Hunt

file three: hhj + hyj

Yeji had been waiting for days.

Taehyung had said that Vernon and Taeyong had taken a detour and would be back some time later than the expected, but it had already been two days. No raid had ever taken two days before.

She wasn't stupid or ignorant about everything that happened in the underworld—in fact, she very well knew how people worked—but most of the time, she was still left out of the loop. That didn't mean she held grudges against the others, though, knowing that they were only trying to protect her. After all, she was the youngest of them, not even past teenage yet.

But at nineteen, she was still an adult.

"Anything?" she asked, sitting up on the bed as Hyunjin clicked open the door and stepped in. He looked tired, like her, not physically but mentally. There was a rosen bloom on his cheeks, judging from which he had probably been talking to Taehyung again. Her brother was obvious. Prickly at times, but very easy to read.

He shook his head, shrugging off his jacket and draping it over the back of a chair before moving to take a seat on the edge of the bed. Some of the glow faded from his cheeks, eyes turning serious. "He won't tell me anything."

"Did you try asking Ten?" Yeji asked. "Or Jinyoung?"

"I'm pretty sure they're all avoiding me." Hyunjin scowled, the action making him look childlike despite his age. "Both of us, actually. Skirting around the topic when I ask them—or straight-out lying."

"Do you think they're—" She bit her lip, not wanting to continue the thought.

"No." Hyunjin's answer was final. "They've done this hundreds of times, and this was an easy hit. They could have found a promising lead on some members close by, but..."

"If that was the case, they'd tell you," Yeji completed, then sighed. She lay back down, almost falling onto the coverlet. "Maybe it's something violent."

"They've never hidden anything violent from us before. Not even the guy whose head they cut off."

Yeji winced as she remembered that incident. There hadn't been any photos, thankfully, but even hearing about the brutal incident had been enough to make her sick. "Why won't they tell us?"

"No idea," Hyunjin said quietly. Yeji recalled the first time she had met her brother, just hours after the death of her sister. Hyunjin had refused to talk to her at first, which she didn't grudge him—he had been mourning a sister she had barely known. The pain both of them shared, the hollow ache of being a shattered family torn apart by time and the clan, but it hadn't been as hard for her as it had been for Hyunjin.

Before she was told the truth just two years ago, she'd spent seventeen years of her life believing her family was dead.

In a way, it was worse. Like losing the same person twice.

Thankfully, Hyunjin hadn't shut her out forever. It had taken him time to open up, but after a few weeks of the cold shoulder she had finally been treated like a sister. For most of the others, she was just a rescue project, like a charity case, but Hyunjin truly treated her as a valuable member, considering her opinions worth something. Taeyong and Vernon had been nice, but what with Vernon so broken and Taeyong so busy looking out for him, they hadn't been able to pay much mind to her, either.

All of a sudden, Hyunjin sat up. Yeji turned her head to look at him quizzically, and found him sitting straight with unfocused eyes but a focused expression, like he was trying to listen to something. After a few seconds, Yeji realized what that was.

"Is that Taeyong?" she asked.

"You hear him?" Hyunjin asked. She nodded, and he slid off the bed to go to the door, shortly after followed by her. They stepped out of their room and into the hallway, going to the living room where the entrance was. She followed Hyunjin, his tall frame blocking most of her view, which meant that she was so focused on trying to look over his shoulder that she almost bumped into him when he stopped abruptly in his tracks.