An Unexpected Clandestine

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(Unedited)

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Bora was irritated, to say the least. She and her brother barely had time to stop and purchase a bottle of washable hair dye before arriving at the conference room. Not a second later, they were engulfed by the flashing lights of the camera. Their father had briefly caught them up on what was going on. The initial shock hadn't washed away yet. The siblings were still trying to process everything while their team helped them memorize their answers before going into the press conference room.

"What do you have to say about this recent scandal?"

"Did you see this coming?"

"Have you stayed in touch with Kwang Mark?"

"How can we be sure you guys aren't involved?"

Bora knew the camera was rolling so she kept a straight face, waiting for her brother to start again. They had already been answering questions for the past hour.

"The recent news came out as a shock to us. As you all know, Mark had once been a part of our team in the early years of our careers. He was like a brother to us and I'm shocked he had chosen to go down this path," Sungjae leaned back into his seat after answering one of the last questions.

Now it was Bora's turn to speak.

"We could have never seen this coming. The Mark we knew was always trained to fight with honor, especially under the eyes of our father. Shortly after he had decided to train under the U.K trainer, Leon Edwards, we still kept in touch, I'll admit. But with busy schedules, my brother and I have not seen him in well over two years."

"Yes, it's a shame that this happened. It saddens me that one of my former students had decided to get involved with rigged matches but I would like to make one thing clear," Bora's father cleared his throat as the journalists furiously typed on their keyboards. "Hwang Mark's current involvement in this ongoing investigation in no way reflect those of my children or our crew. I make sure of that," he gave a stern nod as the cameras began to click. "If you have questions about the whole scandal I suggest asking Leon Edwards. Please keep my children out of it. We fight with dignity. If they won, they won fair and square. If they lost, they lost. That just means they'll train ten times harder so that doesn't happen again. What Edwards did was against all our values and a disgrace to the UFC sport," his father finished and that's when the siblings knew it was time to stand up. Ignoring the current pleas of the journalists to answer a few more questions, they bowed before exiting through the back door. 

"How could he do that?" Sungjae pressed his palms against his eyes, sighing in disbelief. "I still think this is some sort of dream," he whispered, shaking his head.

"I don't know," Bora frowned, still not over the whole thing.

"You guys did well out there," their father spoke, his eyes trained on the floor. Bora couldn't imagine what her father was currently going through. Mark was practically family. "But I can't lie. This isn't good. Even if we did nothing wrong, the media is going to watch your every move from now on. They'll want to see you guys slip up over the littlest thing. The journalists might not have directly said it, but they didn't have to. It's clear they think we're covering something up."

"Then what do we do now?" Sungjae looked at his father.

"We trust no one," her father spoke, eyes staring back at his children. "Anyone who tries to get in touch with us will be ignored. We'll lay low for a while. Sponsorships and other business deals will still be going on, but anything else will be disregarded for the time being. At least until the investigation closes. That way  they know we weren't involved. Things should cool down after that."