Soobin couldn't get out of his thoughts as he sat tucked into the back of the café with Beomgyu and Taehyun. Hueningkai was currently missing at the moment; his fluffy blue hair poking out from the black beanie he wore as he talked to the barista up front.

'And Yeonjun is permanently gone,' thought Soobin as a set of fingers snapping in front of his eyes caused him to look from Hueningkai to the man sitting on his left.

"We're losing him again," said Beomgyu as he brought his hand back down.

"I'm not lost. I'm right here," remarked Soobin with a weak grin.

"Well, you just got a crap Dad joke out of him so we haven't lost him completely," said Taehyun who was sitting to Soobin's right. "Besides, Kai claimed that he had a foolproof plan."

"And I do!" piped up Hueningkai as he came back to their table in all his blue haired glory, armed with a steaming hot cup of coffee. He placed it down in front of Soobin before taking a seat with a proud smile on his face. It was the same smile one would wear while waiting for praise after they had just received an 'A' on a test.

"Your foolproof plan is coffee?" asked Beomgyu as Taehyun reached forward to grab said coffee, turning it slightly to look at the label.

"Coffee with five extra shots of espresso, extra cream, and sugar..." read Taehyun as he looked at the label. "Kai, I thought you were trying to help Soobin not give him a heart attack."

"This will help."

"Coffee like this makes people wired so they can't sleep. It doesn't help them to pass out," said Beomgyu as Taehyun put the coffee back in front of Soobin who cautiously slid it closer like it was a science experiment.

"You just need to hear my logic out," insisted Hueningkai. "It's flawless, I tell you."

"I doubt it, but go ahead," remarked Taehyun.

"Things that should make Soobin sleepy don't. So, since everything seems to affect him oppositely, I figured that extra espresso laced coffee would be a sure-fire way to knock him out."

As Hueningkai talked, Soobin moved to bring the cup closer to his lips. It was almost like he could feel the caffeine high already.

"What he needs is to go see a therapist," insisted Taehyun. "I mean, the man saw -"

"Don't say it," interrupted Hueningkai. "We're here to help Soobin. It won't help him to keep bringing it up. Besides, we all miss him."

All four of them looked at the empty chair at the table with them. It was a stand-in for the missing piece in their puzzle. As Soobin's eyes lingered on the empty chair, flashes of what he had witnessed came to him again. Desperate to chase it away, Soobin took a sip of Hueningkai's concoction, causing the other three to look back at him.

"Well?" asked Hueningkai.

Soobin swallowed, a cough following it as he tried to clear his throat.

"Taehyun is right," said Soobin. "I feel like I'm on the verge of a heart attack."

'But at least this pain is better than the pain that came with seeing Yeonjun die right in front of me,' thought Soobin as Beomgyu and Taehyun both slapped Hueningkai on the back of the head at the same time.

Four Months Ago...

Riding around the corner, slightly out of breath from how fast he had been pedaling, Soobin found Yeonjun's bike discarded in the stirred up dirt outside a warehouse. His cell phone was shattered on the ground near it. Practically jumping off the bike before he fully stopped, Soobin ran over to the phone, picking it up. He couldn't get Yeonjun's voice message out of his mind. He had missed Yeonjun's call by thirty seconds, and when he had tried to call back, he had been met by his voicemail.

A sudden crack like bottled thunder echoed out then. It was a noise that would lead to Soobin becoming just as shattered as the phone as he dropped it back onto the ground and ran into the warehouse. Inside Yeonjun laid alone on the cracked concrete floor. He seemed to hear Soobin's approach, just managing to turn his head as blood trickled out of the side of his mouth. Yeonjun gave a lop-sided grin; blood staining his normally bright smile as the fleeting life in him glinted in the tears in his eyes. Soobin ran over to Yeonjun as he dug his phone out, kneeling beside him and banging his knees onto the concrete. Yeonjun grappled out a hand, trying to grab at one of Soobin's wrists, but clumsily slapping at it instead. Soobin only had one digit of the emergency number dialed before the life left Yeonjun completely; the weak slapping fading away as Yeonjun's arm stilled on the ground.

- - -

Yeonjun had no clue where the van went let alone where he was now, so he had decided to be practical. On the street he found himself on, there was only one shop amongst the abandoned buildings. Thankfully this one shop - since it was a hardware store - seemed to have multiple surveillance cameras outside. He was hoping that maybe one of the cameras had caught a license plate.

Entering the hardware shop, it felt like he was stepping into a stuffed storage unit. None of the pieces of hardware seemed to be arranged with any sort of rhyme or reason. They were all haphazardly placed by type according to what Yeonjun saw as he walked towards the front counter. Behind the front counter sat a bearded man with a ring of grayish black hair about his balding head. To Yeonjun, it was as if the man was growing out his beard to show the fact that he was still capable of growing hair. It was shaggy and long enough to have become a napkin; crumbs of whatever the man had been eating earlier sprinkled throughout it. The pot-bellied man turned to look at him, causing Yeonjun to see how some of the buttons on his too small black and red checkered shirt seemed to be clinging on for dear life.

"Can I help you?" he asked Yeonjun.

"I was wondering if I could view your security footage."

The man cocked a caterpillar thick brow at Yeonjun as he asked, "What for?"

"I'm trying to track down a van that might tell me where my kidnapped friend is."

"Are you the police?" asked the man, "Or some sort of amateur?"

"I'm something like that," Yeonjun said. Not seeing any watchtowers about his immediate surroundings, he had a feeling that this place was different than Nova.

"Something like that...let me see some identification then."

Yeonjun shoved his hands into his sweatpant pockets, hoping that he had his ID card tucked in there somewhere. As he rummaged about, the man looked at Yeonjun's getup and at the noticeably grubby nature of it. Dirt had stained the front of Yeonjun's hoodie and the legs of his pants from having rolled onto the road. Yeonjun let out a sigh of relief when his fingers came into contact with the laminated card, slapping it down on the counter in front of the man's face. The man reached forward to grab it, squinting his eyes at it as he looked at what was written there.

"Where did you get this ID? The dollar store?"

"No," said Yeonjun as the man looked at the bolded title under Yeonjun's picture on the ID.

"Choi Yeonjun: Watcher of Watchtower 3153?" asked the man with a quirked brow as he looked back up at Yeonjun. "That's not the police. That's a joke."

"Can you please just let me see the footage?"

"Sorry. You're not the police," repeated the man as he put the ID card back on the front counter. "Don't know ya. Don't owe ya."

Yeonjun gritted his teeth as he grabbed the ID card and shoved it back in his pocket. Half of him had a mind to paralyze the man with the gun still hidden in his waistband, slip over the counter, and look at the footage himself. However, he knew that he couldn't be reckless. Soobin's life was at stake. Heck, Hueningkai, Beomgyu, and Taehyun's might be too if they were still alive.

"Never mind. Just forget it," said Yeonjun as he turned to leave the store.

Once back outside in the late afternoon sun, Yeonjun couldn't help but to be frustrated. The only slight lead he was hoping to get proved to be dead.

'How am I going to find you?' Yeonjun thought, trying to find the hope in what felt like an increasingly hopeless situation.