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.

Yeji pulled back at the last moment, raising her hand to rest it on her brother's arm. "What?" she asked, brow furrowed, and tugged at his sleeve. "What is it?"

But he stayed silent. Yeji sighed, shaking her head, and pushed him to the side, stepping out from behind him to look. The scene wasn't unusual, with the boys carrying duffel bags filled with weapons, but unlike the usual, there were no bloodstains. They must have cleaned it off, she thought, blinking as her gaze slid from Taeyong to Jennie to—

Her shoulders tensed in surprise.

There, at the threshold, was a ghost. Yeji lost sight of her surroundings for a moment, getting tunnel vision when her eyes landed on the person who was staring right back at her, her shaken expression mirroring Yeji's own. Almost literally.

Right in the doorway stood her dead sister.

Yeji heard Hyunjin inhale softly next to her, and her eyes whipped to the boy. She herself was surprised, of course, the kind of messy surprise that comes from confusion, but Hyunjin, she knew, wouldn't be able to take it as well. The muscles of his arm went taut under her hand, and before she could say something, he was pulling away from her and striding towards the door.

"Hyun—" Yeji cut herself off, hesitating in her position as she deliberated hastily whether or not to follow. But he had already reached the door, and was raising one arm, and the other—and then he was hugging her.

The room seemed to fall silent, as their sister stared at Hyunjin, apparently struck dumb. She had flinched while seeing him run towards her, her lips thinned, but now that he had his arms around her and his face buried in the crook of her neck, she didn't seem to know how to react.

Then, as Yeji watched, she slowly raised her arms and put them around him. Her features seemed to relax, but her eyes still shone—whether from tears or the light, Yeji couldn't tell. She raised her head, her eyes meeting Yeji's and beckoned her with a small smile and a curl of her fingers.

This time, Yeji didn't hesitate.

──────

"I thought you would be more—upset," Y/N confessed as they sat in the siblings' room a few minutes later. Her hands lay curled uselessly in her lap, eyes flitting up to Hyunjin's awkwardly. Hyunjin still remembered her better than Yeji, but he had still forgotten bits and pieces of her. The genuine warmth in her eyes even when she didn't smile, the reflexive flexing of her once-wounded shoulder.

Of course, there were parts that were different, too. She seemed more there, more grounded, a little less forlorn like everything she had known all her life was about to come to an end. Hyunjin had thought about meeting her again, in another universe or the afterlife, and he had always been a yelling, sobbing mess. But strangely, he felt calm, calmer than he had in weeks. Years. In fact, looking at his sister so present, he almost regretted being upset at losing her. Maybe the years away had done her good.

"I'm tired of being angry all the time," he replied. Yeji glanced at him sideways, looking concerned, but he touches her fingertips reassuringly. "I've been angry at you for two years. That's more than enough." He touched the side of his jaw with the curve of his forefinger, feeling a muscle jump in his cheek. "I'm done being angry. I wanted you back, and I got you, so I'm not angry anymore."

His words were forceful, almost petulant, but Hyunjin didn't care. His fingers had tightened around Yeji's hand, but she only smiled at him when he released her.

"I don't deserve that," the oldest replied after a moment of silence. She chuckled, but it sounded forced, and her smile faded too quickly. "Honestly, I would have felt better if you had yelled at me."

She looked better, but there was still a heaviness about her, like the air was damp with blood mist. Hyunjin recalled the scene from the living room—Taeyong standing stiffly apart from her, Vernon not even looking up from unzipping the bag, his expression as blank and cold as marble. Hyunjin guessed he hadn't been a part of her life from two years ago for long, but he still remembered the trio always being joined at the hip. There was something amiss about their dynamic now, as if the boys had drawn a shutter over their window of contact.

It felt wrong.

"If you stick around, there will be a lot of opportunities for that," Hyunjin quipped. Yeji smiled.

"Well, I'm here to say now," she replied with a faraway look in her eyes. Hyunjin was more surprised that he was so unsurprised by the return. Or maybe he had envisioned it so many times that it didn't surprise him anymore. The conversation felt bizarre, but at the same time, completely normal. "What do siblings do? I'm new to this, but I guess the two of you aren't."

"Talk?" Yeji suggested.

"Fight," Hyunjin said.

She laughed. "I'll go with talking for now." She cleared her throat. "So, what did I miss?"

Hyunjin raised his eyebrows. "A lot."

"Not much," Yeji said, giving him a look before turning her attention back to her. "A lot of deaths—on both sides." She bit her lip, and Hyunjin sensed her discomfort.

"How about you go first?" he intervened, fixing her with a narrow look. "Undercover ghost, huh? I almost got you killed."

"Oh, no, I wouldn't have been killed," she said breezily, and lay down, crossing her arms behind her head to form a makeshift pillow. A musing smile appeared on her lips. "I guess it started when Seulgi told me I had to die..."

──────

i'm writing a separate racer!hyunjin oneshot on tumblr rn and though he's supposed to be drastically different from his character in this story, i kept imagining him with long black hair while i wrote this and he looks so GOOD

(please support skz's album which comes out on the 17th—and the racer oneshot, which ALSO comes out on the 17th)