The Culprit
It had been a busy day. Prompted by one thing.
Xiu.
There was a reason Yong Soo usually came to see her and not the other way around. Disturbing Young Sil's delicate order of things threw the world out of whack for both of them. He had thought Xiu knew that.
Xiu had thought Young Sil had grown out of it by this point. So going to their house in the morning did not create any problems in her mind. She already had other problems, like the fact Ramon did not seem to realize she was angry with him. She was angry because she was worried because of the weight he put on.
Seriously, what was his obsession with ice cream?
While she had not seen Young Sil at all, he had seen her. And he had made Yong Soo a proposition.
Not that Yong Soo had really wanted to do it, but it was preferable than dealing with his brother if he did not, so he did, and it was done, and that was that.
Yong Soo did his best to convince himself that Young Sil was not the only one who liked chemistry. If Young Sil was going to test this newest experiment of his, this was just Yong Soo helping out. It would be fun!
Yeah.
And it was not hard. Young Sil only gave him a general description of things. If he found something that fit the description, he picked it up. Or pulled it out, in the case of Ludwig's ceiling fan. Getting that out without raising the ire of either easily angered man in the house was a difficult task. More difficult than distracting the dogs.
(All they required was a handful of treats. Perhaps because they knew him well enough.)
He was almost seen at one point, by Mangus, Matthias, or Antonio. Fortunately Matthias was just trying to get Antonio settle an argument that was between himself and Mangus. Antonio was too busy being cheerful to really pick a side. They were all distracted.
Everywhere else had been easy. The only other time he might have been seen was at Eduard's house. But Eduard was almost more distracted than Mangus, Matthias, and Antonio had been with what he was shouting into the phone.
Yong Soo had not seen the problem with any of it.
Well, except for the one at home.
He could almost hear Kiku in his head.
'Crush his spirit Alfred. Don't help him. The man is a freak.'
Huh. The Kiku in his head seemed a great deal more cynical and evil than Kiku in real life. Not that he had the time to think about that right now. Alfred realized he could not knock on the front door. So he knocked on the back door and then went and let himself in through the front door of the Im household.
Young Sil had to be up to something again. But if Yong Soo had really wanted to take a bunch of things from people, they would have known about it. Yong Soo would not have been quiet about it. Alfred did not know him all that well, but he knew that much about him from Maddox.
He also knew (through Maddox) that Young Sil and Yong Soo had been getting worse.
Therefore he was not all that surprised when he found Yong Soo in the house miserably in a corner.
"Smells minty in here," Alfred commented.
"Eduard's herbs," Yong Soo replied dully, not up for pretending otherwise.
"Right," Alfred nodded, grabbing Yong Soo by the arm and getting him out of there. Arthur would comment if Alfred took Yong Soo home (as would most everybody), so they went to the old church instead. "You really need to stand up for yourself, Yong Soo."
"I do too!" Yong Soo responded hotly.
"You stole everything," he retorted.
Yong Soo glared at him.
Alfred shrugged.
It did not seem like he could keep up the anger for long. And Alfred really did not know what else to say. Which probably meant he should not have said anything, but Alfred was not all that good at that.
"...so what about Maddox's dolphins?"