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Mari lived in a manor so needless to say she was rather wealthy herself. Yet despite her expensive and lavish background, she was still extremely amazed by Mingi's house. The last time she had seen it the lights were turned off with LED lighting up the rooms with thousands of flashing colors. There were too many people in the house at the time due to the boy throwing an actual wild party full of teenagers and college students, so she could barely make out what her surroundings were besides the giant crowd of people that had surrounded her. And then at the same time, she did pass out drunk and didn't get to explore as much as she would have liked.
So one could imagine the amount of surprise on her face when she had entered the boy's house, being greeted by pure white walls and chocolate hardwood floors. There were two large windows that were staring at the boy's large backyard, giving them a very clear view of the outdoors that made Mari wonder how she couldn't find the door to the backyard in the first place during the party. There were several white chairs and one sectional that surrounded a coffee table in the middle, with a grand expensive television hanging up on the wall followed by a few family portraits and baby pictures of Mingi hung up on the walls.
She had asked the boy how he had gotten so wealthy, being completely blown away by just his living room alone. He had given her a rather sheepish and shy smile, flattered by her amazement as he had answered her. "My parents have a lot of businesses they worked to cultivate when I was younger. They're sorta like... traveling entrepreneurs that are constantly making deals with smaller companies to bring them into their own. They also work with Hongjoong's parents as one of their major shareholders. Money comes in and out of the house a lot."
Mingi was odd. His personality didn't match his upbringing. Like Jaerin, he had been raised in a wealthy family that shared some sort of connection to Hongjoong's parents that most likely increased their wealth tremendously if the boy was as rich as she believed he was. Yet Jaerin was rather sly and smug in the way she carried herself, most likely using the money her family earned for her own personal gain like gifting Hongjoong presents to make herself appeal to him more. The only thing Mingi seemed to really do was throw parties when his parents weren't home, and even so, his house was still in contact despite how wild unsupervised parties could become.
Then again, Jaerin was a part of the Lee Faction. Her ego was absolutely through the roof because if any regular person tried to threaten her they'd end up dead on a highway the next day. So Mari did understand just a little as to why the girl was a bit too arrogant for her own good.
While the group was waiting on Hongjoong to return from the garage, Yunho and Mingi had taken it upon themselves to keep Mari entertained. Though she was already preoccupied, staring at the several expensive objects in the living that she wouldn't dare buy and laughing at the silly baby pictures of Mingi that were hung up around sparsely. She couldn't help pointing out what she saw, comparing the boy's past appearance to his current one. They looked like two completely different people.
"Oh, I remember this one!" Yunho exclaimed, taking a picture off of the wall without Mingi's consent. The boy nearly had a heart attack as the photo was removed, scrambling towards the boy to return it back to its original place. Yunho ducked out the way instinctively, dodging the red giant completely as he held a picture out to Mari. "This was around maybe... the end of secondary school? Beginning of freshman year for Hongjoong? This was way before any of us had met Seonghwa."
"You look like children," Mari responded, taking the photo from Yunho just as Mingi dove in to snatch it out of their hands. The girl pivoted out of the way, leaving Mingi to crash into the ground as she examined the picture quickly before the boy could take it from her. It was a picture of both Mingi and Hongjoong together, much more young-looking with full-on babyfaces. There was no wild color in either of their hair, the natural black and browns that most of the country adorned.
Hongjoong didn't have any tattoos that littered his left arm, neither did he have any excessive piercings that hung down from his ears as a sign of rebellion or whatever he called it. They were wearing school uniforms as well, uniforms that were usually worn by middle schoolers and public school high schoolers but uniforms nonetheless. He seemed really happy. "You two look so prepubescent in this it's almost scary. And that uniform, I don't think I recognize what school it's from."
"That's because Hongjoong was constantly moving schools when I was younger," Mingi explained, finally taking a hold of the picture. "He was a year ahead of me so in this picture he would have been in high school by then. I think this was some random public school on the other side of the country he went to, but it didn't last very long before he moved from that one again. This picture was from my graduation before I became a freshman though."
Mari nodded, listening to the boy's reasoning and letting it resonate in her head for a moment. "Why was he moving around so much? I can only imagine how god awfully hard that must have been for him if he was just a freshman when that happened. Aren't freshmen only like fourteen and fifteen? I would have thrown myself off a bridge."
"It was easy!" Hongjoong's voice called, making all three of them turn their heads down the hallway like a group of meerkats. He was light on his feet as he approached Mari, taking the photo out of her hands to look at it himself. A fond smile immediately began to grow on his lips as he recognized the picture as if a million old memories were flooding his mind. "I didn't make any new friends and kept in contact with the ones I already had. Soon enough I started doing dumb stuff to get my parents to stop moving around so much. First, it was skipping classes then skipping school entirely."
"Then it was sneaking out of the house late at night and doing a bunch of petty crimes," Mingi recalled, adding onto Hongjoong's list as he began to remember all the things had done. "Then it was getting your first piercings on the lobes. After that, you moved up to the inner part of your ears and moved up to helixes on both ears."
"Then you got your first tattoos and a thousand more piercings!" Yunho exclaimed, rolling up his shirt sleeve to point to the various places that Hongjoong had permanent art on his skin. "I'm surprised you didn't die from all that blood loss because then you decided why not learn how to ride motorcycles so you could escape the house quicker? The amount of times you fell off of those things and hurt yourself when you first started was scary."
"He basically was a devil child." A voice spoke, a figure practically looming over the boy's body. Both Hongjoong and Mari looked up to catch a glimpse of the person, both being rather small in height compared to the others they stood around. He was watching them through the black hair that hung in his face, his eyes shining with a slight glimmer of amusement as he glanced towards the picture in Hongjoong's hands. "You didn't even stop after they moved back. You just toned it down enough to not make them retaliate in a bad way."
Mari narrowed her eyes at the boy, trying her hardest to figure out where she had seen him before. He was so familiar she just couldn't put her finger on from where. "Mari, this is Seonghwa. Seonghwa, this is Mari. She's going to be staying with her for a few days with Mingi's permission."
His eyes dropped down to Mari as if he was judging her in his mind and reading into her thoughts. She remembered him though, leaving quite the impression on her. The first time she had unknowingly meet Hongjoong, he had been at the scene too. Seonghwa had gotten her position compromised and exposed her to the rest of the group. Seonghwa was the catalyst to her whole ordeal with Hongjoong. "Nice to meet you," She spoke, returning the hard stare he was giving her.
He seemed skeptical of her, the spark in his eyes practically glaring at her as she tried to figure her out wordlessly. Assuming Hongjoong had filled him in on her whole situation, he might be trying to figure out whether she was lying or not. Mari wasn't the best at lying on the fly anyways, which meant he could probably dissect her horrible alibi if he was really that determined. She needed time to patch up the holes in her lies before he tried to question her.
Though the suspicious expression he wore on his face quickly faded as if it was never there. A smile grew on his lips as he held out his hand to her, a strained due to him trying to put on a happy demeanor. "It's a pleasure to meet you as well, Mari." The boy replied, urging her to shake his hand. It seemed as though Seonghwa doesn't remember her, granted that their reaction was small and forgettable. He was focused on the present, not daring to even search his past memories for any sight of her. "Hongjoong talks about you sometimes but it's great to finally meet you in person."
"That last sentence didn't need to come out your mouth," Hongjoong told him, the smile on his face turning slightly more irritated than normal. He didn't seem to notice the awkward yet small tension that was slowly rising between Mari and Seonghwa as they shook hands.
Seonghwa shrugged his shoulders, clearly unbothered by the boy's slight attitude. "I did though and I have no regrets."
"Anyways," Mari interrupted, kicking her feet up on Mingi's couch to get comfortable. "This is a very eccentric group of people, we got here. We've got the rich boy, Mingi, we've got the biker boy, Hongjoong, we've got the sunshine boy, Yunho, and we've got you who I have no idea what stereotype you fit yet. How did all of you even become friends? So many different personalities are mixing together here it's interesting."
"That's like me asking how you became friends with that kid with the gun," Hongjoong told her, earning looks of pure confusion and intrigue. "It makes no sense but it happened, so I'm not questioning your friendship with him."
"I didn't ask for your opinion." Mari snapped, side-eyeing him for even bringing the topic up. "Now as I was saying—"
She didn't even get a chance to finish her sentence, not when the entire group suddenly began to swarm her with questions about Wooyoung. "Actually I'm more intrigued about the boy with the gun! Hongjoong mentioned him once before, he said he almost killed him with the thing!" Yunho exclaimed, grabbing Mari's shoulders and shaking her roughly.
"That was your friend?" Seonghwa questioned, his eyes growing wide with realization. "You're joking, right? How are you going to criticize us when your friend carries around a firearm like that isn't illegal? You've got some very controversial friends on your side."
Mari's ears were turning red as the questions never stopped coming, progressively getting more and more personal and teasing at her very hypothetical statement towards. They were all coming at her so fast that they could barely keep up and answer them. "I promise he isn't actually some crazy kid with a gun. He's actually really nice when he chooses to be. He's just very... uh... unique! I promise you he is Hongjoong is just an idiot."
Mari slumped against the patio sofa, a sigh escaping her mouth as she fell into its oddly comfortable seats. The entire house had gone complete silently a few hours ago, finally settling down and heading in for the night. Mingi had knocked out before everyone even expected it, leaving them all to watch him in bewilderment as he found peace in sleeping while nearly sliding off of the couch. Yunho had put it upon himself to help the boy into his own room so he continued his slumber, then proceeded to fall asleep right after him once the two had reached the top of the stairs.
Seonghwa has opted to sleep on the couch, offering his room to Mari due to her being a first-time guest at the Song household. The entire group of boys snickered and jeered at his show of hospitality though the giant went somewhat unbothered. The only thing he gave them was annoyed and uninterested glares as he was trying his best to get along with her. Mari appreciates the efforts but would never say it out loud of course.
Mari would have been asleep too had it not been for the guilt eating away at her soul every time she shut her eyes. The fight with Wooyoung was so irrelevant and minuscule, it shouldn't have been bothering as much as it did. Yet every time she got a moment of silence her thoughts would flood the entire room, screaming at her about all the wrong both she and Wooyoung had done to each other. It was deafening, and she was absolutely sick of it.
So she had decided to creep out of the room she was borrowing and towards the outdoors. Going through the front door would make too much noise as she would have to unlock it and somehow make it past a sleeping Seonghwa, and she didn't know how deep of a sleeper he was. She didn't want to take the risk and her motives were questioned by the already suspecting boy so Mari had turned on her heels and bolted straight for the back door.
She was lucky enough not to have made any noise while fumbling around the room looking for the back door, which was a lot harder than she expected. Mari expected to see every white thing in the living much more clearly than anything else, but she was as a blind as a bat. She swore she almost crashed into the same wall at least two times while searching around. Though she eventually made it out and made her way towards the patio, staring at the illuminated pool water as Mari tried to ease her thoughts.
"I can't even call him if I wanted to be the one apologizing," The girl grumbled, crossing her arms against the oversized shirt Mingi had let her barrow while she stayed over. "That woman destroyed my phone with her heels! That's some major girl power I can respect but no one can actually call me and vice versa. How am I even supposed to my own dad that my phone trashed by a woman who tried to kidnap me then kill me at the same time?"
Mari's eyes widened at the thought of her dad, cringing at the thought of returning to the manor to face him. How was she going to explain what had happened to him in a way that wouldn't make him overly protective of her? She had seen what he had done when her mother was around, near letting her go unsupervised in fear of what could potentially happen to her. Due to him recently losing his wife as well, knowing that his daughter and heir of the Seo Faction would make him completely flip the switch.
She couldn't even imagine what he might do, knowing that he went extremely far to keep her away from the Kim Faction's eyes. "I'm so... so screwed. There's no way I'm getting out of this..." She mumbled, running her hands through her hair roughly. She had no excuses, no alibis, no genuine reasons to convince her father to let her continue living the way she was. When Mari went back to the Seo manor she was going to be trapped there like a circus animal and her friends would receive punishments for letting her live her own life.
"You okay there princess?" Mari nearly screamed at the sound of Hongjoong's voice, scrambling back and away from where his voice had come from to put distance between the two of them. He stood next to where she had originally sat with a confused yet drowsy expression on his face, carrying a water bottle in one hand while his other hand was shoved into the pockets of his sweatpants. He was surprisingly still wearing the leather jacket he always adorned over the simple black shirt he was seemingly wearing to sleep. "I saw you from the window, you seemed stressed."
Mari rubbed her eyes to rid them of any sort of emotion that would give him the chance to tease her before responding. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking about things." She told him, taking the water that the boy was urging her to grab. "I didn't know you were awake though? Everyone slowly started falling asleep one by one that I assumed you went to bed not long after Mingi did."
"Sleep is for the weak," He joked, falling into the cushion next to her. "I had gone to sleep earlier with everyone else, but I got a call a few minutes ago from my parents and couldn't go back to sleep anymore," Hongjoong explained, propping up his head with his arm as he glanced towards Mari. "I wish it was just a simple I love you goodnight call, but they stopped doing that a long, long time ago."
"I wish that was my dad," She snorted, unscrewing the cap of the water bottle. "If I had my phone right now he would have been blowing up my phone trying to figure out where I was and why I was there and then proceed to tell me all the things I should and shouldn't do while I'm there. And then end it with the blandest and boring goodnight text known to man."
"I wish I could say that's cute but you find it rather annoying," Hongjoong told her, trying to resist a laugh. "At least he cares about you and what you're doing you know? Some parents wouldn't even care if their child died without them knowing."
"Well yeah but...," Mari trailed off, not even taking a sip of the water given to her before placing it down on the glass table in front of her. "I'm definitely getting in trouble once I go home after this whole sleepover thing you all. I left the house without telling anyone in a fit of rage, got attacked by a group of strangers and proceeded to lose my entire phone at the same exact time. All without even telling him I left. I'm probably giving him a hard attack right now Hongjoong, the last person that left my house before something horrible happened to them was my mom."
"I remember you telling me about that," Hongjoong mumbled, recalling the summarized more patchy version of the story Mari had given him. She didn't give him all the details due to the majority of it being rather confidential, but he had a general idea of what had happened then. "If you need any help figuring stuff out before you go home... Yunho and I can help! I lie to my parents all the time, Yunho just helps add the believability to it so it doesn't sound like you're actually lying."
Mari snorted, rolling her eyes at the boy's suggestion. "Yeah, right. My dad wouldn't be the only one you're lying to, you know that right? You'd be lying to my two best friends who know me better than anyone in the whole world and my newest friend who has already picked up on my horrible habits to know when I'm lying or not. You've got to be an extremely liar to get past them."
"If I can get past your dad, I think I can get past your friends. You know what, give me your dad's number. We'll call him right now and I'll prove it to you." Hongjoong demanded, digging around his phone as if he had it with him.
"You're so annoying, stop it!" She complained, kicking at his sides to push him away from her. "You'd tremble at the mere sound of my dad's voice, you don't stand a chance!"
"You say that a lot," Hongjoong pointed out, swatting her away and sliding away to keep a safe distance. "I don't stand a chance against your best friend, I don't stand a chance against your dad. Who do I even stand a chance against at this point? Those seem like the two most prominent people in your lives right now. Do I even stand a chance with you?"
There was a prolonged silence between the two of them when the last sentence slipped out of the boy's mouth. He didn't even seem to realize what he had said until he finally took notice of Mari's extremely skeptical glances towards him. "Oh, sorry. Autocorrect is an asshole you know? I meant do I even stand a chance against you." He responded with as much confidence as he did the last.
"Hongjoong—"
"Don't say anything I know," He stopped her, getting up off the couch and pointing towards the pool. "I'm just really tired and my parents talking to me at all makes my brain shut down. I'm not thinking straight at all right now. So you don't mind princess, I'm going to throw myself into the pool."
As soon as the boy turned to walk towards the freeze pool waters, Mari scrambled to her feet in a rush. "Woah, woah! Stop it, it's the middle of the night and that's probably cold as hell you idiot! And dirty too you don't know the last time Mingi filtered his pool!" Hongjoong laughed as Mari tugged on his jacket sleeves, stopping him from walking any further. "You're so stupid! I might as well sucker punch you right in the gut!" Her complaining didn't stop his laughing, letting his childish giggles echo into the night sky.
"Are you even trying to hold me back, princess?" Hongjoong questioned, surprised by the amount of strength she was using. "I thought you were so much stronger than that! I could just pick you up and throw you into the pool myself with even trying!"
"Kim Hongjoong, don't you dare." She hissed, warning him from attempting any of his schemes. Though when he turned around to face her with a mischievous smirk on his face growing ever so widely with each passing second, she knew he had ignored her. He opened his arms out towards her in an attempt grab her right where she stood, though missing her completely when she ducked out of the way. "I'll kill you, don't even try it loverboy! Hongjoong!"
"Oh no princess, do you not know how to swim?" He gasped, putting his hands over his mouth dramatically. "That's so sad, come here I'll teach you how with hands on lessons!" Hongjoong exclaimed, chasing after her life a child on the playground. Mari practically began to run for her life, making a beeline towards the door to try and escape him. "Come on princess! It's a just a little water it can't hurt you, let's go for a swim!"