Believe Again: Warning
If this was one of Saeran's pranks, Saeyoung was going to blow a fuse for real. This wasn't the kind of prank he should ever play on his own family.
"It's only ten in the morning. Maybe he went somewhere else to stay overnight because he was so stressed?" MC offered, though even she didn't seem convinced by that.
Saeyoung usually appreciated her optimism, but he really wasn't in the mood. In his head, all the worst possible scenarios were springing to mind. "He wouldn't go out for the whole night without telling us first," he replied. "I've told him not to stay out too late because it's dangerous right now. And he's not even picking up his phone! Something must have happened."
He really should have placed that tracker on Saeran right from the start. If he had then they wouldn't be panicking like this.
"Could he have gone to look for his girlfriend? Spent the night at her place, maybe?"
"Oh..." That possibility hadn't occurred to him. That might have happened, since it would also explain why Saeran wasn't picking up. The thought made Saeyoung blush. His little brother, no longer a virgin? He didn't know whether to be proud of sad at the thought of his precious baby sibling finally growing up.
But it was a thousand times better than him having gotten into any kind of danger.
"I'll give her a call," MC said, immediately getting her phone and searching for the girl's contact. Saeyoung waited eagerly, praying and hoping that Saeran was there with her and unharmed.
"Hi, I'm so sorry to be calling you at this time, but have you seen Saeran?" MC's smile gradually fell as she listened. "Oh, you haven't?" Her eyes met Saeyoung's, wide with worry just like his now. "You never met him? Okay, I see... No, it's just that he hasn't come home the entire night and we're getting worried that something might have happened."
The panic was coming back at full force, and Saeyoung began pacing up and down the living room restlessly. He tried to get his brain to think about where on earth Saeran could have disappeared to. According to the security camera feed, he had left the bunker at about 10pm the night before. He hadn't brought anything along with him; just his phone. He didn't seem to be planning on going anywhere too far or for too long.
"I'll see you at the park then," MC agreed, before hanging up the phone.
"The park," Saeyoung blurted out as it clicked in his head, before MC could say anything. He was already rushing out the door without waiting for her to follow.
It didn't take long for them to get to the park. A 3-minute sprint was all it took for Saeyoung to get there, bending over on his knees and panting hard. MC, on the other hand, couldn't keep up, but she assured Saeyoung that she would catch up with him.
Once he had caught his breath sufficiently, Saeyoung broke into a jog, heading over to the bench that he usually went to with his girlfriend. He couldn't remember exactly which one it was given that there were many other benches lining the pavement as well, but it was easy enough to figure out when he found a familiar face kneeling by the bench, holding something in her hand.
"Hey," he greeted breathlessly as he approached her. She looked up, eyes widening in recognition. She uttered the same greeting with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Then she held out the item she had in her hand to him.
Saeyoung accepted it from her, and he felt his heart drop into his stomach.
"His phone," he murmured. He turned it on, and found that the lockscreen wallpaper had changed. What used to be a picture of blue skies and clouds had become a screenshot of a particularly nasty note.
"We know what you did. Leak anything and his safety won't be guaranteed."
Saeyoung was starting to feel sick. Nausea began to rise in his chest and it got worse when he looked down on the floor and found that there was a puddle of some kind of stain that looked an awful lot like vomit.
"What happened to him? Is Saeran in some sort of trouble?" she asked, getting to her feet and shooting him a concerned look.
'Trouble' was a light way of putting it. Saeyoung recalled the stories that Saeran had told him about Mint Eye: the various methods they had of torturing someone who resisted salvation, the force-feeding of drugs to brainwash the disciples, and the array of weapons that the organization secretly had to equip all of its followers.
Idiot. He must have screwed something up majorly while on that mission with Vanderwood. Saeran was right. He was rusty. He must have left some sort of trail that linked it back to him and Saeran, and now it was his fault that his brother had been kidnapped and taken away from him. Again.
How many times did he have to make the same mistake in order to learn?
"Go back home," he told her grimly, pressing his lips in a thin line to keep them from quivering. "Lock the doors and windows, and don't let anyone in if you don't know who they are. Don't go home too late at night, and stay safe."
"But what about—"
"I'll take care of Saeran, so don't worry. Just... promise me that you'll take care of yourself, okay? Saeran would want me to tell you that."
"O-Okay." She didn't ask further, probably sensing that it wasn't the right time to ask questions. With nothing else she could do or help with, she quietly excused herself and turned to leave, but not before saying, "Take care, Saeyoung. Be careful too." Then she left, presumably to go back home. At least she listened to his advice better than MC did.
A few minutes later, he heard MC call him from behind, but he didn't have the strength to turn around. He merely stood there numbly, staring at the phone that Saeran—or his assailant—had left behind. MC approached him carefully, and he wordlessly handed her the phone. She inhaled sharply when she saw the message, and met his fearful eyes, before pulling him into a hug.
MC's hugs had a way of giving him strength just when he needed it. It didn't make things any better, and their situations always remained seemingly hopeless and bleak, but just for that one moment, when all he could feel was her warmth, he could forget and believe that everything would be alright. Made him want to believe that things would be okay in time.
"We'll find him," she spoke softly in his ear. "We found him once; we'll do it again."
His wife had a knack for always saying things and making promises she couldn't be sure of keeping. Just like how he used to make all those promises of freedom to Saeran back when they were kids, he supposed. He remembered each one: he would buy ice cream for Saeran every day, they would go out and walk in the sun for as long as they wished, and they would be together, no matter what happened.
"But what if one of us gets taken by the bad guys?" Saeran asked, referring to one of the many villains their mother liked to warn them about if they ever thought about wandering outside without her permission.
Saeyoung merely smiled at him, ruffling his hair. "If you ever get lost, I'll drop everything to find you so that we can be together again. You'll do the same for me, right?"
The answer was simple enough, and Saeyoung knew what he had to do. He had lost his brother once, and he sure as hell would not let him slip past his fingers again. The gods could go fuck themselves if they thought they could play another cruel joke on him and his brother. They had suffered enough for years.
He was going to find Saeran, no matter what it took. Those Mint Eye bastards had another thing coming for them if they thought they could kidnap his brother and get away with it.
"Let's go," he told MC resolutely, eyes hard and jaw clenched. "We're going to get Saeran back."
His body was burning. It felt like someone was smashing a brick against his skull over and over, and flames were swallowing him whole. Even his perspiration felt like boiling water against his skin.
He wanted to cry out, for someone to save him from the pain, but he bit down on his lips to silence himself. His mother would hear him; she always did. He had to be quiet, or she would stumble out of bed, swinging a beer bottle as she went and burst the door to his and Saeyoung's room open. He could already hear the sound of glass shattering as she broke the bottle and threatened to stab it through his face if he didn't shut up.
He whimpered, because that was all the noise he was ever allowed to make when his brother wasn't there. Having his teeth cling tightly to his gums and lips was the only thing that could keep him barely sane all those months alone after Saeyoung left him.
"Saeyoung... Saeyoung..." He wanted his brother back. He missed Saeyoung so much. He missed the comforting hand that would rub his back when he cried, the warm touch on his head when it hurt like it did now, and the kind, soothing words that Saeyoung would utter to him that would somehow make the pain go away just a little.
But Saeyoung was gone. Or perhaps more accurately, Saeran was the one who was gone now. Would Saeyoung be angry and not want him anymore? If he was, Saeran wouldn't be surprised. After all, his older brother had always been the better, independent twin, the one who could walk out of the house to do errands and get snacks and ice cream as he pleased, the one who could walk out of the house and never look back, the one who now had a family with a woman he'd fallen in love with, and friends he'd found in the RFA.
Maybe Saeyoung never wanted Saeran back to begin with, but had no choice because they had met again in Mint Eye.
But of course. Who would want a broken, sniveling child who only knew how to cry when he was in pain? He was the defective twin, garbage, trash, worth less than a cockroach hiding underneath the floorboards. Like his mother always said, he shouldn't have been born. His brother would have been enough to get money out of their scum of a father, but he just had to follow along out of the womb. He should have been a stillborn, at the very least, but he had come out crying, wailing far louder than his brother, and it was the only thing he knew how to do even when he grew up.
Just then, Saeran felt a hand on his head. It was warm, and it felt like Saeyoung's.
"You're having a fever." Was that how Saeyoung sounded? He couldn't remember. But it was probably his brother; no one else would comfort him like that.
"Come, you need a cold shower." He felt his body being carried up, and then he was being moved somewhere. Each step that the people carrying him took made his head rock and each movement felt like his head was getting pounded into the ground.
Eventually, the rocking stopped, and he barely had time to register the cold flooring under his fingertips and feet when his clothes started being removed, save for his underwear. His body was still burning, but now it felt cold, so cold that he wrapped his arms around himself, nails raking across his skin in an attempt to cling his legs and arms close to his chest.
Then in the next moment, without warning, ice cold bullets of water began pelting his skin. Unable to stop himself, he let out a scream, clutching his head.
"You're alright, don't worry." The voice sounded a little clearer now. It sounded older, nothing at all like Saeyoung's voice.
Saeran slowly looked up, barely able to open his eyes through the pounding headache and found himself looking into the eyes of a man in a white coat, while two other people standing next to him wore black cloaks that looked all too familiar. His eyes traced the moving golden lines embroidered into the center of the cloak — the shape of a half-sun.
"Mint... Eye..." he rasped, as the phrase triggered more memories. Memories of getting beaten, bound, and force-fed a hauntingly beautiful yet bittersweet liquid. He remembered the sweet, honeyed voice of a saviour who had released him from those chains, and called him by his name in a way that didn't make him feel like he was an insignificant fleck of dust on the earth.
"Yes, you're back in paradise now," the man before him spoke with a smile, revealing the whites of his teeth. "But before we get you dressed, I have some questions for you. They're very simple, so no need to think too hard on them, okay? After that, you can get dressed and I'll give you some medicine for that fever and headache."
Saeran barely had the energy to nod. He would do anything to get this raging pain to stop.
"I know you and your brother have been doing some snooping, so I'd like to know what you've found out about Mint Eye so far and I want to know how you gathered information about us. Very simple, isn't it?"
Saeran screwed his eyes shut as he tried to think of an answer. He was starting to remember bits and pieces of the events of the past month or so: finding Sejun, meeting Vanderwood, late nights with Saeyoung, Minari, Sejun, Eun Mi, the Elixir...
"No..." he muttered in response. If he said something, Saeyoung would get hurt. MC would be dragged into this mess. And she... his radiant, beautiful flower could be in danger.
"If you tell me the truth, nothing will happen to them," the man before him assured in a kind voice, as if he'd heard Saeran's thoughts. "I will make sure of it."
"R-Really?"
"Yes. But you must tell me the truth and nothing but the truth. Do you understand?"
"...Y-Yes..."
He could do anything, as long as it made sure they were safe and out of harm's way.
Sejun knocked twice on the elaborately designed door in front of him. It bore the symbol of Mint Eye; the mark of paradise.
"Come in," he heard a voice say from within. Clearing his throat once, he pushed down on the door handle and entered.
The day curtains had been drawn, allowing limited sunlight to filter in through the shades partially covering the bottom three-quarters of the windows. The Saviour was seated in his leather arm chair by his desk. Strands of graying hair were weaved into his short black hair, and under-eye bags accompanied the hints of wrinkles on his aging face. Papers were strewn all over it, surrounding the black laptop on it.
Sejun quietly closed the door behind him and stepped forward towards the desk, placing his hands behind his back and standing at attention. "You called for me?"
"Yes, I did," the Saviour said, eyeing the boy with a curious gleam in his eyes. "Good work getting Saeran back. He's a valuable disciple and I've been hoping to have him back here for observation for a while now."
"I am glad to be of service to you, my Saviour."
"But I have to say, I'm disappointed in you, Sejun. I always thought you had potential, but I suppose not."
"W-What do you mean?"
"You betrayed us." There was a click, and in the next moment, Sejun found a gun being pointed at him.
"Pity," the Saviour said, though he hardly sounded bothered by the crime he was threatening to commit, "it's going to be troublesome cleaning up this mess you've made."
Sejun raised both his hands in surrender, panic contorting his features. He wanted to speak, but he could only manage nervous stutters in protest, unable to defend himself meaningfully.
"If you have something to confess, do it now."
"I-I-I would never!" Sejun blurted, tears welling up in his eyes as he felt his heart rate escalate exponentially. "I would never betray you, or my comrades here! Mint Eye is all I have! You know this! I haven't done anything wrong, and I don't plan to turn my back on you ever!"
"Then how do you explain how the Minari operation got found out?"
"I-I don't know! Saeran must have hacked into something- you know how he is. A genius. He must have figured a way to—"
"We questioned Saeran and he said that Eun Mi told him and his friends everything," the Saviour responded coldly. "And now they've traced it to me and gotten ahold of a lot of confidential and damning information that could get my organization shut down. For good. So what do you have to say?"
Sejun shook his head, an image of sweet, sweet Eun Mi surfacing in his mind. She had been the only girl to give him shelter when no one else would after he ran away. Took care of him and nursed him back to health even though she didn't had a snowballing debt weighing like chains on her shoulders and keeping her trapped in that hellish place in Minari. He recalled the day he had invited her to assist in Mint Eye's operations, promising her a day in her future when she could pay off her debt and run away with him to a place where no one could hurt them again. She had agreed, placing her complete faith in him, and engraved the insignia of Mint Eye on her chest, just like his. It was a promise, to Mint Eye and to him, of her undying loyalty.
"No..." he muttered, shaking his head. "Eun Mi would never betray us."
"Unfortunately, she did."
"No, she promised. She was even marked, right over her heart, just like I was."
"Anyone can get a tattoo," the Saviour said. "She must have had a change of heart, and turned her back against us. And... you know exactly what happens to traitors."
Sejun's head snapped up and his eyes went wide, lips parting. He was almost too scared to ask, but he did anyway. "What... What did... What did you do to her..."
"She's currently in the dungeons—" Sejun didn't wait for the Saviour to finish. He bolted out the room, down the hall, and burst into the stairwell, sprinting down the stairs to the very bottom of the building's basement. His throat was constricting, and it made it hard to breathe as he dashed through the blurring corridors. He tripped once, but recovered quickly and continued running. He made it into the dungeons, roughly shoving past the disciples on guard duty and yelling profanities at those who tried to stop him. His eyes and head darted around, desperately looking for her and praying that she would be alright, that they hadn't gotten their hands on her yet.
He knew all too well what happened to traitors. They were beaten, tortured until the Saviour was satisfied, and then left to rot in the dungeons for as long as the Saviour wished.
The thought of any of that happening to Eun Mi was enough to drive him crazy, and propelled his legs forward no matter how much they ached.
Eventually, he found her. Second last cell at the very end. She was chained to the wall, wrists and ankles and all, and there was blood. Too much blood.
Sejun's fingers wrapped around the iron bars and yanked at them, screaming her name, but she didn't stir. Blood was still dripping down her head and sides where her clothes had been torn apart like beasts had feasted on her, and there were multiple red lines on her body. Whip marks. The number of bruises on her was uncountable, and she was hanging from the wall, unconscious and unmoving.
Sejun screamed his throat hoarse for God knows how long, but his eyes burned with the image of Eun Mi, the only family he had left in this shitty world, hanging from the wall, hurt and abused even though she had done nothing to deserve it.
Eventually, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned around to find the Saviour standing behind him with a bunch of disciples behind him.
Wordlessly, the Saviour unlocked the door, and once he heard the click, Sejun burst into the cell, cradling Eun Mi in his hands like she was a fragile doll. Her cheeks were cold, so cold, but she was breathing. It was faint, but there.
"She's alive. For now."
"Please..." Sejun sobbed, finally letting his tears fall as he buried his face in her shoulder. "Save her..."
"She betrayed us," the Saviour repeated the charge of her crime once more, the word stinging his ears. "But I can heal her and make sure she recovers completely."
"Thank you—"
"On one condition."
"I'll- I'll do anything."
"There are people threatening the very existence of this paradise. I can have Eun Mi healed, but in order to do that, this place must remain safe. You must get rid of our enemies."
"Who? Name them, and I promise I will destroy anyone who steps in the way of eternal paradise." He would eliminate anyone if it meant keeping her safe.
"The ones who made her go astray and led her down the path of darkness. Saeran, and his friends."
Sejun's hands fell by his sides and curled into trembling fists. Saeran... That red-headed bastard who had disappeared, turned on everything they stood for and came back to hurt the Saviour, and in the process, getting Eun Mi swept up into this mess.
He was the reason she was here now, bleeding and in pain.
The despair from before was now burning up into a fiery passion coursing through his veins, and his eyes flashed with bloodlust as he looked at Eun Mi's face with his jaw clenched.
Taking one last look at Eun Mi, Sejun turned to the Saviour and nodded. "I'll take care of it."
They were going to pay dearly for this, every last one of those errant soul, and he was going to start with the people Saeran loved most.
A/N: Updates are going to get a bit slower from here on out because recess week is over and I have to get back into the rigour of college again. But. I can see. The light. THE END IS NEAR!