Baby's Breath

**Chapter 18**

He thought it was a dream. Baekhyun thought there was no way such a coincidence could happen, that the transfer student from Vancouver could possibly be a police officer. From the looks of it, he looked like a very important officer too, judging by the way the other officers of the squad treated and took orders from him. He wasn't sure how to respond, because Kris was one of his classmates, the very same one with eagle-eyes and jet-black hair. 

Baekhyun cleared his throat, "Kris. That's you, right? Kris?"

The taller (definitely taller, much taller) male glanced up from the notes he was busily jotting down with a ballpoint pen, not bothering to answer right away. He, finally, looked up and recognized the two. "Oi, small fry and large fry," he chuckled, handing the notepad to another officer and escorting the two boys to the nearest patrol vehicle. He opened the back door for them, then signaled to two other men. "Let's chit-chat on our way back, this scene's pretty messy for a nice conversation."

Baekhyun was still confused, but he didn't refuse the free ride; after all, he was secretly excited that he was riding in a nice police car (not the dinky ones, but the cool ones that appeared in action movies!). It wasn't everyday a non-criminal would have the opportunity!

Once they were inside, Chanyeol looked around, and Baekhyun was the first to speak up after Kris turned down the police reports that kept muttering in and out of static frequencies. "We're not... going to get in trouble for this, are we?"

"Nah," Kris said, much to Baekhyun's relief, "But you are going to be held at the station for a while, for questioning. Those shadies are a large case and we need witnesses. You're lucky, small fry. If the call had been any later, you would have been found in the dumpster with all your internal organs missing."

Baekhyun swallowed. "Call?"

"Yeah, your brother over there called through a payphone. We had no idea where the coordinates were, exactly, but he found out via tracking the payphone locations scattered in this area." Kris explained, looking at the two through his rearview mirror.

Chanyeol was zoning out like he always did during deep conversations, staring out the window and seeing whether the car or the moon would win the race.

Baekhyun was amazed. If it hadn't been for Chanyeol, the police would have arrived too late. He would have followed the kind old lady into a shady alleyway, thinking it was just one of the poorer parts in town, and then what? A van would have picked him up, whisked him away, dissected him, then thrown his corpse somewhere others would find it rotting weeks later. The morbid thought sent chills down his spine. Chanyeol had saved his life. He wasn't sure how to process that unbelievable thought just yet, if at all, because Chanyeol was acting so normally, like he didn't know the result of his heroic deed.

That aside, Baekhyun was curious about Kris, how he had wound up in a police uniform, when he had been introducing himself to the classroom weeks ago. "So..." Baekhyun twiddled his thumbs, "Are you an undercover agent or something?" 

"Undercover?" Kris asked, then burst out laughing, "Oh, no, not really. I'm twenty-six. When I graduated high school in Vancouver, I didn't go straight into college. I didn't want to go back to Canada; it wasn't the life for me, and the only way they said they'll let me into a Korean college at this age was if I took my entrance exams, since I graduated high school so long ago. I guess I'm just looking back on things and wishing I actually got a better education than this, so I'm back in school." 

It made sense. Baekhyun nodded slowly. "Why Hye-Seong, though?"

"There was no other high school that would take me in, a twenty-six year old officer trying to relive his dreams? Kind of uncommon, and I'm used to having people judge me by how I look. No one would think I'm a police officer, just some shady guy trying to cause trouble," Kris chuckled.