Scream 🔱 Monsta X

TWELVE

"the footage"

Chanyeol slowly approaches Taeil who was sitting down on a stool at the Grindhouse. "Uh, it's Taeil, right?" He speaks up, getting Taeil's attention.

"Park Chanyeol." Taeil smiled as Chanyeol sat down next to him. "Are you hoping to run into Kihyun?"

"It's that obvious, huh?" Chanyeol says.

Taeil realized that there was trouble in the 'Kihyun and Chanyeol Paradise' and recalled what had happened this week.

"I witnessed firsthand that Dangerous Liaisons video landing on your boy." He says. "And that's gonna be a tough one to come back from."

"But, not impossible?"

Taeil straightened up his posture and placed his crossed arms on the counter.

"See, the problem with being a nice guy is that screw-ups look so much worse on you because you're decent. Like, Baekhyun's a bitch. Nobody expected anything better from him." Taeil says and Chanyeol frowned at the last sentence. "And I hear that he talked you into doing some things that were kind of out of your comfort zone."

"Um, he had a way." Chanyeol says.

"Maybe we can help each other." Taeil proposed, earning the younger's curiosity. "I need to know more about Baekhyun. You should come on my podcast, tell me all the stuff that Baekhyun was doing and own your part. Take responsibility."

Chanyeol thought about the offer Taeil was making, not really sure if it was something he should do and eventually help him out.

"Everybody loves a redemption story." Taeil added, gave a friendly pat on the younger's arm before gathering his belongings and leaving him.

♡

"He is definitely hiding something." Jooheon says as both him and Changkyun walk in the school hallways that afternoon. "I did some digging into Mr. Im Jaebeom. You know what I found?"

"He doesn't exist?" Changkyun guessed.

"No. Come on, seriously?" Jooheon scoffs, his best friend only shrugging. "I found four guys, none of whom are our Mr. Im."

"That's damning, how?"

"This Mr. Im didn't exist until he moved here. You don't change your name unless you've got a secret." Jooheon explained.

"Like trolling teens through their webcams to find a victim."

"Exactly. Cops turn themselves inside out searching for logical suspects, but we could just be looking at your garden-variety psychopath."

Changkyun only frowned and shook his head at the thought. "I don't buy it." He told him.

"Yeah, well, neither did the victims of the BTK Killer 'till they were staring down the business end of a boning knife." Jooheon says.

"I thought he was your favorite teacher."

"He is. Which is why the possibility is so alarming." Jooheon adds.

"Maybe he was being manipulated by another psychopath." Changkyun says. The two still walk side by side as they think deeper. "Baekhyun."

Jooheon stopped, slowly nodding. "Baekhyun discovered his secret and blackmailed him into planting the malware." He says. "Hmm... Then anyone he trolled could have motive. The ones he slept with... the ones he didn't... the ones who envied him," Jooheon looked back at his best friend. "... and the ones who despised him."

"That's a long-ass list." Changkyun comments.

"So, pretty much everybody's a suspect." Jooheon finishes. "Including us."