Youngjae left my life as quickly as I left his some years ago. It was painful, but I bet what he experienced back then was several times more painful than this. I couldn’t say I forgive him - there wasn’t a thing for me to forgive - but I neither felt angry or upset. This was life, and we all know how much life likes to play with people’s feelings. I was really fine about this, as long as he was gone for good. I wished him the best when we met for the last time at the roof, sipping on beer as we always did.

Youngjae’s departure wasn’t entirely a bad thing, though. Since he came into my life, I had spent less time alone with Jongup, and I could see how he talked less. I felt sort of guilty for this, although we were technically friends or even “neighbour”. So, I planned to take him for a day out and let him have some fun liberally.

However, before any fun, I had to complete this stupid mission Professor Kim ordered me to. It was a task so simple I didn’t even understand why I had to do: to receive a package from a lady at the park nearby, and deliver it back to the headquarters. To me it seemed like Professor was exploiting me, his only student on the upper grounds, to satisfy his laziness, but I had to do it anyway.

I dressed up casually in the morning to make it easy for me to disappear into the crowd – there was no need of gadgets like sunglasses or suitcases which will give away my identity as a spy – with a plain t-shirt and jeans with a black, ed cardigan knitted by mom. It took me less than 10 minutes to arrive at the park, but it wasn’t as easy to find the lady. I neither have a photo of her, nor her number – I was told that she would spot me easily, so I stayed away from the busy areas and stood in a more spacious, empty part of the popular family place. I adjusted the strap of my backpack awkwardly as time passed slowly, never losing my cautiousness.

“Hello young man,” I turned around as I heard somebody speaking, probably to me, and as expectedly saw a lady in her thirties, I supposed, “how are you?”

I scratched the back of my neck as I replied the usual stuff, “Hello miss, I am fine, thank you, and you?” She smiled warmly as she lowered and turned her head slowly. She had long, silky hair, dyed to dirty brown, matching her light-pink sweater and beige slim cut pants. What caught my eyes were her dark brown eyes that stretch into a kind-looking eye-smile whenever she smiled. Although she was pretty young, she gave off the motherly aura which melted my heart.

“Young fellow you know you’re awkward right?” I blushed at the statement and cleared my throat with my palm covering my mouth. “Anyway, this is the thing you need. Do not open it on the upper grounds and be careful, there is a stalker observing you for some while already.” The lady spoke, one word softer than the one before, when handing me the think, about A4-sized package wrapped in a normal-looking paper bag. My body tensed up until the lady rested her hand on one of my shoulders to stop me, “Chill, they’re not hard to get rid of. You’ve been taught how I suppose.”

I gulped and nodded quickly and subtly. I never thought that someone really would follow me. “And this is why you didn’t approach me at once when you saw me?” The lady smiled again.

“You’re not that amateur after all.” The lady chuckled heart-warmingly and turned around. “Good luck, Daehyun!”

As soon as the kind lady left, I replayed the lesson on anti-stalking in my mind. What I had to do was simple, so I tried to calm myself down in my first emergency. So I only had to walk the opposite direction from my destination and turn around. If someone behind me turned with me, he would be the stalker and I could go into crowded place to get rid of him, or go into an alley and interrogate him. I chose the second way because I would probably be beaten up – I was not a good fighter in any way.

I did as I was taught. I walked out of the park; turning left instead of right, and dived into the streets. My heart raced as I slipped agilely through the gaps in the crowd, avoided contact with suspicious people and made sure I look into the eyes of people to see if they looked guilty. To be quite honest I thought I looked pretty clumsy, but whatever.

As planned after walking for a good five minutes I paused my steps and turned a hundred and eighty degrees, eyes searching for people’s panicking eyes.

But instead of finding any, I found Youngjae’s huge and intimidating camera lens. “Hi!” The owner or the lens greeted.

“Youngjae? What are you doing here?” I pressed my palm against my chest as if to stop it from jumping out due to the shock.

Youngjae shrugged, “Well I was just trying to take some photos of my hometown before I leave.”

“You’re not stalking me or something right?” I asked, regretting a second after because it was quite a stupid question to ask regardless of his answer. He approved my stupid question by a laugh.

“Why would I stalk you, mother of unicorn? I mean, I could just call you out or something.” Youngjae punched my abdomen playfully. I found what he said true.

“Gotta go though; give me a call when you’re free from what you’re going to be doing.”

“Where are you going? Can I walk you there? It’s not like we’re going to meet as much as we want…” Youngjae said softly. I thought for a while before shaking my head.

“I’m sorry but no. It’s okay we can still webcam.” Youngjae pouted uglily and I slapped him lightly on the face for doing so. “Bye!” I waved and he waved back.

Meeting Youngjae soothed my nerves and the walk to the headquarters seemed easier. I still paid attention to my surrounding, but the tension was eased. I almost hopped the way through, humming my favourite song, until I realised that Jongup was probably heading back home after school and I shouldn’t make him wait. I then increased my speed.

Hesitance struck me when I was about to step into the building concealing the lift to hell, my hell. The headquarters wasn’t the best place to be in even though there were people who truly cared about me. The choking smell of disinfectant, the uncomfortable silence and the humming of machines… They really put me off. The security guard who had just checked my pass stared at me, cocking his eyebrows to question my behaviour. I held the package tightly in my arms and entered the elevator as the doors cut me off from the upper grounds and began to sink.

This reminded me of the day I had decided to join the organisation, or institute in other words. I stepped into the exact same elevator with so much determination and hope to change my life, to save my family. For a moment I realised I had fulfilled the second aim – to save my family. My heart skipped a beat when I thought of my family, though. I had actually given enough support for my family to, even, support an extra child – to change an orphan’s life. It was a great thing to do, I thought, that I had never thought of doing because all I could see was my family. I couldn’t see anything else, not even my best friend’s feelings. I couldn’t even accept the fact that my family used my money to support a stranger, which I had overcome now.

I wasn’t that messed up after all. And working here wasn’t that bad, too.

The lights in the elevator automatically lit up when it was fully sunk into the crust of the earth and I was a little startled when it did. My previous train of thoughts were cut off immediately and horrible memories of working underground haunted me.

I was lost when I stepped out of the elevator. No one cared. I jumped a tiny bit awkwardly to ease the weight of my backpack and gulped. A few ladies passed by me by now, but none of them were kind enough to greet me, and clanked on their high heels quickly in an annoying volume. Their faces somehow glowed like metals, but I was quite sure that they were real humans. I lowered my gaze to the small and crumbled piece of paper in my sweaty palms: Professor Kim Himchan – Head of Recruitment and Training Department.

I wandered around, trying to find the door to lead me to the person I was looking for, but all I could see were numerous computers, machines, plain white walls and metal doors with names other than “Professor Kim” engraved on them. Kim Himchan, Kim Himchan, Kim Himchan, I mumbled quietly with curious eyes looking in every direction.

“Looking for me?” A man spoke to me and I jumped in surprised. “You’re Jung Daehyun, right? A warm welcome from every staff in the headquarters of AMORE!” He said excitedly. I was bewildered. This was a warm welcome from him, but obviously not those cold-hearted robots that I didn’t even dare to approach.

“Hello,” I simply replied, “and yes my name is Jung Daehyun.” The man’s face lit up even more and I was curious how he did that – he looked so hyper since the second I had met him, with a goofy smile painted on his face.

“Hi, I am Himchan, your team leader. You’re stuck with me for the rest of your career, haha.” He casually joked while stuffing his hands into the pockets of his lab coat, “Follow me, I’ll bring you to the training centre and your dorm. Come on little boy!” He nodded his head towards me and ushered me to go with him.

Sharp white rays cut into my eyes when I finally reached the highest floor of the deep underground headquarters, and the first person I saw was the receptionist. I showed her my pass and walked straight into the office area, entering Professor Kim’s room after receiving an answer to my knock.

“Hi, Himchan.” I greeted the delighted person with a smile and removed the package from my embrace, handing it to the professor instead.

“Great job Dae, no stalkers?”

“Hopefully not.” He smiled and gave me a thumbs up.

“Your senior told me there was a stalker, but I don’t think it’ll be a difficult task for you to get rid of him right?” I smiled and nodded shyly. Professor inspected the package for a while and grabbed a cutter from his drawer. He cut the tape neatly and started tearing the paper bag open slowly and carefully. The package contains a thin pile of documents and liquid-containing syringes wrapped in several layers of bubble wrappers. A smile spread across Himchan’s face and I felt a sense of accomplishment even though this was a really stupid task.

“Thank you Dae, and good news: You can continue enjoying your work in the upper grounds okay? I think you’ll be having one mission per week instead of two in the coming days. I hope you’re taking your work up there as a vacation, I know you’ve suffered here in the headquarters. Remember, I will not stop trying to find ways to punish him okay?”

Him. I wasn’t happy about him entering the conversation, but I nodded. I would never forget that day.

“So, I guess you wouldn’t want to stay for a coffee?” I laughed as I shook my head as an answer – I had plans with Jongup today and even though it was only morning I didn’t want to lose any of my precious time. “Alright then. Off you go!” He looked up and beamed like the sun.

-

“Hyunnie hyung, where are you taking me today?” Jongup asked with a confused smile as I dragged him into his room from the living room and forced him to change out of his pyjamas. He willingly squatted down and searched for some decent clothes and I watched him from his bed. A moment passed and he stood up with a tiny grunt, holding a white t-shirt and a khaki knee-length trousers.

With no warning at all he removed his shirt to reveal his way-more-than-simply muscular back and I immediately held my breath with my two hands to prevent myself from screaming from either shock or surprise – oh my lord I never noticed how built he was for a relatively short kid. Despite my shock the boy changed as if I wasn’t there and I couldn’t determine whether this was intended or not. I decided it wasn’t intended because he never planned.

Things got serious when he even changed his pants in front of me.

Hi guys I'm back with a new chapter and I hope you'v enjoyed it!
I've been rather busy these days (I mean all the time) and I'm sorry for not able to squeeze out some time to update this story ><
Thank you for the new subscribers by the way, I love you all ^^

OH YES! If you like reading sophisticated stuff with metaphors and all that, please read my oneshot featuring no other than Daejae! If it reaches 1,000 views or 25 subscribers I will be adding an extra chapter ^^

OMG THERE IS A STALKER HAAAALP DAEHYUN