when you wake up | sunki

thirteen.

Jay gets back to Sunoo and Riki two days later. His contacts at AUREUM have located TSUNAMI's stronghold in the city, a compound the gang had taken over a while back sitting further out into the suburbs than the area of Seoul they were living in.

"AUREUM will be ready for a takeover in a couple of days' time," he tells Riki. "With your permission, I'd like for us to wear the colors of the Nakagawa-kai. For this mission, we won't be representing AUREUM. We will represent your family, as revenge for what they have done."

Riki gives his approval. Armbands bearing the insignia of the Nakagawa-kai, a white koi, and the logo of AUREUM, the Scales of Justice in gold, are handed out before the mission itself, and he reads over the words printed under the combined insignia.

"Justice will shine like gold."

"Blood for blood, fire for fire, unity above all."

He thinks of his parents.

─

Sunoo sits at his bedroom window seat, strumming softly at his guitar. It is 11:42PM; he will go up to meet Riki at the rooftop soon, but for now his time still belongs to him and him alone.

A knock at the door sounds.

He puts down his guitar, heading out to the living area. The knocks are irregular, oddly-timed, as if four fists were pounding at the door, but neither of the owners of the fists were entirely coherent.

Sunoo's heart falls as he presses his ear against the door. He can only confirm what he already knows, and the thing he has most dreaded has come.

"Sunoo, you fucking bastard! Open the door now!"

He has to leave.

Mere seconds pass before he watches the door shake on its hinges from the impact of the two people on the other side. He wonders how they have the strength to push a door down, but never had the strength to get their own beer from their own damn fridge when he was a child.

"Fuck off! I told you to stay away!"

"Don't be a fucking ungrateful brat, we raised you! Open this door! Open it now!"

Sunoo runs for his room, scrambling to pack everything in a hurry. He should have known this would happen. Something this good could never have lasted so long without something else getting in the way, as tonight has proven yet again.

He stops in his tracks, blood running cold as he re-enters the living room, only seeing two people standing before him. After all these years, their eyes are still as empty as he remembered them being.

"I told you he was here, the stupid bitch can't run nowhere."

"I will run," Sunoo says, his voice steely with resolution. "I will run from you for the rest of your life, and I will keep running. I will never go back to you."

"Ridiculous. Where do you keep your alc? I'm fresh out."

He's fast enough to duck from the flying object as the vase shatters on the wall beside where he was standing. He's had too much training, he realises bitterly, to not be able to dodge at this point.

Vases are okay. Glasses and plates are bad, but they could be worse.

Please, please don't let them get to the knives.

As he dodges another object aimed at him, he strains to make out the third figure standing illuminated in the doorway.

No, Riki don't-

Before the words can leave his mouth the younger boy is inside the house, standing over him, eyes hard. "Riki, get out, it's da-"

Riki looks back as if to answer him, and in the split second that his concentration is unfocused the bottle smashes into the back of his head. The only thing Sunoo can make out is too much ringing in his ears as the younger boy's body crumples before him.

There's a flurry of movement afterwards, but Sunoo doesn't remember all of it. He recalls Jay and Sunghoon coming in, he remembers shouts and screams and more breaking of things around him, but nothing comes to him afterwards. All he knows is that he has to leave, he has to run now, from the two people standing in his living room, and he has to run far away.

Far, far away again.

He leaves 4,000,000won in cash in Riki's pocket for the medical bill, letting the paramedics take over, stemming the flow of blood from his head, stabilizing his neck, setting up a stretcher. As much as his heart aches to leave the other boy like this, he can't process anything except the need to escape.

"I'm sorry, Riki. I'm so sorry."

Sunoo runs.