Phoenixes {NCT}

12 - that night...

"Ah!" Mark screamed as Taeil was stitching the cut in his stomach.

"Sorry... you're lucky it didn't go as deep as to the liver. So, you're safe.''

I couldn't bear Mark's screams, so I took off the blanket, and walked right up to him, stomping my feet.

"Minhung, stay quiet. I know it's hard, but the Dreamies and others are trying to sleep. They're tired, hm?" he nodded his head and said with a sore voice "Will Haechannie hold my hand again? I think that would be a great help."

So, I gave in. "Okay... Anything for MinHyungie" I chuckled and looked at Taeil's hands which had stopped working and I looked up to see him and saw that he was looking at us with a 'uhm-cheesy' kind of look. "You guys act like you're a couple. Get hold of yourself" he chuckled and started working again. 

"Stop it" I said and he only chuckled louder and worked. My cheeks were flushed red at the comment, and I only saw Mark glare at him.

"MinHyung?" I asked while he was getting stitched and he only hummed in response. "D-Do you think they will come back?" Mark sighed.

"I don't know... but we know for sure that they don't keep their deals. Finally, they will ask us to give them almost like- 40 percent of our earnings, because we stay at Their Dorm." I nodded.

"And no-one wants to, or ever will, leave this place. This is our home, as Taeyong said..." suddenly I felt guilty. Guilty for leaving the squad. Guilty for running away.

"I'm sorry... I shouldn't have left you guys..." Mark smiled. But it faded away and he looked at Taeil, who looked back at him. I saw Taeil nod. As if they were talking with their eyes. "What" I asked concerned. And Mark started.

"Donghyuck... me coming back wasn't the only thing that has happened... a lot has happened, that you couldn't have even imagined." My mouth is agape. Off-course that's not all that's happened.

"W-What happened" I was nervous. He looked at Taeil who was working and looked back at me.

"The squad that provides us this place, Exo, one of their members betrayed them. One of their members as in Chanyeol. I'm sorry to say, but... he joined the Seventeen squad. He ganged up with them. Kai was most close with him, so he stopped coming to the gambling club for a month. That month, we ourselves insisted that they don't have to give us any money for that month. But they insisted, and gave anyway. But we all could sense that they were all not in a good phase at that time.

 And they even got to know that Chanyeol, was dating the girl who betrayed us. They couldn't bear the fact that the happy, playful, kind Chanyeol had become one of the evil ones. And today, the one that had a knife around your neck, w-was him..." my mouth fell agape. Chanyeol, was my good friend too. He and I used to play poker nights together. We had fun.. And the part where Mark mentioned 'the girl that betrayed us' was on my mind again. 

But he continued. " The Dreamies, Jisung and Chenle were threatened to be taken away from here forever, if we didn't pay the amount that the Seventeen wanted to, so to save them, we had to pay. We lost a huge amount of money. W-we lost 50 million wons.

All these years, we earned 5 lakhs from Exo, each month, as the gambling club went into a huge profit, and an amount of almost a year that we earned was taken away from us to save Jisung and Chenle. If we wouldn't, they would have been killed. We were at a loss. We had to steal food from shops, and eat only one bread, or 2 at the most, everyday but all of us survived. We survived when Exo decided to pay for our daily foods for 5 months, and even pay our monthly earnings fully..." I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't do anything to help them.