon laughingly. “No, I’ve really found something out, something big. It involves the Choi family.”
“I’m listening,” said Heechul, suddenly serious.
It turned out that Eeteuk and Kangin were both perfectly willing to listen too, as Siwon told them about how he had gone out with his family for a meal the night before and had gone for a drink with his father afterwards - his father felt like he hadn’t spoken to him in too long - and had ended up in a bar somewhere in the Choi part. There he had gone up to order, and had ended up in ear shot of two men, who were discussing their plans for later that week.
It hadn’t taken Siwon long to realise that these men were members of the Choi family: quite apart from their expensive suits and obvious guns, they were also talking about auctions and selling and trade gleefully, as if they knew exactly what the auction that weekend was going to entail. Siwon had listened carefully without showing that he was listening for as long as possible, and then had come in the next morning to inform Eeteuk and Kangin.
He finished his story with a wide smile, looking rather pleased with himself, something which made Heechul scoff and shove at his shoulder. Kangin, however, looked dubious. “An auction, this weekend?” he asked. “We haven’t heard anything about it.”
Eeteuk shrugged and answered for Siwon, who didn’t quite know how to answer. “We never usually do, though, do we?” he pointed out. “We don’t normally find out until the actual day, and then we’re like headless chickens trying to get ready in time.”
“You overheard them talking in a bar?” asked Kangin. He still seemed doubtful.
“Drink makes people talk too loud,” said Heechul with a shrug. “You know that as well as I do. It’s why I always get wrong - like a little kid, might I add, and I’m not that much younger than you so - whenever I go out drinking, right?”
“That’s true,” said Kangin, frowning a little. “Did they say where the auction was taking place?”
“Not that I can really remember,” said Siwon, looking a little sheepish. “Something about Dong-bo? I don’t know.”
“Dong-bo Auction rooms,” said Kangin in a low urgent voice to Eeteuk.
“That’s where it was the first time,” said Eeteuk, appearing to think about it. He was silent for a minute or so, and then turned to Heechul. “Find out what you can,” he said. “Ask Kibum to ask around, he usually comes up with good stuff.”
“And I don’t?” asked Heechul, affronted.
“Of course you do,” said Eeteuk, and his soothing tone of voice just managed to annoy Heechul even more. “It’s just that you’re good at names and Kibum’s good at the actual details.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Heechul with an annoyed flick of his hair. Siwon grinned at him, and Heechul flipped him off.
Kibum found out that the auction was taking place that Saturday at midday - and Kibum never did find out why Heechul stopped talking to him for a full day after he found out before him - and there was almost certainly going to be people for sale. It was rather saddening that no one expressed any disbelief at the time of the auction: they were already too used to the sheer face of the Choi family. As they were going over the plans for their raid, Siwon found out that he was to be one of the drivers of the vans that they used to carry the people they rescued.
“Me?” he asked, looking a little pale. “You’re trusting me with that? Already?”
“We need to trust you with something,” said Kangin with a laugh. “After all, you were the one who found out that the thing was taking place to begin with, you should be able to take part in this.”
“I know, but-”
You’ll be in a car with tinted windows,” said Eeteuk. “The Choi family won’t be able to see you and won’t be able to find out who you are.”
“Who I am?”
“It could be a serious problem if they realised that your family lived in Choi territory, right?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“This is the test,” said Kangin, half-serious. “If you do well in this, then we’ll know that you can be trusted with bigger things and we’ll be able to give you more to do. You can’t live in fear of the Choi family finding out who you are all the time. They will find out at some point or another.”
“I was hoping to keep it secret for as long as possible,” said Siwon, looking at the floor. Kangin shook his head sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “And I promise you, when it comes out, we will give your family our protection. We’ll pay for them to move to our area, if we need to.”
“You look like you’ve just been given some bad news,” noted Heechul as Siwon came into his bedroom. Hankyung, who was writing a report for Kangin, paused his fingers over the keys of the laptop to glance at Siwon. “Either that,” continued Heechul with a grin. “Or you’ve just run over a baby.”
“Neither,” said Siwon, forcing a smile as he collapsed on the sofa next to Heechul, who immediately lay over him. “Kangin just told me that I’m one of the drivers on Saturday, along with Yehsung.”
“Scared?” asked Hankyung absently, already working again but keeping an ear on the conversation.
“A little,” admitted Siwon. “Not because I’m scared I’ll get hurt or anything, just - he said it was a test, and I’d really like to pass it.”
“Well if you’ve already passed your driving test then you’ve already passed this test,” said Heechul. “Getaway driver is the easiest job in the world. Boring too. Believe me, I’ve done it.”
“We’re the mafia, Heechul,” said Hankyung. “Not a gang of bank robbers. We don’t have a ‘getaway car’, we have a van that we use for leaving places quickly.”
“It’s still boring,” insisted Heechul. “You sit there for ages waiting for something to happen. The only exciting thing is when you get to screech away quickly.”
“You’re such a boy racer, hyung,” said Siwon, amused, and Heechul nipped his shoulder in retaliation.
“Be quiet,” he said, putting his hand over Siwon’s mouth. “I was watching something before you came in. Either get out or watch it with me.”
“Hyung, you’re sitting on me,” said Siwon when Heechul let him answer.
“So you’ll watch it with me,” said Heechul brightly. “Great!” And he settled himself in Siwon’s lap and watched the rest of the show that he usually missed.
***
Ryeowook threw himself face down on the sofa in one of the drawing rooms with a heartfelt sigh into the pillow. Yehsung looked up from his work, amused in spite of himself. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“I’m bored,” said Ryeowook, or at least, that’s what Yehsung thought he said. It was hard to hear with Ryeowook’s mouth pressed against a seat cushion. “And I’m worried about the others.”
“Yeah,” said Yehsung, chewing on the end of his pencil. “They’ve been gone for quite some time.”
“Don’t say that, hyung!” said Ryeowook, sitting up suddenly. “That’s not helping my worry!”
“Sorry,” laughed Yehsung. “They’ll be fine, you know that as well as I do.”
“But what if they aren’t?”
“They will be,” said Yehsung absently, scribbling something across his piece of paper. Ryeowook regarded him thoughtfully. Sometimes people made jokes about Yehsung having quite a dark personality, and about how stupid he was, but if that was the case, then Ryeowook envied him. Ryeowook worried about everything, but Yehsung trusted his family members so inherently that he just took it for granted that they would be fine no matter what happened. When something did go wrong, like the time Kyuhyun had been injured, Yehsung had been affected more than anyone had previously thought he would, simply because it had never entered his imagination that something like that could occur.
Yehsung’s mother had been the sister of the old leader, a woman with long hair and a pretty nature who could disarm a man in four seconds flat. When she was twenty she had married a man from a landed family who lived in the country, and then they had been sent to Thailand to live with the family that the Kim family had connections with there, as informal ambassadors - Thailand and Korea had good relations then, and the Kim family were renowned.
Yehsung had been born a year later, and they had lived in Thailand happily for two years, before unrest began to spread. The Government stopped listening to the families, came to believe that they didn’t need the mafia telling them what to do, and before long the three families that lived in Thailand realised that they were living on borrowed time. The family that Yehsung had been living with were the first to go - they were the most influential, and the Government sent the army and anyone still living in the house were killed. Yehsung’s parents fled - they were caught by the police and executed.
There was nothing the Kim family could do - soon afterwards Thailand closed their doors to anything. No one was allowed in or out of the country, and nowadays no one knows what is happening; it’s a silent country. Yehsung was retrieved during those first few weeks, the chaotic time, and taken to live with his grandmother in the countryside - it was just lucky, people said, that he had been so young that he didn’t remember his parents.
His grandparents always made sure that he knew who his parents were, but Yehsung couldn’t really remember them. They also made sure that he always had links to his mother’s side of the family, and when he was twelve, it was decided that he would go and live with them. It was felt that it was more important that he lived with the ruling family that his mother belonged to.
Yehsung found that at the Kim family there were people of his own age to be with, something that had been missing considerably from his life with his grandparents. Sure, Heechul annoyed him, and he found Kibum to be almost too quiet, and when Ryeowook came he couldn’t quite handle that level of silence in a boy of that age - he certainly hadn’t been that quiet, even living with elderly, proper grandparents - but Yehsung loved them all unconditionally, and would do anything for any of the members of his family. He trusted them to know what they were doing, even if he didn’t always know what he was doing.
“What are you doing?” Ryeowook asked, standing up to look over Yehsung’s shoulder at whatever he was writing.
“A report for Eeteuk,” said Yehsung. The paper was blank apart from a name written across the top. “I caught a Choi member in our territory a couple of days back and he wants to know about what happened.”
“You never told me about that!” said Ryeowook, slightly surprised. Yehsung shrugged.
“Nothing happened,” he said. “It wasn’t like anyone was shot. No one would have known about it if the bastard hadn’t complained to his leader, who then pulled Eeteuk about it. Eeteuk had to remind Sikyu that his family member had been on our territory.”
“I bet he enjoyed hearing that,” said Ryeowook with a shudder. He had only met Choi Sikyu once before, but it was enough to form a fairly good impression of the man. Ryeowook was terrified of him, although he knew that wasn’t the best feeling to have - he was supposed to hate him or wish to be a better man than him, but in all honesty, Ryeowook was just scared. Men without morals scared him.
“Well, it’s his own fault,” said Yehsung. “If he controlled his family, then we wouldn’t have to get involved.”
“Do you think he knows about the auctions?” asked Ryeowook thoughtfully, lying back down on the sofa, though on his back this time so he could stare at the ceiling. “Do you think his family is now so far out of control that he has no idea?”
“We’ve met him, Ryeowook,” said Yehsung darkly. “That man knows exactly what his family is doing. I have no doubt that he’s running everything.”
“I hope everything is going okay,” murmured Ryeowook.
“It will be,” said Yehsung, trusting in his family. “Who else is home, or has everyone else gone on the raid?”
“Heechul-hyung’s home,” said Ryeowook. “Hankyung-hyung and Henry were, but Henry was worried about everyone so Hankyung-hyung took him for a training session to get his mind off things.”
“I bet Heechul was happy about that,” said Yehsung with a wince. Ryeowook shrugged.
“He seemed alright,” he said. “He was standing at the doors when they were leaving, and I get the feeling that they asked him along but he didn’t want to leave. I think he wants to be here for when Siwon gets back, so he’s the first to know how his first job for the family went.”
“And Hankyung was okay with leaving?”
“You know Hankyung-hyung. He can’t sit around and bitch about things not happening fast enough like Heechul-hyung can, he’d rather be out there getting his mind off it too. It’s probably killing two birds with one stone, taking Henry out to the training rooms.”
“How much longer do you think Heechul can last?” asked Yehsung with a grin. Ryeowook moaned.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I came here.” He paused, and then frowned. “Although, if he came looking for me, this would probably be the first place he looked.”
Yehsung frowned at him. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Never mind,” said Ryeowook breezily. “Hyung, if everything goes okay and they’re all back and everyone’s uninjured, do you want a drink tonight? I was given a bottle of wine as a taster by a factory that I wanted to test out.”
“A drink?” Yehsung looked unsure.
Ryeowook shrugged again. “We’re both grown adults, aren’t we?” He had worked out that stressing how old he now was seemed to work on Yehsung, who thought about it for a minute or so and then nodded. Ryeowook beamed at him and was just about to ask if he should get some food in when Yehsung’s bedroom door burst open and Heechul stormed through.
“Ryeowook,” he said, in an annoyed voice that they recognised as being his ‘I’m really stressed and worried right now so don’t fucking talk back’ voice. “Come downstairs and make me something to eat.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” Heechul glared at him. “I’m hardly going to ask Yehsung, am I? Do you think I want food poisoning?”
“I’m not that bad,” protested Yehsung.
“You are,” said Ryeowook and Heechul in unison. Ryeowook laughed slightly at that; it just made Heechul’s eyebrow twitch. “Ryeowook,” he said firmly.
“I’m coming, hyung,” said Ryeowook, standing up. He knew there was no point in arguing with Heechul when he was like this - much like there was no point in arguing with Heechul when he was like anything - and he knew he probably was similar whenever Yehsung went out on a vaguely dangerous job, only there was probably a lot more moping and a lot less snapping.
He followed Heechul to the kitchen and started making him some ramen without any further instruction - he didn’t dare attempt anything rice related, because then Heechul would bitch about how it wasn’t Beijing fried rice, and how only Hankyung was allowed to make that. He had just put the bowl down in front of Heechul when the sound of the cars returning and shouting was audible from the front drive.
The food was immediately forgotten about by both of the residents of the kitchen. Heechul was first to the door, and he was already running across the front hall towards the doors when Ryeowook left the kitchen. Ryeowook found the front drive to be the usual bedlam of post-rescue, with people who were mostly unable to speak Korean milled around trying to work out what was going on, Kim family members ran through trying to get some sort of a structure going, and the guards at the bottom of the drive doubled security just in case the Choi family attempted an attack in retaliation.
They were Chinese this time - Ryeowook reassured them as best he could with the limited Chinese he had, and just thanked God that Hankyung hadn’t been there to see people from his homeland almost sold into slavery.
Heechul found Siwon talking to a young girl in a soothing voice and immediately pulled him out of the conversation - physically - by wrenching him around and holding him still to look him over. There was blood on his sleeve.
“That’s not yours, right?” he asked, glaring at him as if daring him to admit to getting hurt.
“What?” Siwon looked down at his sleeve in surprise. “No, I don’t think it is. They were shooting at the van.”
“But someone was shot, then,” said Heechul. “For you to have blood on your sleeve.”
“No,” said Siwon. “Eunhyuk said that one of the traders got injured, and the blood got on his hands and then he pulled on my sleeve to make sure I was driving the right way.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” exploded Heechul, hitting him over the head. “You should know by now, you don’t make me worried!”
“Sorry, hyung,” said Siwon, suitably cowed, and Heechul just gave him one final glare before he stood back and allowed Siwon to continue with his reassurance. Heechul huffed at him, before he went to find Kangin to find out what they were doing with the Chinese that they had saved. No doubt, they had been shipped out of the country with permission from the Han family - a new way, perhaps, of getting rid of people that disturbed their rule.
If that was the case, then there was no way of getting them back into China, and if the Han family were providing the Choi with people to trade, that suggested that relations between the two families were now stronger than had previously been thought - something that probably didn’t bode well for Hankyung, Henry or Zhou Mi.
Heechul sighed as he climbed the front stairs. When he had been younger, he had thought that being part of a ruling family was something glamorous and fun - it made him sick to think how different it actually was.
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: Siwon/Hankyung/Heechul, Yehsung/Ryeowook
Word Count: 3,228
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: I had to go back and insert this chapter a week or so ago because I hadn't written it during November when I should have done - I wanted to get onto the 'exciting stuff' or smth idek. I regretted it like whoa.
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
Siwon looked so excited that Heechul wondered when he’d been replaced by a puppy dog. “What’s got into you?” he asked from the landing that overlooked the front doors, as Siwon raced through, apparently heading for the grand doorway that opened onto a series of meeting rooms, and Eeteuk and Kangin’s office. Siwon stopped at the sound of his voice and looked up, grinning widely.
“Hyung!” he said happily. “Hyung, I found something out!”
“Really?” Heechul lay his arms across the banister and leaned over to smirk at him. “Worked out your times-tables?” Siwon rolled his eyes at him. “Hey,” said Heechul sharply. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, I’m the heir to this family!”
“Sorry,” said Siwon laughingly. “No, I’ve really found something out, something big. It involves the Choi family.”
“I’m listening,” said Heechul, suddenly serious.
It turned out that Eeteuk and Kangin were both perfectly willing to listen too, as Siwon told them about how he had gone out with his family for a meal the night before and had gone for a drink with his father afterwards - his father felt like he hadn’t spoken to him in too long - and had ended up in a bar somewhere in the Choi part. There he had gone up to order, and had ended up in ear shot of two men, who were discussing their plans for later that week.
It hadn’t taken Siwon long to realise that these men were members of the Choi family: quite apart from their expensive suits and obvious guns, they were also talking about auctions and selling and trade gleefully, as if they knew exactly what the auction that weekend was going to entail. Siwon had listened carefully without showing that he was listening for as long as possible, and then had come in the next morning to inform Eeteuk and Kangin.
He finished his story with a wide smile, looking rather pleased with himself, something which made Heechul scoff and shove at his shoulder. Kangin, however, looked dubious. “An auction, this weekend?” he asked. “We haven’t heard anything about it.”
Eeteuk shrugged and answered for Siwon, who didn’t quite know how to answer. “We never usually do, though, do we?” he pointed out. “We don’t normally find out until the actual day, and then we’re like headless chickens trying to get ready in time.”
“You overheard them talking in a bar?” asked Kangin. He still seemed doubtful.
“Drink makes people talk too loud,” said Heechul with a shrug. “You know that as well as I do. It’s why I always get wrong - like a little kid, might I add, and I’m not that much younger than you so - whenever I go out drinking, right?”
“That’s true,” said Kangin, frowning a little. “Did they say where the auction was taking place?”
“Not that I can really remember,” said Siwon, looking a little sheepish. “Something about Dong-bo? I don’t know.”
“Dong-bo Auction rooms,” said Kangin in a low urgent voice to Eeteuk.
“That’s where it was the first time,” said Eeteuk, appearing to think about it. He was silent for a minute or so, and then turned to Heechul. “Find out what you can,” he said. “Ask Kibum to ask around, he usually comes up with good stuff.”
“And I don’t?” asked Heechul, affronted.
“Of course you do,” said Eeteuk, and his soothing tone of voice just managed to annoy Heechul even more. “It’s just that you’re good at names and Kibum’s good at the actual details.”
“Yeah, whatever,” said Heechul with an annoyed flick of his hair. Siwon grinned at him, and Heechul flipped him off.
Kibum found out that the auction was taking place that Saturday at midday - and Kibum never did find out why Heechul stopped talking to him for a full day after he found out before him - and there was almost certainly going to be people for sale. It was rather saddening that no one expressed any disbelief at the time of the auction: they were already too used to the sheer face of the Choi family. As they were going over the plans for their raid, Siwon found out that he was to be one of the drivers of the vans that they used to carry the people they rescued.
“Me?” he asked, looking a little pale. “You’re trusting me with that? Already?”
“We need to trust you with something,” said Kangin with a laugh. “After all, you were the one who found out that the thing was taking place to begin with, you should be able to take part in this.”
“I know, but-”
You’ll be in a car with tinted windows,” said Eeteuk. “The Choi family won’t be able to see you and won’t be able to find out who you are.”
“Who I am?”
“It could be a serious problem if they realised that your family lived in Choi territory, right?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“This is the test,” said Kangin, half-serious. “If you do well in this, then we’ll know that you can be trusted with bigger things and we’ll be able to give you more to do. You can’t live in fear of the Choi family finding out who you are all the time. They will find out at some point or another.”
“I was hoping to keep it secret for as long as possible,” said Siwon, looking at the floor. Kangin shook his head sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder.
“I know,” he said. “And I promise you, when it comes out, we will give your family our protection. We’ll pay for them to move to our area, if we need to.”
“You look like you’ve just been given some bad news,” noted Heechul as Siwon came into his bedroom. Hankyung, who was writing a report for Kangin, paused his fingers over the keys of the laptop to glance at Siwon. “Either that,” continued Heechul with a grin. “Or you’ve just run over a baby.”
“Neither,” said Siwon, forcing a smile as he collapsed on the sofa next to Heechul, who immediately lay over him. “Kangin just told me that I’m one of the drivers on Saturday, along with Yehsung.”
“Scared?” asked Hankyung absently, already working again but keeping an ear on the conversation.
“A little,” admitted Siwon. “Not because I’m scared I’ll get hurt or anything, just - he said it was a test, and I’d really like to pass it.”
“Well if you’ve already passed your driving test then you’ve already passed this test,” said Heechul. “Getaway driver is the easiest job in the world. Boring too. Believe me, I’ve done it.”
“We’re the mafia, Heechul,” said Hankyung. “Not a gang of bank robbers. We don’t have a ‘getaway car’, we have a van that we use for leaving places quickly.”
“It’s still boring,” insisted Heechul. “You sit there for ages waiting for something to happen. The only exciting thing is when you get to screech away quickly.”
“You’re such a boy racer, hyung,” said Siwon, amused, and Heechul nipped his shoulder in retaliation.
“Be quiet,” he said, putting his hand over Siwon’s mouth. “I was watching something before you came in. Either get out or watch it with me.”
“Hyung, you’re sitting on me,” said Siwon when Heechul let him answer.
“So you’ll watch it with me,” said Heechul brightly. “Great!” And he settled himself in Siwon’s lap and watched the rest of the show that he usually missed.
***
Ryeowook threw himself face down on the sofa in one of the drawing rooms with a heartfelt sigh into the pillow. Yehsung looked up from his work, amused in spite of himself. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“I’m bored,” said Ryeowook, or at least, that’s what Yehsung thought he said. It was hard to hear with Ryeowook’s mouth pressed against a seat cushion. “And I’m worried about the others.”
“Yeah,” said Yehsung, chewing on the end of his pencil. “They’ve been gone for quite some time.”
“Don’t say that, hyung!” said Ryeowook, sitting up suddenly. “That’s not helping my worry!”
“Sorry,” laughed Yehsung. “They’ll be fine, you know that as well as I do.”
“But what if they aren’t?”
“They will be,” said Yehsung absently, scribbling something across his piece of paper. Ryeowook regarded him thoughtfully. Sometimes people made jokes about Yehsung having quite a dark personality, and about how stupid he was, but if that was the case, then Ryeowook envied him. Ryeowook worried about everything, but Yehsung trusted his family members so inherently that he just took it for granted that they would be fine no matter what happened. When something did go wrong, like the time Kyuhyun had been injured, Yehsung had been affected more than anyone had previously thought he would, simply because it had never entered his imagination that something like that could occur.
Yehsung’s mother had been the sister of the old leader, a woman with long hair and a pretty nature who could disarm a man in four seconds flat. When she was twenty she had married a man from a landed family who lived in the country, and then they had been sent to Thailand to live with the family that the Kim family had connections with there, as informal ambassadors - Thailand and Korea had good relations then, and the Kim family were renowned.
Yehsung had been born a year later, and they had lived in Thailand happily for two years, before unrest began to spread. The Government stopped listening to the families, came to believe that they didn’t need the mafia telling them what to do, and before long the three families that lived in Thailand realised that they were living on borrowed time. The family that Yehsung had been living with were the first to go - they were the most influential, and the Government sent the army and anyone still living in the house were killed. Yehsung’s parents fled - they were caught by the police and executed.
There was nothing the Kim family could do - soon afterwards Thailand closed their doors to anything. No one was allowed in or out of the country, and nowadays no one knows what is happening; it’s a silent country. Yehsung was retrieved during those first few weeks, the chaotic time, and taken to live with his grandmother in the countryside - it was just lucky, people said, that he had been so young that he didn’t remember his parents.
His grandparents always made sure that he knew who his parents were, but Yehsung couldn’t really remember them. They also made sure that he always had links to his mother’s side of the family, and when he was twelve, it was decided that he would go and live with them. It was felt that it was more important that he lived with the ruling family that his mother belonged to.
Yehsung found that at the Kim family there were people of his own age to be with, something that had been missing considerably from his life with his grandparents. Sure, Heechul annoyed him, and he found Kibum to be almost too quiet, and when Ryeowook came he couldn’t quite handle that level of silence in a boy of that age - he certainly hadn’t been that quiet, even living with elderly, proper grandparents - but Yehsung loved them all unconditionally, and would do anything for any of the members of his family. He trusted them to know what they were doing, even if he didn’t always know what he was doing.
“What are you doing?” Ryeowook asked, standing up to look over Yehsung’s shoulder at whatever he was writing.
“A report for Eeteuk,” said Yehsung. The paper was blank apart from a name written across the top. “I caught a Choi member in our territory a couple of days back and he wants to know about what happened.”
“You never told me about that!” said Ryeowook, slightly surprised. Yehsung shrugged.
“Nothing happened,” he said. “It wasn’t like anyone was shot. No one would have known about it if the bastard hadn’t complained to his leader, who then pulled Eeteuk about it. Eeteuk had to remind Sikyu that his family member had been on our territory.”
“I bet he enjoyed hearing that,” said Ryeowook with a shudder. He had only met Choi Sikyu once before, but it was enough to form a fairly good impression of the man. Ryeowook was terrified of him, although he knew that wasn’t the best feeling to have - he was supposed to hate him or wish to be a better man than him, but in all honesty, Ryeowook was just scared. Men without morals scared him.
“Well, it’s his own fault,” said Yehsung. “If he controlled his family, then we wouldn’t have to get involved.”
“Do you think he knows about the auctions?” asked Ryeowook thoughtfully, lying back down on the sofa, though on his back this time so he could stare at the ceiling. “Do you think his family is now so far out of control that he has no idea?”
“We’ve met him, Ryeowook,” said Yehsung darkly. “That man knows exactly what his family is doing. I have no doubt that he’s running everything.”
“I hope everything is going okay,” murmured Ryeowook.
“It will be,” said Yehsung, trusting in his family. “Who else is home, or has everyone else gone on the raid?”
“Heechul-hyung’s home,” said Ryeowook. “Hankyung-hyung and Henry were, but Henry was worried about everyone so Hankyung-hyung took him for a training session to get his mind off things.”
“I bet Heechul was happy about that,” said Yehsung with a wince. Ryeowook shrugged.
“He seemed alright,” he said. “He was standing at the doors when they were leaving, and I get the feeling that they asked him along but he didn’t want to leave. I think he wants to be here for when Siwon gets back, so he’s the first to know how his first job for the family went.”
“And Hankyung was okay with leaving?”
“You know Hankyung-hyung. He can’t sit around and bitch about things not happening fast enough like Heechul-hyung can, he’d rather be out there getting his mind off it too. It’s probably killing two birds with one stone, taking Henry out to the training rooms.”
“How much longer do you think Heechul can last?” asked Yehsung with a grin. Ryeowook moaned.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why I came here.” He paused, and then frowned. “Although, if he came looking for me, this would probably be the first place he looked.”
Yehsung frowned at him. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Never mind,” said Ryeowook breezily. “Hyung, if everything goes okay and they’re all back and everyone’s uninjured, do you want a drink tonight? I was given a bottle of wine as a taster by a factory that I wanted to test out.”
“A drink?” Yehsung looked unsure.
Ryeowook shrugged again. “We’re both grown adults, aren’t we?” He had worked out that stressing how old he now was seemed to work on Yehsung, who thought about it for a minute or so and then nodded. Ryeowook beamed at him and was just about to ask if he should get some food in when Yehsung’s bedroom door burst open and Heechul stormed through.
“Ryeowook,” he said, in an annoyed voice that they recognised as being his ‘I’m really stressed and worried right now so don’t fucking talk back’ voice. “Come downstairs and make me something to eat.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” Heechul glared at him. “I’m hardly going to ask Yehsung, am I? Do you think I want food poisoning?”
“I’m not that bad,” protested Yehsung.
“You are,” said Ryeowook and Heechul in unison. Ryeowook laughed slightly at that; it just made Heechul’s eyebrow twitch. “Ryeowook,” he said firmly.
“I’m coming, hyung,” said Ryeowook, standing up. He knew there was no point in arguing with Heechul when he was like this - much like there was no point in arguing with Heechul when he was like anything - and he knew he probably was similar whenever Yehsung went out on a vaguely dangerous job, only there was probably a lot more moping and a lot less snapping.
He followed Heechul to the kitchen and started making him some ramen without any further instruction - he didn’t dare attempt anything rice related, because then Heechul would bitch about how it wasn’t Beijing fried rice, and how only Hankyung was allowed to make that. He had just put the bowl down in front of Heechul when the sound of the cars returning and shouting was audible from the front drive.
The food was immediately forgotten about by both of the residents of the kitchen. Heechul was first to the door, and he was already running across the front hall towards the doors when Ryeowook left the kitchen. Ryeowook found the front drive to be the usual bedlam of post-rescue, with people who were mostly unable to speak Korean milled around trying to work out what was going on, Kim family members ran through trying to get some sort of a structure going, and the guards at the bottom of the drive doubled security just in case the Choi family attempted an attack in retaliation.
They were Chinese this time - Ryeowook reassured them as best he could with the limited Chinese he had, and just thanked God that Hankyung hadn’t been there to see people from his homeland almost sold into slavery.
Heechul found Siwon talking to a young girl in a soothing voice and immediately pulled him out of the conversation - physically - by wrenching him around and holding him still to look him over. There was blood on his sleeve.
“That’s not yours, right?” he asked, glaring at him as if daring him to admit to getting hurt.
“What?” Siwon looked down at his sleeve in surprise. “No, I don’t think it is. They were shooting at the van.”
“But someone was shot, then,” said Heechul. “For you to have blood on your sleeve.”
“No,” said Siwon. “Eunhyuk said that one of the traders got injured, and the blood got on his hands and then he pulled on my sleeve to make sure I was driving the right way.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” exploded Heechul, hitting him over the head. “You should know by now, you don’t make me worried!”
“Sorry, hyung,” said Siwon, suitably cowed, and Heechul just gave him one final glare before he stood back and allowed Siwon to continue with his reassurance. Heechul huffed at him, before he went to find Kangin to find out what they were doing with the Chinese that they had saved. No doubt, they had been shipped out of the country with permission from the Han family - a new way, perhaps, of getting rid of people that disturbed their rule.
If that was the case, then there was no way of getting them back into China, and if the Han family were providing the Choi with people to trade, that suggested that relations between the two families were now stronger than had previously been thought - something that probably didn’t bode well for Hankyung, Henry or Zhou Mi.
Heechul sighed as he climbed the front stairs. When he had been younger, he had thought that being part of a ruling family was something glamorous and fun - it made him sick to think how different it actually was.