Chanyeol's choked intakes of breath were loud and grating. The simple movement of sucking oxygen into his lungs burned the linings of his throat. It soothed him, like water gliding along a dry patch of desert, when he released the lungful of air.
His blood pumped through his ears, clouding his human senses when all he could focus on was staying awake. His shoulders fell limp and his eyes struggled to remain open had it not been the high of the adrenaline keeping him from collapsing.
The arrow wound took a toll on his body, but he stood strong, covered in the blood of his enemy like a warrior.
It was over.
Or so he thought.
In his hazy trance, when all he heard was the thumping of his heart to remind him that he was still alive, he failed to notice Yoongi and his unexpected entrance.
A flash of metal looped over the top of his head. And the next thing he knew was that he was being dragged backwards by a crowbar resting horizontally under his chin, locking him in a chokehold from behind.
"Where is she?" He heard Yoongi's terrifying growl next to his ear. He couldn't answer back, not even air passed through his neck when the cold iron lever compressed his windpipe. His feet slipped against the floorboards as he attempted to pull himself away, and it was only when he found his back plunging to the ground did he realise Yoongi had released him.
Gasping for air, Chanyeol looked up to see Yoongi's shoes on either side of his body, standing over him.
"Don't make me ask again," Yoongi warned, "WHERE. IS. SHE?"
Chanyeol laughed humourlessly, shaking his head at Yoongi as he leaned his head against the wood of the floor. "Cute of you to ask me where 'your girl' is, Min Yoongi. Why don't you know?"
The main doors slammed open with the KSI scooping in. Weapons and guns were raised, bullets flew off the walls and all hell broke loose.
At the corner of Yoongi's eye, he could see his boys covering for him, fighting off their new arrivals in a circle position, keeping their leader safe in the middle with their rival enemy mercilessly at his hands.
He caught Hoseok's eye next, who was frantically looking for any sign of Taehyung as he shot through the crowd.
Turning his attention back to Chanyeol, a dark and chilling look flashed across his face when he bent down, hovering the crowbar above his eye. "Don't test my patience, Park Chanyeol. Where's Soo-ji?! If she's harmed in any way in here, I swear to god I will make you responsible for it!"
Yoongi was growing desperate. Looking around him now, where the chaos devolved into an absolute war zone, he only feared for the safety of Soo-ji even more. Dead bodies piled on top of each other and he shivered to even imagine Soo-ji lying at the bottom of it. Chanyeol, on the other hand, knew she was okay, that she made it out on time. And with this knowledge that only he knew, he couldn't resist to taunt Yoongi over it.
Chanyeol smirked at him, the grey glint of the metal bar equally reflecting the danger in his eye. "So now you care for her? After you so easily threw her away like a piece of trash? Make up your mind, would you? Soo-ji doesn't deserve someone like you."
A kick to the abdomen had Chanyeol doubling over. He hunched on his side, feeling the arrow wedge deeper into his flesh from the impact.
"I wish my bullet hit you just an inch more to the left straight to your fucking heart." Yoongi seethed in his face, stepping onto his chest. His bullet wound opened up, soaking through the bandages to his shirt where a red patch was blooming into a big circle like a sacred flower.
"Why didn't you then?" Chanyeol laughed again through clenched teeth, "oh of course, as far as I remember your aiming skills have never been particularly admirable. You tend to miss a lot of things, don't you? You miss the chance to kill me, and now you miss the chance to ever saving the girl you proclaim to love."
Another kick to the stomach had Chanyeol rolling to his side. His body curved into a ball, unable to keep the pain down any longer. And before he could even recover, Yoongi had hit the side of his face with the crowbar, carving his cheek with a bloody gash.
"Okay," Yoongi breathed heavily, "let's see if my aiming skills are as shit as you say they are, hm? Let's see if I will miss my chance this time."
Chanyeol's eyes widened when the pointy end of the crow bar came crashing down to the right of his head, making him flinch and turn his head to the left, narrowly missing being stabbed through the skull. Splinters of wood flew into his face when the crowbar drilled through the floor boards. When he looked up, Yoongi had raised the weapon once again, stabbing it back down with the aim to kill. Chanyeol rotated his head to the other side, dodging the near hit but when he looked back up a second later, the sharp pointed end of the crowbar glistened in the light as it dived towards the centre of his head at an intense speed...
***
Soo-ji never made it out.
When she turned her back towards Chanyeol and the chaotic scenes erupted, the last thing she saw was Chanyeol's arrow hitting Kai's shoulder when she was stopped from leaving the exit.
Her yelps and screams were blended into the background when someone had her arms locked behind her back and she was dragged upstairs to the VIP area. Her legs kicked and thrashed at the person holding her against her will and when she was shoved through the VIP doors, her knees buckled to the floor from the forceful push.
"Soo-ji!" A familiar voice called out for her. Looking up, her face paled at Taehyung kneeling on the floor, his arms was tied to his back with five men crowding around him, each pointing a gun to his way.
"Finally! The star of the show has arrived!" A female in a smart black suit came into view. Her blonde hair was tied up in a high ponytail and from the way she strutted to the middle of the room with everyone waiting for her command, Soo-ji knew that this woman was in charge.
"Who are you?" Soo-ji asked sceptically, narrowing her eyes at the intimidating woman.
"Ah... hasn't Taetae mentioned about me before?" She laughed, her pearly whites stretching across her face, "let me introduce myself. My name is Lalisa Manoban. Head of the KSI."
Chills ran down Soo-ji's spine. The time when Taehyung told her his story was still freshly engraved in her head. It wasn't so much of the fact that she felt sorry for him - not any longer to say the least - but it was the uneasy thought of the suffering Taehyung had to go through as a child that made her physically sick as she stared at the perpetrator in front of her.
Soo-ji's eyes darted to Taehyung quickly. And from the panicked look on his face as he tried to jerk hard on the zip tie around his wrists, it only told her that this wasn't somewhere where they should be.
She rounded her attention back to Lisa, squaring her jaw tight. "What do you mean by 'the star of the show has arrived'?"
Lisa let out an unnerving laugh. Her high heels clicked and clocked behind her feet as she strode towards Soo-ji, her sleek ponytail swinging from left to right behind her back with a gracious flair. Kneeling down to Soo-ji on the floor, Soo-ji stilled when Lisa's finger trailed down her cheek before stopping just under her chin. Tilting Soo-ji's head up, Lisa scanned her face with a ghost of a smile on her lips. "I've waiting for you for a long time, Choi Soo-ji."
Soo-ji held her breath, feeling Lisa's long sharp nail prickling the skin under her chin. "How do you know who I am?"
"Everyone knows who you are," Lisa chuckled, "my, you do have a pretty face, don't you? No wonder the whole underground is shaking up because of you."
Soo-ji pursed her lips into a thin line, hating the fact that everyone kept deriding her. "Stop beating around the bush, will you? What do you want from me?"
Lisa raised an eyebrow at her, her smile growing wider at Soo-ji talking back to her in such gutsy way. "Ballsy and straight to the point." She nodded, "I like that. Okay, I have a proposal for you."
"What sort of proposal?"
"Join us," Lisa demanded rather than asked, "the KSI would like to recruit you as an agent."
A muffling sound came from the back. And when Soo-ji looked towards the direction of the distressed sounds, the men was forcing Taehyung's mouth closed with tape as he tried to yell out a string of incoherent words, cautioning her.
"Why does the KSI want me as an agent?" Instinctively, as if something was telling her that she wasn't going to like where this was going, the muscles in her shoulders tightened, fearing for the answer to her question.
Lisa gripped onto Soo-ji's chin with her thumb and index finger, holding her in place so that her attention was undivided. At the end of the day, Lisa hated it when people didn't listen to her.
"You have two gang leaders willing to do anything for you, Choi Soo-ji. If you join us as an agent, we can take them both down. You hate them, right? The KSI can help you get rid of them permanently."
Taehyung shook his head slowly, seeing Soo-ji looking down to the floor as her expression hardened. To his biggest fear, she was actually considering Lisa's offer and there was no way he could let her know what the real truth was.
Lisa's lips broadened into a wide grin as the seconds ticked by. She got through to Soo-ji, that easily. Everything and everyone was under her control just the way she wanted. But that smile instantly dropped, when Soo-ji's next words crushed her anticipated win.
"No can do," Soo-ji said, meeting Lisa's glare with equal threat. Something told her, from the way Taehyung was held by his own people and forced to keep silent, that there was more than meets the eye. "It's not a matter of the KSI helping me to get rid of them. It's me who won't help the KSI."
Soo-ji smirked at her, prompting Lisa's claw like fingers to instantly curl around Soo-ji's forearm, jerking her upright into a standing position. "It's not a choice I'm giving you."
In the next second that followed, all the guns in the room were aimed at Soo-ji. And before she could even react, a hard impact forced her to whirl her head back when Lisa's palm connected to the side of her face.
"You don't wanna end up like Taetae over there, Choi Soo-ji!" An eerie voice came out of Lisa's lips. She was no longer smiling, instead an evil look so dark that would send anyone's toes curling into their feet settled on her face. "Poor Taetae didn't agree to my proposal and now he's at the mercy of his own 'family'. If you don't agree to be an agent then you're signing your own death sentence, along with stupid Kim Taehyung over there!"
She flashed Soo-ji a death glare, and the unmistakable sounds of guns cocking one by one spread around the room as they readied to blast Soo-ji into bits.
"Have you never wondered why Kwon Bora was with Kai, sweetheart?" Lisa continued, "you see, the KSI isn't as simple as it seems. On the outside, we work for the government, protecting the country and the people. We're noble and good people. But really..." Lisa's voice trailed off into thin air, replacing the smooth chilling sound with a smirk of her own, "the KSI is the White Thorn Gang. We own them. Kwon Bora is just one of our pawns to bait Kai so that we can take the XV Gang too..."
Soo-ji stopped breathing momentarily, each word penetrating through her ears like a shocking hot wire as she listened carefully.
"... with two notorious gangs under the KSI's thumb, we are invincible. But obviously, you have to come along and kill my precious pawn." Lisa laughed so loud that her head fell back, her shoulders shaking in fits at the hilarious realisation that little Soo-ji actually had the capability to kill Bora. It was surprising, and not to mention, entertaining to learn that Soo-ji was the dark horse that no one had anticipated.
Lisa continued, "have you also never wondered why Min Yoongi was allowed to live after his parents were exposed as secret agents with the KSI? Considering how we're naturally unforgiving, there's a reason why he wasn't killed as a child."
Soo-ji's heart rate accelerated to the point where she could hear her own pulse in her ears.
"Taetae had lied to you about so many things to cause your mum and dad's death, Soo-ji. He's a disgusting bastard in his own right. But in all the conversations he ever had with you, there was some truth in it. Min Yoongi's parents were our agents, as you know. Years ago, the KSI gave them a mission to help Kwon Bora's dad set up the White Thorn Gang, gain information along the way. It seems... they found out way too much."
Lisa's smirk grew wider the more Soo-ji's face dropped in horror.
"We couldn't let them live when they realised they were actually helping their own agency create their own gang. They were smart people, they realised our intention was to take over the gangs one by one, eventually take over the whole underground for ourselves, hiding behind the good name of the KSI as pretence. We purposely kept Min Yoongi alive just for this moment."
"Elaborate." Soo-ji's own voice scared herself. It was heavy and dark, laden with such ire that she forced herself to contain.
"Your Yoongi has been brought up for us to manipulate all this time." Lisa gestured to the main dance floor downstairs with an outstretched open arm. And when Soo-ji looked to the direction she was gesturing, her heart dropped. In front of her eyes, Yoongi had a metal bar at Chanyeol's throat, dragging him by the neck backwards. "He had been raised with our sole intention to help us kill the leader of the XV Gang. And when he does so, he'll be next. That way, we would've finally got two of the biggest gangs in South Korea under our control. We would be unbeatable. Feared. We could have anything and everything we want. And after that, we planned to make Taetae the leader of the White Thorn Gang as disguise... that was until he rejected our proposal."
Soo-ji glanced at Taehyung again, finally understanding why he was held by his own people. He had been their puppet all along, and when the puppet wouldn't cooperate with the puppeteer, cutting the strings and disposing the useless was the only way to end the show.
"You fucking bitch!" Everyone thought those words came out of Soo-ji's mouth, but when the doors blasted open, a single man came into view. His arm was extended in front of him, a machine gun perched on top of his shoulder. Angry bullets flew around the room, forcing everyone to take cover. Judging from the seething look on his face, he overheard the shocking revelation and he wasn't having any of it.
"Hoseok!" Soo-ji called out, and when their eyes met, she threw him Yoongi's switch blade. She watched the knife fly into the air, above the cowering heads, until it was safely caught in his hands.
Slashing the zip tie behind Taehyung's back, Hoseok pulled him up, handing him a spare gun. They had their backs against each other, weapons raised as they shot at the KSI men coming their way.
"You good?!" Hoseok shouted behind him to Taehyung.
"I am now!"
"Get Soo-ji out of here, she's unarmed now!" The only weapon Soo-ji had was in Hoseok's hand. He held onto Yoongi's switch knife tight in a fist, grateful that she had given it to save someone important to him but whom she absolutely hated. He scanned around the room, searching for the said girl and when his eyes landed on her, his lips curled into his teeth at the scene unfolding in front of him.
A man twice her size straddled on top of her tiny frame, bringing down face crunching fists to her head. Her beautiful face quickly became unrecognisable, blood spurting out of her nose and lips and her eyes were swelling into purple slits. She was losing consciousness.
Aiming his machine gun towards the man, Hoseok saw it coming just as his finger curled around the trigger. Out of the corner of his eye, Lisa pointed her handgun towards his direction, aiming for his heart. Hoseok pressed it anyway, two shots rang out between them.
Taehyung felt a heavy weight force his body to lurch forwards. And when he spun around, he had just managed to catch Hoseok's falling body in his arms.
"Hyung!" Taehyung screamed out, sinking onto the floor with Hoseok. But Hoseok could only smile, seeing the man had finally got off of Soo-ji, dead next to her. He winced, coughing up blood as his body violently shook at the life draining out of him.
Taehyung was in a state of shock. His lips trembled, tears were flowing down his cheeks uncontrollably as he pressed onto the gaping hole in his brother's chest.
"H-hold on, hyung. I-I'll get you outta here-"
Hoseok grabbed onto the front of his shirt, pulling Taehyung closer to tell him his last words. His voice was muffled, but Hoseok's cheerfulness could still be heard amidst the blood gushing out of his mouth. "No. It's okay," Hoseok reassured him, giving him a small smile, "remember in high school when I promised Yoongi that I'll protect Soo-ji for him? You go tell him I fucking damn did, alright." Hoseok chuckled, blinking his eyes rapidly in a fight to keep them open. "And you have to carry on that promise for me, okay?"
Taehyung shook his head, biting hard on his lips to keep the sobs in control as he listened carefully to every word.
Hoseok brought a hand up to Taehyung's head, patting him with his weak and blood coated hand. "I- I've always believed in you, agent Kim. Yoongi did, as well. L-Look after him and if you can, M-Miyoung too."
A single tear leaked out of Hoseok's eye just as his hand slipped to the side, dropping lifelessly next to him. His last thought before dying remained on Miyoung, a girl he was too scared to love but whom owned his heart completely even to this day. His eyes glazed over, and his body no longer fought. He stilled, covered in his own blood, as Taehyung cradled him in his arms. Taehyung cried hard, unable to keep down the sobs.
Soo-ji, sprawled across the floor on the other side of the room, cried silently with them. It was only when Lisa had dragged her upright into a standing position did her cries stop.
"And now," Lisa taunted next to her ear in a mocking voice, "you watch Min Yoongi kill Park Chanyeol."
Soo-ji's eyes widened in horror. From upstairs, she was forced to witness Yoongi bring down the crowbar to the right side of Chanyeol's head...
She had to do something, anything. Chanyeol couldn't die. The KSI couldn't win. If he died, the KSI would claim the XV Gang and they would become an organisation too powerful to defeat.
Soo-ji wrenched her elbow back, pivoted, and snapped it into Lisa's face. She grabbed the gun out of Lisa's hand, and when she swivelled back around, Yoongi had thankfully missed stabbing the crowbar to the left side of Chanyeol's head, but he was already bringing it back down. This time, Yoongi aimed for the kill.
Soo-ji screamed. With no other choice to stop Yoongi, she brought the gun up, aimed it at him and shot.
Yoongi toppled to the side, Chanyeol was saved.
But another gunshot resonated across the entire club.
Lisa shot Soo-ji in the back. The close range shot was so powerful that it forced Soo-ji's body to hurl forwards over the railings. Like a light feathery bird, Soo-ji tumbled to the dance floor below before crashing in front of Chanyeol and Yoongi's eyes. Her head slammed straight to the floor first, blood seeping out into a big puddle around her.