off to the races (8/?)
off to the races (8/?)
~ 3416 w, r, (krystal/kai) l part i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii.
Oh, so she was declared dead - that’s convenient.
■ fanmix/soundtrack
■ i'm now posting this on aff too, so go subscribe if you'd like
“Yixing” She sing-songs, her tresses tickling his cheeks, “Wakey-wakey, I’ve made you breakfast~”
“Wake up, Yixing…wake up”
His eyes open without him wanting them too. Yixing knows the moment he shakes awake with an echoing gasp and trembling hands clutching her clothes that Soojung’s not here. He’s used to seeing her in his dreams, what he’s not used to is not being able to see her out of it.
It’s been seventy nine hours since Soojung’s gone missing.
Yixing thinks it to be weird how it can feel like she’s been away from three years, rather than three days but at the same time, feels like she’s still in this very room with him. He can’t remember the last time he slept in her room; they haven’t shared a bed since fifteen. It’s been a long time since he’s come into her room alone; lying on her bed and smelling her sheets. The state that the room has been left in can only be described as a messy. Soojung has never been particularly tidy but this; it’s different.
“I had a hunch that you’d be moping around in here,” Minseok enters without so much as a knock on the door, “Tao mentioned something about ‘provoking the bear’ but I thought I’d come in and find out just how much brooding you’re doing anyway.”
“This is worst than I thought,” Minseok looks around the room and scratches his head, “I know Krys’s hates to clean but this…is really something else. Have fun trying to clean all th -”
“I’m not doing it for her,” he sits up, says, “When she gets back, she’s going to be one who cleans it herself.”
Minseok approaches, giving Yixing a quiet pitiful look that he thinks he can’t see. “Tao’s still got nothing on her where about.”
“Then he’s not trying hard enough - “
“He’s doing his best, Yixing,” Minseok cuts him off, his eyes hardening, “I don’t know how to tell you this but chances are we’re not going to be able to track her down for a while. I know you’re worried - we’re all are but you’re the only one beating yourself up over this, man.”
“Worried?” Yixing turns to look at him incredulously and picks up one of her t-shirts off the floor, “She might be dead and all you can do is be worried?”
Minseok sighs. “You’re thinking of the worst -“
“I’m thinking of the possibilities.”
“And you’re wasting your time,” Minseok says more harshly than he intended to, “There is nothing that you can do for Krystal.”
Yixing thinks the worst part of all this is how useless he’s become to her.
-
They must take her for a really stupid bitch, Krystal glares at the plates and the variety of fancy food it offers. She can tell that they’re not home cooked; it looks like a more expensive of her average Sunday night take out that’s been shoved in the microwave for three minutes and dumped into bowls.
There’s no point in wasting time and cooking up something good when you’re going to laced it with poison, she gets that.
Without really being able to help it, her stomach growls angry and loud. She’s lived through poverty before; the best way to avoid hunger is to sleep through it but there’s no way in hell she’s going to as much as blink in the devil’s lair. Krystal couldn’t help it last time - concussion and all and even now, when she knows her body is begging for the much needed rest, she knows she can’t succumb to it.
What’s the point of recovering when it won’t get her the hell out of here?
The food’s gone cold by now but she stares at it anyway, trying to ignore the painful knot in her stomach. Krystal hears the ‘click’ from the other side of the room and for once, she can say that she’s glad that someone’s coming in to see her. She just prays that it won’t be Baekhyun again (she’s had enough of him in one night to say the least).
“Oh look, there’s…one, two, three, four…four of you this evening!” She counts the boys by the head in mocked enthusiasm as they approach her bedside with their slouchy pants and crinkled school shirts, “Did you all come to see if I’m still breathing? Sorry to disappoint.”
“You’re not eating,” Suho says sternly, ignoring her snide comment, “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m not hungry -“
“She thinks it’s poisoned,” Sehun cuts her off, flicking the spoon with his finger and watches in disdain as it plops back in the cold porridge, “One of you should have made sure she ate.”
The raven haired boy, the one who had a malicious smirk and temper that could set fire, looks down at his foot and taps it in steady rhythm. She can’t say that her memory’s top notch after everything it’s been put through but she’d have to be dead before she can forget him; Kyungsoo. He stands on her left and unconsciously, Krystal shifts away because his presence is like a battle scar but not one that she’s proud of.
“Told you I should have stayed longer,” Baekhyun blows raspberry, squishing in next to her until there’s no space between them, “Could have spoon fed my little princess then.”
“Aww oppa, you’re the best!” Krystal rolls her eyes at his pout when she pushes his face away from hers, “You know what would make me like oppa more? If he can just get very, very far away from Krystal, that would make her sooo happy.”
Suho clears his throat, stresses, “You need to eat if you want to recover -“
Krystal scoffs. “Who says I want to recover?”
“You’re right,” Sehun agrees, gaining himself surprised looks from his buddies, “We want you to recover.”
That definitely got her attention. “You?” Krystal glances between the other three, making sure to catch all of their faces as a clarification that they’ve all heard Sehun right, “You all want me to recover? Have y - Have you lost your fucking mind or?”
“No,” Sehun says without one bit of hesitation, “Actually, the quicker you recover the better. School is on Monday and since we’ve already signed you up for classes, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t attend.”
Krystal could have bursts laughing then and there if she’s certain it was a joke, except she isn’t.
“I’m sorry, I think I might have lost too many brain cells when you put me out ‘cause you’re talking absolute nonsense to me right now.”
“What he’s trying to say is…” Kyungsoo steps in and utters his first few words since he got here, “We can’t watch you here. Our only choice is to put you in school - where we can keep an eye on you at all times.”
The last time Krystal’s been to school, she was fourteen.
-
“I can’t do my work if you’re going to keep on looking over my shoulder.”
Chen jumps at the abrupt end to Tao’s one hour of pure silence. With a grunt, he picks his leather jacket up from the floor and throws it over his shoulder, throwing Tao a disgruntled look over his shoulder before stalking off.
Shaking his head lightly, Tao murmurs under his breath, “There’s no patience in this house whatsoever.”
“Well, it’s not every day that one of us gets taken,” Kris speaks up, “I’m afraid not all of us can be so sure of themselves like you are.”
He swivels around in his chair and pushes up his glasses. “What are you really trying to say, Kris?”
“Nothing, nothing,” The blonde brushes him off, “Fair enough, you’re the one who knows how to work the gadgets in this house. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be confident in finding her location.”
“I’ve got no time to doubt myself,” Tao says easily, turning back to the screen, “If I spend all day long throwing tantrums like Chen then we’d get nowhere.”
Yixing surmises it as simply as he could, “We’re still getting nowhere.”
“Not for long”
“Let’s all hope so,” Kris says grimly, folding his hands over his face, “It’s impossible that she’s not at any of their warehouse -“
There’s a screech from the door that could have made the calmest of them sit up but it’s only Chen with his sneakers rubbing against the floor when he comes to a halt in his sprint. He looks to Kris with wide-eyes, sweat seeping through his tee and his mouth hung open, trying to sew some words together for a comprehensible sentence.
Finally, he chokes out, “I f- I found her leather jacket!”
“And?” Tao raises a brow his fingers still furiously tapping on the keyboard. “I didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to leave the house without some kind of outer garment - “
“You don’t understand - she left without it!” Chen looks like he’s in a state of manic, his gaze growing more alarmed as it darts back and forth between Kris and Yixing, “She’s not supposed to have left without it!”
Kris shoots him a warning look from across the room, “If you know what’s good for you, Chen -”
“Then you’d tell the truth.”
In any other situation, it would be amusing to see Kris even more fearful than Chen. Yixing didn’t spend two years living under the same roof as they without any knowledge of their true nature. Kris, has the exterior of what a preferable leader should possess - calm and cool with carefully devised plan, but when he knows he’s run into a wall, his logics fold while his emotions come out to play. Yixing has to grab onto the arm of his chair to stop himself from going for Chen’s neck because if he’d just squeeze a little, he would be on his knees and wailing out the truth.
“You did something you shouldn’t have done,” Tao observes the scene unfolding in front of him, his frown deepening, “Haven’t you?”
“I - I’m sorry, hyung,“ Chen starts cautiously, trying not to look at Kris’s murderous expression, “She came back for a minute and went straight to her room. You guys weren’t here and I saw one of them, j - just hanging around outside with not one fucking care in the world and n - none of you were he - here so I - I called Kris hyung, you know, to ask him wha - what I should do and he told me to put a tracker on her leather jacket ‘cause she dumped it outside wh - when she went into her room, so I - I did. I don’t kn - shit - I don’t know what happened, she m - she must have switched or something because that jacket - it - it’s still here.”
“Hyung…” Luhan looks unsure of which of the two he should be more horrified of, “What w - were you thinking?!”
It’s easy like that - one day Yixing wakes up and she’s there, nagging him to make breakfast then when he gets back, she’s not. For all his life, it’s been the two of them. They pack and go, one suitcase in one hand and her hand in his other. They’d held onto each other so tightly that even on the streets, they know they’ve created a home with one another. Because Yixing was born in dirt with not a cent of money but he couldn’t say he never had nothing ever; he has Soojung and that’s enough for him.
He supposes that’s all in the past now - they made it easy like that.
“I regretted it the moment she walked out the door - th - this wasn’t supposed to happen,” Chen begins to pace back and forth, his nerves scattered all over the place, “Oh god, this has all gone to shits!”
“Not everything is always going go to plan -“
“But it was your plan,” Yixing cuts Kris’s off, his voice soft but deadly, “So can we say it’s your fault then?”
“My fault?!” Kris’s spits in bewilderment, “Like hell it is! Not only did Krystal leave the house when we specifically agreed that she wouldn’t, she chose to bring a K member back to our territory and went back out there -“
Bluntly, Tao says, “And you chose to let her go.”
“You of all people should understand, Tao,” The so-called leader swallows visibly, “She broke a rule - and not just any rule, she exposed our fucking home to the enemy.”
Luhan drops his gaze to the floor, refusing to look at any of them as he whispers, “It doesn’t matter, she’s still one of us, hyung. How could you let her leave when you know -”
“I know nothing and neither do any of you. She might as well have been consorting with the rest of them every Friday night after what she did,” Kris snaps, then takes a few strides to reach Yixing and takes a quiet moment to look down at him, expelling a low breath, “I have to say, Yixing, I’m surprised that you still haven’t given me your two cents on this. Since you basically kiss the very ground she walks on, I thought you’d be up on your feet and hammering me into the ground by now.”
His only response is to look up at the blonde, but it isn’t accusing nor is it anger. It’s pure disgust. “Are you done?”
Kris looks taken aback.
“It’s enough. I can make an educated guess that you wanted them to take her,” Yixing drawls, eyes glittering maliciously, “We promised a new batch of stocks would be delivered in the next two months, if we don’t then they’ll send the loan sharks after us. You’re scared, you have no other option, you’re desperate and Krystal opened up a great opportunity and you took it - they’ll take her back to their head quarter, the tracker will lead us to all the goods and you’ll drain them of every piece of motor they own. Okay, I can understand that,” He gets up and yanks Kris in by the lapel of his jacket, “And I would have applauded you if it had worked out fine but it didn’t, did it?”
Kris is stunned to silence and Yixing punctures the hushed moment.
“So, she’s out there somewhere, paying the price of your mistake but here I am, with you,” He continues, backing Kris into the wall, “What should I do about that? Because I don’t think I have it in me to forgive you -“
“Let him go, Yixing”
To Tao’s shock, he does.
Yixing’s hands are trembling, still fighting the urge to use it as a tool of destruction when he wipes them on his jeans and as he watches Kris slumps to the floor, Yixing doesn’t know how to breathe and rasps out, “But Krystal would.”
-
It takes Krystal’s half an hour to relent and shoves a spoonful of Kimchi and rice into her mouth.
She swallows, then looks to him almost to say ‘are you happy now?’ Sehun certainly did see it but he did not let it on, drawing up a graph and labeling it to match the equation he’s working on.
“I’m eating,” She says like that one bite counts, “You can get out now.”
“Finish it and I will.”
“Get out and I will,” she retorts.
He moves right onto the next question on the worksheet, says, “Eat your dinner, Krystal.”
“Yes, mummy dearest, anything you want,” She mocks, stabbing the cherry tomatoes with unnecessary force, “Should I eat up all the vegetable too?”
“If that’s what you’d like, then sure, go ahead.”
There are a handful of things Krystal knows not to underestimate under this roof, Sehun’s most definitely her top priority in that aspect. Krystal’s not above owning up to losing out to a class act like him. Krystal doubts she’ll ever know for sure who the mastermind of the grand plan was but she’s not easy to trick, someone like Baekhyun for example, wouldn’t succeed in getting her to so readily walk into their trap.
But then again, it was all Jongin, wasn’t it?”
“Where’s Kai anyway?”
Sehun puts his pen down, smiling wryly as he shifts in the arm chair, angling himself towards the bed so he can give her a full view of that tamed smugness. “Don’t you mean Jongin?”
Krystal doesn’t say anything, mainly because she didn’t know how to.
“Jung Soojung, granddaughter of Jung Hongmin, ex-senator and owner of the nation’s football team,” Sehun recites the facts to her, taking out a folded piece of paper from the inside of his blazer, “Your dad is not doing too bad either, I believe, it says here that he owns….” He hands her the cut up section of the newspaper and Krystal shudders when her finger rubs against the faded ink, “A lot of lads here on the west side.”
She thinks she ought to turn away now, but she knows it won’t change anything. He’s giving her hard proof and not words she can counteract. What Krystal’s looking at is a piece of report with a blurred picture of the scene of the crime attached under it; dark woods with frosty weather wrapped around with yellow tape. She’s never read it once; if she did she would have known that the portrait of her that they’d chosen to use did her face complete injustice. No wonder no one recognized her on the street when the missing report was filed.
There was no mention of Kim Jongin or his family being on the trip with them, only descriptions of her father’s devastation and the sheriff who was “confident Miss Jung had fallen into fast-running creek” and they’ll “try to the best of their abilities to recover the body despite the tumultuous weather.” Oh, so she was declared dead - that’s convenient.
Softly, Krystal says, “How did you know it was me?”
“It was a guess,” Sehun says with such ease that it almost got a laugh out of her. She could have denied it and everything would go to rest, but she didn’t. As if to comfort her, he tells her, “Jongin kept the clipping in between the pages of one of his books.”
She freezes. Why would he have kept this?
“How did that lead you to the conclusion that the girl is me?”
He leans over to whisper in her ear, “I know that you two know each other.”
Knew, Krystal corrects in her own head. “Congratulation…? You found out my deep, dark secret…?” She questions in sarcasm, not really understanding what he’s trying to get at, “I’m impressed that you’ve dug this deep into my past in such a small time frame, have a cookie…?”
Sehun seems surprised by her reaction and says, “I know where your parents are.”
She’s already got some smart-ass comment on the way when something catches in her throat. Krystal flickers her gaze to meet his to confirm that just as she thought, he’s filled to the brim with malice for her. “That’s great,” she feigns ignorance, toying with the loose thread in the pillow case, “I know where they are too, no plans to visit them though but if you let me out then maybe I could drop by with a fruit basket and whatever back-from-the-dead daughters brings to family reunion.”
“No, you won’t be leaving here anytime soon,” Sehun says, unamused, “I’ve got a feeling that you’re not very eager to let them know that you’re still alive and now that I know who your parents are, it’s not very difficult to contact them -“
“Get to the point,” she grits.
“It’s very simple - forcing you to attend school is only my way of reassuring everyone else that you won’t be getting away without giving us anything first.” Firmly, he says, “I believe you when you say you don’t where the stock is now. Small bike gang like yours works for the bigger power, don’t you?”
Terrified of what’s to come, she nods.
Sehun stops at the window, training his gaze outside and in. “You’ll not run, you’ll not tell anyone about this conversation - especially not Jongin, “ he stresses, “You’ll cooperate with any future plans the team has or I have for you. And if you don’t,” His smiles a little and continues, “And you decide to call me bluff then I’ll have prove you wrong by shipping you back to your grandfather in California.”
~ 3416 w, r, (krystal/kai) l part i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii.
Oh, so she was declared dead - that’s convenient.
■ fanmix/soundtrack
■ i'm now posting this on aff too, so go subscribe if you'd like
“Yixing” She sing-songs, her tresses tickling his cheeks, “Wakey-wakey, I’ve made you breakfast~”
“Wake up, Yixing…wake up”
His eyes open without him wanting them too. Yixing knows the moment he shakes awake with an echoing gasp and trembling hands clutching her clothes that Soojung’s not here. He’s used to seeing her in his dreams, what he’s not used to is not being able to see her out of it.
It’s been seventy nine hours since Soojung’s gone missing.
Yixing thinks it to be weird how it can feel like she’s been away from three years, rather than three days but at the same time, feels like she’s still in this very room with him. He can’t remember the last time he slept in her room; they haven’t shared a bed since fifteen. It’s been a long time since he’s come into her room alone; lying on her bed and smelling her sheets. The state that the room has been left in can only be described as a messy. Soojung has never been particularly tidy but this; it’s different.
“I had a hunch that you’d be moping around in here,” Minseok enters without so much as a knock on the door, “Tao mentioned something about ‘provoking the bear’ but I thought I’d come in and find out just how much brooding you’re doing anyway.”
“This is worst than I thought,” Minseok looks around the room and scratches his head, “I know Krys’s hates to clean but this…is really something else. Have fun trying to clean all th -”
“I’m not doing it for her,” he sits up, says, “When she gets back, she’s going to be one who cleans it herself.”
Minseok approaches, giving Yixing a quiet pitiful look that he thinks he can’t see. “Tao’s still got nothing on her where about.”
“Then he’s not trying hard enough - “
“He’s doing his best, Yixing,” Minseok cuts him off, his eyes hardening, “I don’t know how to tell you this but chances are we’re not going to be able to track her down for a while. I know you’re worried - we’re all are but you’re the only one beating yourself up over this, man.”
“Worried?” Yixing turns to look at him incredulously and picks up one of her t-shirts off the floor, “She might be dead and all you can do is be worried?”
Minseok sighs. “You’re thinking of the worst -“
“I’m thinking of the possibilities.”
“And you’re wasting your time,” Minseok says more harshly than he intended to, “There is nothing that you can do for Krystal.”
Yixing thinks the worst part of all this is how useless he’s become to her.
-
They must take her for a really stupid bitch, Krystal glares at the plates and the variety of fancy food it offers. She can tell that they’re not home cooked; it looks like a more expensive of her average Sunday night take out that’s been shoved in the microwave for three minutes and dumped into bowls.
There’s no point in wasting time and cooking up something good when you’re going to laced it with poison, she gets that.
Without really being able to help it, her stomach growls angry and loud. She’s lived through poverty before; the best way to avoid hunger is to sleep through it but there’s no way in hell she’s going to as much as blink in the devil’s lair. Krystal couldn’t help it last time - concussion and all and even now, when she knows her body is begging for the much needed rest, she knows she can’t succumb to it.
What’s the point of recovering when it won’t get her the hell out of here?
The food’s gone cold by now but she stares at it anyway, trying to ignore the painful knot in her stomach. Krystal hears the ‘click’ from the other side of the room and for once, she can say that she’s glad that someone’s coming in to see her. She just prays that it won’t be Baekhyun again (she’s had enough of him in one night to say the least).
“Oh look, there’s…one, two, three, four…four of you this evening!” She counts the boys by the head in mocked enthusiasm as they approach her bedside with their slouchy pants and crinkled school shirts, “Did you all come to see if I’m still breathing? Sorry to disappoint.”
“You’re not eating,” Suho says sternly, ignoring her snide comment, “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m not hungry -“
“She thinks it’s poisoned,” Sehun cuts her off, flicking the spoon with his finger and watches in disdain as it plops back in the cold porridge, “One of you should have made sure she ate.”
The raven haired boy, the one who had a malicious smirk and temper that could set fire, looks down at his foot and taps it in steady rhythm. She can’t say that her memory’s top notch after everything it’s been put through but she’d have to be dead before she can forget him; Kyungsoo. He stands on her left and unconsciously, Krystal shifts away because his presence is like a battle scar but not one that she’s proud of.
“Told you I should have stayed longer,” Baekhyun blows raspberry, squishing in next to her until there’s no space between them, “Could have spoon fed my little princess then.”
“Aww oppa, you’re the best!” Krystal rolls her eyes at his pout when she pushes his face away from hers, “You know what would make me like oppa more? If he can just get very, very far away from Krystal, that would make her sooo happy.”
Suho clears his throat, stresses, “You need to eat if you want to recover -“
Krystal scoffs. “Who says I want to recover?”
“You’re right,” Sehun agrees, gaining himself surprised looks from his buddies, “We want you to recover.”
That definitely got her attention. “You?” Krystal glances between the other three, making sure to catch all of their faces as a clarification that they’ve all heard Sehun right, “You all want me to recover? Have y - Have you lost your fucking mind or?”
“No,” Sehun says without one bit of hesitation, “Actually, the quicker you recover the better. School is on Monday and since we’ve already signed you up for classes, I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t attend.”
Krystal could have bursts laughing then and there if she’s certain it was a joke, except she isn’t.
“I’m sorry, I think I might have lost too many brain cells when you put me out ‘cause you’re talking absolute nonsense to me right now.”
“What he’s trying to say is…” Kyungsoo steps in and utters his first few words since he got here, “We can’t watch you here. Our only choice is to put you in school - where we can keep an eye on you at all times.”
The last time Krystal’s been to school, she was fourteen.
-
“I can’t do my work if you’re going to keep on looking over my shoulder.”
Chen jumps at the abrupt end to Tao’s one hour of pure silence. With a grunt, he picks his leather jacket up from the floor and throws it over his shoulder, throwing Tao a disgruntled look over his shoulder before stalking off.
Shaking his head lightly, Tao murmurs under his breath, “There’s no patience in this house whatsoever.”
“Well, it’s not every day that one of us gets taken,” Kris speaks up, “I’m afraid not all of us can be so sure of themselves like you are.”
He swivels around in his chair and pushes up his glasses. “What are you really trying to say, Kris?”
“Nothing, nothing,” The blonde brushes him off, “Fair enough, you’re the one who knows how to work the gadgets in this house. I don’t see why you shouldn’t be confident in finding her location.”
“I’ve got no time to doubt myself,” Tao says easily, turning back to the screen, “If I spend all day long throwing tantrums like Chen then we’d get nowhere.”
Yixing surmises it as simply as he could, “We’re still getting nowhere.”
“Not for long”
“Let’s all hope so,” Kris says grimly, folding his hands over his face, “It’s impossible that she’s not at any of their warehouse -“
There’s a screech from the door that could have made the calmest of them sit up but it’s only Chen with his sneakers rubbing against the floor when he comes to a halt in his sprint. He looks to Kris with wide-eyes, sweat seeping through his tee and his mouth hung open, trying to sew some words together for a comprehensible sentence.
Finally, he chokes out, “I f- I found her leather jacket!”
“And?” Tao raises a brow his fingers still furiously tapping on the keyboard. “I didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to leave the house without some kind of outer garment - “
“You don’t understand - she left without it!” Chen looks like he’s in a state of manic, his gaze growing more alarmed as it darts back and forth between Kris and Yixing, “She’s not supposed to have left without it!”
Kris shoots him a warning look from across the room, “If you know what’s good for you, Chen -”
“Then you’d tell the truth.”
In any other situation, it would be amusing to see Kris even more fearful than Chen. Yixing didn’t spend two years living under the same roof as they without any knowledge of their true nature. Kris, has the exterior of what a preferable leader should possess - calm and cool with carefully devised plan, but when he knows he’s run into a wall, his logics fold while his emotions come out to play. Yixing has to grab onto the arm of his chair to stop himself from going for Chen’s neck because if he’d just squeeze a little, he would be on his knees and wailing out the truth.
“You did something you shouldn’t have done,” Tao observes the scene unfolding in front of him, his frown deepening, “Haven’t you?”
“I - I’m sorry, hyung,“ Chen starts cautiously, trying not to look at Kris’s murderous expression, “She came back for a minute and went straight to her room. You guys weren’t here and I saw one of them, j - just hanging around outside with not one fucking care in the world and n - none of you were he - here so I - I called Kris hyung, you know, to ask him wha - what I should do and he told me to put a tracker on her leather jacket ‘cause she dumped it outside wh - when she went into her room, so I - I did. I don’t kn - shit - I don’t know what happened, she m - she must have switched or something because that jacket - it - it’s still here.”
“Hyung…” Luhan looks unsure of which of the two he should be more horrified of, “What w - were you thinking?!”
It’s easy like that - one day Yixing wakes up and she’s there, nagging him to make breakfast then when he gets back, she’s not. For all his life, it’s been the two of them. They pack and go, one suitcase in one hand and her hand in his other. They’d held onto each other so tightly that even on the streets, they know they’ve created a home with one another. Because Yixing was born in dirt with not a cent of money but he couldn’t say he never had nothing ever; he has Soojung and that’s enough for him.
He supposes that’s all in the past now - they made it easy like that.
“I regretted it the moment she walked out the door - th - this wasn’t supposed to happen,” Chen begins to pace back and forth, his nerves scattered all over the place, “Oh god, this has all gone to shits!”
“Not everything is always going go to plan -“
“But it was your plan,” Yixing cuts Kris’s off, his voice soft but deadly, “So can we say it’s your fault then?”
“My fault?!” Kris’s spits in bewilderment, “Like hell it is! Not only did Krystal leave the house when we specifically agreed that she wouldn’t, she chose to bring a K member back to our territory and went back out there -“
Bluntly, Tao says, “And you chose to let her go.”
“You of all people should understand, Tao,” The so-called leader swallows visibly, “She broke a rule - and not just any rule, she exposed our fucking home to the enemy.”
Luhan drops his gaze to the floor, refusing to look at any of them as he whispers, “It doesn’t matter, she’s still one of us, hyung. How could you let her leave when you know -”
“I know nothing and neither do any of you. She might as well have been consorting with the rest of them every Friday night after what she did,” Kris snaps, then takes a few strides to reach Yixing and takes a quiet moment to look down at him, expelling a low breath, “I have to say, Yixing, I’m surprised that you still haven’t given me your two cents on this. Since you basically kiss the very ground she walks on, I thought you’d be up on your feet and hammering me into the ground by now.”
His only response is to look up at the blonde, but it isn’t accusing nor is it anger. It’s pure disgust. “Are you done?”
Kris looks taken aback.
“It’s enough. I can make an educated guess that you wanted them to take her,” Yixing drawls, eyes glittering maliciously, “We promised a new batch of stocks would be delivered in the next two months, if we don’t then they’ll send the loan sharks after us. You’re scared, you have no other option, you’re desperate and Krystal opened up a great opportunity and you took it - they’ll take her back to their head quarter, the tracker will lead us to all the goods and you’ll drain them of every piece of motor they own. Okay, I can understand that,” He gets up and yanks Kris in by the lapel of his jacket, “And I would have applauded you if it had worked out fine but it didn’t, did it?”
Kris is stunned to silence and Yixing punctures the hushed moment.
“So, she’s out there somewhere, paying the price of your mistake but here I am, with you,” He continues, backing Kris into the wall, “What should I do about that? Because I don’t think I have it in me to forgive you -“
“Let him go, Yixing”
To Tao’s shock, he does.
Yixing’s hands are trembling, still fighting the urge to use it as a tool of destruction when he wipes them on his jeans and as he watches Kris slumps to the floor, Yixing doesn’t know how to breathe and rasps out, “But Krystal would.”
-
It takes Krystal’s half an hour to relent and shoves a spoonful of Kimchi and rice into her mouth.
She swallows, then looks to him almost to say ‘are you happy now?’ Sehun certainly did see it but he did not let it on, drawing up a graph and labeling it to match the equation he’s working on.
“I’m eating,” She says like that one bite counts, “You can get out now.”
“Finish it and I will.”
“Get out and I will,” she retorts.
He moves right onto the next question on the worksheet, says, “Eat your dinner, Krystal.”
“Yes, mummy dearest, anything you want,” She mocks, stabbing the cherry tomatoes with unnecessary force, “Should I eat up all the vegetable too?”
“If that’s what you’d like, then sure, go ahead.”
There are a handful of things Krystal knows not to underestimate under this roof, Sehun’s most definitely her top priority in that aspect. Krystal’s not above owning up to losing out to a class act like him. Krystal doubts she’ll ever know for sure who the mastermind of the grand plan was but she’s not easy to trick, someone like Baekhyun for example, wouldn’t succeed in getting her to so readily walk into their trap.
But then again, it was all Jongin, wasn’t it?”
“Where’s Kai anyway?”
Sehun puts his pen down, smiling wryly as he shifts in the arm chair, angling himself towards the bed so he can give her a full view of that tamed smugness. “Don’t you mean Jongin?”
Krystal doesn’t say anything, mainly because she didn’t know how to.
“Jung Soojung, granddaughter of Jung Hongmin, ex-senator and owner of the nation’s football team,” Sehun recites the facts to her, taking out a folded piece of paper from the inside of his blazer, “Your dad is not doing too bad either, I believe, it says here that he owns….” He hands her the cut up section of the newspaper and Krystal shudders when her finger rubs against the faded ink, “A lot of lads here on the west side.”
She thinks she ought to turn away now, but she knows it won’t change anything. He’s giving her hard proof and not words she can counteract. What Krystal’s looking at is a piece of report with a blurred picture of the scene of the crime attached under it; dark woods with frosty weather wrapped around with yellow tape. She’s never read it once; if she did she would have known that the portrait of her that they’d chosen to use did her face complete injustice. No wonder no one recognized her on the street when the missing report was filed.
There was no mention of Kim Jongin or his family being on the trip with them, only descriptions of her father’s devastation and the sheriff who was “confident Miss Jung had fallen into fast-running creek” and they’ll “try to the best of their abilities to recover the body despite the tumultuous weather.” Oh, so she was declared dead - that’s convenient.
Softly, Krystal says, “How did you know it was me?”
“It was a guess,” Sehun says with such ease that it almost got a laugh out of her. She could have denied it and everything would go to rest, but she didn’t. As if to comfort her, he tells her, “Jongin kept the clipping in between the pages of one of his books.”
She freezes. Why would he have kept this?
“How did that lead you to the conclusion that the girl is me?”
He leans over to whisper in her ear, “I know that you two know each other.”
Knew, Krystal corrects in her own head. “Congratulation…? You found out my deep, dark secret…?” She questions in sarcasm, not really understanding what he’s trying to get at, “I’m impressed that you’ve dug this deep into my past in such a small time frame, have a cookie…?”
Sehun seems surprised by her reaction and says, “I know where your parents are.”
She’s already got some smart-ass comment on the way when something catches in her throat. Krystal flickers her gaze to meet his to confirm that just as she thought, he’s filled to the brim with malice for her. “That’s great,” she feigns ignorance, toying with the loose thread in the pillow case, “I know where they are too, no plans to visit them though but if you let me out then maybe I could drop by with a fruit basket and whatever back-from-the-dead daughters brings to family reunion.”
“No, you won’t be leaving here anytime soon,” Sehun says, unamused, “I’ve got a feeling that you’re not very eager to let them know that you’re still alive and now that I know who your parents are, it’s not very difficult to contact them -“
“Get to the point,” she grits.
“It’s very simple - forcing you to attend school is only my way of reassuring everyone else that you won’t be getting away without giving us anything first.” Firmly, he says, “I believe you when you say you don’t where the stock is now. Small bike gang like yours works for the bigger power, don’t you?”
Terrified of what’s to come, she nods.
Sehun stops at the window, training his gaze outside and in. “You’ll not run, you’ll not tell anyone about this conversation - especially not Jongin, “ he stresses, “You’ll cooperate with any future plans the team has or I have for you. And if you don’t,” His smiles a little and continues, “And you decide to call me bluff then I’ll have prove you wrong by shipping you back to your grandfather in California.”