Doubler || NCT || Completed

25

Heavy silence filled the room once everyone was seated. Yujin fidgeted awkwardly with the paper she had used as her cheat sheet during the game, her eyes searching everyone's faces, trying to gauge the general atmosphere of the room. Most of the guys seemed confused and worried - their brows furrowed and postures rigid.

"So, what's our plan?" Jaehyun asked when no one else seemed to be willing to speak up first.

"I think that our plan is to come up with a plan", Yuta said blatantly.

"Maybe first we should hear the rest of Yujin noona's story, since it was interrupted last time", Jeno proposed. Some of the guys agreed with him.

"I'd like to hear the story from the beginning", Mark quipped with interested eyes. He had sat down next Haechan who kept kicking his ankles imperceptibly.

"I'm not starting from the beginning for the third time today", Yujin refused his curiosity in a heartbeat. It had been enough that she had begun the story once for the group and then again when Taeil had joined the company, she didn't want to do it again.

"Noted", Mark answered and grinned awkwardly. He didn't seem to notice that Haechan was still kicking him, or maybe he was so used to it that he didn't pay any attention to it.

Yujin rubbed her forehead, gathering her thoughts for a moment before narrating the chain of events of the past Thrusday evening to the entire group. It wasn't particularly enjoyable to reminiscence it all, especially since her memories were hazy and unclear due to the tranquilizer she had been shot with.

"I'm still not sure whether they were hunters or poachers but I'm leaning towards the latter, since they have forced that doubler kid to work for them", she told them at the end, after telling them about the conversation she had had with the Jisung boy, followed by the chase, fight and escape.

Taeil and some of the older ones nodded thoughtfully.

Jeno, however, cleared his throat. "I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but what's exactly the difference between hunters and poachers?"

Yujin couldn't hide her surprise.

"Are you kidding me?" she asked, confused by his question. It was unbelievable that an adult doubler wouldn't know such a basic thing but at the same time she was certain that he wouldn't joke about stuff like that.

Jeno shook his head. Had he been in his animal form, his ears would've probably been pinned against his head in embarrassment.

Yujin looked around and saw that he wasn't the only one with puzzled expression.

"How come you don't know?" her bewilderment was obvious.

Jeno faced her with uncertain eyes but before he could say anything, Renjun cut in.

"That's rich coming from someone who doesn't understand how grouping instinct works", he huffed and narrowed his eyes. "Just because you know something doesn't make it indispensable knowledge."

Yujin opened her mouth to defend her question but realized that Renjun did have a point. Many doublers only ever spoke about hunters or then used the terms interchangeably - even she did it. Maybe those who had grown up in packs safely didn't know the importance of knowing the difference.

"Sorry", she said instead, pointing her apology to Jeno and the others who had seemed confused by the terminology. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad."

"The basic difference between hunters and poachers is that hunters want to kill doublers while poachers want to make a profit", Taeil explained on Yujin's behalf. "Hunters are driven by an ideology that we are unnatural monsters and that the world would be better without our existence. Some hunters do earn money by killing us but most of them are motivated by sheer anger. They rarely use trackers since it would be against their believes to work with such an unnatural being."