The STARS Building, located on the left corner of the imposing Hathor High School, was the sanctuary for the institution's most prominent students. Five floors of concrete and steel, featuring recording studios, practice rooms, and luxury dorms. But although it was open to Hathor's academic and artistic elite, everyone knew who it had originally been built for: NEON7.
The fifth floor was theirs. Seven individual rooms, a common area the size of an apartment, and the privacy that only money and fame could buy. It was their bubble, the only place where they could take off their masks.
And right now, Jhin's mask was shattered.
He was pacing in circles around an Italian leather sofa. His black hair, normally styled to perfection, was a complete mess. He ran his hands through it compulsively, leaving unruly strands pointing in every direction.
"It's not here. It's not here. It's not here," he repeated like a mantra.
DM, sitting on one of the sofas with his legs crossed, watched him in silence. In his right hand, he held a glass of orange infusion, swirling it slowly. He wasn't drinking. He just held it.
On the table in front of him was a framed photo of the seven of them together during their debut, smiling with an innocence that now seemed to belong to another life.
"Calm down, Jhin-ah. It'll turn up. Breathe, brother," DM advised, his deep voice carrying that protective tone he used whenever one of them was on the verge of a breakdown.
"I can't breathe!" Jhin exclaimed, stopping dead in his tracks. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple. "DM, you don't understand. That envelope...! If someone opens it, if they read..."
His voice cracked, and he clutched his chest as if he were running out of air.
"I know, I know," DM understood, rising from the sofa with fluid movements. He approached Jhin and placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "We know how important it is to you. But panicking isn't going to help."
On the other side of the room, J-Min was leaning over the dining table, focused on his important mission. He had spread out a detailed map of the Hathor campus, with various colored markers scattered around him. With the millimetric precision of a lead dancer, he traced routes with his finger, mentally counting steps. Beside him, his phone was on speaker on the table.
"Blue Glove Puppet, do you copy?" J-Min called out, his tone analytical and practical as he adjusted his glasses.
K-Sey's voice came through the speaker, slightly distorted by the wind.
"I copy you, Satellite Eye. I'm in sector three, near the music wing. I just checked the fourth bin. Just snack wrappers and... is this a calculus exam? Someone from class 1-C is going to fail."
"Okay, the library was the point of impact," J-Min continued, marking a red X on the map. "Cleaning staff confirmed they didn't find anything. The next vector is the main hallway toward the west wing. K-Sey—I mean, Blue Glove Puppet—I need you to move to sector four. There are three more bins near the art room."
"Received. Moving to sector four," he replied. "By the way, Satellite Eye, if someone sees me rummaging through trash, my sophisticated idol reputation is gone."
"Your reputation will survive," J-Min replied with a barely perceptible smile. "There is only a 2.4% chance of a student being out of class right now."
"Besides, our manager is already preparing recycling posters with our faces on them," DM remarked.
"Very practical of our agent," K-Sey answered, convinced. "But why am I looking for it in the trash, like a lost soul looking for a physical reason?"
"It's possible that..." J-Min tried to complete the thought without finding a 100% logical reason. "Maybe someone picked it up and threw it away without realizing what it was." He pulled out his calculator and notebook, pressing numbers, signs, and the equals symbol several times. "According to my calculations... -89.2%... Why is it coming out negative?!"
The word "someone" made Jhin flinch visibly, fortunately falling back onto the sofa and burying his head in his hands.
Then Vhy entered the room.
His pink hair was damp, as if he had just stepped out of the shower, and he wore an oversized gray hoodie that fit him perfectly in that careless way that only worked when you had his bone structure. Black sweatpants and sockless sneakers completed his look.
But it was his eyes that revealed everything. He walked straight to Jhin without a word and knelt in front of him, placing both trembling hands on Jhin's shoulders.
"Hey," he said, his voice stripped of all arrogance. "Look at me." Jhin looked up slowly. His eyes were red, but no tears came out. "We'll find it," Vhy continued, holding his gaze. "Do you hear me? We'll find it. I promise you."
"But Vhy, what if...? What if someone has it?" His voice broke at the end.
"Even if someone has it, they don't know what it is. It's just an envelope to any of these millionaires." He swallowed hard, the sound echoing in his throat. "They probably don't even know it's a letter; they've only seen those in romance movies."
"And what if she has it... the new one." Jhin swallowed again. "Yes, it's most likely. I gave her my jacket, I snatched it back, and it must have fallen out. She has it!"
"Calm down, don't base everything on guesswork," Vhy interrupted before his friend lost it.
"Vhy is right," DM intervened, sitting back down but staying on the edge of the sofa, ready to step in if necessary. "That girl... she's dealing with her own problems. She probably didn't even notice the envelope."
"I don't know, DM. According to my calculations, there's a 97.7% probability she has it," J-Min informed them, before receiving a death glare from DM. "Oh no, it was negative again. I don't know what's wrong with my calculations today."
"Let's not assume Suri has it; let's just view it as a possibility," DM said.
"How do you know her name?" K-Sey asked over the call. "No, a third caviar sandwich? This is worse than the abyss of consciousness."
"I heard it," DM replied with a shrug. "When Zen intervened in the cafeteria. Besides, it's not hard to find out the name of the only new scholarship student."
K-Sey's voice came through the phone again.
"Sector four clear. Nothing but another caviar sandwich... these rich kids make me sick. Moving to sector five."
Vhy stood up and sat on the arm of the sofa near Jhin. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes remained fixed on his friend.
"Listen," he said, his voice taking on a firmer tone. "Let's think clearly. When was the exact last moment you remember having it?"
Jhin closed his eyes, his hands trembling slightly as he reconstructed the scene.
"I had it. In the jacket pocket. I could feel the weight of the paper against my abdomen." His voice became smaller. "I picked it up from the Hathor mail; I had it when we went for your coffee and... I don't remember feeling it after lunch."
Jhin sighed, his shoulders slumped as if drained of strength.
"It could only have been during the coffee disaster. When I snatched my jacket back and turned around, it must have fallen."
"Then the scholarship girl has it," J-Min deduced from the table, lifting his magnifying glass from the map.
"Suri," Vhy corrected automatically. "Her name is Suri, if I remember correctly."
"And Zen?" J-Min asked. "He intervened in the cafeteria. Maybe he knows something."
"Zen is in his room, probably composing some song about the darkness of the human soul or meditating on existential suffering," Vhy said, but his tone lacked his usual sarcasm. He sounded almost... worried. "You know it's impossible to talk to him when he's in that mode. But you're right. He might have seen something."
K-Sey's voice interrupted from the phone.
"Guys, sector five is also clean. But I found something interesting. There's a security camera pointing directly at the hallway where Vhy bumped into the scholarship girl. Does anyone have contacts in security?"
J-Min and DM exchanged a look.
"We could try," DM said slowly. "But we'd have to give explanations. And that means..."
"That we'd have to admit we lost something important," J-Min finished. "Which would lead to questions Jhin would have to answer."
Jhin covered his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking.
"This is my fault. I was an idiot to her; she probably hates me. This is what you call karma."
"Don't say that," DM interrupted, leaning forward, his voice carrying all the authority of his position as the eldest of the group. "She doesn't hate you. She's just scared and defensive. She's new here, she's alone, and we... well, we didn't exactly give her a warm welcome."
Vhy ran a hand through his pink hair, messing it up even more. When he spoke, his voice had a different quality.
"DM is right. Put yourself in her shoes. A nightmare day, and we didn't exactly make it better." He paused, as if the next words were difficult. "It was more my fault. I was a complete jerk to her because of the coffee."
"We have to find her," J-Min continued, rising from the table and stretching his back with a dancer's grace. "And get that letter back."
"J-Min is right," K-Sey's voice came from the phone. "Logic says she's the most likely suspect. But we need an approach plan. We can't just corner her. The last time we tried to recover something... dramatically, it didn't exactly go well."
"Hey, the plan was perfect," J-Min explained, as if he were still proud of the idea. "Hiding in the Paranormal Club, approaching step by step to the rhythm of our finger snaps, and letting the echo do the rest. All to get your tarot cards back."
"Yeah, but as soon as we turned on the light and they saw us, they fell to the floor fainted," DM muttered, looking at the floor, carrying the weight of the disaster. "They thought we were the souls of their idols."
"But that day we gained fame as 'Ghost Idols,' and Zen's songs got even more popular," Vhy recalled with a laugh.
DM pointed to a poster on the wall: them, dressed in impeccable black suits, pale skin, and sharp gazes, looking like they stepped out of a horror movie.
"Luckily, our manager turned that fame into a marketing gimmick. Now everyone thinks it was pure acting."
"Stop fighting already!" Jhin shouted, looking up with a new spark of hope mixing with the panic in his eyes.
He looked at his friends: at DM, his unshakeable rock; at J-Min, his strategist; at K-Sey's voice from the phone; and at Vhy, his brother, who was showing him a side the world never saw.
For the first time in hours, his breathing calmed slightly.
"Okay," he said, his voice firmer but still shaky. "Okay. Let's find her. But this time... this time we do it right."
Vhy nodded and put his hand in the center.
"This time we'll do it right," he repeated, in a tone that sounded like a promise.
"All right, we'll do it with a good plan," DM added, placing his hand over Vhy's.
"Though we all know my plans are great," J-Min replied with a half-smile, adding his hand to the small circle.
Jhin's face lit up with emotion.
"Thanks, guys," he said, his voice cracking.
At that moment, heavy strides echoed from the hallway. The door burst open and K-Sey entered, sweat sliding down his forehead.
"Don't forget about me!" he shouted, still breathless from the run.
They all joined hands, one over the other, forming a perfect circle. It wasn't a pose for the cameras. There were no fans watching. No stage lights or rehearsed choreography. It was just the seven of them, like at the beginning, when they weren't NEON7 but just boys with a dream and the determination not to be defeated.
"One... two... three... NEON7!" they shouted in unison, the voice bouncing off the walls like a team roar.