We've made it to 100 chapters!
"Coming back tonight."
"Coming back tonight."
"Coming back tonight."
The words continued to echo through the small training room as Xiao Qiu clicked on it over and over in shock.
His teammates listened with him, not daring to make a sound as he replayed it another time, while Lee glanced at the phone in Xiao Qiu's hand.
Finally, the voice message ended and Xiao Qiu calmly looked up from the phone. With a straight face, he announced. "I'm taking the day off, yeah."
Lee nodded and added. "Let's take the day off."
Xiao Qiu didn't stay to listen; he was already out of the room when Lee's sentence started, and by the time Lee had gotten up to follow him, he had his shoes on and was ready to go. He faced Lee with a serious expression, and Lee only laughed as he grabbed the car keys. "You know he still has to take a bus, right?"
Xiao Qiu swiftly countered. "Who knows when he sent that, he could already be walking back. Besides, do we really need training?"
"Ah," Lee picked up on the main point and reassured him. "There's only a few weeks left until the next season, do you know how hard it was rounding up the boys?"
Once Lee had his shoes on, Xiao Qiu swung open the door and basked in the soft beams of sun that would be gone in the next half hour. "It wasn't that hard."
"You didn't help."
"What was I supposed to do? Get on a plane to South Korea and drag them out of Hei Lu's house in front of his parents?"
Lee chuckled. "That's a good idea."
Xiao Qiu waved his hand as he got in the passenger seat. "You don't want to deal with his parents and you think I do? Ah, we're lucky she let him come back after he got sent to the hospital."
"Well," Lee steered the topic back to Xiao Yi. "Have you told the other guys yet?"
Xiao Qiu shook his head. "If they're at the apartment, they'll find out when we get there."
"What about V?"
"He's probably home, right?"
The car shook as they approached a stop sign and Lee glanced over to see Xiao Qiu staring down at the message as his leg shook. He placed his hand on his leg and stroked it softly with his thumb while comforting him. "He'll be back soon, you heard the message."
Xiao Qiu glanced down at his leg, placed his foot flat against the ground, and grabbed Lee's hand in his. "I know he will…"
He was just nervous. Just like Xiao Yi had grown dependent on him, he had grown dependent on his little brother in some ways. Since he had missed out on spending time with him as a child, he made up for it by coddling his little brother.
His need to know where Xiao Yi was, to be there for him, grew stronger as he realized how badly their parents treated him. Ever since he'd taken his little brother in, he continued to learn more and more about what happened when he was in the hospital or the apartment near the hospital and it just made him sick to realize if Chen Qiang's parent weren't around, or if the person who found him curled up on a bench in the middle of winter didn't stumble across him, Xiao Yi might be dead.
That thought had continued to plague him.
But he had been working on it. He knew Xiao Yi wasn't a child and that his attachment, both of their attachments, were unhealthy.
He just wanted to see him.
A few minutes later, Lee knocked on V's apartment, and Xiao Qiu walked into his old apartment without knocking.