Broken (MinSung 18+)

Chapter 43

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Three and a half weeks had passed by in the blink of an eye- at least for Jisung. He had spent the majority of his time gathering as much information as he could, working with Seungmin to finish their "project" as quickly as possible. Jisung was under the impression that this could be handled much more rapidly, so it greatly frustrated him when that wasn't the case. He and his younger friend had been working for several hours every single day, trying to uncover anything incriminating that could be used against Minho's father. 

That proved to be difficult, considering he was the literal fucking President. And trying to keep their work hidden, covering their traces every time they touched something online, took much more time than either of the two boys wanted it to. Jisung found out much more about Minho's life than he had ever intended. He was never the type of person to violate someone's privacy, and that's exactly what it felt like he was doing, when he uncovered how Minho's mother had passed away when the boy was young, or how Minho had grown up in hunting and shooting ranges, rarely seen with his father outside of them, or even how Minho was a straight-A student, going to medical school on a fully-funded scholarship, only to drop out and presumably take on his current work.

Minho's files were sealed behind layers upon layers of secure AES 256-bit encryption, meaning Seungmin and Jisung had to spend days translating everything from ciphertext back into plaintext. Seeing as how brute-force attacks wouldn't work against AES 256-bit encryption... Jisung didn't even want to know how Seungmin made his way into the files. If anything over the last year had genuinely scared him, even moreso than his recent trip to Yi-Soo's creepy little kill room... it was Seungmin's ability to find anything he wanted to, even if it took a bit of time. 

While Jisung had been against looking into Minho's files, Seungmin said it would most likely be necessary, since it would provide insight into his father's earlier years. It was uncomfortable, but ultimately, the younger was right, and they did find something that could aid in their current goal. It was added to Seungmin's own, separate encrypted drive, along with all of the other possible evidence pieces they had found along the way. Trying to complete a full file of incriminating corroboration affirmations in this manner was like trying to create a piece of art, filling a canvas using nothing but pinpoint dots from broken pens.

But neither of them would lose hope.

When a knock hit the door, neither of them had heard it. Both were typing away at their keyboards, staring at their computer screens as if they were hypnotized. Minho cracked the door open to see them both working hard, but he couldn't bring himself to smile. He understood that working on this "project" was important to the boys, as he still thought the goal was to find Seungmin's mother, but his alone-time with Jisung had been nearly nonexistent for almost a month, outside of their nighttime cuddles and family meals that were steadily growing more and more infrequent.

Jisung saw the older out of the side of his eye and quickly did everything he could not to panic, and act natural while getting up to meet Minho outside of the room. Luckily, Seungmin had been working on cracking through the security of other files, so Minho wouldn't have been able to see or understand any details of what they were working on. But... he had seen enough to ask questions.

"If you guys are looking for his mother, still... why is Seungmin cracking into something? How much hacking is actually related to location-finding?" Minho asked with a tilted eyebrow. 

"It's really hard to explain, but he's just... kind of taking every measure he can to find where she is. I guess that includes hacking into secure locations- probably for footage." Jisung tried to remain vague, as he couldn't give the older a proper answer.