~<*>~ Music in me: seventeen fan-fiction ~<*>~

Chapter 11

Scoups returns to his home. He is tired, but Scoups has to put Hoshi in bed before he can rest himself. The blonde male is walking behind him, still crying. Scoups wants to cry as well, but he just doesn't have any tears left.
"Let's go to bed, okay?" he asks Hoshi gently. The blonde male nods, but it looks like he is not living in this world at the moment. He gently rubs Hoshi's back while he leads him to his room. Hoshi lays down on his bed, too sad and tired to change before sleeping. Scoups tucks him in and sits by his side until Hoshi is actually sleeping. It's hard to know that they will never be with the three of them anymore. Scoups notices a hoodie laying on the ground. Sighing, he picks it up and he suddenly notices that this is a hoodie from Woozi that Hoshi has stolen a while ago. With a sad smile, Scoups places the hoodie in Hoshi's closet. Scoups decides to clean his house some more, he would simply not be able to get some sleep anyways. He starts cleaning the living room and every time he finds something that belongs to Woozi, he puts it inside a box. Hoshi and him will decide what to do with those things later. While Scoups is cleaning the table, he notices a cup of coffee standing there. It's not empty yet and Scoups realizes with pain in his heart that it's Woozi's. Normally, Scoups would shout and get irritated, but now, Scoups is only smiling. It's a little thing like that, which gives Scoups the sign that Woozi is still there. Scoups sits down and thinks back at the argument Hoshi and him had recently. Woozi was the one who calmed them down, now that he's gone, will it still be this calm in their house? Would they still be able to fix their arguments? Ofcourse they will, Scoups says to himself, Hoshi and him are mature enough to fix it. Lost in thought, Scoups almost doesn't notice the vibration in his pocket. He grabs his phone and reads the notification.

Go to sleep! The group needs you. :)

Looking at the ceiling with tears in his eyes, Scoups sighs, his voice trembling from emotion. He totally forgot that Woozi secretly had put a notification in his phone, which would come up every day in the evening. It feels like Woozi is still here. It's like he's talking to Scoups. Out of frustration, Scoups clenches his fist. He's the oldest, the goddamn leader of his group and he's crying like a baby because he isn't even able to protect his own team. If it keeps going like this, Scoups will lose everyone eventually. He almost lost Dino as well. Thinking back at the sight of Dino laying down on the street, knowing that he could've ended like Woozi, Scoups feels some shivers. But if he keeps worrying like this, Scoups won't get any further. They have to take some action themselves, starting with weapons. Reading the notification again, putting his phone down and letting the cup of coffee stand on the table, Scoups walks to his room to get some sleep.

~<*>~

Dino is glad that his bruises don't hurt as much as yesterday anymore. But to be honest, he doesn't care about that right now. He is worried about Wonwoo, Scoups and Hoshi and actually just the whole group. Losing someone is hard and Dino wants to support the team. He leaves his house and walks through the city. The group has decided to meet up again. When Dino arrives at the dance room, everyone is already inside. Dino quickly runs over to Hoshi and hugs him tight, the blonde male is crying again. Dino can only imagine what it feels like to lose your best friend.
"Hey, are you allright?" Dino asks worried. Hoshi shakes his head and shrugs.
"Everything looks so empty without him, you know? I miss him already." he pouts and Dino rubs his back to comfort him.
"It's okay, it's going to be allright." Dino says. A few minutes later, Hoshi leaves Dino to comfort Jeonghan and Dino notices Scoups sitting down on a chair in the corner of the room. He is sitting alone and Dino walks over to him.
"Hi." he says quietly.
"Hey." Scoups greets him.
"Are you okay?" Dino asks. Scoups stays silent and doesn't look Dino in the eye.
"It's okay to be sad, you know." Dino adds. Scoups shakes his head.
"No, I have to stay strong for my group." he says. Dino places his hand on Scoups' shoulder and tries to lock eyes with him.
"You can't help your group if you just sit here, alone and quiet." Dino tries to reason with him.
"Wow, that's helping." Scoups says with sarcasm. Dino sighs and looks at Scoups.
"I'm sorry, but it's the truth and- Is that a gun!?" Dino yells surprised. Luckily, no one heard it because they are all talking and crying. Scoups hushes him and looks him in the eyes.
"Can you be quiet!? The group doesn't know yet!" he whispers.
"You're mad." Dino says while slightly backing away from Scoups. The black-haired male grabs his arm to keep Dino by his side.
"You don't know me." he says calm.
"Well, explain it to me!" Dino shouts.
"Allright, I have to take care of twel- eleven members at the moment and the other group is hunting us down! I didn't want to be violant at first, but after what happened to you and to Woozi, you have to understand that I have no other choice!" he says. His voice is trembling from emotion and Dino looks at him with tears in his eyes.
"Are you really going to kill them?" he asks shocked.
"It's the only solution." Scoups sighs.
"It's not!" Dino shouts.
"Do you want them to kill us all?" Scoups is now shouting as well, causing a scene that everyone is watching without the two males knowing.
"You can put them in jail!" Dino yells.
"It's not like I'm a police officer, Dino!" Scoups snaps back. It's stays silent for a while when a voice echoes through the room.
"You bought a weapon?" Wonwoo asks shocked. Scoups sighs and stands up to meet the gazes of all his members.
"Yes, I did! What do I have to do?" Dino notices that the leader is starting to get desperate.
"But we aren't violant!" Mingyu says.
"What am I supposed to do!? Let you all be killed? Was Woozi not enough?" Scoups' eyes shine because of the tears that are forming.
"Guys, Scoups is right. We have no other choice." Hoshi says. The blonde male has stopped crying, but you can see that he isn't happy either.
"But killing?" Jeonghan says doubting.
"We can also use them to protect ourselves. If they attack first, we will use our weapon. Otherwise, we won't." Scoups says. Everyone nods and they finally agree to having a weapon. There are three guns laying on the table, one for Scoups, Mingyu and DK. There are also a few knives laying on the table for the people that want a weapon to defend themselves.
"It's been a while since we did something nice." DK says suddenly.
"You're right." Minghao agrees.
"Maybe we should organize a dinner?" Dino suggests.
"Yes, a great idea!" Wonwoo says excited. Dino is glad that the group is already cheering up a bit. Maybe they could use something like this after Woozi's death. But they will also make sure that Woozi's death won't be useless. They will honor him, that's for sure.
"Can I invite Minho?" Dino asks carefully. Scoups looks around to see the reactions of the members, but everyone is positive.
"Sure." Scoups smiles. Dino nods and for the first time in a while, they are all excited for the future. Death can be painful and hard, but life moves on. Dino also hopes that Wonwoo has realized that all of this isn't his fault because the black-haired boy with glasses was quite sad yesterday. But looking at Wonwoo now, Dino can tell that the boy with glasses is happy. Dino smiles, he loves making his team happy because from now on, they are one team. And no matter what happens, they will always take care of and protect each other.

~<*>~

Seungmin sits down next to the others. He knows that Hyunjin is staring at him, but he doesn't mind at the moment because Hyunjin is the one who made a mistake, not him. Chan sits down as well and his expression looks furious. Their leader locks eyes with Hyunjin before speaking up.
"Can you explain to me how that guy recognized you?" Seungmin hears Chan's voice trembling from anger and Hyunjin is almost too scared to look his leader in the eyes.
"I-" an awkward silence falls down while the salmon-haired boy is choosing his words wisely.
"He lost a tooth." Jisung blurs out. Seungmin looks at him surprised, he didn't know that Jisung speaks to Hyunjin.
"You did?" Chan asks. Hyunjin nods quietly and Seungmin notices Felix getting uncomfortable.
"Where?" Chan goes on. Hyunjin presses his lips against each other.
"Where!?" Chan bangs the table with his fist. Everyone is shocked to see their leader close to loosing his temper.
"At the crime scene." Hyunjin mumbles while looking down at his feet. Chan places his hand at his forehead and sighs.
"Then we can only guess that Scoups' group has found it. Otherwise the cops would've already looked for you. That explains why that guy knew you." Chan thinks out loud. Seungmin is quite satisfied to see Hyunjin being uncomfortable to be honest.
"Do you realize what this means?" Changbin asks. He too is quite dissapointed in their salmon-haired member.
"They probably know who I am." Hyunjin says.
"Which means that we are even. We only know for sure that Scoups is the leader of his group, and now they know someone in our group. We are loosing out headstart. We have to take action soon." Chan says. It stays silent for a while before Seungmin speaks up.
"What do you have in mind?" he asks carefully. Chan smiles shortly at the male and Hyunjin sees it as well. Seungmin knows that his teammate is not happy with that, but he likes the fact that his leader likes him.
"We have to take out as many members as we can. Which means that we will spy on Scoups more to see who he's with. Everyone he has contact with is going to die, allright? That's the only way to get Scoups." Chan says calmly.
"Because he only gets violant when you hurt his loved ones?" Felix asks.
"Indeed." Chan says.
"And if we get Scoups, we get the whole group." Jeongin adds.
"No group is stable without their leader." Changbin agrees.
"It's always been our plan to take Scoups down. But he is clever, so the only thing we can do is to trigger him, break him." Chan nods shortly to see if everyone understands and then they go on. Seungmin doesn't know if he's ready to kill yet, but he knows for sure that this group is planning to kill a lot of people. It will be necessary if they will ever want to get to Scoups.