After the conversation with 'Minho', not much changed, he doesn't feel any better. He still keeps spending most of his time out of home, walking in the city without a precise destination, just walking and walking with his thoughts wandering.

The previous day he also noticed a detail that unsettled him a lot: his hair spontaneously changed colour, which is strange, since he never had that disease and that he knows, it's something one had from birth.
In the doubt, in the bathroom while everyone was sleeping, he cut all of his hair. Literally, shaved his head like that. - Not bald just very short -

Today, he casually reaches that lively centre of Seoul, full of restaurants, stores and food stands - the one in 'You're beautiful' -. It's afternoon and there is quite a lot of people in there. He stops to look at the shop windows in awe at the sight of all the lights, the clothes and cool things one can find in that place. For how he is, Earth should be like a heaven, if he only could see something bright in life, right now.

The thing he has in mind the most is the idea of sending a letter to the Emperor, proposing to hand himself over in return for his hyungs to be spared and allowed to return safely to their lives. He is really considering it and would probably have done that for real, if it had not been that he doubts the Emperor would give a damn about it.
He doesn't have any money with him, of course, not even Xhuanghen currency since they broke him out of prison.
At some point, he stops by a bench there and sits down there, looking at the ground.

After the first day he went out, he started to leave the apartment every day and for whole day, only returning right before it gets dark. Sometimes he doesn't even come inside, he just remains out in the light of the corridor, still feeling safe enough. He has no intention to keep robbing the bed and looking like he is some special privileged in that house.
He was tempted to jump into the river a few times already and the only thing stopping him from killing himself was not wanting to make the hyungs' sacrifice go wasted like that. That's how bad he is actually feeling.

He didn't even realize that LianBi and HyunKi arrived, the place is so crowded that it's hard to keep up.
The evening of LianBi's arrival, he returns to the palace even later than usual, after dinner time, when most people are already lied down to sleep.
He doesn't eat anything and just goes out of the balcony to be on his own. He looks down at the street, almost fascinated. From the 5th floor it's quite a jump, of the kind that leaves little doubt about the outcome.
He clings to the railing with both hands, quite firmly, and for a moment he gets the urge to leap over. As he moves his leg to jump, though, he feels someone grabbing him and pulling him back.
"Don't you dare to move a muscle", says an unknown voice. The stranger wrapped both his arms around his belly and is holding him really tightly.
"It's not how it seems..." he murmurs.
"I know what I've seen and I don't like it at all."
"We don't even know each others..."
"I don't need to know someone, to refuse to let them waste their lives."
"I wouldn't do it for real..."
"Now you are going to tell me what's wrong. You are just a kid, for Gods' sake!" The other sounds really disturbed.
"You are hurting me..." He tries to push away the hand that is pressuring right on the place where the stitched up wound is, but he doesn't manage to. "Please... I'm wounded..." In addition to the fact that the position is making him on the brink of throwing up. "Please..." he sobs in a broken tone and the other finally lets go, but grabs his wrist.
YooJin turns around and finally looks at the person. He knew it had to be someone from Xhuanghen, since he could understand his words, but although his voice seemed unfamiliar, he is certain to have seen his face somewhere.
He excludes that he could he his customer, since he has never been with someone so tall. He looks at the hand at his wrist then down. "I need to go to refresh the bandages..." Hoping that the other would let go.
"You can't do it alone. I will help you."
YooJin's eyes get teary but he nods, knowing by his tone that he wouldn't get convinced to stay back.

He walks to the bathroom, while the other keeps following him, clung to his wrist. Once inside, he closes the door and looks up at the man. "Hyung-nim, I need both my hands..."
"My name is Minho."
"YooJin..." When the other lets go, he puts some distance between them and turns around, always feeling overly shy to show even an inch of his skin, let alone the whole top of his body.
"How did you get those?"
"I was beaten up..."
"I mean these", specifies Minho, touching the wound on his shoulder and arm, that are almost healed by now. "They look like... stabs."
"Someone stabbed me, about 10 days ago..."
"How? Why?"
"Because someone wanted me dead." He tries to restrain himself from bursting into tears and starts to uncover the wound on the belly, to disinfect and new bandages on.
"How old are you?"
"16..." Finds it pointless to lie, since nobody ever buys it anyway.
Minho places his hands on his shoulders, but although the gesture was very gentle and light, YooJin jumps as if his touch had been fiery and quickly moves away. "Please... don't touch me... please..." he sobs, wrapping his arms around his own chest, like a naked girl.
"Mianhe, I won't do it again." And he seems honestly concerned about it, like he understood what the matter could be.
YooJin turns around again, to focus on the wound.
"Did it happen in prison?" Minho suddenly asks, in a lower and thoughtful tone.
His eyes widen and he just slowly nods in reply. He thinks the others must have told him their story, for him to know.

YooJin pours a generous dose of disinfectant on the wound and then uses the many bandages to cover it the same way as Kori did.
While he works on it, Minho approaches him again and removes the band-aid from his neck, uncovering the branded mark, that by now looks just like a tattoo, that could even seem cool if it wasn't for the meaning of that word. "Those bastards!" hisses the other, sounding honestly furious at that.
YooJin bows his head and covers the spot with his hand, hating that he saw it, but at the same time kind of resigned to it. He has it and it will never go away.
"I always thought that... if one treats the others kindly and respectfully, if one is..." YooJin sobs. "Good with everyone, then nobody would want to harm... that people would show at least a bit of mercy..." And he bursts into tears. "Do they really think that if a person had a choice, would willingly go through all this... take all these risks, just for some stupid money...? Does Jeonha think we'd die, just to mock his rules...?"
"There can be no greater failure for a ruler, than knowing such things could happen to a child of his people..." answers Minho, with an almost as broken tone as his own.
"He doesn't care... nobody cares about people like me, like us..." Including all his hyungs too, among the people the 'society' doesn't care about. "They only want us to be out of sight and if we start to make some noise, if someone above gets to notice us, all they'll want to do is to make us disappear forever, In a way that will convince all the others like us to stay hidden and silent..."
Minho shuts his eyes and some tears come out of them.
YooJin is surprised by it, but doesn't react. He quickly covers the mark on his neck again. "Gomawo, hyung-nim..." he murmurs and bows to him, before walking out of the bsthroom.

It's morning and as usual at that time, he is alone at home. He is cleaning the bathroom and washing the clothes dirty of blood that were left from Kori's mending, when someone suddenly knocks on the door. His first thought is that it is probably Kori himself who came back for some reason or mahybe to bring the rice cakes, since he was so sensitive about it.
Without too many thoughts, he goes to open and freezes at the sight of a number of Imperial Guards standing right in front of him.
He takes a step back, feeling like to faint, but the IG standing right in front of him firmly grabs his shoulder. "You must come with us."
"W-why...?" he hardly manages to ask, with his heart beating so fast it hurts. He knows the answer already, though.
"For questioning."
YooJin can't even think on how it could come to this, since very few people knew where he lives. His first and most natural suspect is Yoshi, since he was told he is the Advisor of the Emperor.
"Does anyone live with you here?"
"A-aniyo, daegam..." He doesn't want any of the others to end up in troubles because of him, for the rest he feels too terrified to think.
One of the IGs pins a little parchment on the door to notify that the person living in that house was arrested and they drag him away with them to the Imperial Prison.

After the visit of Kori, before their plan against the murderer starts (Let's say they'll get to it in that evening, giving the time to the other guys to move?), he finally manages to push himself out of home, despite all the worries and fears.
Since he expects he will have to be home for a few days in order to succeed with their trap, he decides to go to get a few things to survive those days, like food and some cheap teas. He didn't even go to buy the medicines the physician ordered yet, both because they are expensive and because he worries he could find guards waiting for the person with that prescription. He is a bit paranoid indeed.

While walking in the centre of the city, through the open-air market, while on the way back home after buying all those things, he end up being two very well dressed men, a few steps ahead, who are conversating and for some reasons, their words catch his ears.

"How do we get them to approach us though?" says one of the two.
"Acting as if we've been doing this for a while. Look confident, as if it wasn't the first time", replies the other.
"But how? Seriously, how do you look like you go with whores?"
"You just behave as if you were looking for one, specifically. Target handsome men, wink at them if they look back at you..."
The first man snorts. "Why did General Zhendong have to pick me..."
"It doesn't matter, you won't have to go bed with them for real. You take them out as if you wanted to look for a room and just arrest them when nobody watches. I heard the Imperial Assassins are on this task too, we can't let them do better than us!"

Those words leave YooJin totally petrified. As if those thugs wanting to kill prostitutes weren't enough, now even guards become a problem.
In panic, he hurries to reach a spot to teleport to YeolMin's home. There, he tells the man everything he heard, every single word the guards were saying. He also gets forced to tell him about the attack he received.
YeolMin tells him to not go to hunt on his own for any reason and to just wait for news from him. He hands him 2 silver coins to 'survive' for a while and leaves as well to go to warn the other prostitutes he knows, so that nobody will be in danger. There could be less dumb guards working on that task too.

After parting from YeolMin, YooJin returns to Taifuan and slowly, very slowly, starts to get back to the way home. He really cut his hair - like he has in pictures -, plus where he got wounded on the head he got a scar, so there is a little spot where hair doesn't grow anymore. He has the mask covering his face and his head bowed, fearing that the person who wants him dead could see him in the streets and finish the job.
He is also crying silently as he walks.

After returning home (was he accompanied?), he goes straight to the bathroom, to wash his face. He is not sure if he can take a bath already, after what the doctor did, so he is avoiding to, at least for this day. He cleaned himself in the morning at least.
After that, even if it's day, he goes to wear his night clothes and decides to lie down for a while. He still feels very weak, it takes a while to recover from all that: the shock, the blood loss, the terror, the haunting memories...

He ends up falling asleep and wakes up a few hours later, in late afternoon/early evening.
He doesn't wear day clothes, he gets up and goes to the kitchen to fetch some tea and maybe a snack, since he didn't eat anything for the whole day.
He puts up the water to boil and starts to search some little sweet, like biscuits, since he doesn't really feel like to have a real meal, just nibble on something to avoid to lose energies.