Bubble

27. Hidden

Minho stayed where he was by the table after listening to what Hyunjin had told him, not sure how to respond.

"Um...sorry?" Minho eventually said as Hyunjin just nodded his head.

"You're not going to ask follow up questions?" asked Hyunjin confused as he turned to watch Minho go back to work sorting the folders.

"It's not that I don't want to or don't have questions, but I'm respecting your privacy," said Minho without looking at him. "I know that I appreciate when people respect mine."

Hyunjin nodded again, watching Minho as he stayed focused on his task of sorting the folders. Hyunjin had never bothered to tell the story of his past to anyone, not even his best friend Seungmin. For Hyunjin it was a past that he didn't want anyone to compare him with, but he had a feeling that Minho wouldn't.

"Can I tell you about it?" asked Hyunjin.

"You want to tell me your past?" asked Minho as he stopped what he was doing to look at Hyunjin.

"I do. I want to tell someone since I've kept it to myself all my life. Hearing what you just said, I know I can trust you to keep it private. Besides, maybe this will help us bridge the gap from 'strangers searching an abandoned mental institute' to 'friends searching an abandoned mental institute'."

Minho didn't say anything, letting his actions speak for him as he took a seat in one of the half lopsided chairs at the table. Hyunjin moved to take a seat across the table from him, setting his stack of folders off to the side in order to fix his gaze on Minho. Minho remained silent, giving Hyunjin the floor to start and stop whenever he pleased.

"Before I was even born, my mother had to hide from my biological father.  Whenever I asked her why she had to hide us, she had said it was safer that way. When I was little, I didn't think much of it, but as I grew up, I started to wonder if safer meant he had abused her or something. In her effort to hide me from my father, she gave me her maiden name and moved us far away from Seoul. I grew up being raised by my mother and it was just the two of us against the world until she got really sick when I was in middle school and passed away. When I was helping my grandmother clean up some of my mother's things before I moved back to Seoul with her, I found letters my mother had left unsent to another woman, thanking her for saving her from an abusive relationship and for preventing me from growing up in that kind of household. Within one of the letters, I finally saw my father's name for the first time and it was then that I vowed to hunt him down. I wanted to know why he did what he did, but ever since I came back to Seoul, it's like the man is a ghost. This is the first time I've seen his name again since those letters..."

"So, you've been trying to track this man down for a while?"

"Ever since my mom died, yes," said Hyunjin. "No wonder I can't find him if he was here. He's probably holed up in some other hospital somewhere."

"Maybe I could help," said Minho. "At least, if I've seen the name, I could help you."

"You'd want to?"

"I feel like I owe you one for coming along to help with this, and besides, I thought you wanted to cross into the whole 'friends' territory with this heart-to-heart?"

Hyunjin cracked a small grin, nodding as he put the folder with his father's name on it down onto the table and pushed it towards Minho. Minho grabbed the folder, looking at the name on it before his eyes grew wide.

"What is it?" asked Hyunjin.

"That name...surely it's just a common last name..."

"Why? Do you think you know him?"

Minho closed his eyes for a moment, thinking back to where he found the note thrust in the folders that led him to come here in the first place.

'Everything on the note was blacked out except the name of this institution...' thought Minho, 'and the chances of a man with the same last name working for the company right after the death of the main actor of 'Bubble'...'

"Lee Know? Are you alright?"

Opening his eyes, Minho looked at Hyunjin sitting across from him. Hyunjin was fixing him with a look, waiting for him to fill the void between them.

"I think we found the something suspicious I was looking for," said Minho finally, laying the folder down on the table before them so that the moonlight lit up the name on the file folder.

The name Ahn Jongsu.

- - -

Seungmin sat in the car, muttering to himself as his eyes faced the building before him. He was half wondering if he would see the intermittent flicker of flashlight beams from inside to show him where Lee Know or Hyunjin were, but he was having no such luck.

"I am not a scaredy cat," said Seungmin out loud to himself. "My fear is justified. I mean, why did we have to wait until the middle of the night to do this..."

Seungmin's muttering was cut short when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. Turning his head, he saw nothing but oddly elongated shadows caused by random piles of debris. Even so, he kept his eyes focused on it for a moment as if something odd was hiding within the dark there.

"You're making up ghosts to justify things..." commented Seungmin.

Just as he was about to turn his head to look towards the building again, he caught sight of another flicker. This one wasn't a flicker of a shadow though. This one had color to it. It had life and a destructive one at that.

Fire.

The flickering flame greedily ate the debris surrounding it as if it had never had food before. Its tentative licks soon became ravenous bites as its appetite became insatiable, devouring everything in its path on the way towards the building.

Cursing under his breath, Seungmin dug out his phone to try and text Hyunjin to warn him, but he noticed they were out of range of any sort of service. Panicking as he noticed the fire growing larger outside, Seungmin threw his phone aside and did the only other thing he could think to do.

Sliding over into the driver seat, he slammed on the car horn repeatedly, letting its abrasive squawk fill the night again and again as a man watched him from the shadows for a moment before disappearing away from the building and into the night.

- - -

"My father could be who you're searching for too?"

Minho nodded, but before he could open his mouth to try and offer any sort of explanation, he paused at the presence of an odd noise in the night. Standing up from the chair, he moved closer to the still partially open door as he listened near the hallway.

"Do you hear that?" asked Minho as Hyunjin stood up to come join him at the door.

"It sounds like a dying bird," commented Hyunjin as it continued echoing through the building.

"That's not a bird," said Minho after listening for a second longer. "That's a car horn. Do you think it could be from Seungmin?"

Hyunjin dug his phone out of his pocket to check for a text message just as a sickly sweet smell started to reach their noses followed by the popping sound of glass breaking. Poking his head out into the hall, Minho could just barely make out a small flame at the end of the hall.

"The building is on fire!" shouted Minho. "We have to get out of here!"

He quickly moved to snatch the empty file folder with Ahn Jongsu's name on it off the table before rushing towards the door that Hyunjin had already snuck through.

Of course, as misfortune would have it, the fire had laid claim to the stairwell they had used to get up to the third floor, leaving them trapped.