Beautiful Crime || DoTae

Chapter Four

Please refer to the end notes for this chapter's trigger warnings.

Tuesday, August 23rd 2161, 14:26.

Neo City, South Korea.

Neo City was the quietest it had ever been since the day that Doyoung had stepped foot in the subterranean district on his search for Taeyong. Kun had ordered a "lockdown", though it wasn't enforced, he simply requested that the citizens remain inside of their respective houses, or at the very least, the block in which that happened to be. They'd complied, much to most of Noctis' surprise, but it made their job much easier.

Doyoung and Taeyong both arrived at Block E shortly after Johnny's confrontation, though they'd been specifically told by the older man that they weren't to appear outside of the Arena until they'd both been "dealt with", as he'd put it. It had made for the least satisfying orgasm that he'd had possibly in his whole life, though he wasn't sure if the knowledge of the attack had dampened Taeyong's spirits as much as it did his.

When they arrived, Doyoung immediately recognised one of the two citizens that had been killed by the gunman. It was Mr. Hong, an elderly man who he'd helped in a Fixer job shortly after he'd resigned from the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He'd been dealing with a repeat-offender thief who Doyoung had caught red-handed and threatened with being forced to leave Neo City.

It was more a bluff than a realistic threat, but it worked nonetheless.

Mr. Hong thought highly of Doyoung—and even the rest of Noctis, after the fact—and he was a man that he was sure he'd never forget. He felt especially sorry for his widowed wife, though. She'd been balling her eyes out the moment that they'd arrived, as she faced Kun, blaming him for failing to protect her husband. The sight pained Doyoung, but he didn't have time to comfort her.

He walked over to Taeil with Taeyong by his side, and glanced down at Mr. Hong and the young woman beside him. They'd been covered by an old blue tarp, but the elderly man's hand peeked out of the side, holding his old phone which was drenched in blood. Doyoung took a deep breath. "Did they at least die immediately?"

"Yeah, pretty much, according to witnesses. Miss. Oh was shot first, and then Mr. Hong called Kun to report the attack. He was shot, and then somebody nearby shot the attacker. He left almost immediately, so I couldn't ask him about what happened, but what the witnesses said does sound pretty solid," Taeil explained. "It's an indiscriminate attack. Random chance and bad luck killed these two."

"It seems to me like it was this guy who killed them, not shit luck. Nobody accidentally takes two shots in the air and hits people," said Taeyong, as he crouched beside the attacker. "Where's this pin that Johnny mentioned?"

"Oh—" said Taeil, reaching into his pocket where he pulled a folded piece of cloth, "—it's here."

Doyoung glanced over Taeyong's shoulder as the older man took the cloth from the medic and uncovered a small bronze pin. It was tainted by small splatters of blood, but it was easy to make out the Namjeong Clan logo beneath it. Taeyong looked closely at it, before turning it upside down. A series of numbers were engraved into the underside. "He's a grunt. A new recruit, too. He's only been in the Namjeong Clan since sometime this year."

"Do you think that the Chairman sent somebody here because you refused to help him find the girl?" asked Doyoung, his voice quiet as a low-ranking member of Noctis passed by. "Do you think that he'd do that?"

"Of course, Doie. There's a reason that he's been the Chairman of the Namjeong Clan for sixteen years. He's not gonna sit on his ass moping because I refused to help him," said Taeyong, and he snickered. "I didn't think that he'd kill innocent people for his cause, though. I was expecting to be attacked or kidnapped, but clearly I thought too highly of a man like him."