Super

33. impromptu history lesson

Mark watched Taemin disappear into the elevator as soon as the others started mingling.

He frowned as soon as he saw him leave, then glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. Apparently not. Baekhyun and Shao were still chumming it out over at the massage chairs, Taeyong as Lucas drinking in silence at the watch point, and Kai and Ten looked hammered—well, at least, Kai did. The only thing different about Ten was the slight, languid smile on his lips as he observed Kai try to down another glass, a shot glass hanging between his fingers.

Mark bit his lip and glanced back at the closed doors of the elevator uncertainly. On one hand, he kind of wanted to join Taeyong and Lucas, since this was his one opportunity to interact with them, but on the other hand, his hero could be downstairs doing something Mark could help out with.

With a sigh and a few seconds of making up his mind, he set his jaw determinedly, grabbed his lime soda from the table, and slipped into the elevator while no one was watching. Only once the doors shut in front of him did any doubt enter his mind—the place had like, forty floors, and Taemin could be on any one of them.

Mark shook himself out of it and pressed the button leading to the meeting room. It was the floor the team hung out on whenever they were together in Nova Tower, and not only did it house their training rooms, but also the laboratory and a few mysterious doors that always seemed to remain closed.

The elevator doors slid open when Mark was still absorbed in his thoughts, so soundlessly that he didn't even realize it at first. He came back to his senses with a jolt, and stepped through, walking the isolated hallway connecting the elevator doors to the second set of protected gates. He paused at the entrance, bending to pass the retinal scan before they opened, allowing him access.

He stepped inside, and the doors shut behind him, leaving him blinded in the pitch darkness before the elevated circle in the center of the floor lit up with a dulled orange glow. Unlike the rest of the building, this floor was built with a strange floor plan shaped like the figure eight, with a door in the middle separating the two circles. Doors lines the walls of the compressed-cylinder-like structure, identical except for the etchings on their surface, designating them their identities. Being on this floor sometimes reminded Mark of the inside of a microwave oven—if the microwave oven had been circular.

Thankfully for him, it wasn't hard to guess where the billionaire was. The door to the meeting room was firmly shut, but a soft blue glow emanated from the thin slit at the bottom, indicating that it was occupied.

Mark punched in the password, and the door opened to reveal the meeting room. Unlike usual meeting rooms, this one was also in the shape of a cylinder—Taemin liked his circles—and was floor-lit, with high walls that led up into a beckoning darkness. Half the walls were one-sided glass, allowing them a view of the city outside. It did have the normal meeting furniture, too—a long table covered with Lucas's conspiracy theory magazines, a few chairs, and appropriately messy couches. They had all left their marks in the room, and the artifacts left behind were much like a dog pissing over a place to mark its territory, ranging from Taeyong's neck pillow (one he actually used, seeing as he slept more than he contributed to the assembly) to napkin bits covered in Ten's surprisingly beautiful doodles.

Taemin was standing over the long table, a section of which he had cleared away, and was apparently studying an issue of The Conspirator. No, it wasn't actually that, as Mark noticed when he got closer, but a heavy-looking notepad filled with pictures and scribbled evidence of the Foursaken, probably from Jae's basement.

"I noticed you left the party," Mark began, and Taemin looked up, surprised at first, but a slow smile curved his lips as he realized who had crashed his mini-party. He hesitated, then backtracked, cheeks burning as he tried to rephrase his words. "I mean—not like, left left, but that you didn't stay to kind of interact or make a toast like they do in movies or—"