Road to Utopia - NCT

17 - Sugar Daddy

"So Taeyong and others, what brings you back to my place?" A middle-aged man swivelled his chair around to face us. Currently, it was us leaders in some dingy office in what seemed to be the slightly poorer side of Seoul. "And I see you have another child."

"Hello, I'm Jisung. Nice to meet you." I politely bowed to him.

"We need a new base. Some bastard basically bought his way to close our business and force us out of the restaurant." Taeyong scoffed, crossing his arms.

"Those people still exist? I thought the whole point of the Utopia Party was to get rid of those transactions." Kun thought out loud.

"Well, they also want to drug all of Korea to be their mindless robots so take your pick." Taeyong replied. "So, new base. Whatcha thinking?"

"Any particular place? I've got some all set up but knowing you and your ever-expanding group, you want something bigger."

"As always, you know me so well. If you're gonna build one, maybe the outskirts of Seoul. Please don't make us go back to Gangnam or Busan."

"Well, I was thinking Gwangju, but I have recently acquired a plot of land in Seoul." He turned his computer screen to face us, showing a mansion? "I turned it into a mansion and waited for one of you to blow up your current place so I could place you here."

"You have so little trust in us, I'm sad." Mark pouted.

"I've given Taeyong four places within the past three years and only one of them is still standing today. Of course I don't trust you!"

Wait, four? But I thought they had two old bases and our current place.

"Taeyong had a house with a few others, but Mark tried to cook eggs and kinda burned the place down." Kun whispered in my ear after seeing my quizzical look. I glanced at Mark and saw his sheepish grin.

"So...it's ours?" Taeyong switched back to the main topic.

The man (who Mark named our sugar daddy) grabbed some keys and tossed them to me, which luckily, I caught. "Of course it's yours; I'm funding your whole project. What sponsor would I be if I left you all HQ-less?"

"Nice one."

"Thanks." Mark grinned.

"Cheers." Kun said.

"Thank you so much." I bowed again.

"You can stop with the formalities, little one. You'll be seeing me more often." Little one? What am I, five? "Now, everyone, get out of my sight. I spent 5 million on that place and it'll be gone in a few months."

Taeyong pushed everyone to the door and waved at Soo Man. Before we all left, he gave us some valuable information.

"The mansion has three floors and 2 underground levels. There are also bedrooms this time so you can all move out of your apartments but remember to still legally own it to look less suspicious. The underground level has a training ground and the lowest is a parking garage to store the vehicles, which will lead out to a road. Try not to blow this one up, Taeyong."

"Thanks, I can't promise anything though." He finally ushered us out of the room and back in the van.

"So, Taeyong, how do you know him?" I asked as I put my seatbelt on.

"Let's just say we go a long way back." He smiled and drove back to the current HQ.

~~

We closed the restaurant yesterday and the Jaemin and Jeno were still packing the remnants of Taeyong's office into boxes. Lucas and Ten were in the kitchen packing the plates and cutlery whilst Yuta was just grinning and lying across a table. To be fair, he was still injured.