stepping backwards?
it’s over

"Why not a car?"

"The streets are too narrow for a car here," Jennie said, her eyes flitting about the place with a sort of wary restlessness. I had the feeling she wasn't paying much attention to what I was saying. "And besides, declaring what area we are a part of wouldn't get us many fans in this place."

I raised an eyebrow, but didn't say anything. Worry had kept me up all night, worry and fear, and the exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. Not just the bikers, or the scarily familiar predator tattoo that had painted Taehyung's back, but also the fact that I hadn't been home in two days.

Sliding one last look at her, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and swiped up. No texts.

Damn it. It had been unsettling enough to disappear without my father knowing anything about where I was, and then he hadn't tried to contact me either.

"Be alert." Jennie brushed past me with a casual air, but her tone held warning. I suppressed a sigh, sliding the phone back into place and following her.

The heart of the city. That's what they had told me about where I was going, though all of my questions about the gang that had tried following me were waved away. Though Jennie was right; the road we walked along was too narrow, the streetside buildings lit up with neon signs and smelling of dust and wine.

I couldn't see much heart of the city material in the place, but on a closer look, the whole place throbbed with life. Noise and laughter rolled across the streets, and the heavy bass of  heavy music seemes to vibrate through the very asphalt. All kinds of people lounged at the roadsides—piercings, smoke, the glint of a gun here, the glazed-over eyes of an addict there. The heart of the city? I had the feeling that this was the heart of crime in the city.

I hadn't allowed anyone else to accompany me here, though I guessed that was probably what they wanted, too. It still wasn't clear how much the racers knew about my past involvement with the bikers, but using me as—and crudely—bait had been a dead ringer for the purpose I had been kept in the dark for so long. I was recruited with little knowledge, but had unwittingly become a catalyst for what had already been brewing.

Jennie stopped in front of a dilapidated-looking building, next to an alleyway but looking far from inconspicuous. Rusted railing stuck to the side of the wall facing the alley, probably a fire escape that had not been used a lot. The building itself was pretty tall, at least when compared the ones in its surroundings.

"You've always had the thirst, haven't you, to know what was going on all the time?" She wondered aloud. "Looks like the time has come, finally, for you to get some answers."

I glanced at her, bemused, then turned back to the tall structure. "When will everyone else arrive?"

"Not everyone." Her voice was on edge. "Once we're done with this, we'll have to prepare for everyone to have enough to hold out in twos and threes, and maybe we'll have to suspend races for some time. You'll have to come with, though." She looked over at me, half in distaste, though probably not because of me. "Don't tell me you still have a problem with us being the way we're supposed to be."

Mutely, I shook my head. Of course I had problems.

But I wasn't going to voice them.

"It won't be much of a problem, then," she said, but her tone sounded like she was suppressing amusement yet again. "Let's go."

"Here?" The question came up before I could stop it, and her lips twisted into a smile, though it looked too close to a sneer.

"We have an informant here." The interior was lit with a dim, reddish glow. "Some of the rest of the crew will be able to meet us here, since it isn't the safest idea to travel in packs ever since—"

She broke off as we reached the elevator, and gestured for me to follow. We stepped inside, and the button didn't light up when she pushed 4.

Packs, huh? The word reminded me strangely of a pack of wolves, and consequently the memory of a tattoo from months ago. I bristled when the doors slid close with a noise that spoke of bad maintenance, remembering the tiger sloping along Taehyung's shoulder and back, wondering what that was about. Tigers and wolves. Wolf and tiger.

"What about my dad?" I couldn't stop the half-hysterical enquiry from bubbling up.

She froze, tensing very suddenly, her posture stiff and stark. "What about him?" Her voice was carefully blank.

My forehead furrowed. It seemed a bit of an overreaction to such a minor suggestion about my home, though I guessed the racers wouldn't have wanted me to let myself out of their sights for even a minute. Notwithstanding my anxiety, I stilled my hands and continued. "He would be—worried. And now that I haven't had the chance to get out of here—"

"You can't go home, you know that, right?" Her voice when she interrupted me was gentler, but firm. "Not with them on your trail."

Choosing not to comment, I only pressed my lips into a thin line.

"We'll manage your dad, come up with an excuse for him or something." Her voice was less tense, maybe even relieved. "He will be fine."

I didn't voice my doubts, though my mouth remained stubbornly shut. As if sensing my reluctance to speak, she didn't elaborate further until the doors parted.

"Come on," Jennie said, stepping out onto a larger floor, and I quickly followed. The fourth floor was something of a long corridor, the same red lights on the walls every twenty feet, lapsing into dark patches in between. The corridor faded into the distance, and I couldn't tell how long it was despite having seen the building from the outside.

"Does this connect two buildings?" My voice rose in a question as she started down the right side of the hall. "The hallway is too long for it just to be..."

She didn't reply for a moment, but the same amusement flashed across her face as it did whenever I displayed any curiosity. "Yes."

I opened my mouth to ask her something else, but before I could voice my question, we reached a door. Without knocking, she pushed the door open and entered, not bothering to check whether I was following. With a split second of hesitation, I shook my head and walked in behind her.

The interior was so dark that it seemed disorienting at first. The room was large and spacious, if I could call it a room—a billiard table stood in the centre of the floor, and there was a massive fish tank to one side, lit from within by a brighter, florescent light.

"You're late."

I sucked in a sharp breath. The room had seemed empty at first glance, but when I concentrated hard enough, I could make out the figure of a person at one corner of the table. The shoulders were somewhere between broadness and slightness, the figure steady yet willowy, but the voice had been silky and too deep for a woman's. His body was too cloaked in shadow for me to make out his features, but there was something about the voice—

And then the person moved into the dull yet harsh light of the tank, and my breath caught in my throat.

"Jennie, Y/N." Baekhyun's familiar lilting voice was stretched with amusement as he spoke, an easy smile resting on his lips. "I'm sorry not to have revealed this to you sooner, but, you see—work is work."

──────

THE SILVER BULLET, CENTRAL SEOUL

9:53 P.M.

The boy watched the older man warily, cleaning the dirt off the edge of his knife. Some of his hair stuck to his forehead because of the sweat, darkened to a dark, almost black shade where it was wet.

"Would that be all?" The man asked, swallowing after he spoke. Some of the hair at his temples was streaked with a light gray color.

The room was apt, he knew, with soundproof walls and the place devoid of any adornments. The Silver Bullet wasn't unfamiliar to him, with frequent visits over the weeks, but it was a little disorienting to see the place so empty. In case someone got suspicious... Of course, even then, the staff was in his group's hands, anyway.

"For now." The boy said lightly, touching his brown hair and setting the knife down on the table. "I would advise you to keep this conversation to yourself. We wouldn't want the riders to catch whiff of anything, now, would we?"

The man gulped visibly, failing to hide the cracks that appeared in his composure. To an ignorant onlooker, it would have been a strange scene—a man probably in his midlife to appear to fear a boy so young, but there was no one there to see or hear the exchange.

"Why not them, though?" The man asked slowly, as if afraid to even pose a question in front of the younger, but there was something in the tense curve of his fist and the set of his jaw that spoke of determination. Maybe it wasn't fear for his life. Maybe it wasn't fear at all. "Your men. Wouldn't you want them to know...?"

The corner of the young brunet's lips lifted into a half-smile. He retracted his feet from the table just as the man's voice drifted off, and got to his feet, fixing the silvery lapel of his suit jacket as his smile grew into something swifter and sharper. "It's not just my men anymore, is it?" His voice was a soft croon, melodic but covering something sinister, like a silk cloth over a knife. "The bridge is there, too, after all..."

His amusement only grew as the man's face went almost imperceptibly paler, delight dancing in the boy's usually calm eyes like fire over water. The boy was a man now, as he had been for years, but now he looked the part, too. "Point is, I couldn't let the pack know about me." The boy brushed his hair from his eyes as he spoke.

The man nodded, looking years older as he smoothed his face into a marble mask. "They will be in Seoul soon?" He questioned in a grim tone.

"They are already in Seoul."

A stunned pause.

"When will you let them know?" The man's tone turned an octave higher as the young brunet looked at him sharply, his eyes like butterfly knives. "About all of this?"

"Not yet."

"Very well," the man said. "What kind do you want?"

The boy looked away, out of the windows that ran the entire length of the wall, down into the shimmering lights of the cityscape below. "The fastest you have."

──────

so if you didn't understand what happened in the second half, it's pretty much in third person. these two events ^ are playing out at the same time (around 9-10 p.m.).

plus The Silver Bullet is just a restaurant, don't worry. and i know the seoul i've described here is far from the real one, but it's fiction so let it pass :')

so baek enthusiasts, wassup? and if you guys still think he's part of the biker gang, think again (wink wink) still hungover from dmumt it seems

and wow, can we talk about how i'm on an updating roll?? mhM who's your favorite author now?

love,
Manx.