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PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ALEXITHYMIA AND DYSTHMIA

clearing up and running over the backstory and the plot to clear things up.

there will be bold text meaning those parts are the most important. you can just read those if you're not bothered to read the whole thing.

STORY/PLOT RUNDOWN:

after the whole incident where she 'died' at the car park 3 years before dysthmia, winwin grabbed her and told her she couldn't go back to nct like she wanted to. winwin then brought hyejin to register to be put on the missing persons list through black marketing. he did this because he wanted hyejin to be entirely safe from inho and for starship to stay away from her. best way to do this was to pretend she was missing/dead despite having the sacrifice her relationship with nct.

the reason they couldn't just go back to nct was because once starship finds out that hyejin isn't actually dead, they're going to easily be able to find her with nct or at her college, hence why she dropped out.

this brings up to dysthmia era, where she and winwin have been working for stone for up to 3 years. winwin had convinced hyejin to stop thinking about nct and chenle due to the fact that he wanted to make sure she was not tempted to run back to nct because if she did, she'd get herself killed by stone. cross-dating between mafia gangs are highly prohibited.

for context, nct's missions work like this. an anonymous sender will send nct a request in exchange for money, usually to track down someone or to prevent fatal accidents from happening. they have a system where once they complete mission, the anonymous sender will send back money. keep in mind, all senders are anonymous

over on nct's side, they had just received a request to kill a specific Stone employee. so nct set off, and turns out that Stone employee was hyejin. and then chenle and hyejin meet up coincidentally.

starship soon found hyejin worked at Stone, and bought her over. and that's when hyejin and winwin decided to work with nct. the story continues and then we get the whole jisung backstory ordeal

they had to find out jisung's backstory and inhos backstory to get more evidence to officially court inho and abolish starship. winwin and hyejin then decide to go to TOP just in case inho finds his way back.

and it was also later revealed that hyejin was the one who sent the request to kill the stone employee, who was also her. she did this because she wanted nct to find her to explain what's going on but it kind of just turned into a mess after that.

in the end, she ended up betraying TOP and going with nct despite risking her life all over again.

WINWIN'S BACKSTORY:
winwin had an interesting character this time. winwin had always been really against the idea of hyejin thinking or wanting to help nct, but if we think about it ethically, it does make sense. the more hyejin reminisces about nct, the more she wants to go and meet nct again. but if she does try to do that, she'd get herself dead. so he's just kind of driving her off nct's path for her sake. winwin is also revealed to have a liking towards hyejin, therefore he'd do all he can to protect his best friend and the person he likes romantically.

but there's no reason winwin isn't hurting either. it was not really mentioned but also consider the fact that all of winwin's harsh words were directed at hyejin, but perhaps it was also directed at himself. perhaps he himself also needed to be convinced that they couldn't have any sort of connection with nct anymore. remember, winwin lost 4 years worth of friends for survival.

in ALEXITHYMIA when hyejin first finds out that winwin was the betrayer, winwin says this:

"i was blackma— i cant explain now"

i think majority of my readers forgot about this line, but the whole reason winwin actually betrayed nct was also for nct's sake.

nct's member profiles were stolen by starship and without those member profiles, it puts them at risk to be exposed entirely. but starship needed someone to steal the member profiles off nct, so they blackmailed winwin saying that they'd expose the member profiles to court if he doesn't comply. so he took the member profiles and disappeared for a couple days in ALEXITHYMIA. starship got the member profiles and made an alliance with Stone, selling the member profiles to them so nct wouldn't find it.

this alliance is actually very important, since that alliance what made Stone sell hyejin to starship so easily.

winwin found out about the profiles being sold to Stone before they had joined any mafia group, so that's why he decided for him and hyejin to move to Stone so they can have a chance to take it back. and they settled in Stone, and when they went to nct, winwin had gotten a hold of the profiles in Stone and slipped it into taeyongs office without saying anything

then winwin died in the hands of TOP. i wanted to do this to create conflict in the readers. winwin was a very hated character at the start due to what he did to nct in book 1. but once everyone found out what actually happened, suddenly everyone was upset over his death. and also it's a KHYUAN book, someone gotta die

the main message here is to 'never make assumptions when you've only stepped in one persons shoes'

INHO/JISUNG BACKSTORY (continuation of Death's Wish):
DEATHS WISH SPOILERS!!!! skip if you have not read it

in deaths wish, aeri ran away after having killing hansol to save herself from getting caught, save jisung from having a connection with a murderer and also save her family's reputation.

chenle told everyone, including nct, that he had killed aeri, who is hansols sister. he did this for jisung's sake. inho was a stalker type character and would do anything to get with aeri, so jisung thought it would be safest for aeri to just say she's dead so inho wouldn't look for her.

and the reason for inho wanting to kill hyejin 24/7, because he thinks chenle killed the girl he 'loved'. therefore wanting to get revenge and give chenle a taste of his own medicine and kill hyejin.

later on, inho finds aeri and kidnaps her to try and keep her for himself. the reason jisung found her at aeris mothers funeral was because inho wanted to be 'caring' towards aeri so he took her there. but he's probably done pretty despicable things to her to make her 'love' him.

aeri then stole the bullet from inho when he was out and gave it to jisung. so what happened after that?

alright so i never actually revealed what happened cos i didn't know how to and kinda wanted the readers to take it however they want. but my thought process was that she actually died. after inho found out she took the bullet, he's going to go threaten to hurt her but when he came back, he found her dead on the floor beside a knife. that would both create conflict in inho and also end inhos torture towards her. and so that she doesn't have to run anymore after running for like idk 5 years.

man jisung had such a sad story