√ 𝐸𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑛𝑡 // 𝐻𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑔 𝐻𝑦𝑢𝑛𝑗𝑖𝑛

nineteen.

Nari's p.o.v.

     "Are you okay?"

     The girl snapped out of the stupor she'd gone into after her call with Hyunjin and squinted. "Huh?"

     Taeyong rolled his eyes while smiling. "Are you okay, silly bean. Did they agree to meet?"

     "Oh," she gathered her thoughts and swallowed. "Um, yeah. They did."

     Squinting, Taeyong bent down to look his sister in the eye. She squirmed beneath his piercing gaze, uncomfortable with the unexpected attention.

     "Is there something else?"

     Nari exhaled shakily and bit down on her lip, willing herself not to overreact.

     "I called one of my members, not Chan," she explained while picking at the skin around her fingernails. "And he seemed like he was really angry with me."

     With the change in her demeanor, Taeyong could see that this was obviously stressing her out. He raked a hand through his thick locks, sighing.

     "Listen, I'm sure he's not upset with you. You just got kidnapped, I'm pretty sure he's angry with us," Taeyong said with raised eyebrows.

     Slowly, Nari nodded in agreement. "Yeah... you're probably right."

     Taeyong smiled good-naturedly and mussed Nari's hair up, giggling as she snarled at him and combed it back down with her fingers. His happy expression solidified into a serious one.

     "I don't mean to pry, but if you and this fellow member of yours are wanting to have a relationship outside of mafia business, he'll need to speak to me before he even thinks about it."

     At that, Nari's face lit up like a Christmas light, and she barely managed to cough out a "yes" while trying to hide her burning embarrassment.

     Her brother nodded as if accepting her answer and reached into his pocket, punching something into his phone with a small smirk on his face.

     "I'm going to go brief one of my units on what's happening and leave you with Dream, okay? They should be here any second," he asked absently, twisting his head around to look down the hallway they were in.

     "Who? Dream?" Nari muttered, clearly at a loss. Taeyong stopped looking around and realized his sister didn't know how things worked in his gang.

      "NCT has twenty one members, and those members are usually split up into different units, which allow us to operate in more precise and organized groups. There are four: NCT 127, NCT Dream, NCT U, and WayV," the boss explained. "Dream makes up the youngest unit of NCT."

     Now enlightened, Nari's eyes went wide, imagining how well coordinated and efficient this gang must be. The members must have been extremely professional and well trained, ready to handle anything -

     Her thoughts were interrupted by a barrage of alarmingly high pitched noises. She threw her hands over her ears, mouth dropping in surprise. Worried, she glanced at Taeyong, who looked very annoyed.

     "Sorry about this," he sighed as several boys stampeded towards them. To avoid getting run over by the rambunctious group, Nari used Taeyong as a shield, much to his dismay.

     When the spotted their leader, the boys froze, trying to straighten themselves up while panting from their dramatic entrance. Peeking over her brother's shoulder, Nari counted one, two, six teenagers, all with varying expressions of mischief and guilt on their faces.