HEE:LIFT | TXT & Enhypen

☆ ninety-two ☆

TW: abuse, slight violence

~~~~~

The Ball Drop (Reprise) || 4/4

"Soobin!" Mei waved at the boy from down the hallway of the HYBE building. "Can you come here for a minute?"

The older boy shot Heeseung a confused look before wandering away from the group.

"What's that about?" Sunoo asked.

Heeseung shrugged, herding the eleven remaining boys into a meeting room. He shivered anxiously as they took seats around a conference table. The last time they were here, they had been escorted by the military alongside BTS. The time before that, they'd voted Heeseung the leader of Belift. And the time before that, the very first time they'd been in this room, the CEO had dropped news of the Belift merge on TXT and Enhypen.

"Hey." Sunghoon sat in the office chair beside Heeseung and they joined hands under the table. "It's alright. Nothing they tell us can possibly be worse than what we've already been through."

Heeseung slowly nodded, unsure if he truly believed that statement. A minute passed before Soobin entered the room, joining the rest of Belift around the table. They sat in silence for another minute until the door creaked open again, alerting them of the CEO's arrival.

Heeseung carefully watched the neatly-dressed man cross the room, walking along the lengthy rectangular table behind Daniel, Jay, Jake, Soobin, Yeonjun, and Kai. He carried with him a short stack of tan file folders, which he set down just before taking a seat at the head of the table.

"What's that?" Ni-ki asked curiously, reaching out to touch the folders. He froze, quickly retracting his hand. "Sorry."

Heeseung held his breath, expecting a snarky response back from the CEO.

Instead, the man simply replied, "Job applications for Eunji's position. Shall we get this meeting started?"

Heeseung stared at him impassively. "You're lucky we agreed to meet at all. We're not supposed to be here without our lawyers."

"Oh, relax. This has nothing to do with the court case. It's about the future of Belift."

"Be:Lift as in the company or Belift as in our group?" Sunoo asked.

"Both." The CEO leaned back in his chair, casually crossing his legs. "Daniel, TXT, Enhypen. You need to be packed up and out of the dorm by Friday."

"Wait, wait. What's going on?" Jay eyed the older man suspiciously. "Are we moving? Already?"

"Yes. There's no need for two different groups to live in the same dorm."

"Two different groups?" Kai frowned. "We're one group. Belift."

The CEO checked his watch. "Not as of four pm yesterday."

"What?" Sunghoon leaned forward, subtly squeezing Heeseung's hand under the table out of anger. "What do you mean?"

"Yeah, um. Explain, please," Sunoo added.

"Jesus Christ, you want a whole history of the decision? Fine." The CEO rubbed his face. "Two months ago, Be:Lift made a bad partnership. The other company found a loophole to get out of our contract and steal nearly all of our funds."

He loosened his tie, tugging the piece of fabric off and tossing it onto the table beside his folders.

"Besides us, the people who had the most to lose if Be:Lift went bankrupt were the BigHit board of directors. They had already invested a lot of money into Be:lift by funding I-Land, the survival show that created Enhypen, so not only would Enhypen's failure hurt their finances, but also their reputation in the K-pop industry. They lent TXT to us as a method to increase the popularity of Enhypen so we could make back our lost profits while also increasing the marketability of TXT. They told me to ensure your success by any means necessary."