CHANGE versus US (ON-HIATUS)

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

"It's already late, I'll take you guys home so you can rest." The manager said.

The boys, along with Manager Jeon, were still outside at half-past two in the morning. They had already left ICCJ for the night, but an unplanned trip to a nightclub prevented them from returning home sooner. They have something that needs to be taken care of soon.

The older boys went with Manager Jeon to deal with the situation, while the younger boys remained on the bus, not daring to open their windows but equally irritated by the situation.

That matter being Soonyoung unexpectedly going MIA, and the boys searched for him for hours.

Earlier......

As they prepared to leave ICCJ, Manager Jeon was doing his normal headcount. He roll-called when he counted eleven out of twelve people and concluded that Soonyoung was the one who was missing.

He tried looking for Soonyoung on his own, assuming he may have wandered off somewhere, but when he couldn't find him, he alerted security, who assisted him in searching the building while the boys and a few staff members joined in the search and began asking around.

After half an hour with no sign of Soonyoung, the boys grew increasingly worried. Manager Jeon charged into the security office, waking the snoring guard from his seat, although he didn't have permission.

Manager Jeon wasted no time in demanding that the CCTV footage be reviewed. The guard initially declined, claiming that he did not want to violate their security protocols. The guard eventually let the manager watch the CCTV footage when the head of security arrived.

They spent another half-hour going over the footage, Manager Jeon becoming more anxious as the minutes passed and they still hadn't seen Soonyoung in any of them. Manager Jeon is more concerned about Soonyoung's safety than about being fired if Mr. Kim finds out what happened.

As the footage continued to show no sign of Soonyoung, manager Jeon was losing hope. They move from camera footage in the hallways to camera footage inside the practice rooms.

Manager Jeon paid close attention to the footage, keeping his eyes peeled for a certain blue-haired man, and eventually, after hours of searching, he saw Soonyoung himself.

The video came from one of the rehearsal rooms, but SEVENTEEN's, instead MONSTA X's. This perplexed manager Jeon. Aware of Soonyoung spending more time with another group, he thought little about it. But now he realizes he should have.

The footage had a timestamp of 7:30 pm, showing that it had been an hour before Manager Jeon had done the roll-call and realized his absence. Nobody noticed Soonyoung leaving on his own because there were so many of them inside the wardrobe hall earlier.

Had he taken the time to inform someone of his plans, the problem would never occur. But Soonyoung had been behaving haughtily lately that Manager Jeon already foresaw things would eventually spiral out of control.

They watched the video, a little fast-forwarding it. Soonyoung was laughing and joking around on the sofa with Hyungwon, Kihyun, and HoJoon, while Wonho sat on the carpeted floor with a sleeping Changkyun curled up in his arms.

Just Shownu and Minhyuk were missing, but the former emerged from the bathroom not long after, looking exhausted as though he had just run a marathon. One could only guess what he was doing inside the toilet, given his heavy panting and sweaty appearance.

The response surprised those watching the video when, not long after Shownu, Minhyuk emerged from the same bathroom with the same disheveled look.

However, since there were no cameras in the bathroom or any other bathrooms in the building, no one can confirm or refute what the two men did inside. They can only go by how the two looked when they first appeared.