"When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun."

― William Shakespeare,  Romeo and Juliet

* * * 

Even though it didn't seem like it would, life resumed its pace after that night. Life stopped for no one, no matter what happened, days passed by and time didn't stop for no one. Nobody knew that better than Porchay.

He attempted to erase the Kim of that night from his memory, but the ghost of him lingered. Something wasn't right; despite forcing himself not to think about Kim, he kept returning to that night to figure out what it was. As the days went on, he gave up wondering and looking for the signal, but after a month and more, he was abruptly reminded of Kim's words...

That day, like any other Sunday evening, Porchay had left the compound to spend his day in his favorite cat cafè, but upon his return, he was welcomed by people running on and about, everyone high on alert.

"What's happening?" He politely asked the nearby bodyguard as they heard Tankhun's shrill voice demanding something while throwing things around.

After months of living on the compound, Porchey had witnessed a few of his episodes, but nothing intense to match the one Tankhun was currently having. Worried for the eccentric yet kind man who had adopted him as a younger brother at sight, he stepped into the meeting room where he found his brother and P'Kinn along with Pol and Arm trying to comfort Tankhun who was crying helplessly.

"What's happening?" He asked his brother when he met his eyes.

"Khun thinks Kim is missing," Porsche told him with a sigh.

"What? " He asked, gasping at the information he was being given, his mind losing lucidity as more details were presented.

Apparently, Tankhun and Kim met once a month, if not in presence, then online, to binge-watch whatever the older man wanted. It was an event Kim couldn't miss, never missed, no matter how busy he was or where he was. Tankhun had made Kim promise once a month check-in for his peace of mind and to ensure everything was okay with him. It was a pact they had agreed on after Kim moved out. Knowing his eldest brother's need to be assured of his safety, Kim never dared to miss the event ever, until now.

"Something has happened to him, I am telling you, Kinn. Why wouldn't you believe me?" Tankhun yelled, eyes red and nose runny due to the force he was putting into his cries.

"Khun, I am sure he is okay and has just forgotten to contact you," Kinn repeated with a sigh. 

"Impossible. I sent him a reminded the night before, and even that went unseen, his phone is off, his emergency numbers are off, his manager doesn't know where Kim is and he says that our brother has been missing for the past week," Tankhun yelled before putting his hands in his hair just to pull them with his desperation and pain.

"And what's going on here," suddenly someone asked as they entered the room.

"Vegas, if you have something to do with this, so God help me, I will personally shoot you," Tankhun threatened the newly arrived man in the meeting room.

"Why am I being blamed for something I don't even know? At least inform me what I am being accused of first," Vegas muttered in annoyance.

"Khun Nu, what happened? Arm and Pol asked me to come because there was an emergency," Pete asked as he stepped closer to his former employer, leaving the two brothers who came with him behind.

After being told the reason why the three had been summoned so urgently to the main compound, Vegas was asked if he had anything to do with Kim's sudden disappearance.

"I thought he was on hiatus after his tour," Macau said with a frown.

"He was on a tour?" Everyone asked at once.

"What? None of you knew about it? Am I the only one keeping track of his career?" Macau asked with a scoff.

After enough chiding from the youngest Theerapanyakun, they were told about how Wik had been on tour along with a very famous singer, and how he had been invited to be the opener for the nationwide Thailand tour of the said singer. Videos of the songs he sang at the concerts went viral during the tour, and his opening acts were a big hit. Macau informed them that it was anticipated that after the end of the tour, Wik would have additional opportunities and release his first official album. However the day after the last concert ended, Wik's manager informed everyone that he was taking a hiatus.

"Does our Pa know about this? How is this even possible? According to his deal with our father, he shouldn't, can't be famous enough to go on tours," Kinn muttered with a worried frown.

"What do you mean?" Porsche asked, confused.

"When Kim was leaving home, our father put forward demands and limits for him, and one of these limits was that he wouldn't pursue a career in music in the traditional sense. He can be a musician, sing, and do whatever he wants but not be famous. Which means, no albums, no tours, and no big exposure," Tankhun explained mournfully.

"What ?" Porchay asked, shocked. He had long questioned, as did many other Wik fans, why there were no official albums even though Wik composed and produced all of his music. It had been frustrating for them that their idol was so underappreciated and wasn't receiving the credit he deserved. Despite the fan wars they have fought and the tireless efforts they had put in to make Wik's songs popular once they were released, nobody seemed to have recognized Wik's brilliance. And now to know that Wik was never meant to be appreciated by many and wasn't supposed to get mainstream success? That irked Porchay more than he could ever admit.

"Yes, Arm is responsible for trumping down and deleting anything that could have gone viral," Tankhun casually mentioned.

"What? " Porchay asked, his eyes burning with anger as he glared at the said man.

"Khun Porchay?" Arm asked, nervously, confused at the sudden attack as he saw the younger boy marching towards him.

"You have any idea how many hours we have spent trying to get his music to become viral? How much time have we spent trying to get Wik and his songs to become popular? Are you aware of the extent of our efforts to stream his songs only to discover that the views and even the tweets have been removed? And now I am being told that it was your doing," a furious Porchey rolled up his sleeves ready to unleash hell.

"Oh, I totally forgot Chay is a Wik fan," Porsche muttered, amused at the scene in front of their eyes.

"Khun Korn told me to just keep an eye on things. Khun Kim has a separate team that makes sure everything is under control," Arm said in his defense, stepping away from the young boy, giving away confidential information just to placate him.

"What? " Porchay asked in disbelief. But of course, he should have known by now that Kim was a control freak, and would personally overlook everything related to him. He was twisted and wretched, in so many ways. While other artists bought and paid for individuals to trend, stream, and make them famous. Kim apparently paid people to prevent himself from getting famous and maintain his lowkey and underrated status.

"Porchay, let's not get distracted, okay? We have to find Kim first, you can solve this issue after your idol is here," Porsche scolded him as he dragged him away from poor Arm.

"Let's first trace down when he went missing," Pete being the voice of the reason told them.

A few seconds later, with his laptop open, Arm started to search and build a timeline that could help them understand what had happened.

"It was a month-long nationwide tour, and see this, his opener acts have increased from just about 10 minutes to half an hour, which means there was a public demand for Wik 's songs and the opening acts were a huge success," Arm informed them as he dug in for more information.

But when he started to play the clips of the songs and the days Kim had sung them, Porchey could see a pattern that others couldn't. He was telling a story, their story with his songs. It started with covers, probably because he was only supposed to sing covers. His selection of covers always followed the same timeline: meeting someone with whom he couldn't help but fall in love, how complicated love was, loss, and then building the climax with a song on failing, and always ending the opening act with Why Don't You Stay. Except for the time, when he sang a new untitled single about longing for a familiar stranger. For some reason, there was no doubt in Porchey's mind that the song was about their last meeting...

"This was the last song," Arm informed while playing a song that Wik sang to console his fans at the parting, telling them that goodbyes weren't final. And that's why, Porchay was certain that the song was a final farewell despite his promise.

Kim had already said his goodbyes ...

With his wet eyes, soft smile, his beautiful words, and his songs, Kim had been comforting people for losing him even before they got to know they had lost him...

"Chay? What happened? Why?" Porsche asked when he noticed his younger brother crying.

"Something is wrong, Hia. Very wrong," Porchay muttered, his voice shaking, his gaze still fixed on the screen where Kim as Wik was saying his goodbyes to his audience with a soft smile and tears in his eyes and thanking his fans for their support.

Did anyone else present there notice what he was doing?

Did anyone understand what his words meant?

Did anyone try to stop him from leaving?

"Can't you all see there is something wrong?" Tankhun asked, echoing Porchay's thoughts. "Can't you see what he is doing? And on top of all, Kim would never miss our movie night," he continued insisting on the matter, his arms warped around his knees as he rocked in his attempt to soothe himself, his eyes still weeping.

"Kim doesn't keep his promises for long, Khun, you should know by now. He is busy with his music and life away from us," Kinn tried to assure him, even if the frown on his forehead told another story.

Suddenly Porchay was reminded of the promise he had made Kim that night when he had come to him. He had told him to give that small sealed paper mailer to Tankhun when he got the signal.

Was his disappearance the signal?

Suddenly Porchey stood up and ran to his room to get it and then returned. With his heart beating loudly and hand trembling, he handed it to Tankhun.

"What is this?" Tankhun asked, looking at it with a frown.

"P'Kim had told me to give it to you," Porchey responded, panting for air.

"When?" Kinn asked.

"About a month and a week ago? He told me to hold on to it until the signal and then give it to P'Tankhun," he explained.

Everyone turned to the eldest man in the room as he opened the paper mailer, pulling out a letter to read and as he did that, his tears and sobs took more force, and by the end he was trembling, muttering Kim's name in pain.

"Oh, Kimmy, my baby Kimmy," he kept repeating as he cried, not replying to anyone.

After not getting a response, Kinn snatched the latter away from his hand and after reading it, passed it to Porsche with a pale face. And when his brother read it out loud, understanding the meaning of the words, Porchay felt his knee would have given in if he wasn't already sitting.

I never wanted you to find out. I wanted to protect you the way you protected me when nights were too dark. But the only way I can do that now is by letting you know the truth. Use it as you see fit to protect yourself. Take care of yourself for me.

I love you, Hia...

Your nosy brother

Kim

"What does that even mean?" Porsche asked after reading it out loud.

"Use what? There must be something inside," Vegas said.

And there was, it being a lone red USB drive with only Tankhun's name on it.

"What's is this? Why is Kimmy giving me a USB along with this strange letter?" Tankhun asked, panicking, just a few seconds away from hysteria.

"Arm, plug that in," Kinn ordered with a frown, trying to make sense of the situation. And when the contents of the USB were displayed on the projection screen, Kinn felt as if someone had punched him in the gut. Right in front of their view were folders with each name of their family member holding countless proofs of their activities, from paper crimes to real deals, everything recorded with detailed precision. True work of someone who knew how valuable information was in their world as a medium of power against someone.

"That little shit, " Vegas muttered under his breath as they took in the vast information recorded by Kim.

"What's in Tankhun's file?" Pete asked and when Arm clicked on it, there were detailed lists containing information about the likes and dislikes of Tankhun, the movies and dramas he has watched, wanted to watch, and the designers he liked. The allergies he has, and his profound hatred or fondness for particular things. Pictures, school certificates, and memories of the younger Tankhun, the homemade videos of their childhood, their mother's pictures, and voice recordings of the times when she had played piano or sang to them or at the events.

"Where had he even found all of this?" Tankhun muttered, amazed and deeply moved.

"This file is locked with a password," Arm informed them after reaching the last file.

"The new identity of Luke Garner from Among the Hidden? What kind of a question is that?" Macau read out loud, confused.

"We can Google it if you don't remember the answer," Arm told Tankhun who seemed frozen in place.

"No, don't. Don't open that file. I know the answer and you won't find it on Google or anywhere else," Tankhun muttered, seemingly shaken.

"You already know what is in this file," Kinn said, in no need of confirmation.

"Yes, I do," his elder brother whispered.

"And you aren't going to tell me what is it," Kinn said with a resigned sigh. There were many secrets between his brothers. It has been happening ever since they were children, the two of them would just look at each other and know what the other meant. Nights spent building forts, whispering stories, and sharing their thoughts, Kim and Khun always seemed to be using some code language that Kinn couldn't understand. At some point, he had been part of that equation, but after their mother's death and Tankhun's kidnapping, everything had changed and Kinn's presence was rare due to him becoming the heir. At one point Kinn had assumed that Kim's moving out had put an end to everything. But it seemed only he was isolated and left out by Kim, as Tankhun still could understand the cryptical message their younger brother had left. The next words muttered by his brother confirmed his thoughts.

"Something is wrong. Something bad has happened to him," Tankhun whimpered, finally understanding the implication of what was left behind for him by his nosy brother.

"Why would Kim hand Khun all this?" Porsche asked, confused as he took in the two brothers losing their composers, one crying as he muttered about something being wrong while the other kept cursing out loud, and then there was his own little brother who was silently crying a river.

"So Tankhun would have something he can use against us. He could even go to the police if he wanted to," Vegas explained as he took in his cousins' behavior with a frown.

"No, no, no ... Kinn, what should we do? Why? What went wrong?" Tankhun kept muttering, his fingers in his hair, pulling and pushing, his always on-point hairstyle already ruined so much so that any other day, it would have given him a heart attack.

"Why no one knows what happened to him?" Porchay asked, trembling, barely able to get the words out. There had been a part of him that had been disturbed ever since Kim had visited him and the sight of the two brothers losing themselves to rage and panic was only making his heart sink further. He wanted to be positive and deny what his brain had already concluded, but nothing and no one was helping the situation.

"If Kim believed he had a chance of getting out alive from wherever he is, he would never lay down the cards he has been holding for years and give them all to Tankhun.," Kinn finally explained as glared at the screen.

"Getting out alive ?" Porchay repeated in a whisper, the implications of the words confirming what he was fearing.

"You guys are missing something. Pay attention," Vegas admonished, before replacing Arm and taking center stage like a professor ready to give a lecture.

"See this, notice the pattern, these dates," he told them and sighed loudly when no one of his students connected the tots.

"As Kinn and Porsche may be aware, several small and large gang leaders who have been managing Theerapanyakul business—particularly minor family businesses—have been assassinated one by one around Thailand in the last month. So is it a coincidence that all the stops of the tour and dates match the areas where the said gangs are situated?" Vegas asked, smirking and raising his eyebrows at them as he presented his theory, going through the dates and the killings, waiting for the praises that no one but Pete gave him in the form of a pat on the shoulder and a soft smile.

"Whipped," Macau muttered under his breath, but ignoring his brother's remark, Vegas just smiled to himself. Basking in the warmth of his lover's fondness for him, he decided that Pete acknowledging his smart conclusions was more than enough for him.

"That was Kim's doing? I thought he had nothing to do with the family business," Porsche said, confused.

"What makes you think it was Kim?" Kinn demanded with a frown.

"Well, I am glad you asked," Vegas beamed with a twisted but excited smirk before going into the details like the nerd he would never admit to being.

"You see, there are few men that still report me, and if I still wanted to be in charge of the minor family's business, I would be furious that most powerful men loyal to the minor family are getting replaced. But as I don't want that, I don't care. Yet that also doesn't mean that I am not informed about the ground reality," he said before handing a USB to Arm to connect it to the projector.

"This is going to be a bit too much gore and graphic. Are you sure you are comfortable with knowing?" He suddenly turned to ask Porchay.

"I want to know," the younger boy responded, gulping nervously.

"Then again, you should know this more than anyone else. You gotta know what and who are you getting into," Vegas muttered with a nod of approval.

"What was does supposed to mean?" Porsche asked, not liking the way he was made to feel there was something about his own brother that he didn't know.

"Still hiding things from big bro? Maybe you do have things in common with Kim," Vegas said with mirth dancing in his eyes as he looked at the young Porchay.

"Stop being creepy, Vegas," Porsche said, pulling his little brother towards himself to try to hide him behind himself.

"You are losing track of your nerdy lecture, bro," Macau reminded his brother, scolding him smoothly in English.

"You are right," Vegas agreed readily, before turning back to Thai for his audience.

"You are connected, Khun Vagas," Arm informed.

"Okay, so look at this," Vegas continued his lecture with the help of Arm.

"These are one of the first pictures that I got, look at this one," he said, stopping at one gruesome picture of a dead man.

"Every assassin has a style unique to them only, a way in which one can identify their work of art. They leave behind a sign, it's like their signature. In the case we are about to analyze, the assassin is very particular about the weapon of his choice, he doesn't like using guns that much, so it's rare, it seems like he uses it only when it can't be avoided. So mostly it's hand-to-hand combat, his force is brutal, knows where to hit to maim and efficiently incapacitate a person with few moves, as you can notice there aren't many visible injuries or wounds," Vegas explained, going through various pictures, bodies bloody and beaten, dead.

"It seems like he enjoys playing with his hands, but on these missions, he rarely had the time to do so. That makes us observe another thing: the most used weapon by him is a knife, sharp and small. As you can notice, the most favorite spot is the victim's neck. Quick and silent, truly efficient," he commented, nodding in approval even though he personly liked to take his time.

"And you suspect that Kim did this?" Kinn asked, taking in the information. 

"I do. I and Kim are opposite, our methods and preferences too, yet he and I are most similar out of anyone else in the family," he observed with a tilt of his head, making Tankhun and Kinn cringe in disagreement.

"I didn't get many CCTV clips, but there are a few," Vegas informed before playing the clips.

The quality of the videos wasn't good, many were grainy and blurry, too dark, too short, and too fast. They couldn't make sense of what was going on until Arm managed to reduce the speed; only then could they analyze the movements shown in the videos. Even then, it wasn't much—just a shadow gliding through the darkness that attacked men who were keeping watch before silently vanishing from the view of the camera.

"That's my Kimmy?" Tankhun asked in disbelief, side-eyeing and twisting his face and eyebrows.

"The one and only," Vegas confirmed with a nod.

"It doesn't look like he is doing it for the first time, it seems like he has done it countless times," Porsche observed.

"It seems like my father and my younger brother have been sneaky and doing whatnot behind my back," Kinn said before cussing.

"There is something more," Vegas announced.

"What's that?" Kinn asked, wary.

"I don't have any proof for that. It's only my assumption," he muttered, hesitant.

"Spit it out, Vegas," Tankhun ordered.

"Last week the Italian Don here in Bangkok was killed, exactly on the date Kim has been missing," he said, making the elder men cuss and yell in denial.

"That's not possible. It doesn't matter how good Kim is, that can't be his doing," Kinn muttered, shaking his head.

"Pa would never put Kim in such an enormous danger," Tankhun denied.

"Italians are well guarded. There is no way anyone would make it out alive with all the security, especially after killing the leader in his own territory," Porsche pointed out.

"That's exactly what I am saying," Vegas muttered with a frown.

"No, no, we would have been at war with Italians if Kim had been caught or worse," Kinn said, forcing his mind to not give in the panic. Reminding himself that regardless of how plausible his cousin's theory seemed, it was just that —a theory.

"You are forgetting that no one knows what Khimhant Theerapanyakun looks like. He was probably sixteen or even younger the last time anyone in our circle saw him. Not many outside the compound know what he looks like, that is exactly why he is the secret weapon, the spy, and the assassin of Theerapanyakun. No one can trace him back to us," Vegas said with a grave tone in his voice.

"How do you know about all of this?" Kinn asked with a glare.

"In the past months, I had time to think about while healing. And I realized how despite all the internal crisis and animosity between our fathers, Theerapanyakun business was well structured until recently. Our roles were well crafted: you got the glorious part to play, you were exposed and on the front line while I was the torturer and enforcer, and Kim the well-kept secret weapon, working in shadows. But they made sure none of us knew how to trust each other so they could control us as they wanted, to make sure we remained the pawns so they could move us as they wanted." Vegas revealed with a heavy sigh.

"I am free now because my keeper is dead. Kim's isn't, and that's why he is probably dead," he continued, forcing words out.

"No, no, no, shut up," Tankhun whispered, and soon the repeated words transformed into screams, making everyone jump to calm him down, to console him.

"That can't be true," Kinn muttered, shaking his head, refusing to believe to be kept ignorant to the point of not knowing how much he had not known, what he had lost.

As Porchey looked at the two brothers, his wounded heart which had been trembling in fear started to beat too fast, and as his brain was clouded and slow, it took him a few seconds to finally process what was said and grasp the gravity of it.

Vegas said Kim is probably dead...

Kim knew what could happen and that's why he left Tankhun a message...

Kim knew what would happen yet went ahead to complete his mission and now he was dead...

Kim is probably dead...

Kim had said his goodbyes...

Kim was dead...

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A/N:- Here is the next chapter. Please, let me know your thoughts and feelings about the story in the comments...Would love to hear from you! :)

Thank you! <3

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