light a flame || seventeen

three ; hey buddy.

WONWOO

yin and yang return to the warehouse unannounced for the third time. there's no greeting, no preamble. they're in the middle of dinner. "they know about vernon."

wonwoo, along with everyone else, stops what they're doing, eyes wide and expressions ranging from shocked to horrified. wonwoo readjusts his glasses, feeling them slipping down his nose.

"how?" someone asks, maybe himself.

yin's brows furrow, and they exhale a little shakily. "i'm realising now that there's a lot of missing context, so bear with me as i explain. before yang moved to seoul, i met xu ming hao—yes, the investigator—and we've lived together ever since. he eventually moved into the law enforcement field here and was put into the same unit as lee chan—yes, the investigator—who i, uh, dated at one point.

"i've been living as minying with minghao, and sometimes he tells me about their progress on catching perilous, which is why i know anything at all. it's how i knew they had a lead on yang. jihoon and vernon apparently went to the same university and even did a project together, but that's how jihoon figured it out."

wonwoo doesn't mention the fact that he also knows jihoon from university. he's too shocked to speak, not expecting anything like this—much less all of the connections and background of yin's life. but it doesn't stop there.

"and as for me," starts yang, hand squeezing yin's, "the name i usually go by is jilong, but i started using jiyong once i moved here. i'm half chinese, half korean. my father's side is chinese, and i lived on the mainland for most of my life before going to university in taiwan. but my mother's side is korean, and that's how i'm related to jeongin and hongseok."

as quickly as wonwoo is trying to process things, a thought occurs to him, but he doesn't have time to voice it.

"i'm half and half, too, in the same way," adds yin. "i mostly use minyeong, but, as i said, i use minying with minghao. if you haven't figured it out by now, i'm president park's kid, and if you were unaware, i tend to disappear a lot. i guess i like doing other things instead of thinking about my impending future. but i brought jeongin to sun castle when he was a kid and first saw a future black moon there. it was moon, in fact. more recently, i brought over a band of pirates from an island called wonderland."

"hold on," seungcheol cuts in, nearly waving his arms in the air in distress. "this is a lot. give me a minute."

it's uncomfortably silent as the quartet takes in everything. yin and yang just solemnly watch them.

"wait," mingyu exclaims after a moment. "you brought—what do they call themselves again? the golden rays or something?—them to seoul? i've known some of them for years."

"the golden lights," yin corrects with a fond look that quickly turns sombre.

wonwoo clears his throat, fiddling with the cords on his hoodie and feeling especially awkward. "i've been friends with a guy named yuto for a while now, and he's friends with hongseok. i actually asked him the other day if he knew jeongin, and he said he did."

yin stares at him for a moment. "we know yuto as well. he's the one who told us he knew you."

if he and yuto hadn't already talked, wonwoo would've been a little peeved about being outed by someone he calls a friend. but since he knows yuto better than yin, he's kind of annoyed that they snitched on him. for whatever reason, he completely trusts yuto. he's always known the guy to be thoughtful and kind, not one to talk shit or butt into other people's business without good reason.

"um, that reminds me," yang says, suddenly as nervous as wonwoo's ever seen her. "i might have sent him—hongseok, i mean—over here the other day."

seungcheol's eyes narrow. "what do you mean by that?"