outbreak | bts

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Taehyung gaped at him.

"Hyung, are you crazy?" He yelled, hushing himself when he noticed some of the children flinch at the noise. He came to stand beside Baekhyun, with Jin and Byunhyun following suit.

"The nearest station from here is Jamsil-" Taehyung began.

"Which isn't far at all." Byunhyun reasoned.

"If you could drive at a normal speed on a normal road! We had to take a crazy number of back roads so that we could get here undetected and even then we had some close calls in our car which isn't even that big. A big yellow vehicle moving around will definitely attract attention." Taehyung rebutted, looking exasperated.

"We can come up with contingencies. If we cover the windows properly, the kids won't look out, then they're more likely to stay quiet. We can oil the gears so that they make less noise and we can carry more materials that you can use in the bus. Come on, guys. We can't stay like this for who knows how long." Baekhyun pleaded, gesturing to the group with a sweep of his hand.

Sharing a look with Jin, Taehyung ruffled his hair in defeat. He knew that the kids couldn't stay here, but the journey would be rough. Would they really be able to stay still and quiet for long enough? Sensing Taehyung's doubt, Jin put himself back on teacher mode. Clapping his hands lightly to get everyone's attention, he spoke in a gentle manner.

"Alright everybody, my name is Teacher Kim. These are my friends Taehyung, Baekhyun and Byunhyun." He introduced. After a short pause, the children quietly bowed politely in acknowledgment, careful to be quiet since that's what their own teacher had said. Jin smiled at them.

"Oh my, what a polite group of students. It must have been scary having to hide in here for a very long time, am I right?" He asked, keeping a finger on his lips to indicate that they shouldn't answer him loudly. The students nodded, many of them beginning to leave the huddle around their teacher to sit on the floor and listen properly. Taehyung blinked at Jin's back.

"We want to get everyone to a place where we don't have to be so quiet, and where the scary people can't see us. Would you like that everyone?" Jin asked again, keeping his finger pressed to his lips. The other adults looked mortified at the thought of leaving their current safe space. The children nodded eagerly, desperate to leave the space filled with tension.

"In order for us to get to that place, we need to practice creeping around quietly so that the scary people don't find us. Can you do it everyone?" The children nodded once more. Realising what Jin was trying to do, Baekhyun tapped Taehyung away from the group and began to pick up the cards with tape on the side and grip them in his hands. He exited through the door that would take him to Byunhyun's smithy since the bus was closer to that entrance.

Following his lead, Byunhyun grabbed a can of car oil and left the same way, leaving Taehyung to assemble piles of wood and thin sheets of metal into bundles with rope, thanking God for the Byun brothers' tinkering habit as he went. When he managed to make a few bundles that held a reasonable amount of material but weren't unmanageable on his own, he grabbed two of the bundles and strode past Jin who was practicing actions with the children.

When Jin put his finger to his lips, the children clasped their hands over their mouths. When Jin held his hand flat in the air, everyone crouched down. When Jin patted his thigh twice, the children found a partner to cling to, still crouched down. Impressed with how quickly he had developed the signals for them, Taehyung felt some concern lift from his shoulders and left the smithy too.

~*~

Seocho station was utterly deserted. Nobody had come through in the time Namjoon and Hoseok had been there, which suited Namjoon just fine. Most likely once the news had come out, employees and commuters alike had rushed home to hide with their loved ones. The first thing the pair had done after checking that the main station was clear was go down to the platforms and manually lock all the gates that usually opened automatically when trains arrived.