milk tea

02:20

"How do you guys play anyway?" Serene nonchalantly asked, her hand reaching into the batch of cookies that Doyoung baked. Popping it into her mouth, she could taste the bitterness of the chocolate. Dark chocolate was incorporated in the cookies, which Serene fancied over the typical milk chocolate.

"We usually play tag-in-the-dark but with a knife," the casual reply of Jungwoo startled the calm girl. "This whole room will be pitch black. The "'it' has a knife in their hand and when you get tagged, the 'it' will pass the knife. The last one with the knife has to kill one of our hostages."

"Hostages? Where do you keep them?" Serene was intrigued by the fact that they had hostages. When Ten gave her a tour, he didn't mention a room for them. "This is new."

"Oh, we keep them in the underground area. It's just that you need Taeyong's permission to see them," Jungwoo responded. "Either that or you have to be one of the top 3 to have access."

"Are they innocent people?" Serene questioned.

"No. Do you even know how our gang started?" Hendery asked, to which the girl returned with a shake of her head. "Doyoung, tell her."

"It all started with Taeyong's family. They were a normal family, but after Taeyong was born, an incident happened. His mother was assassinated while in the hospital room," Doyoung elucidated the roots of the gang. "His father wanted to avenge her death. He was a single dad and he took matters into his own hands and commenced this gang."

"Then what happened?" Serene intervened in the flow of Doyoung due to her curiosity. "Did he avenge her?"

"Yes, that was three years after her death," Doyoung acknowledged. His hands were now clasped together as he resumed to explain. "His father decided to keep bringing justice to innocent people who were abandoned by the government. That's why we only keep criminals as hostages. We'll usually kill them right away, but sometimes we keep them. You know, slow death?"

"Oh, I see," the mutter escaped from her mouth as she looked around at everyone in the room. "Shall we start the game?"

The opportunity of this game for Serene was to get closer to the rest of the members. Despite Shotaro, Jaemin, and Yangyang being absent, she presumed it was good enough. Aside from the ones she works with, she barely knew everyone else and how they work.

"Let's choose the 'it' first," Mark proposed, then placing a bag full of guns in the middle of the room. Everyone surrounded the bag. "Oh, right. Serene, take a gun. One of the guns is loaded. If you get the loaded one, you're the 'it' for the game."

After picking up a random gun from the bag, Serene undeviatingly checked the load. Finding it empty, she glanced at the others who also checked their guns. Alarming everyone, an abrupt shot was fired.

"Oops, I guess I'm the 'it' for today," a chuckle escaped from Jaehyun's mouth as everyone had their eyes on him. His competitive side was unquestionably showing at that moment."I won't go easy, so make sure your senses are good."