RDM | MW [✔]

07. Mingyu

"Your brother is missing, Mingyu. Could you please show me some fucking compassion?"

One would think my affinity for curse words resulted from the time I spent in active duty. Combine those years with the few I've worked under Seungcheol and it was no wonder fuck was the only word I used to express myself.

Except, no.

My fondness for vulgar language began the day I figured out how to use my tongue. Park Seohee spoke like a fucking barbarian, and it was her that'd taught me how to use curse words as both nouns and verbs.

"Rowoon is not missing, ma."

"He most certainly is. Now, I know your contempt for him prohibits you from feeling troubled in any sort of way but he is your fucking brother, Mingyu. I expect you to find him."

Find him?

"Ma, I'm busy. I don't have time to go gallivanting across the goddamn state for Rowoon. I couldn't give any less of a fuck about where he is but if I had to guess, I'd say he's in a warehouse somewhere bleeding out of his nose and stuffing his pockets with money."

"Mingyu—"

"Do not push me on this. If you want to know where Rowoon is then hire a fucking PI."

Her exhale was long, bordering on a counterfeit sob specifically designed to pump me full of guilt. I'd heard it hundreds of times before, and just like it never worked then, it didn't work now.

The next few words she spoke were lost—obscured by the sound of my blinker and the rev of my car's engine. Street lights flickered on either side of me, feeble beams fighting the mask of nightfall as it hugged my car from all sides. Devil's Thumb was nothing more than a speck in my rearview, and the farther I got from Wonwoo, the more I wanted to turn around. His absence was a harrowing, empty sensation that I felt across every inch of my body—filleting me open with slow, uneven cuts.

I wanted to fucking shoot something, and if my mother kept pushing me to seek out my brother, it was going to be him.

"Don't be ridiculous, Mingyu. I am not going to hire a PI. You're in the mob, for fuck's sake, can't you simply send an intern to check up on him? Perhaps even coerce him into calling his fucking mother?"

"An intern?" Christ. "We don't have fucking interns, ma."

"Well, then you're going to have to do it yourself."

My thumb hovered precariously over the bluetooth button on the side of the steering wheel.

Hang up.

"He hasn't spoken to me since our dinner, Mingyu. That's very unusual for him. Rowoon calls me nearly every day."

"Maybe you pissed him off."

"I did no such thing!"

Her gasp was as animated as ever. I could practically see her fingers flitter across her collarbone with false decorum—the skin around her neck tightening as she feigned shock.

With a quick jerk of my wheel, I was barreling down a desolate street. Clouds of dirt rolled across my windshield, and I just barely made out the uneven treeline through a wave of fog.

"Ma, I've got less than ten minutes before I'm walking into a meeting. I've got to go."

"Mingyu, please consider reaching out to your brother. If not for any reason other than to prove to me you didn't kill him yourself."

Oh, for fuck's sake... "I didn't kill Rowoon, and you damn well know it."

He wasn't worth the bullet.