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"You know how pissed Namjoon would get if he finds out you left? Especially without him?" Jimin asks, looking at me as we walk through the trees.
"It's not like I'm enjoying the company I have anyway," I say low, nodding forward toward Lay. He walks slightly ahead with Baekhyun while Suho walks behind us. All of them carry rifles, but I didn't take one. I didn't want to carry anything too heavy or have it slung on my shoulder. I was okay with just my handgun. I look over at him, smiling. "Except for you of course."
He laughs, nodding. "Okay good, I would have been a little sad."
"We don't want that," I grin.
"What exactly are we doing out here?" Baekhyun slows down to walk beside me.
"Find my knife."
"We came out for a knife?" Lay turns his head.
"I never asked you to come."
"What was that?" He narrows his eyes at me and my shoulders drop a bit as I look down.
"Nothing."
Jimin looks between the two of us and speaks up.
"It's important to her, it won't take long. We know where it would be. We're going to check then be gone, okay?"
The rest of the boys nod in agreement and I keep my eyes down as I walk, avoiding twigs and stones, nearly stepping on Jimin's foot in the process.
We walk for about 10 minutes in silence until I begin to see tire tracks in the ground and hear the rippling of the river. I slow my pace, feeling my heart rate pick up.
Jimin holds his gun to his chest, alert and the others follow his lead. Lay switches places with Baekhyun to be at my side, which makes me even more tense than before. I pull my gun out of it's holster as we get closer to the clearing.
It's 15 trees ahead. 10. 5.
I see it. Giving a signal, Baekhyun leads everybody into the clearing, all raising their guns as they spread out. Except for Lay, of course. He stays with me as we go to the opposite end, checking for any threat. The cold water reaches my ankles, the wind not helping by the time I step out.
As we walk, I can't help but stare at the ground. The tire tracks are faint, but definitely there. There aren't any bodies, but there is still dried blood on the rocks and gravel. I look around. Not one body. Like they were cleared out.
I wonder who did it. Blues, feds or Mr. Min's men. Then again it were the feds, I don't think we would have come back. Blues? There's a chance since Mr. Min has them wrapped around his finger.
We near the tree line and suddenly something rustles to my left. My head snaps toward the sound and I look at Lay. Occupied. I blow out an airy, quiet whistle. He looks at me and I nod toward the direction the sound came from, tapping my ear.
He approaches carefully as I pull my hammer back, going up as I go around the other side. Something is moving behind a large bush, nearly as tall as Lay. Looking through the small leaves, he gives a short nod.
We both pop out, guns up. My finger is on the trigger, ready for the worst. A raccoon lets out a high pitched noise as it jumps out at us. I yelp, jumping back, nearly pulling the trigger.
Before Lay can even comment, the stench hits both of our noses, causing us both to cover them and step back groaning.
We look at the ground to see a rotting body, a gaping hole in the abdomen. Organs have either been ripped out or eaten, leaving a hollow stomach. Chunks of flesh have been torn from the arms, legs, even face. Or what's left of it anyway.
The decomposing corpse is covered in dirt, blood and maggots. The sight is horrid to see. But the smell. I try to breathe as little as I can because it's seeping through my sleeve.
"Oh my god," I groan, feeling nauseous.
"Fucking hell," Lay mumbles, slinging his rifle to his back and grabbing a stick. He moves the branches of the bush and tries to see who it is. He steps closer, moving them from the face.
It could be a woman. I can see long hair, but the face is too decomposed and ripped apart by scavengers to tell. He manages to move the hair and leans over the body, looking. He steps back and the stick brushes the side of the face by accident. A sort of goop attaches to it, pulling the skin up and drawing the last straw for Lay.
He tosses the stick, shaking his head. "Not one of ours. Crosses on the back. Not many, but they were there. Must have missed her when they were cleaning up," he stifles a gag. "Let's go."
I nod quickly and the two of us leave, emerging from the trees and back into the clearing to see the rest of the boys finished.
"What are we going to do about it?" I ask.
"Nothing," he says, grabbing his gun. "Leave her to the forest."
I narrow my eyes at him. "We can't just leave a body-"
"Don't get like that. She attacked you, it doesn't matter if we leave her or not. The forest can take care of her."
"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that if the feds decide to sweep the forest and find a body in the forest that our property is in, it'll throw some red flags. I don't think you want feds on your ass."
He tilts his head, sighing. "That's a good point. But I'm not cleaning that shit up." He turns and starts walking to the middle. I roll my eyes and scurry after him.
"All clear from your sides?" Lay asks from the other side of the water.
"Yeah," Suho responds. "It seems like..."
The conversation begins to fade, my eyes glued to the spot Lay stands. That's where Hyunsoo stood. As he spoke to me, tormented me. Threatened the boys. Forced me to do things. The image flashes through my mind. There are trucks behind me, headlights blinding my eyes. The smell of blood and fear thick in the atmosphere.
I'm back.
I slowly look down at my feet. I'm standing in it. The dried blood of the man I executed. It's dark again. I see him, I see his face. I feel my gun pressed against his forehead. The fear in his eyes, the anger I felt running through my veins. It's all so vividly engraved in my brain. I pull the trigger.
I'm back.
My breath shakes as I look in front of Lay, slightly to the right. I stood there, the cold metallic killing machine resting in my sweating and shaking palm as I had to choose between killing a pregnant woman and the man who saved my life. The man I needed alive.
The sky falls again. The tears in my eyes blur my vision, making the headlights seem brighter. I look at Namjoon. The same expression. Pure devastation. The moment he knew everything was falling apart, when everything failed. He failed the boys, he failed his mission, he failed his boss. When I pressed the barrel to my head, he knew he had failed me too.
The cool sensation on my head feels so real, my fingers wrapped around the handle, shaking to the point I could have missed my own head.
"Y/N," Namjoon says. His voice is distorted. I ignore him. "Y/N!"
My finger squeezes the trigger and somebody grabs my shoulders, shaking me back into reality.
"Hey, you with me?" Jimin asks, suddenly in front of me. I quickly nod, looking around. Everybody is staring. Mostly confused.
"Yeah," I say, backing up from him and looking down feeling awkward. "Let's just go. I need to go a bit farther, that's where it could be."
I turn around, Lay is standing there, eyebrows drawn together. I walk past him toward the place Namjoon was dragged. I walk in the front, drawing my gun. I blink away the stinging sensation in my eyes as I walk. I don't know how I remember where it was. I just do. There's no trail, it was through random trees, but somehow my body knows where to go.
Somebody's footsteps approach in a jog.
"How much farther?" Suho. My breath catches in my throat. He even sounds like him.
"Uhm... not far, couple minutes or so to get there."
"I don't see anything," he says, tilting himself to the side to see between the trees.
"I wasn't walking like we are now," I say in a small voice.
"Oh..." he nods, understanding. "What does this knife look like?"
Unsheathing my current knife, he pulls his head back a bit. I hold it out, tilting my head.
"About this long," I show, cutting an inch off with my finger. "Serrated halfway down this side, curved at the top, other side is smooth all the way, but also curves to meet the other side at the top. The handle is gold plated and has my tattoo engraved in it."
"Your tattoo?"
I unzip my jacket, pulling the sleeve down to show the ink on my arm. He raises his eyebrows.
"Oh right."
I nod, looking down. My eyes catch something on his hand. On the scaphoid.
"Is that your trademark?" I ask, looking back up ahead of me.
"Hm?" Then he turns his hand to see what I'm talking about. "Oh. Yeah it's something EXO decided to do. After we merged. We wanted to have a sort of bond and a message that we are one. It was my idea. After EXO-M fell apart, everybody was devastated, reckless. I had to pull myself out of a pretty dark hole in order to help the others. The tattoo was the first step."
"It was your idea?"
"Yeah," he says, looking behind us to the other boys. "From there, we all got closer."
"EXO-M. I knew you split into two groups, but were still kind of the same thing. Why'd they split you up?"
"Well for one, we had a large number. Of course, that's good, but at the time, there was too much going on in different places. EXO-M broke off and worked in a different city. Of course, neither of us were stationary, we kept moving, but we barely saw each other," he sighs before continuing. "But then numbers started cutting down and they decided to bring us all together again. There were 9 of us. Until Lay left."
"China right?" I ask, recalling what Yoongi told me.
"Yeah. Back to the gang where he was raised. Mr. Min and Mr. Zhao came to an agreement because Mr. Min was contacted about three months after Lay disappeared. He was angry at first, but Lay wasn't leaving permanently. He sort of bounces between us. It's pretty crazy. Zhao and Min have an understanding and now we have a gang allied in China."
"Your numbers are a lot bigger than I thought," I nod, impressed. "When does he come back usually?"
"Usually 3 months with both of us if nothing is going on. If he's needed somewhere, he'll go right away, but if he's not needed, he'll go back and forth. Except he didn't come back this year. We never heard from him, which is why we were so shocked that he showed up out of the blue."
"Was he in a job?"
"No he wasn't. He just didn't come back," he sucks his cheek in, shrugging. Nobody knows why. Mr. Min wouldn't tell us anything, we were left in the dark. I tried talking to him, but he was quiet about it. To be honest, ever since the three died, he's never been the same. And when he came back from China? I thought it was a different person."
"Different how?"
"Vicious. Aggressive. He's always been a very skilled person and got shit done when it needed to be done. But it wasn't the same. It was like he lost his heart. Even started treating the rest of us different. And when it came to training, it was like he was put through some kind of machine. I love him, we all do. He's our brother. But he's not the same."
We both fall silent for a few seconds.
"You were in the other unit?"
"EXO-K, yeah. With Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Sehun, Kyungsoo and Kai."
"Who were the extra two in EXO-M?"
"Chen and Xuimin. I don't know if you've met them yet."
"I met Chen earlier," I say, nodding. "Xuimin and I had a small talk but it was fast."
"Yeah... it was pretty hard to get them back on their feet. Chen. Beside Lay, he was probably the worst to recover."
"Was he close to them?"
"Depends what you mean," he says. I look at him, confused. "Yes, he was close to them all relationship-wise. But he was also there when Kris died. Right beside him. That whole day messed him up really bad, emotionally and physically."
"Physically?"
Suho sucks on his teeth, as if trying to figure out how to start.
"There was a complication after a job. We had to clear a warehouse to send a message to another gang. They were in our territory, killing our people. We needed to get rid of them. We thought we got all of them, but we were wrong. Everybody took different cars back. Chen and Kris were in one together.
We all took different routes, they took one north of the warehouse, forking to the left toward a bridge. Chen said they were just driving for a few minutes, it was dead silent. Suddenly a car ran up on them, shooting at them and hitting their back. It escalated too quickly. Kris tried to keep them behind, but when they got to the bridge, they were able to race up their side, driver side."
Suho pushes out a deep breath, shaking his head.
"They started hitting their side, trying to run them off the road and off the bridge. Chen was trying to get a shot off, but he was too late. Kris was shot. Right in the chest. He lost control and with one last hit, the member pushed them off the bridge. It was a hard fall. The car crumbled and Kris was knocked unconscious.
Chen said he was out for a few seconds, but as soon as he smelled the smoke, he snapped out of it. He kicked the windshield out before the door was too compressed to fit through and tried to pull Kris out. But a scrap of metal impaled his head during the fall. He was long gone. The car was going to blow any second. Chen had to crawl and drag himself as far as he could.
Unfortunately he wasn't far enough. The fire hit the gas tank and the car exploded, the blow hitting the right side of the body. It burned him. Bad. The only part he could save was his face because he protected it with his hand. He partially lost fingers, completely deformed it. Saved his face, possibly his life, but otherwise, the right side of his whole body suffered second to third degree burns."
I walk, my mouth hanging slightly.
"Not only did he lose Kris that night, he was beside him as he was shot, impaled then blown to pieces. And as a bonus, he suffered the fires too. Scarred him for life. He covers up as much as he can because he hates the way he looks. Doesn't matter if it's 300 degrees, he'll still wear full-length pants and a jacket. From time to time he'll wear a t-shirt around us, but it's not often."
I blink slowly, looking down. I saw his neck, I just didn't know they had that kind of a story behind them.
"How recent was it?"
"Three years maybe? Probably a year or so after Tao went missing."
"What happened with him?"
"We don't know. He was scouting something for us a few cities up. Suddenly his communications were cut. Some people were sent to his most recent location. Blood was everywhere and there was what used to be a body. Unidentifiable. Ripped to shreds as if a wild pack of dogs reached him."
Dogs? I think of that night in this same place. Taehyung was nearly torn apart by dogs. Hyunsoo's dogs.
"Do you know what he was scouting for?"
Suho slowly looks at me and shakes his head. "No. He didn't say anything about it. I wasn't with him at the time, but Xuimin said he would usually tell them what he was doing and where he was going, but he didn't say anything at all. He was even quiet in general. Mr. Min refused to tell us anything too. We were totally in the dark."
The small clearing is up ahead, I can see it.
"Dogs," I mumble. "Weird."