Chapter Text
Hyunjin
When I opened my eyes, my mind was submerged in fog. There was nothing but darkness, and a throbbing pain that started at the back of my head and spread to my temples wouldn't let me think straight. Breathing was hard — the air felt heavy. I was sitting on a wooden chair, rigid and still, and from that very first moment I knew this was not the chair from my hotel room.
I could feel my own breath but couldn't hear it — breaths trembling with fear and confusion. I tried to move but my arms were pulled back — rope. Tied tight around my wrists, firm and merciless. Slowly, fragments of memory returned.
I remembered… the hotel, the room door, a man who said he was from room service. And then — pain at the back of my head, and darkness. A burning sensation twisted through my stomach, maybe from fear, maybe from hunger. I didn't know where I was; a black cloth covered my eyes. But there was one thing I knew well: I wasn't going to die. Because I knew who had taken me — the Shadows.
They always said the Shadows weren't killers. They only took and disappeared. But if you followed their trail, you might — like me — one day open your eyes in darkness and silence. I remembered the words of that police officer, a man who'd been tangled up in the Shadows case for years. He used to say: "They live in the dark. Not for fame or pleasure — for the money."
An involuntary frown settled on my face. I was someone who had accepted their fate, yet still caught up in wondering what was going to happen to me.
Would they torture me? Let me go? Take the money I didn't have?
Chris looked at the boy on the chair with an expressionless face, watching as the tension in his body slowly began to stir. With the same seriousness he always carried, he turned to his group and said:
"Enough. I know myself that what I did was reckless — I just need to know if you're okay with him living with you or not."
Jeongin rose silently from the couch. Everything was spiraling out of control — stealing money was one thing; kidnapping was another. But he knew objecting was pointless. Every time he disagreed with Chris's methods, a heavy argument would erupt. Now was not the time. He only murmured:
"I'll get a room ready for him."
But Chris stopped him. He placed his hand on Jeongin's shoulder and said briefly:
"He stays in my room. Under my own watch."
Minho finally broke his silence. He couldn't accept that a mysterious boy who had nearly exposed all of their identities would now roam freely through their house — and in Chris's room at that. His rough voice was thick with anger:
"How can you let him stay in your room? When he almost figured everything out? He's our enemy, Chris."
Chris said nothing. He only cast a look that held no hesitation, no fear at all, just resolve. He untied the ropes from around the boy's wrists, draped his limp body over his shoulder, and walked up the stairs without a word. Everyone was silent. No one objected — except Minho. Not even Jisung, who had caused all of this, said anything. Because he knew if he opened his mouth, the entire group would turn against him. Changbin, who as always couldn't sit with silence, forced a thin smile and said:
"Well... is anyone actually hungry for dinner?"
Felix rose with a heavy frown, crossed his arms, and headed toward his room. Without looking back, he murmured:
"I'm not eating."
Minho exhaled sharply and pressed a hand to his forehead. In a dry voice he said:
"Felix, come sit down."
But it was no use. The younger boy didn't care in the slightest. Seungmin stood up as well. Before Jeongin or Changbin could protest, he simply said:
"I'm on a diet."
Jeongin frowned and snapped:
"What exactly are you trying to slim down? Those few grams of bones? Is a diet supposed to mean not eating?"
Seungmin said nothing. A few seconds later, only the sound of his bedroom door closing could be heard. Jisung, sensing the heavy atmosphere, placed his hand on Jeongin's shoulder:
"Don't stress. Me, Changbin, and Minho will eat every bit of your share."
Jeongin slapped Jisung's hand away with his palm and, without a word, walked quickly toward the kitchen. Chris, in silence, set the boy's numb body onto the bed. The faint light of the bedside lamp traced the delicate lines of his face.
Closed eyes, long lashes, and slightly parted lips.
A flutter of his eyelids told Chris he was regaining consciousness.
For a moment his gaze settled on the boy's long, black hair. When he had first looked at him in the hotel room, those strands had caught his attention. hair that spilled across his pillow like a river of night.
Chris took a deep breath. He wanted to keep himself away from things that were appealing yet dangerous.
He reached out and gave the boy's cheek a gentle tap. His eyes opened and he tried to sit up. His eyes were dark. Chris had heard that truly black eyes didn't exist, but the disproof of that claim was blinking irregularly right in front of him. Chris murmured:
"Well. Good morning."
He received no answer, there was no fear, no pleading and just pure silence. The boy simply watched him, without a movement, without a reaction.
Chris raised an eyebrow and spoke again:
"I don't have the patience to deal with you. Who do you work for? Who hired you? The police? As far as I know, you were fired from your last job."
The boy still said nothing. He turned his head slightly to the side. he didn't even have the strength to keep looking at the man.
In his imagination, the Shadows were middle-aged men covered in tattoos with permanent scowls. The young, athletic man in front of him was nothing close to that image. Chris frowned, stepped toward him and raised his voice slightly:
"Who do you work for?"
But the boy only pressed his lips together. He looked like he wanted to speak, but his lips seemed sewn shut.
And as before — not crying or trembling, again, silence.
Chris let out a long breath. His hands had curled into fists. In all the years they'd been active, no one had ever managed to trace them. If it weren't for Seungmin's ability, if they'd found out even a little later, this boy who was now staring at him like a small black kitten would have had every one of their identities and handed them straight to the police.
He was angry at himself. angry that he couldn't bring himself to inflict serious physical harm on the person before him. If it were that officer, his knees would be broken by now, maybe his ribs too… but with this strange hacker? No. He couldn't. Not with that face. Not with that gaze. And that made him furious.
Anything that gave Christopher Bang a feeling of weakness made him furious.
just like with his own crew members. He muttered to himself:
"With that face of yours… you'd better start talking."
He thought about how to make him uncomfortable. He couldn't hurt him physically, and there was no family to threaten him with. His eyes drifted over the boy's face and body, until they landed on what had caught his attention from the very first moment they met.
Those long strands that reached his shoulders must have meant something to him.
He tied the boy's hands behind his back, then stepped sharply out of the room. He returned after a minute. the boy was still sitting there.
When Seungmin had alerted him that someone was tracking Jisung's expensive purchases, he had completely fallen apart. For the first time since Minho's accident, he had been afraid. His image of whoever had managed to call Seungmin's abilities into question was nothing like what he was now seeing.
Maybe a few aging detectives, or a few teenage geniuses like Seungmin — thick-framed glasses, hunched over computers, no food, barely anything else, endlessly trying to hack other people's systems.
A young, good-looking, calm boy who had been playing Minecraft in a hotel room was entirely outside every scenario he had imagined.
His hair was disheveled and his lips were wet from the soda in his hand. When he noticed Chris moving toward him instead of tending to the room, the boy stepped back in a panic — but in the end, without understanding how, he found himself in Chris's hands, with only a sharp pain at the back of his head to mark the moment. But now, with silver scissors in hand and the blade catching the faint light of the room, Chris was thinking of other things.
"If he looks worse, it'll be easier to hit him."
Or:
"Once he's bald and ugly, nothing will stop me from landing a fist in his jaw."
Childish.
His brain screamed.
He sat close to the boy and, with calm composure, ran his hand through the black hair.
It was soft. And beautiful.
Hyunjin flinched this time and drew his head back. He didn't want his hair to be touched by this man — not when the dearest person in his life was the only one who had ever stroked it.
No good thoughts crossed his mind. He couldn't guess what the man intended. Chris gathered a lock of his hair and brought the scissors toward it.
"That face of yours… it bothers me. Shall we ruin it a little?"
And after a snip that Chris heard clearly, his hand was full of black strands.
The boy who until that moment had been sitting perfectly still suddenly had trembling lips.
His bound hands curled involuntarily into fists. When he felt his hair being cut, a tear slid from the corner of his eye.
His Grandmother
Sonja
had always asked him to keep his hair long. Since she only had one son, she had dreamed of having a granddaughter whose hair she could braid. But her grandchild turned out to be a boy too.
She had raised Hyunjin all the same and given him all her love, but Hyunjin was a boy who kept his hair long for his grandmother.
Chris continued, mercilessly.
The sound of scissors mingled with the whisper of severed hair, breaking the silence of the room.
With every lock that fell to the floor, it felt as though another fragment of Sonja's gentle touch was lost. yet still, he said nothing.
Only tears.
Only the faint trembling of his shoulders.
Chris paused for a moment, as though something had caught in his throat.
He stopped cutting and fixed his eyes on the boy's face. He drew a breath, then threw the scissors onto the bed.
For a moment, he second-guessed his own purpose. He ran a hand through his own hair and let out the breath he had been holding. loudly.
Now, in the boy's sorrowful eyes, he could see anger.
It was impossible to miss:
his brows were drawn together and his lashes were wet and stuck together. His hair had been cut unevenly, but Chris had not gotten what he wanted. Why did that glow still radiating from his face continue to trouble him? He turned his back to the boy and pulled out his phone.
"Jeongin… who's with you?… Come to my room."
The call ended. When Jeongin took the stairs two at a time and reached the room, the bed was covered in hair and the guilty scissors gleamed among the strands.
He went forward immediately and stood before Hyunjin. It was the first time he was seeing the face of their hostage in real life and not in the pictures seungmin showed.
Broken. Tearful. Beautiful.
He understood what had happened. He said nothing. He didn't even offer the reproachful look Chris had been bracing for. So Chris began speaking himself.
"I'll clean the bed myself,"
he said in a rough voice.
"Of course you will. I'm not a housekeeper. Everyone in this house cleans their own bed."
Chris pressed his lips together with irritation. He couldn't be harsh with his people in front of a stranger they considered an enemy.
"Take him to the storage room. Give him something to eat. The trimmer's in the drawer — fix his hair with it."
Jeongin still wasn't looking at Chris's face. He walked quietly toward the boy and crouched down, untied his hands, and felt the tension coiled in his body.
"Shh...don't worry. In this house, the last person who would ever hurt you is me."
Jeongin's curly orange hair tickled Hyunjin's face as he leaned down. Chris himself went for the trimmer and handed the device to Jeongin. He guided the trembling boy out of Chris's room and into his own. knowing he had defied Chris's orders, but truthfully, he didn't care much for Chris or his foolish commands.
Hyunjin quietly and obediently sat on the white couch Jeongin steered him toward.
"What's your name? Honestly, I don't think you'll ever get the chance to leave this house, so we might as well be friends. What do you think, Hyunjin-hyung? Yeah — I already knew your name. Sorry."
Hyunjin, who had been watching Jeongin's lips, looked up in surprise at the word
"Hyunjin-hyung"
and stared at Jeongin, who was busy turning on the trimmer. His image of the Shadows was completely shifting. The boy who looked like an orange cotton candy seemed like he couldn't even steal a piece of candy from a two-year-old, let alone the crimes Hyunjin knew they were responsible for.
This time his hair was being cut from the root. It didn't take long for Jeongin to finish.
He picked up the handheld vacuum he'd already set beside Hyunjin and cleaned around the couch.
"I saw a photo of you with long hair. it was really beautiful. But now… you're still just as beautiful. How is that even possible?"
Jeongin said with a laugh, and pressed a kiss to Hyunjin's newly-shaved head. Hyunjin was a little shocked.
He didn't know how many people were in this group, but the two he had met so far were both, in their own ways, strange.
"Why aren't you saying anything? Talk to me. I genuinely don't care who you work for."
Hyunjin tore his gaze from Jeongin's lips and swallowed. He didn't know whether he could trust the young man now sitting beside him on the couch.
"Okay… if you don't want to talk, I understand. I'll go get you some food. Sorry..I have to lock the door."
Everyone who had refused to eat dinner was now sitting around the table by force, because Chris was seated there, and Changbin — as always — reassured Jeongin with his warm smile, since setting the table was Jeongin's responsibility.
When Jeongin returned with a tray of food, Hyunjin was at his desk, writing something on a piece of paper.
Jeongin stood beside him unhurriedly, glancing at the paper.
He set the tray down on the desk. Hyunjin looked up. With unguarded eyes, he handed the paper to Jeongin. After reading what was written, Jeongin — without looking at Hyunjin — left the room in anger.
He went down the stairs at his usual quick pace and made his way back to the crowded table.
He went to the head of the table where Chris sat. Six pairs of eyes followed him with curiosity. He slammed the paper down in front of Chris and looked at the face of every person around the table.
"When I came to this house, you welcomed me well. You gave me shelter, food — I became part of your family. I swore to protect myself and all of you. I swore not to take a life and not to harm the people I call family — meaning all of you. But I also swore never to harm someone weaker than myself. We all took that oath."
His gaze fixed on Chris, who was still looking at the paper. He continued, louder:
"And the person who asked us to take those oaths was you, hyung. You knocked unconscious a boy who — just like every single one of us — was working for money. Not through theft, but working. And you brought him here."
Minho cut in:
"If he hadn't done that, we'd be getting whipped right now instead of eating."
Jeongin raised his hand toward Minho in a gesture of silence, without looking at him. He raised his voice further:
"And because he wouldn't listen to you, you shaved his head. How was he supposed to listen to you, hyung? When you struck him on the neck and dragged him here, his hearing aid fell out of his ear. You psychologically tortured a deaf boy — someone who is so terrified of not being able to hear that he can't speak when he can't hear — you put him through that agony for what? For one damn name that Seungmin could get you with a single click? Wasn't bringing him here enough? When you tied his hands and feet, what harm could he possibly have done to you?"