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pprodsuga · 3 months ago

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secrets untold (part 1) | sunghoon

summary: ever since sunghoon graduated university, he’s been working the same bothersome job without any real excitement in his life. but when you move into the apartment next to his, sunghoon’s reality is turned upside down and he finds himself running all over korea with you by his side. as he comes to learn, not everything is as it seems.

PAIRING: sunghoon x fem!reader

notes: ahhhhh. four revisions later and i’ve managed to write the best version of this story. i also made a playlist that you should definitelyyyy listen to while reading this. there’s nothing left for me to say other than i love sunghoon and i hope you enjoy. xx

SECRETS UNTOLD PLAYLIST

WORD COUNT: 24.1K

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to my lovely best friend @moonstruck-muses for helping me on my revisions, for brainstorming with me, and for being the best person i know.

consider leaving a comment (or two) and reblogging! x

warnings under the cut!

content warnings: mentions and descriptions of guns and a blood wound, violence in the form of hand-to-hand combat and gunshots, descriptions of stitches, alcohol use.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

Just once does Sunghoon wish for something exciting in his life.

Day in and day out, he swipes his keycard to enter the lobby of the high-rise building he calls his workplace and locates his secluded office by the back of the floor. His name sits in gold lettering, the prestigious plaque gifted to him upon his promotion a few years prior. Sunghoon’s morning begins by opening his laptop to note all of the reports he has yet to finish from the day before and checks his email for any lingering questions from clients or his co-workers. Despite his diligence, his peers aren’t and he finds himself picking up the slack more often than not. Being a financial analyst was not on Sunghoon’s bucket list of goals to achieve in his twenties. In fact, Sunghoon would rather do almost anything other than look at numbers all day and tell people what to do with them.

If he had his way, Sunghoon would have chosen a career path less rigorous and numerical-based. He would’ve tried his hand at photography and studied the fine arts to garner a career in the editorial space, or perhaps he would use his time at university to study the history of coffee before opening his own shop in the busy city of Seoul. But his parents had other plans for him, namely to study law, medicine, or finance, and the latter of the three options seemed less boring to him.

His years of studying lead him here, at Kim Search Group, crunching numbers that mean absolutely nothing to him.

The glasses that sit on the bridge of his nose become bothersome after an hour of staring at his laptop. His next meeting is in twenty minutes and he’s less than pleased when he realizes his reports are on the docket. The agenda stares back at him in hard, black letters like they’re taunting him. Sunghoon thinks they mock him with the way the cursor hovers over the parts highlighted for his portion of the presentation. Nonetheless, Sunghoon acquires what he needs and heads to the meeting room.

Everybody arrives early as usual. His boss concludes the opening remarks and lets his employees take the floor. One by one, Sunghoon’s co-workers stand in the front of the room and report their findings and other related topics from the past month. It all sounds the same to him; every person in this room looks like they could be carbon copies of one another with their suits too expensive and cologne too strong. It makes Sunghoon nauseous. Everybody here lives for everyone else instead for themselves, himself included.

“Good work, Park,” his boss tells him on the way out of the meeting room. “I grow impressed by your work ethic and capabilities everyday.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kim,” Sunghoon says with a bow.

“Do you think you can finish the Kang-Yoon reports by tonight? Our clients will be here first thing tomorrow morning to review before they decide on their purchase. I’d love to get them a first draft of their financial report when they come in.”

With a tight smile, Sunghoon nods. “Sure thing. I’ll email it to you tonight.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Mr. Kim winks. He nudges Sunghoon’s arm like they’re old friends.

By the time he gets home, it’s nearly nine in the evening. His tie sits loosely around his neck and his suit jacket is thrown haphazardly over his arm with the too-expensive briefcase his father bought him when he had been promoted. Sunghoon can’t help but scoff when he sees the dark brown leather staring back at him.

Sunghoon lives in a quiet part of town, just on the outskirts of Seoul. His neighbors are either asleep by the time the sun goes down or busy juggling children with muffled laughter echoing in the hallways. Typically, Sunghoon expects to come home and enter his apartment lobby to be greeted by the doorman who wishes him a good night, take the elevator to the third floor, and tidy his living room while trying to undress himself in the meantime.

Except, you’ve moved into the apartment next to his.

Now, Sunghoon walks with excitement because he anticipates running into you when he’s on his way up. Sometimes you both arrive at the lobby together. Other times it’s you that he sees unlocking his door when he approaches. It doesn’t matter to him, though. The only good thing about working late on the weekdays is that he gets to run into you when he comes home.

He quickly learns that you like to keep to yourself. You aren’t a loud person–not like his neighbor who lives on the other side of him–because he barely hears your footsteps and never hears you watching television. The most he’s heard is the scrape of a chair against hardwood floors.

Above all, Sunghoon thinks you’re cute. You make his heart flutter for no good apparent reason. He’s barely spoken a word to you beyond introducing himself when you first moved in and yet he finds himself pacing his living room, wondering what kind of food you like to eat and what you do on the weekends.

Sunghoon wishes he could come up with something witty to say to convince you to keep talking to him. But even seeing you in your well-worn clothes and tires expression on a Wednesday night is enough to leave him flustered.

“Hey,” Sunghoon says awkwardly with a single nod in acknowledgement when he sees you standing in front of your apartment. He watches your hand halt by the knob. You turn your head to look around you and Sunghoon feels the heat creep up his neck.

“Hi?” you say with an uptick in your voice, pointing at yourself.

Sunghoon nods. “Hey.”

“You already said that.”

“Right.” He clears his throat. “I’m Sunghoon.”

“I know. I remember you from when I moved in.”

“O-Oh,” Sunghoon stutters. “Right, yeah. You’re right. Well, I’ll introduce myself again in case you need anything.”

You unlock your apartment and step inside. “Duly noted. Goodnight, Sunghoon.”

When the door locks behind you, Sunghoon closes his eyes and curses at the ceiling for being awkward around you. He swears he might’ve felt his knees buckle when he looked into your eyes and struggles to fish out his apartment keys.

He always wishes he could say something that would convince you to stay in the hallway just a minute longer. He wants to be courageous enough to ask a question that piques your interest, so much so that he invites you back to his apartment to discuss it over a bottle of soju before you head back to your place. But Sunghoon doesn’t do any of that because he always gets tongue-tied when he realizes you’re standing before him, and because you always close the door before he can even think of something else to say to you. Sunghoon sighs in defeat and loosens his tie as soon as he steps through the threshold of his own apartment.

He sleeps with the sound of crickets chirping outside his window.

The following morning is the same. Sunghoon wakes up before the sun has the chance to say hello, swipes his keycard to access his office, and stares at his laptop until he’s sure his eyes will fall out of their sockets.

While he meanders in his office with an unusually meeting-free day, Sunghoon uses his idle time to think about you. It seems as if his thoughts gravitate towards you these days, especially as he’s gathered the courage to say more than a few words every time you’re in his line of sight. He still feels that anxiety in the pit of his stomach when he sees you with your hair down after a long day, but it’s not enough to discourage Sunghoon from being as polite as he can so that you remember him as being kind.

If he remembers correctly, you moved into the apartment next to his four months ago. Sunghoon recalls seeing a load of boxes perched by your front door and the bubbling excitement of seeing the new tenant piqued his interest. A large one was used as a door stopper and he’d noticed you carrying boxes inside one-by-one. In fact, that’s the first and only time Sunghoon recalls seeing what the interior of your apartment looked like. White, bare, and undecorated. He had offered to help but you declined on the notion that you hired movers to help bring the rest of your belongings. The two of you exchanged names and pleasantries, and when the conversation fell flat, Sunghoon settled to welcome you into the neighborhood and told you to reach out if you ever needed anything. Much to his dismay, you didn’t.

It’s crazy for him to think about how tongue-tied he’s gotten for a complete stranger over a short period of time, even crazier because he doesn’t know the first thing about you.

It’s gotten so bad that his friends have heard Sunghoon speak about you countless times.

Jay and Jake are his best friends from college and the only people he talks to. Sunghoon’s career has overtaken his social life with many friendships and blooming relationships falling apart because of his commitment to work. His degree is the product of parental expectation, but his paycheck is enough to make him feel comfortable and Sunghoon likes to surround himself with people who don’t make him feel like a stoic shell of a human being.

It seems as though Jay and Jake aren’t tired of him because they regularly include him in drinking nights and check in about his nonexistent relationship with his neighbor crush. Jay in particular is extremely vocal about having work-life balance in order to, as he puts it, “have a life for yourself before you grow old and die alone.”

For now, however, Sunghoon is happy watching you from afar and praying that there’s a reason for the two of you to become closer.

It’s another Tuesday night and Sunghoon is staying late again. Mr. Kim is too, so Sunghoon supposes tonight must not be all that bad if his superior has ordered takeout for himself for the late hours. Sunghoon arrives at his apartment around the same time he always does and prepares himself for a well deserved, deep slumber before he does this again tomorrow. Only, Sunghoon hopes he sees you before he’s off to dreamland.

And there you are, unlocking your apartment door. You look far too cute at nine in the evening. It’s unfair.

“Hey,” Sunghoon calls out to you, throat far too dry to continue speaking. He pulls his keys out of his pockets to keep himself busy when he feels your eyes burning into him.

“That’s the second time you’ve started a conversation by saying that.” Sunghoon whips his head in your direction to be met with a charming smile that seems almost playful. It’s the first time you’ve ever looked at him like this and he swears he feels his knees buckle.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, fishing his keys out of his pocket. “I guess I’m running out of things to say after a long day at work.”

“Is it that bad?”

Sunghoon breathes out a laugh. “I’m a financial analyst. Long hours and not a lot of socializing, if you can believe it.”

“Oh, I believe it.” You put your keys in the lock and push the door open. “Can’t say I’m a big fan of math.”

“It all starts to look the same after a while but you get used to it. Crunching all those numbers…I feel like I’m saving the world,” Sunghoon says facetiously.

“Well, I'm sure you’re a superhero to someone.”

“I highly doubt it, but I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

“I hope tomorrow is kinder,” you tell him as you walk into your apartment. “Don’t let those numbers get you down.”

“Goodnight,” he calls after as you close the door with a friendly smile.

Sunghoon is barely able to make it into his apartment when his cheeks start to hurt from how wide he’s stretched the lower half of his face. As he stares at your shared wall, he feels a sense of excitement and pride swell in his chest upon replaying his conversation with you over and over again. He paces in his living room with the image of your grin etched in his memory and eats a quick meal before getting ready for bed.

Sunghoon sleeps with a smile on his face.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

When the weekend approaches, Jay and Jake accompany Sunghoon to a bar across from his apartment on a rare Friday night at eight o-clock on the dot.

For the first time in a long while, Sunghoon leaves his office right on time with no prospect of having to work later in the evening or on the weekend. His friends convince him to go to the dive bar and celebrate his early dismissal with a drink or two. Sunghoon doesn’t remember the last time he saw them so casually like this because he’s either still at the office or too tired to agree to their plans.

Each of them have at least two drinks in their system. The bar food is starting to digest and the chips are a little too stale for Sunghoon’s liking but Jay and Jake don’t seem to mind as they keep shoveling them into their mouths in between conversations. The two of them seem far too energetic for Sunghoon to keep up and the exhaustion from the past week is finally catching up to him.

“Work has been killing me,” Jake groans while clutching his beer bottle. “You know how I just passed my two-year mark at the Seoul Research Center? Well, my boss assigned me an apprentice who’s interning for the semester and he’s just not cut out for this kind of stuff. I have to remind him about basic protocol every single time we work together.”

“That blows,” Jay says.

“I babysit him more than I do my actual work and I’ve been going in on Saturdays to finish my work. My boss told me not to fuck this up because this kid is apparently the son of one of the investors and plans to work here full time after he graduates college. This is gonna blow up in my face, guys. I just know it.” Jake sighs. “But what about you both? What have you been up to?”

“Some idiot misfiled a bunch of expense reports and I’m responsible for managing them.” Jay rolls his eyes and slumps back in his seat. “I’m good at my job, I know I am. I bring in clients like it’s nobody’s business but because I’m the youngest on my team, all of the managerial tasks are put on me. I mean, we have a secretary for a reason and that’s literally in the job description. Why can’t they do it?”

“Guess this is a bad week for both of us,” Jake says with a light chuckle. “I look forward to the weekend when I realize it’s Monday.”

“What about you, Sunghoon? How are things with you and the firm?”

The condensation of his drink feels nice against Sunghoon’s palm. Jay and Jake are looking at him expectantly and he knows the topic would come around to his job at one point or another. He plasters a small smile on his face and tries to answer as honestly as possible.

“Same old, same old. I’ve only been working late a few days every other week. It’s not as taxing as it was before.”

“Are the higher ups still giving you a hard time?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “I’m only responsible for seven junior analysts. They’re all competent enough and get their work done on time. I don’t really have to look after them like my colleagues and thank god for that.”

“I’m still rooting for you to quit your job,” Jay encourages.

“I’ll quit my job when you quit yours.”

“Touche.” They don’t press him about it anymore.

“Any update on the hottie next door?” Jake asks.

“Don’t call Y/N that,” Sunghoon scolds. “You make her sound like a hooker.”

Jake shrugs. “You said she was hot.”

“I said she was pretty.”

“So you don’t think she’s hot?” Sunghoon rolls his eyes as the other two laugh at him from across the booth. “Relax, I’m just messing with you. It’s fun to see you all riled up.”

“There’s something incredibly wrong with you.”

“Okay, enough with Jake.” Jay pushes his friend to the back of the booth to get closer to Sunghoon with both elbows on the table. “On a serious note, have you talked to her yet?” Sunghoon closes his eyes shut in shame and grimaces. “I’ll take it as a no?”

“Oh we talked,” he says, opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling above him. “I actually grew a pair and talked to her when I came home.”

“Why is that a bad thing?”

“I started the only conversations we’ve had by saying ‘hey’ like a virgin loser.” Sunghoon groans before facing his friends again. “She called me out on it too.”

“Ouch,” Jake winces. “That bad?”

“Well, she laughed and we talked about my job a little. She called me a superhero for dealing with math.”

Jay shrugs. “You kind of are.”“Did anything else happen?” Jake asks. “Did she invite you over? Did you invite her over?”

“Slow down, Jaeyun. Not everyone is as pathetically desperate as you are.”

Sunghoon laughs. “No, I didn’t invite her over. I also didn’t go to her place. But she said she hoped the next day would be kinder so I think that’s a good sign?”

“Dude, you’re thinking way too hard about this. That’s like, the best kind of sign. It means she cares about you.”

“I wouldn’t go so far to say that. Maybe the next time I see her, I won’t be such a fucking loser.” Sunghoon finishes his drink.

“Well, maybe you won’t be so tongue tied now that you guys are familiar with each other,” says Jake. “She knows something about you now.”

“But I don’t know anything about her,” Sunghoon groans.

“That’s why you make small talk, Hoon. Maybe try asking Y/N about her day and see where that takes you.”

“Y/N seems like the kind of person to keep to herself. She’s always so quiet.”

“Maybe she’s just a quiet person, then,” Jay adds. “You know, someone you have to get to know in order to get them out of their shell.”

“I’m so bad at talking to girls.” Sunghoon chastises himself and nods when the waiter signals to ask if he’d like another beer. “I get in my own head and end up making a fool of myself.”

“If words fail, just smile at her and use your good looks,” Jake teases. The waiter brings the three of them fresh, cold bottles. Sunghoon takes a long sip and savors the flavor as it slides down his throat. The coolness of the liquid provides a nice contrast to his warm face.

“I couldn’t tell you why I'm so hung up on Y/N. When I see her, I feel like my feet are planted into the floor and nothing I want to say comes out of my mouth.”

“That, my friend, is what it’s like to have a crush,” Jay says. “I mean, you remember the time Jake had a crush on his lab partner in sophomore year, right? The one time he brought her coffee, he ended up spilling it on her white shirt.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jake groans. “But God, I’m really no better.”

“You’re not the only one feeling like this, man.” Jay takes a drink. “Maybe you should take it as slow as you are right now, you know? Start by talking to her before you both go your separate ways. Maybe you’ll be comfortable enough to ask her on a date.”

Sunghoon laughs humorlessly. “God, I’ve been pining after this girl for so long and I don’t know a single thing about her other than her name. What if I never get to know her? What if she moves away and we don’t keep in touch? Or worse, what if she's dating somebody? What if she’s not into guys?”

“Well, I don’t think we can help there,” Jake shrugs.

“I mean, I’d be bummed but I wouldn’t be upset.”

“You would totally be upset.”

“Okay,” Sunghoon says. “Maybe a little upset.”

“There’s no use in thinking about what-ifs,” Jay advises. “You’ll only give yourself a headache.”

“My mom keeps asking about when I’m gonna get a wife,” Sunghoon complains. “Every time we talk on the phone, I can tell she humors the pleasant talk about my job and life because she becomes really animated when she asks that question. How do I tell her that I’m so fucking hung up on my neighbor that the thought of dating anyone else repulses me?”

“Damn,” Jay swears. “You really like this girl, don’t you?”

“Yes, and it’s really fucking frustrating to pine after her because I barely know her and I’m ready to drop everything if she called me right now.”

“Maybe she’s not worth it,” Jake says with a shrug. “I know that’s the last thing you want to hear, but maybe there’s a reason why you haven’t been able to make a move on her. Maybe you guys aren’t good for each other and the universe is trying to tell you that. I don’t know.”

“I just wish someone would send me a sign,” Sunghoon pleads. “I don’t really know what sign, but something that’ll make us talk more. I need courage. I just need one chance. If it fails and she rejects me, then I’ll be an adult and move on with my life.”

“You deserve to be happy,” says Jay. “After all the shit you’ve been through, you deserve at least to go on a date with a cute girl.”

“Everything feels so bleak these days. I go to work every single day and leave unfulfilled. It’s like I’m floating through my day to make it to the weekend just to do this every single week. Before I know it, the holidays have come and another year goes by. I feel like I’m wasting my life by being at this job but my parents sacrificed so much so that I could have the life I have now.

“I don’t know what to do, guys. Every day feels the same. I wonder if this is how my life is supposed to be for the rest of it. Life is so fucking hard and all I want is a break. I just want to feel something.”

“I wish we could give it to you,” Jay says quietly. He knocks his hands to Sunghoon’s. “You know we’re with you every step of the way, right?”

“I know. It’s just…hard.”

“You’re the best person I know, Hoon,” Jake comforts. “I’m really sorry that everything went down the way it did.”

“Sometimes, I wonder if I feel like this for Y/N because I daydream about her to escape my life,” Sunghoon confesses. “I think about a future with her, and I know that sounds crazy considering I barely know her, but sometimes I wonder what it’ll be like to come home to her instead of parting ways when we get home at the same time. I think about cooking meals for her and going on dates instead of working late. I think about falling asleep next to her instead of being alone. I wonder what my life would’ve been like if my parents never forced me to study finance. Maybe Y/N and I could have a chance.”

“Or, maybe you would’ve never met her at all,” Jay says. “Maybe you would’ve never met us.”

“In another life, I’d own a coffee shop and my biggest worry would be somebody making a scene.” Sunghoon laughs. “I could deal with that.”

“Do we get free coffee for life?” Jake asks, pointing between himself and Jay. “I think bitching in dive bars all these years together means we deserve free coffee.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sunghoon teases. “But seriously, I think…I’m so tired of my life right now because I’m unhappy. There’s no excitement. There’s nothing to keep me going. Work doesn’t fulfill me and I hate it when my boss asks me to stay late. But if I quit my job, I don’t know what I’d do. My parents would disown me if I abandoned their plans for me.

“And you know, I feel so fucking selfish talking like this when there are so many people in Korea who don’t have what I have because they don’t have the means to work. I feel so guilty thinking like this when people go hungry every day because they can’t afford to eat. What kind of person does that make me? I can handle bad days so long as there’s a roof over my head.”

“Sure, but you can’t control the way you feel and your upbringing doesn’t make you a bad person,” Jay assures. “You can acknowledge that you’ve had it good in life but that doesn’t mean your struggles aren’t any less valid.”

“Yeah, and beating yourself up over it is only making you more upset. You deserve to be happy, Sunghoon. Don’t forget that.”

“Thanks, guys. I guess I’ve avoided saying how unhappy I am out loud. Sometimes it feels too much because I don’t have a second to myself. When I get home, I sleep and then the next day comes. I dread closing my eyes because that means I have to work the next day.”

“One step at a time,” Jay says. “We’ll be there with you until you figure out what to do next.”

“You guys mean the world to me. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jake says, hiding his blush. “We know.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

Another week goes by and Sunghoon is disappointed because not once did he run into you.

He doesn’t know if the universe has it against him or what it is about his conversation with his friends that has left him feeling so empty these past few days. Leaving the bar with alcohol and hope in his system had Sunghoon feeling like he was on top of the world and that everything would fall into place if he willed it enough. But upon coming home on Monday evening and the nights after that, he didn’t see you at your door.

Sunghoon wonders if his life was always supposed to be like this–stagnant to the point where he feels numb, like he's supposed to be a cog in the machine until the day he retires. Even then, Sunghoon wonders if he’ll be happy when he’s finally able to stop being miserable. His greatest fear is looking back at his life and seeing a plethora of unhappy moments instead of achieving what he wanted for himself. He’s afraid of taking his last breath, regretting the relationships he let fall through the cracks and not choosing a life that he wanted to live in favor of making his parents happy.

He wonders if there’s more to his life than feeling alone all the time. He wonders if he’ll regret marrying the person he spends the rest of his life with if he continues down this path, so aggravated by his mother’s inquiries about his love life that he’ll ask the first girl who shows interest in him to marry him. Sunghoon doesn’t know when he’ll stop feeling like an empty shell of a human being and he can’t remember the last time he was truly happy.

Everyday, Sunghoon feels like he’s on autopilot. It feels as though someone else has taken control of his life and he’s completing the orders of somebody else against his will. It’s hard to push back against his norm when he’s got nobody to stand behind him. Knowing his parents would be disappointed in him if he abandoned the life he worked hard for is enough for Sunghoon to remain afraid of changing anything.

He’s snapped out of his daydreams when he hears you come home. This is the first time that you’ve arrived later than he has, to his knowledge, and he wonders if you’ve had dinner. It’s a Friday night and he thinks about if you’ve got any plans for later in the evening.

Sunghoon stares at the television screen and lets the colorful animation fly right over his head as he contemplates his next move. He’s itching to invite you over with all of the unopened bottles of soju he has in his fridge, thanks to Jake buying a case for him at the start of the week. All of the thoughts about how his life feels desolate is enough to convince him that he might have enough courage to invite you over for drinks.

Without thinking too much about it, Sunghoon stands from his spot on the couch and grabs two bottles from his fridge. He pays no mind to the cold sensation against his palms, nor does he care that he’s walking in the hallway in his pajamas and slippers. Sunghoon shoves down any nervousness as he knocks on your doors and figures he has nothing to lose, even if you reject him. He hears your feet shuffling behind the door before you open it.

“Sunghoon?” you say with an uptick in your voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he says, clearing his throat. Sunghoon holds up the soju bottles, where the condensation has begun running down the side of the glass and onto his fingers. “I, uh, have a few bottles because a friend bought them for me and don’t want to drink them by myself. I was wondering if you wanted to come over and have a drink with me.”

You peer up at him and Sunghoon feels like you’re inspecting him. He avoids running back to his apartment despite his mind telling him to hide. It’s at this moment that Sunghoon realizes he’s putting his heart on his sleeve.

“I’d love to,” you agree. “Would you mind giving me a few minutes? I want to change into something more comfortable.” Sunghoon looks at your attire and you’re still dressed like you’ve just come back from work.

“Yes,” he nods. “Of course. Take all the time you need. Just knock on my door when you’re ready.”

You give him a smile that makes him feel like his heart might burst right out of his chest.

He anxiously waits for you and pulls out his speaker, connecting his phone to play at an appropriate volume. Sunghoon sifts through his playlists until he lands on one that he’s satisfied with and pockets his phone, anxiously pacing around the living room until he hears you knock.

“You look cozy,” he comments, seeing your pajama pants and a sweater that looks a bit too oversized on your body. Sunghoon tries his best to keep himself from making you uncomfortable and steps aside to let you in.

“I hope it’s okay that I brought my own slippers.” He looks down to see your purple ones. “I felt kind of weird putting my shoes on when you’re only a few steps away from me.”

“I don’t mind at all.” Sunghoon brings out two shot glasses from his cabinets and sets them down on the coffee table in front of the couch. “Feel free to make yourself at home.”

You sit politely on the couch while Sunghoon opens a bottle of peach soju and pours a shot in both glasses. He’s slightly buzzed from previously drinking alone and chuckles when he sees your leg crossed over the other, handing one of the glasses to you. His usual, awkward demeanor is relinquished with the alcohol in his system already.

“Here, I think you’ll need a shot or two to loosen up.” You laugh when you hear the glass clink against his before drinking.

“Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve done this.”

He raises his eyebrow. “This?”

“Drink,” you clarify. “And get to know somebody completely off the bat.”

“Well, I’d say we’re pretty acquainted.” Sunghoon pours another shot for himself and beckons you to bring yours over. “We’ve been neighbors for a few months and we know each other’s names. I think we know each other pretty well.”

“Your definition of knowing someone well is different from mine. But maybe I’ll need to take a page or two out of your book.” The two of you clink glasses and drink together.

“You know, I was a little nervous about asking you to hang out,” Sunghoon confesses, sitting on the couch with a respectable distance between the two of you. “You’re the only neighbor I see regularly. It’s nice to see a familiar face from time to time.”

You take the bottle from Sunghoon. “I think you might be the only person I’ve spoken to, really. Well, except for the doorman.”

“Love that guy.” Sunghoon lets you pour liquid into his shot glass and the two of you take another shot together.

“I don’t feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot of the people here. But it’s a big building and so much is always happening. I feel like I’m playing catch up every time people greet me when we’re in the elevator together.”

“You get used to it. There are people from all walks of life who live here and sometimes it’s hard to remember who’s who.”

“I moved in a few months ago, as you know, and I feel like I’m just barely starting to get to know the neighborhood. Do you know Mrs. Kang from 31B? Apparently, her grandson owns a noodle shop just two blocks from here and she swears it’s a neighborhood staple.”

“It’s a small hole in the wall that gets the job done,” Sunghoon nods. “It’s pretty good but they close so early.”

You frown. “That’s a shame.”

“What do you do for work, if you don’t mind me asking? We run into each other at the same time most of the week so I figured you might have a night job, or something.”

“I work as security at the Seoul Metropolitan Library and I usually cover the night shifts because people rarely volunteer for them.”

Sunghoon pours more soju in the glasses. “Oh, really? That’s pretty cool. Do you like working there?”

“It’s a comfortable job that pays decently well. It isn’t the most exciting job but it’s a means to an end, you know?”

Sunghoon immediately drinks his shot. “I know it all too well.”

You follow suit. “Is your job really that bad?”

“I don’t want to bore you with the details, or anything. I invited you over because I thought we could be friends.”

You look at him, amused. “Sunghoon, it’s a Friday night and we’re both staying indoors to drink. This is the perfect time to bitch and moan about your job.”

“Well, shit. In that case, I think we’ll need to finish this bottle off and get another two.”

He leaves you on the couch when the two of you finish the bottle and brings out two more, along with some dry snacks he found in his kitchen. He brings them over on a stray to avoid cleaning a mess while he’s inebriated and sets it on the table in front of you. By now, you’ve taken the liberty to sink to the floor and rest your back on the couch. Sunghoon hides behind a grin at the notion that you might already be comfortable around him.

“Alright, I’ll need to be significantly more drunk to talk about work. You absolutely don’t have to drink more if you don’t want to.”

“Don’t be silly,” you say, grabbing the bottle from him before pouring yourself another shot. “It’s no fun to drink alone.” Sunghoon’s cheeks burn as he watches you swallow the liquid, forcing himself to focus on anything but you to avoid choking on his own spit.

Sunghoon’s mind is already hazy from the head start he had but he can’t deny that you look like the epitome of comfort in your oversized hoodie and pajama pants. He wonders if this is what you must look like when you get home from work and if you’re somebody who likes to sleep with the blankets tucked just underneath your chin. He wills himself to stop daydreaming when he hears you put the glass on the table.

“My job is soul-sucking,” Sunghoon begins. “Everyday is the same and I sit in my office contemplating on jumping out of my window if that means I stop being so miserable every time I open my eyes.”

“You work in finance, right?”

He nods, touched that you remembered. “I do. To sum it up, my job is basically to tell people whether or not they’re spending their money wisely to make a profit. It’s a greedy, immoral business that makes everybody miserable. Yet, everyone keeps a straight face and pretends to be happy by gloating about how much money they have or what liquid assets are in their possession.”

“Sounds tough.”

“I’m pretty good with numbers and my dad works in finance, too. I guess it runs in my blood.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “I know. But he’s set some pretty high expectations for me that seem pretty unattainable and it feels like the only way I can make him proud is by staying at this job and climbing the ranks until I become somebody’s boss.

“Sometimes, it feels like I’m living somebody’s else’s life and I’m watching from the backseat. Most days make me feel like my life runs on a loop because I experience the same kind of dread every time I wake up and get ready for work. I can’t enjoy coming home because I stay later than what’s expected of me and barely get a wink of sleep before I do it all over again.”

“I can understand that to a degree,” you say. Sunghoon watches as you fidget with the strings on your sweater. “Living for somebody else feels bleak when every day feels the same. It’s like there’s no beginning or end.”

He nods enthusiastically. “There’s no purpose in my life right now. I don’t care about our clients or that the rich are getting richer. They could give their money away to people who actually need it but don’t.”

“People who have power are greedy and that’s true no matter where you go. It doesn’t matter if it’s money or influence, politics or connections, it’s always the same.”

“I come from money too,” he admits, pouring himself another shot. Sunghoon stares at the liquid until it settles within the small glass and sighs. “My dad made a fortune in the economic boom just after he married my mom. He understands the struggle, to a degree, but I think he lost a lot of it when his career took off.

“I grew up in a gated community and never had to think twice about asking for anything because I knew I’d always get it. I was so spoiled as a kid and was always told to be grateful for what I have because not many people could say the same.” Sunghoon laughs incredulously. “God, I sound like a dipshit.”

“Maybe just a little.” The way you smile at him makes Sunghoon feel like his stomach is performing backflips.

“I realized a lot of people weren’t like me when I got to university. My best friends had part-time jobs to afford tuition while I didn’t have to. How fucked up is that? I realized the majority of the world works so hard for virtually nothing while people like me sit on power and do horrible things with it. The company I work for glorifies these kinds of people and it pains me to see who gets taken advantage of in the name of making a sale.

“I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for me, or anything,” Sunghoon says, looking at you. “Although, I’m pretty drunk at this point and can’t seem to shut up.” You pour yourself another shot and nudge your glass against his.

“The world might be a messed up place but that doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up for it. Sometimes you need to follow what you’re told just to survive.”

“So we both know what it’s like to work in a corporate hell hole, huh?” Sunghoon asks. He chugs his shot and you follow suit.

“Something like that, yeah. In my experience, putting your head down can only last for so long. Being in that kind of environment makes a person feel like I’m a pawn in someone else’s game and I can’t speak up for myself without repercussions.”

“You fucking get it,” Sunghoon muses. He slaps his thighs like it’s a revelation. “I don’t have many friends other than the two guys I met in university because this job has cut into every part of my life. My colleagues are all people who care a little too much about their jobs and make it a mission to see who can yield the highest profit margin for clients across the board. It’s depressing, really.”

“Money makes people do crazy things. People forget their morals if that means they get a big payout.”

“I feel like I’m the only person at the company who feels like this. Everybody brags about their work. My boss always tells me I’m doing it right by keeping my success stories to myself but he doesn’t get that I feel ashamed to be doing the work that I do.”

You nod slowly. Sunghoon’s eyes are fixed on the way you shift your gaze to look at the coffee table in front of you and the way your mouth parts slightly ajar like you’re about to say something. He waits patiently for you, but you don’t say anything.

“Anyway, sorry for the rant,” he apologies, rubbing the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or to talk that long.”

“You didn’t. You just made me think a lot about my life. I hadn’t realized that I felt the same.” Sunghoon gestures his hand, beckoning for you to continue. “Ah, my life is filled with chaos. Most days, I don’t know when to quit or when I'll be able to live a peaceful life. It feels right to hope for the best but expect the worst and I’ve grown quite tired of waiting on someone to rescue me.”

“I’m sorry you feel this way too.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know my parents growing up and I lived far from the city life up until I was sixteen. I feel like I pretend to be somebody I’m not to keep my sanity intact on most days. It’s almost like I’ll combust if I face the truth.”

“Makes you feel like a machine, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. It feels like I have no personality and that my opinion doesn’t matter.”

“My colleagues make me feel like I have no voice, either. If I don’t follow the rules the way it’s written to get a job done, then I fail, even if I secure success for my client. Do you ever feel like that?”

Sunghoon watches you nod with a tired laugh. “All the time. Individuality doesn’t matter if you’re doing something to serve the purpose of the ‘greater’ good. What matters is if everyone acts accordingly.”

“It’s a fucked up world we live in, Y/N, let me tell you that.”

“I guess I’m starting to realize just how unhappy I’ve been lately. Sometimes it feels like I’m not meant to amount to anything if it’s not to make other people happy by overextending myself.”

“Don’t say that,” Sunghoon says, knocking his knee with yours. “I’m sure you’re amazing.” He watches you bite your lip to keep from smiling.

“I bet you’re amazing too, Sunghoon.”

“I don’t want to be somebody who follows orders all the time, especially when I don’t believe in them. My boss is somebody who has no values as long as money comes pouring in. He gave me a box of documents to process a few months ago. It had a thumb drive with digital records but none of them made any sense because it didn’t match the payroll for anyone in the company. I tried to look into it on my own but nothing on that drive made any sense when I compared it to financial records we keep for transparency purposes.”

Sunghoon watches your eyes snap to him. “Financial records?”

He nods. “All the names were people who worked for the company but none of the paystubs matched what we keep on file. I think he must’ve given it to me by accident because he came back a week later and asked to look at the box.”

“What happened next?”

“Something felt off about these records so I took a spare thumb drive from the office supply room and put it in that box.”

“What did you do with the actual thumb drive?”

Sunghoon purses his lips. “It’s in my bedroom. I haven’t looked at it since that day because I’m worried that the higher-ups will trace company property back to my personal laptop. I know I shouldn’t have done it and I probably should’ve given it back to my boss, but my gut was telling me something was wrong.”

You look at him with curiosity and Sunghoon can’t fathom why you must be interested. He’s even more perplexed when he sees you sitting like you haven’t taken a sip of alcohol on an empty stomach, body planted to the ground. He’s impressed with how you aren’t rocking from side to side like he is. His body feels like it’s fidgeting where he sits and he feels his head spinning with the growing silence between the both of you. You must have a high alcohol tolerance.

“Well anyway,” Sunghoon says while clearing his throat, attempting to dissolve the tension. “I don’t think I’ll be in trouble if no one notices it’s missing. I’ll probably forget about it tomorrow morning or fess up and give it to my boss when I go into work next week.”

“You should probably keep it a secret until you’re ready to provide evidence.”

He tilts his head and looks at you. “Yeah…You’re right. I’ve never told anyone this before. It’s been a secret I’ve kept for so long but I can’t trust anyone.”

“And you feel like you can trust me?”

Sunghoon shrugs. “You seem loyal. That, and I’m really drunk.”

“I don’t know about you, but my head feels like it’s spinning.”

“Y/N, you look completely sober right now.”

You laugh, the kind of laughter that comes from deep within until it bounces against Sunghoon’s walls until you’re covering your mouth with embarrassment. He wouldn’t mind hearing that again.

“Believe me, I’m pretty drunk. I just conceal it well.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Sunghoon teases. “I thought I was drinking alone.”

You shake your head. “If you need a drinking buddy any time soon, you know where I live.”

“Yeah? You’d be down to do this again?” He watches you tilt your head with a smile he can’t quite decipher, but it hits him right in the chest and the alcohol in his body starts to make his neck feel warm.

“I would love that,” you say. “I can bring the alcohol next time.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

Things are going well. Too well. Sunghoon can see the sun’s departure as he makes his exit from his office and down to the lobby, where the sky is turning a shade of purple. The car ride home is even more beautiful, so much so that Sunghoon doesn’t mind getting stuck in a spot of traffic on his way home. For the first time in a while, he’s had a good work day.

He thinks back to the night you were in his apartment and the excitement of a budding crush comes back to him all over again. Through his own glossy, alcohol-fueled eyes, he swears you might’ve been flirting with him when you suggested spending time with him in his apartment again. Sunghoon wonders if he’s your every waking thought like you are to him. He then wonders if he should’ve asked for your phone number before you said goodnight and retreated to your apartment.

Despite this thought, Sunghoon reckons that he’s buzzing from the excitement of getting off of work early. There’s still time for him to engage in whatever he wants to do to unwind after work. He plans on taking extra time to cook himself a big dinner and maybe catch an episode or two of the anime he’s been meaning to finish. When he’s sure you’re back in your apartment, Sunghoon considers asking if you’d be up to hanging out.

He grips his briefcase as he steps into the elevator on his way up to his apartment with a hop in his step. Sunghoon loosens his tie around his neck with his free hand and pushes his clear specks up the bridge of his nose as the elevator door opens. It’s only when he’s about to fish for his keys does he notice your apartment door slightly ajar.

Your lights are turned off. Sunghoon’s arm is still in his pocket as he reaches for his keys and the metal grows warmer as he holds it in his palm. He stands before his own door, a feeling of uncertainty ringing in his ears as he beholds the unusual sight before him. For the months that you’ve lived next to him, you have never been careless enough to leave your apartment unlocked and available to anyone who might be curious enough to enter. Your door being unlocked makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

But Sunghoon tries to rationalize with himself. You could be in your apartment with the assumption that you closed your door when you didn’t. Maybe you were in too much of a rush to get to work and didn’t take the time to close your door properly. Surely even an astute and organized person could slip up from time to time, right?

Or, maybe something is terribly wrong. Maybe you’re in need of help and can’t reach your phone. Sunghoon’s mind runs through a million scenarios, none of which make him feel any better about knowing your door is unlocked. He can partially see inside of it but he can’t see anything else inside. Sunghoon can’t see nor hear you moving in your apartment. Something must be wrong.

Fighting the comfort to dismiss it and retreat back into his apartment, Sunghoon grips his briefcase and shoves his keys back into the depths of his pocket. He takes a careful step forward and feels his balance faltering, wondering if you really did forget to lock the door on your way to work. Still, he thinks it’s better to check if you’re okay before closing your door and telling you about it when you come home. Slowly, Sunghoon uses his free hand to open the door slightly. He pushes his head in and takes a look around but sees nothing out of the ordinary.

“Y/N?” he calls out, opening the door enough to let his body through. “Are you in here?”

Sunghoon talks into your apartment and peers around the corner by the hallway when he feels arms around his neck.

His life flashes before his eyes when he realizes he isn’t alone. The arms around his body feel far too big and muscular to be yours. Sunghoon tries to hit the stranger with his briefcase, but the angle falters and causes him to drop it onto the floor. He grips the assailant’s arm with his fingers in an attempt to pry them off of him until his own fingers feel close to numb. Sunghoon’s attempts prove futile, however, as the strength of the man overpowers him. He feels his breath constrict while his feet shuffle against the hardwood floor, his own voice sputtering out coughs and nonsensical phrases to get the assailant to let him go.

A force makes it so both he and the attacker stumble forward. Sunghoon falls to the ground as he coughs to regain his breath now that he’s free from the chokehold he was put in, the sound of violent gasps seeping in the air amongst the chaos behind him. As he coughs, he looks beside him and sees you land a punch to his face.

You’ve managed to close the door as you dodge the stranger’s attempts to hit and kick your body. You move expertly like you’re dancing at the same frequency, anticipating the assailant’s next move like it’s nothing. It looks like a choreographed sequence with the way you’re maneuvering to block yourself from getting hit while landing punches to the assailant’s chest until you’ve hit a sore spot, kicking the popliteal to make him surrender.

You waste no time and place the stranger’s neck between your arms. Sunghoon watches as he tries to push you off of him to no avail. He thrashes and pulls at your arm but you don’t relent, choosing to wrap your legs around his back when he stands in an attempt to rid you from his body. Sunghoon moves to where the two of you aren’t to stay from the action.

Eventually, the assailant manages to back you into a wall until you shout in pain. The small distraction allows the stranger to pull away from your grasp and run towards your window, bracing himself before breaking the glass and making a run for it.

It’s over as quickly as it began. The sound of glass shattering rings in Sunghoon’s mind as he stares at the shards littered around your floor. He rushes next to you when he notices you walking towards him. Sunghoon watches as you peer out of the window and hastily grabs onto your arm to prevent you from following the assailant out of the window.

“Are you okay?” you ask when you finally look back at him. He’s got a red patch on his jaw from being knocked in the face by an elbow, but Sunghoon’s doing well with the adrenaline that’s coursing through his veins. It's you he’s worried about.

“I’m fine. Are you okay?” Sunghoon lets go of your arm. “What the fuck just happened?”

You talk away from him to turn on the overhead lights to assess the damages to your face on your wall mirror by the door that managed to survive the attack. With a split crack down the middle, you stare at the faint purple bruise on your left cheekbone and the swelling of your bottom lip. Sunghoon watches you from where you stand and uses this opportunity to catch his breath. He watches as you tilt your head to look at your once-bruiseless face, now littered with scratches, and feels an ache in his chest along with confusion.

When he looks around the room, he’s perplexed to see how empty it is. You have a single loveseat facing towards the door with your television mounted in front of it. You have a single chair and a small dining table and the walls are completely blank with no photos held up by picture frames. The open kitchen is barely functional and it seems like all you have is one of everything–one pot, one pan, one set of utensils, one plate, and one bowl–while the rest of the living room has none of your personality.

Sunghoon questions all of it. He wonders if this is the reason you’re always in a rush to get inside when he sees you unlocking the door. He thinks back to all the times the two of you have walked together and can’t recall a single time he ever saw anything other than white walls. There’s nothing on your wall except the mirror you’re standing in front of.

“What the hell just happened, Y/N?”

You turn to look at him and Sunghoon feels as if you’re trying to tell him something. He’s never seen you look like this before, so hard and controlling. He’s used to your soft laughter and easy eyes, not the sharp daggers in your irises.

“There are very bad people in the world,” you tell him cryptically. “You need to learn how to be more careful with things that aren’t yours.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

You turn around and look at Sunghoon, averting your eyes to the mess around you both. He follows your line of sight and hears as you curse underneath your breath. The curtains that have been pulled back flutter in the wind as it starts to pick up, and suddenly the apartment starts to feel much colder because of it. While Sunghoon is visibly panicking, he’s confused as to why you aren’t.

“I’m sorry, Sunghoon, but for me to tell you that, I’m going to need you to leave with me.”

“Leave with you?” he asks, stepping away from the glass shards. “What are you talking about? Why do we need to leave?”

“Because of that.” You point at the broken window. “Whoever that was will come back and finish the job if you’re not careful. If you want to live, you need to do as I say.”

“Y/N, I know we’ve been neighbors for a few months, but you’re asking me to blindly trust you after someone tried to kill me.”

“He tried to kill us, actually,” you correct. “But I see your point. Don’t leave because you trust me, then. Leave because he knows who you are and where you live, and won’t hesitate to come back.”

Sunghoon gulps. “He’s gonna come back?” You tilt your head and look at him in a way that makes him believe you can sense his confusion. You don’t step closer to him with the fear that he’d attempt to pass through you to get into the safety of his apartment. Instead, you take a deep breath.

“I’m asking you to value your life and keep living,” you say. “I saved you, Sunghoon. I’m not trying to hurt you.”

“I can’t believe this.” He shakes his head and looks away, averting his gaze to the broken window. “I can’t believe someone broke into your apartment and tried to fucking kill you. At least have the decency to act scared.”

“I’m petrified.” Sunghoon’s eyes are back on you when he hears the upstick in your voice. “But things don’t surprise you when they happen often.”

The apartment is quiet, save for the soft hum of the wind from outside and the tree branches knocking against the window frame. Sunghoon still feels like his ears are ringing and that his veins are pumping with adrenaline as he looks at you with a pained and confused expression. If you’re someone who’s had to fight men twice your size to survive, he doesn’t want to know what would happen to him if he chose to stay behind. He also doesn’t want to think about how your life likely did depend on it at one point or another.

The crush he’s harbored for you since he first saw you move in makes this whole ordeal that much more confusing. To the untrained eye, you look incapable of jumping into a fist fight nor do you look strong enough to pry a grown man off of another person. The idea of you in his head is unlike the person he sees standing before him. To Sunghoon, you are someone who likes to walk on the slow path, letting life take you wherever it sees fit. He thinks of you as a quiet, unassuming individual who accepted that, like himself, the kind of quiet life you were living was one you’d live for the rest of your life.

But he’s scared out of his mind when he sees the bruise setting on your face and the way your lips are swelling up. He watches you look around the room before heading into your bedroom, and he wonders what you must be looking for.

Your bedroom is just as bare and desolate as your living space. A single twin bed faces the door and a small nightstand with an equally small lamp sits beside it. There’s a book in one of the hollow spaces and your closet area is small, tucked away behind a door mirror that serves to cover your hanging clothes. You have nothing on your wall. No photo, no artwork, nothing that could tell Sunghoon anything about you. Sunghoon gets a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Y/N,” he pleads, voice cracking when he speaks. “What’s going on?”

You just look at him. “I’m sorry, Sunghoon.”

“Sorry? Why are you sorry? What’s there anything to be sorry about? Someone broke into your apartment and then tried to kill us.”

Your posture sinks as the weight of reality overcomes your perception. Sunghoon watches as you hold yourself back and averts his eyes when he assumes you’re about to cry to be polite. His heart lurches in his chest and he feels like he might cry too.

“I really need you to trust me.” You sound helpless and he wonders if you feel that way too. “I would never ask you to do something if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Your life is in danger, Sunghoon. I don’t want to see you die.”

“Woo says I’m going to die?” he asks. Why should I trust you? Who the fuck are you and how do you know how to fight like that?”

“You need to trust me because there is no one who can protect you from what you witnessed and I’m somebody who can protect you if this happens again.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“That’s the only answer I can give right now.”

Sunghoon sighs. “You’re asking a lot of me, Y/N.”

“Fine.”

Sunghoon watches you pull a backpack from your closet and haphazardly throw in shirts, undergarments, and other items into it. It’s when you pull the vent cover from the wall that Sunghoon starts to panic. You pull out a large ziplock bag with stacks of cash and other items he assumes are credit cards and passports. When you pull a gun from your nightstand and push into your backpack, you look at him.

“You can stay. But know that I will not come back should anything happen to you or the people you care about.” He doesn’t know if this is a threat or not. But his heart is beating erratically and the thought of being without your help doesn’t make him feel better.

He doesn’t want to go. He wants to retreat back to his apartment and pretend this never happened. Sunghoon wishes he would’ve ignored that gut feeling in his stomach to check if you were okay and live his life blissfully unaware of what life you must live to attract people who are out to kill you. But thinking like this makes Sunghoon feel guilty because despite your unusual talent for warding off men twice your size and height, he would be damned if something serious happened to you.

Even so, leaving his life behind feels unfair. The idea of leaving his friend and family behind makes his stomach churn. Will he ever be able to see his friends again? What about his mother, father, and sister? What of them? Will they have to wonder where their son is and deal with the aftermath of not knowing that Sunghoon’s gone missing, let alone why? Sunghoon can’t think of the last time he talked to his family on the phone. His poor sister, too, will have to continue growing up without a brother to protect her.

But none of that matters if what you say is true. Even if Sunghoon chose not to follow you and remain as clueless about your life as he does now, the chance that he’ll be safe doesn’t seem like a risk worth taking. The strange man still knows where he lives and what he looks like. If what you claim is true, then this man will eventually find Sunghoon and kill him. Whatever “bad” means to you must really be bad if someone was aiming to murder you.

“Okay,” he says with a trembling voice. “I’ll go with you.”

“You’re making the right decision,” you explain with your arms gesturing to the space around you. “The life you have…whatever it means to you, it will never be the same. There is a very bad man who works for someone equally worse. They’ll always find you.”

“I understand, I think.”

“It’s a lot to ask of you. I know,” you nod. “That man knows what you look like now and will be able to find you no matter where you go.”

“So that’s it? I just leave?”

“Well, you’ll need to do some packing first. Do you have a backpack?”

“I have one I travel with, yes,” Sunghoon says.

“Good. Let me gather some things and then we’ll head to your place so you can pack.”

As you continue gathering last minute belongings, Sunghoon takes the time to comprehend just how strange this situation is. Why is your apartment so empty? It looks as if no one is supposed to live here, like this space is just temporary. It barely looks like a functioning living space. How do you entertain yourself? If you’re able to afford living in this apartment, how come you don’t have any furniture to fill the space? And what about decorations? Why don’t you have any photos of yourself, your friends, or your family hung up on the walls?

The harder he thinks, the more his headache returns. You live in isolation to the point where he starts to question everything he knows about you. All of your belongings could fit into the backpack you’re carrying and he wonders if this familiar experience is something you’re running away from.

Sunghoon can only stare in utter shock as you pull out a plastic bag filled with things he's only seen in movies. More passports, more cash, more credit cards, and what he assumes to be more fake driver’s licenses. Your supply seems endless. Underneath your sink contains knives stashed away in protective bags that you shove into the backpack with one tucked behind you. The way you touch these weapons without flinching scares him.

He knows he shouldn’t be naive to find normalcy in your actions, even if you look eerily calm and composed.

“So this is it?” Sunghoon asks when you walk past him, following you to the living room.

“Mhm,” you mumble, looking at your broken window. He watches as you sigh before you turn all of the lights off and lock the door behind you.

Walking into the well-lit hallway feels weird. It’s too normal.

“What should I bring and how much of everything?” he asks after he’s let the both of you inside of his apartment.

“You’ll want to change out of your clothes and get into something more comfortable,” you say, gesturing at his work attire. “Wear comfortable running shoes. Bring as many shirts, pants, and underwear as your backpack can fit. Make sure to bring a toothbrush and toothpaste, too. Bring only one jacket. You won’t need more than one. You have fifteen minutes. I’ll wait in the living room.”

Sunghoon watches your figure disappear down the hall and gets to work immediately, changing out of his suit and into comfortable pants and a t-shirt. He doesn’t bother putting away his suit jacket and slacks. Sunghoon shoves what he assumes to be necessities into his backpack and rummages in his bathroom for things he’ll need until the two of you need to stop to buy the essentials. He feels like he’s got tunnel vision, focusing on the task at hand to prevent himself from losing his mind over the situation he’s found himself in.

But a photo on his nightstand stops him in his tracks.

It’s a picture of his family and the first time Jay and Jake made the trip to his hometown after graduating college. They’d embarked on a road trip and spent some time in his parents’ house before the week-long adventure of exploring the nearby area before the reality of work and responsibilities sunk in. His father had Sunghoon set up a self timer photo to commemorate the bond between his friends and adulthood before his career would eventually begin in the fall. Sunghoon and his friends sat on the picnic table with their bodies facing the camera as his parents stood around him. His sister held up a peace sign next to Sunghoon. The memory feels distant.

Sunghoon puts the photo down and makes his way back to the living room eventually, forcing himself not to pick up anything that isn’t a necessity. He puts his wallet on the coffee table and you turn around to see his backpack in his hand while he witnesses you looking at the decor on his wall.

“You have a nice apartment.”

“Thanks.”

You pick up his wallet. “Do you have your birth certificate on you? Maybe a passport or any other identification?”

“Just my passport.” Sunghoon runs back into his room to grab it before handing it to you, then pointing at his computer on the couch. “And my laptop.”

“We’ll need to bring both of those.”

“What for?”

You give him a look that gives him a bad feeling. “We’ll need to destroy them as soon as we can. I can’t have them finding you that easily.”

Sunghoon sighs and grabs his computer. “If it’s for the best.”

“I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t necessary. I’m sorry, I really am.”

Sunghoon thinks he hears your voice waver. Choosing to forego any more pleasantries, you allow him to lock his door before beckoning him to give you his keys.

“I assume we need to get rid of these?”

“You’re catching on pretty quick,” you say. “We’ll bury these somewhere far from here so no one can find them.”

“I think the adrenaline is getting to me.”

You look around his room. “Where’s the thumb drive that your boss gave you?”

Sunghoon looks at you quizzically. “What?”

“The thumb drive with financial records on it. Where is it?”

“In my bedroom. Why are you asking about it?”

“Bring it with you.” You push Sunghoon back to his room with a little more force than he expected. He stumbles over himself and pulls it out his desk drawer.

“Why is this so important? Why were you asking about it when you were here?”

“There’s no time to explain right now, but we need to bring it with us and keep it safe. It’s best if I hold onto it.” He’s skeptical. You sigh when you see his expression change into something unpleasant. “Sunghoon, I’m being completely honest with you when I say both of our lives depend on what’s on that thumb drive. If this disappears or if it’s destroyed, we’re both dead.”

He hesitates but hands you the thumb drive away. Sunghoon looks around his apartment once more, memorizing the sight of the coffee mug on the counter he neglected to wash because he was rushing and the remote that he’d thrown haphazardly on the couch the night before. All of this makes him want to cry. The thought of never returning makes him feel like throwing up.

You lead him out of the building and lock his door with the keys before pocketing them in your pants. He follows you down the stairs to avoid the elevator and assumes you’re leading him down the back route where you don’t have to run into the doorman, who will likely strike a conversation with the both of you and find it odd that you’re rushing out of the building at this hour.

“You’re scaring me with how much you know about what we need to do next,” Sunghoon comments.

“It comes with the job description,” you explain vaguely. “I was trained to think quickly in these types of situations and what to do if someone tries to kill you in your own home.”

“Trained?”

Sunghoon chokes as he looks at you but you’re too busy looking elsewhere to see the shock on his face. It feels like he’s sucking in his breath before you finally turn to look at him.

“Let’s find a secure place before we talk.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The two of you avoid taking the metro. When Sunghoon asks why, you tell him it’s best to keep yourselves from any places that are under heavy surveillance to avoid being tracked. It’s best to keep yourself out of the public eye as much as possible.

The stillness of the night doesn’t match his erratic heartbeat as he walks through familiar streets that no longer feel like home to him. Every light post feels like there might be someone hiding behind it and every quiet neighborhood makes him feel out of place. Sunghoon wills himself to be calm like you are, but he can’t stop himself from replaying the events of earlier that night in his head.

Who are you? Why do you know so much about being on the run? What kind of life do you live that forces you to be somebody who looks over their shoulder?

Sunghoon wonders if this is what he’ll have to deal with for the rest of his life. He isn’t sure whether he can trust you the way you say he can, but he figures it would be better to take his chances with you and die trying instead of waiting for someone to come and kill him. Even if he has to leave everything he loves behind.

The two of you don’t walk for very long. Dodging metro lines and public transportation feels like the journey takes forever, but you tell him you’ve only walked for roughly an hour and a half in dead silence. Sunghoon doesn’t dare ask a single question for the fear that you might abandon him.

Soon after you lead him out of your shared neighborhood, Sunghoon finds himself in a small hostel just on the edge of Seoul with two twin beds across from one another and a small bathroom. He watches as you pay in cash and accept the key to the room from the desk employee without so much as a word. The space isn’t the luxury apartment he’d found himself living in for the past three years, but it’s better than sleeping with one eye open in his own bed where anything could happen. The twin mattress is decent enough but he feels like a giant when he lays down after setting aside his belongings.

You don’t unpack your bag or relax like he thinks you will. Instead, you double check to ensure the door is locked and immediately check the bathroom and living area from top to top, corner to corner. Sunghoon watches you pull a nightstand from the corner. He nearly yelps when you dare step on the small, unsteady piece of furniture.

“What are you doing?” Sunghoon asks, sitting up on the bed.

“Checking for any potential listening devices,” you say as you pay him no mind, hand touching the small crevice near the window sill. “I highly doubt it, but you can never be too careful.”

“You mean bugs? Like those things from the movies?”

You hum. “Yeah, those are the ones. I need to assess the room before we can talk freely.”

“Oh. I didn’t think people used those in real life.”

“People do, unfortunately. You have to look at every inch of the room from floor to ceiling. Check the lights, the phone, the back of any objects like picture frames or wall decor, even underneath the toilet seat. Anything you can reach by hand, so can they.”

Even though Sunghoon doesn’t know the first thing about you, it feels odd to see you like this. You always look somewhere in between disheveled and put together, but the version he's staring at looks nothing like what he’s used to.

Sunghoon is a man of few words hidden behind a million thoughts. He reserves himself for people he feels comfortable around to play it safe, unleashing his loud and extroverted tendencies when he becomes well-acquainted with certain people. Despite uttering a few sentences to you throughout the time you’ve moved next door, Sunghoon has daydreamed about you plenty.

When Sunghoon closes his eyes, he swears he can see himself asking you on a date. He can picture you saying yes and wearing an outfit that will make his jaw drop until you become bashful under his stare. He imagines getting to know you well enough that when he drops you off at your apartment door, where the two of you become too reluctant to say goodbye until the evening ends with a kiss. His favorite scenario, though, is picturing you sleeping on his chest. His pillows can only help so much.

Sunghoon can’t pinpoint just why he was so fascinated by you. With a single glance, you turned his world upside down and he thinks he’ll never feel anything like that ever again.

Deep down, Sunghoon assumes part of his thoughts about you is because you’re a disruption in his mundane, boring life that feels like an endless loop. There was nothing for him to look forward to once his life and career became monotonous. But somehow, your honey-like voice and warm smile intrigued him. You’re an enigma he can’t quite seem to understand. It entices him to unravel who you are and what you could mean to him.

But none of that matters now. Watching you search the perimeter of the room for listening devices is enough to pull Sunghoon’s head out of the clouds.

“Oh God,” Sunghoon exclaims in a panic, as if the thought of his reality crashes down on him all at once. “My job. What the fuck am I gonna do about my job? My boss will report me missing if I don’t show up two days in a row. Fuck, what do I do?”

“There’s nothing you can do now,” you tell him. “Going back will only increase the risk of getting hurt. Don’t you understand that?”

“I can’t just leave my fucking job. I’m responsible for training entry level interns. I have so many unfinished reports due at the end of the week. Fuck! What if they call the police because I haven't shown up?

You sit next to him. “I understand this is a stressful situation, but your life can never go back to the way it was and we have to roll with the punches as they come. If everything goes according to plan, we’ll be too far from Seoul for anyone to find us.” Sunghoon swears he hears a bit of melancholy in your tone. “I’m very sorry:

Somehow, he believes you. “It’s okay. It’s not technically your fault.”

You don’t meet his eyes.

“This room is clean, by the way. No audio or video devices.”

“That’s probably the only good news from today.”

“We should probably talk about the next steps,” you tell him as you rise from his bed. “We’ll need to get some rest tonight. The hardest part about survival is the first few days and mapping out where we need to go next.”

“So where do we go?”

Your shoulders sag. “There might be somebody who can help us. It’s a long shot…but I think if we’re able to reach Jinju in the next few days, then we might be on the right track.”

“Jinju? Why Jinjiu?”

“I have a friend there who might be willing to help us.”

“So why don’t we call them and see if we can crash in the meantime?”

You shake your head. “It’s not as simple as you make it seem.”

“I’m struggling to keep up.” With pursed lips, you sit on your own bed and face Sunghoon. He watches you tuck your legs underneath yourself until you’re sitting criss-crossed and look down at your lap where you play with your fingers.

“There are people out there who do bad things for a living,” you say. “Really bad things. Worse than whatever imagination your mind can conjure up.”

Sunghoon’s heart palpitates. “Like what?” You look up at him.

“Like carrying out a hit.”

His stomach plummets.

“Y-You mean to tell me someone was trying to kill you? What for? What sensible reason does anyone have to kill an innocent person?”

You go back to playing with your fingers. He watches you look at him before biting your cheek and looking at the floor. “There are things in this world many people will never know. Few find out and live to tell the tale. I’m telling you this because I need you to understand me when I tell you things are getting serious, not because I’m trying to hide things from you.”

“Can you at least explain to me what the fuck is going on? Everything you say is cryptic and I know you’re not telling me the whole truth.”

“There’s a time and place for everything. I promise I’ll tell you everything. You deserve that at the least.”

“You owe me more than that.”

“I know, Sunghoon. Believe me, I do. But right now your adrenaline is wearing off and neither of us are thinking straight.”

“This is crazy,” he says. “I go to work and come home just to do it over again the next day. I barely have a social life and don’t go out on the weekends as much as my friends want me to. I’m just a normal guy living a normal life. Then, you showed up.”

Ultimately, Sunghoon knows you’re right. The bright lights of the hostel are suddenly too bright in his vision and they aren’t helping his headache. The mattress he’s sitting on top of suddenly feels too uncomfortable and sharp with the metal springs and rods beneath him. His body is calming down as his breathing returns to a normal rate and his eyes begin to feel heavy.

He looks at you and finds that you can’t meet his eye. Sunghoon immediately regrets his words and imagines what it must be like for you to carry the weight of knowing someone tried to kill you, coupled with the fact that you have to babysit somebody who has no idea how to fend for his life. Awkwardly, Sunghoon rises from his mattress and mutters about how he’s going to get ready for bed.

He splashes cold water onto his face to calm his face from the rushing heat creeping up his neck. Sunghoon doesn’t know what to think or how to feel. His bones are starting to feel heavy and his mind is telling him to go back home and pretend everything’s fine. He wants to be wrapped up in a blanket his sister got him for Christmas watching reruns of American television he can barely understand.

But his gut is telling him to stay with you. He can’t delude himself into thinking his life can go back to the way it was after everything that unfolded. He very well could remain looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life without someone who’s knowledgeable about this side of life. He can’t imagine leaving you without somebody to protect you, even if you seem like you can handle yourself. The least he could do is listen to your orders and follow your instructions until the both of you can live your lives without the fear of imminent danger. These thoughts haunt him as he washes his face and brushes his teeth.

When he emerges from the bathroom, he notices that you’ve changed into sleeping attire and tries to avoid looking at your bare legs when it registers that you’re wearing sleep shorts and a sweater. He feels somewhat remorseful of what could have been if the two of you get to know each other under different circumstances. You brush past him into the bathroom and he can hear the sound of the faucet running when you close the door.

Everything seems too calm compared to the few hours he spent with you. His ears are no longer ringing and his heartbeat isn’t beating as erratically as before. This is the first time that Sunghoon’s had a few minutes by himself where nothing distracts him from his thoughts. He’s too exhausted to push them away.

Soon, the two of you are tucked in your respective beds with the moonlight from the window illuminating the shared space. It’s bright enough for Sunghoon to see your figure laying still and facing the wall. You look so meek like this and he wonders how anyone could ever hurt you. He wants to say something, to apologize or thank you for caring about him.

“I can’t say I’m too sad about leaving my job,” he blurts out. Sunghoon’s about to chastise himself for saying something opposite of what he intended until he hears your bed creaking and looks over to see that you’ve turned to face him.

“Why’s that?”

Sunghoon crashes.

“I’m not happy. I feel like I’m working for nothing and I hate the life I have. People always need me for things and I never get any recognition for the work I do to save everybody’s asses.”

“You sound like you’ve given it a lot of thought.”

Sunghoon stares at the ceiling. “I haven’t been happy with my life in a long time. My friends tell me I keep fooling myself into thinking I have it all because my job pays well and I live by myself. Total autonomy.”

“But your job keeps you from that freedom.”

“Yes,” Sunghoon says, exasperated. “It feels like I’m living on someone else’s dime. Everything I do at my job is to make people happy because they tell me what to do. It doesn’t matter if I have my own principles. If it doesn’t align with the people who hire me to do my job, my voice doesn’t matter.” You don’t say anything for a moment but Sunghoon’s too caught up in his own thoughts to think about it.

“I can’t believe I just admitted that out loud.”

“Sometimes it takes a stranger to say what you really feel.”

Sunghoon turns to look at you. “You were always the most unpredictable part of my day.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You moved into the apartment next to mine and running into you a few times a week kept me on my toes. I don’t know. I guess I saw you as someone I would have potentially befriended. I could at least pretend I was coming home to talk to someone who cared.”

“That’s…very sweet. You’re a nice person, Sunghoon.”

He sighs. “I don’t feel that way. I don’t know when I’m gonna see my family and friends again and explain all of this, but I'm starting to get the feeling that they’ll never hear from me and they’ll never know what happened tonight.”

“You know,” you begin, “a lot of my life was spent moving from place to place and never having anything or anyone to call home. I can’t imagine what it must feel like for you to leave everything behind. For that, I truly am sorry.”

“It’s really not your fault,” Sunghoon says dryly. “Whoever tried to kill you should get a bullet to his head.” He hears you laugh awkwardly.

“Yeah, well that likely wouldn’t solve our problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think that man acted on his own accord. It’s too professional to assume he’s working alone.”

“You’re saying he’s working with someone else?”

“Or, he’s working for someone.”

Sunghoon gulps. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“The price of freedom is high. Remember that.”

“You know, none of this explains how you know what you’re doing. If you know, for that matter.”

He doesn’t hear you move for a short while and closes his eyes shut. Once again, he’s found himself slipping up and saying things that don't translate well. Too afraid to speak, Sunghoon considers sleeping and dealing with his actions in the morning.

“I know what I’m doing because I’ve done it before,” you say through the darkness. “When your whole life revolves around survival, you adapt to the best of your ability and do anything to stay alive. I’ve learned a few things from my time on the run so please know that I know what I’m doing.”

“Who are you?”

The room is silent.

“Someone you can trust.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

Sunghoon’s surprised when you wake him up as the sun rises to vacate the premises. He gets dressed as quickly as he can and he knows you can hear him yawning as he prepares himself for the day ahead of him. After freshening up and a quick breakfast consisting of leftovers from yesterday’s convenience store run, the two of you return the hostel key and leave as quickly as you came.

Sunghoon watches as you destroy his phone and laptop, which ultimately makes his soul wince at his personal items deemed unworthy and unsafe. It makes him feel like this new lifestyle is set in stone and the physical burial of his worldly possessions feels like he’s burying his normalcy and trading it in for life on the run. You bury it in a plot of land somewhere and let him mourn before he’s ready to pack it up and leave.

The two of you travel on foot again, stopping by another convenience store to grab more water and food for later. The sun isn’t as warm as it was the day prior and Sunghoon’s grateful that he doesn't have to walk under the sweltering heat with all he’s carrying on his shoulders. He doesn’t know where the two of you are headed and prevents himself from asking more unnecessary questions because he’s met with a wall whenever he speaks about the next steps. In the hours he spends with you, he realizes that you barely know what’s to come.

Eventually, the two of you have found refuge at another hostel, miles away from the first one. Sunghoon doesn’t understand the method to your madness. He’s tried to make small conversation and ask you about your expertise, but you shut him down every time. You keep saying that “now” isn’t the right time to explain things to him because you’re too wrapped up in making sure you both manage to live until the next day. He’s starting to think you're not the person he once imagined you to be.

Sunghoon tries his hand at scaling the hostel for any listening devices at your suggestion. He follows you and watches as you inspect the bathroom–behind the toilet bowl, inside of it, in the shower drain, and behind the medicine cabinet–before he takes a stab at the living area. He feels awkward when you watch him but follows your pointers when you notice that he neglected a few spots.

One thing he realizes about being on the run is that sometimes, it’s very slow and extremely boring. With no phone or laptop to keep himself company, Sunghoon wishes he remembered to pack a book or two before leaving his apartment for good.

Realistically, you tell him it’s better to get as far away from the origin point as possible in the shortest amount of time. To pass the time, Sunghoon asks you questions he thinks are silly, ones that he’s seen movie characters from spy thrillers ask their partners.

Can we call anyone for help? No.

How about taking the bus instead of walking? No.

Is there anyone who can help us get into another country safely and quickly? Probably not.

It seems like you’ve been leaving Sunghoon with more questions than answers. You leave him in the dark, pondering on his own as you try to come up with a plan and he does his best to be patient with you because he can’t imagine having to care for someone who has no idea how to keep himself alive. Sunghoon daydreams about who you must’ve been in order for someone to attempt to kill you when the two of you are traveling. It keeps him occupied and what prevents him from complaining about walking too much.

Sunghoon pictures you as someone who knows a little too much. Perhaps you stumbled upon a classified piece of information or made a shady deal with bad people in your past life and moved to Seoul to escape. Maybe that’s why you know so much about being on the run.

He also thinks you might be some sort of spy dabbling in espionage, and the man who assaulted you is someone who works for your arch nemesis. This idea seems silly because it reminds him of a k-drama his sister used to obsess over but he can’t lie when he thinks about how this theory might be the only one that makes sense.

Even so, Sunghoon comes to the realization that you are truly, utterly alone.

He wonders if you have any friends or family that you had to leave behind. You know so much about him because he’s been open about his feelings after the startling realization that his life is something he will never return to. But you’ve kept quiet about who you are up until the point where you moved into the apartment next to his. So caught up in his own miseries, Sunghoon neglected to consider that you would have to leave people behind as well. Do you have loved ones in Seoul? Do you get drinks with your colleagues after work? Is there anyone who would notice you missing?

He falls asleep with these questions ruminating in his own head.

The next time Sunghoon opens his eyes, he’s not surprised to find you already packing. Like clockwork, the two of you set out on foot again and walk for miles under the sun until you’re farther away from Seoul. There’s a small noodle shop by the newest hostel and he’s more than shocked when you ask if he’s up for eating dinner there.

The two of you wear masks and a cap to conceal your identities to the best of your abilities. Sunghoon lets you pay for the noodles upon realizing his own wallet is buried in a plot of land somewhere. The money you have was a stash for a rainy day and he’s wondering when it’ll run out.

“It’s crazy that you think about this stuff,” he says as the waitress hands off his noodles. “I still don’t understand why you insisted on picking this table.” You nudge your head to the window.

“Being visible from the outside means bad business. Anyone can see in the window and spot you if the lighting is good enough. I chose this table because it’s concealed the most and closest to the door in case we need to make a run for it.”

“So what, do we just leave without paying if someone comes in and tries to kill us?”

You shrug. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“That’s so unethical,” Sunghoon huffs in disbelief.

You laugh into your spoon. “Well that’s the life we have to live now. You learn to put aside your conscience and morals when trying to survive. Neglecting to pay for a meal is a small act of ungratefulness compared to saving your own life.”

“I don’t even want to ask how many times you’ve had to do that.”

He watches you lament. “I’ve been living like this for a long time, Sunghoon. That's all I know. I can’t afford to think about the what ifs because the future happens quicker than you expect it to. Knowing I get to sleep at the end of the day is the goal, but then I have to worry about what’ll happen when I open my eyes.

“Becoming your neighbor was my first taste of normalcy, in a sense. I still slept with a gun under my pillow and kept my door bolted shut with a cane underneath the handle. Every room in my apartment had a weapon in it should I ever need it.”

Sunghoon winces. “I’m sorry it came to that.”

“Me too,” you say, sipping from your spoon. “But that’s my life.”

“If you hate it so much, why did you choose it?”

You look at him. “I didn’t.”

“I assume this is a story for another time.”

“You’re assuming correctly.”

Sunghoon watches you slurp on your noodles. The soup is splashing inside the bowl and the steam is burning your tongue but you push through it, forcing yourself to chew and suck cool air into your mouth. You seem normal like this and Sunghoon’s heart softens when he thinks about what life would be like if the two of you weren’t on the run.

“Tell me about yourself.”

Sunghoon’s taken aback by your sudden question. “Myself?”

You nod. “Who are you, Sunghoon?”

It’s a loaded question and one he wasn’t expecting to hear from you. You’ve seldom made conversation in the couple of days since you two have been together, only asking him about the necessary things as they come up. Sunghoon’s the one who initiates small talk and shares what he’s thinking with you when the conversation falls flat. He’s learned to be okay with your silence.

Hearing you ask him such a question sends him into deep thought. For a moment, Sunghoon imagines that the two of you are on a first date. He pretends you both agree to forego the fanciness of a five-star restaurant in favor of dressing comfortably and having no expectations other than good food and good company.

You look so innocent in this light, so far removed from a world of danger that Sunghoon nearly deludes himself into thinking this fantasy of his is real. Your cheeks are full of noodles and your body is hunched over the bowl like any normal person would be. He pulls himself back before he could mourn his past.

“I don’t really know where to begin. I have two parents, a mother and father, and a younger sister. I grew up in Suwon until I moved to Seoul for university. I hate my job and I really want to open a coffee shop one day.”

“Why a coffee shop?”

“It’s the exact opposite of my life right now,” Sunghoon explains. “I won’t hear telephones ringing or be pulled into budgetary meetings for clients every second of the day. I’ll work for myself. I won’t have to stay later than I want to and I can talk to real people who I’ll actually give a shit about.”

“That sounds like a really nice dream.”

“I’d probably call it ‘Soul Coffee’ because maybe I’ll have a soul by then,” he says with a short laugh. “I think I’d be happy waking up to work in a place like that instead of in finance. It feels like I’m living the same day over and over again. There’s no variety in my life because everyone expects you to stay later than the typical workday. It’s a shark-eat-shark world there. I’m sick of it. I’m tired of pretending to care about our morally-grey clients. Nothing about it feels…me.”

“Listening to commands is tiring, don’t you think?”

He sighs, exasperated. “You’ve read my mind. It’s like I’m a cog in a machine. I serve to benefit high society and make the rich, richer. There’s no morality in what I do. I have to look at the numbers I see pile across my desk everyday and pretend they mean nothing to me. If I start to think about how much money is being used to do ungodly things, I start to lose my mind.

“None of my clients and colleagues seem to care about anyone but themselves. They compete with each other to see who can make it out on top the fastest without caring about who they hurt. It’s like they’ve lost their humanity.”

“Survival of the fittest is everybody’s weakness. When the consequence of falling behind is termination, that alone can make people do things against their own will.”

“They all seem like they’re running on autopilot, like they’re so used to it that they’re numb.” Sunghoon shakes his head. “I always thought I’d do something more creative with my life like photography, or something. I wasn’t too half bad at painting. I considered majoring in fine art but coming home for winter break was enough for me to reconsider that.”

“Why’s that?”

“My father's well connected in finance. He’s respectable and has set a lot of expectations for me. He wouldn’t hear it when I told him I wanted to be a photography major. He said it was nothing compared to having a stable job that you can depend on. It shattered my wellbeing and I knew there was no chance I could ever convince him otherwise.

“Living under your parents’ expectations is difficult. I have a younger sister who’s starting college soon and she wants to become a professional dancer. I can only imagine the conversations she must be having with our parents now. But I guess it’s all for the best, right? I have a good job that pays decently and a roof over my head. I can’t complain, really.”

“You can still mourn the life you could’ve had,” you tell him. “Just because you chose one path, that doesn’t mean you can’t be sad about a future that never was.”

His eyes flicker to you when he hears an uptick in your voice. You look back with a melancholy gaze that's hard for Sunghoon to figure out. He watches as you divert your eyes from him when silence has passed and he thinks that’s peculiar.

“I guess so.”

The two of you finish your meal without a word spoken. He’s done eating just a minute quicker than you do, and patiently waits until you’ve discarded your utensils into the bowl in front of you. Sunghoon wonders if what he said must have made you uncomfortable, but the voice in his head is telling him you know more about what he’s feeling than you let on.

With your expertise about being on the run and evading assailants, Sunghoon truly begins to wonder what your life must have been like prior to moving next to him.

You break the silence.

“You’re a very resilient person, Sunghoon. I think your friends and family are very lucky to have you.”

Sunghoon is speechless.

“T-Thank you. I hope I can get to know you well enough to say nice things about you too.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The two of you decide to make a trip to the only convenience store in town before heading back despite it being farther away from the current hostel. It’s dark outside and even Sunghoon is starting to feel spooked when walking through the dead of night, distant lamp posts illuminating the night sky. He can’t tell what you’re thinking either. Most times, you wear the same expression and remain stoic until it’s time to go to sleep. It’s then Sunghoon can truly see just how tired you are. He wishes he could spearhead the planning to give you some time to rest.

He learns that you’re resilient too. You push your body to its physical maximum. You’re able to think ahead and prepare everything you need before your head hits the pillow because the next day is never promised. Sunghoon, too, starts to push himself towards his breaking point and only thinks of surviving.

Sunghoon catches you yawning as you shuffle items into the basket. He offers to hold it for you and picks out items he’s seen you purchase before. The cashier bids you farewell once the tab has been paid. The two of you make the trek back to the hostel under dimly lit lights in the middle of nowhere when you push Sunghoon forward until his face meets the ground below him.

Already, the sound of a bullet piercing the air interrupts the tranquil atmosphere of the environment. He looks up to see a man inside of a car aiming his gun in his direction and covers your body with his when he realizes the armed stranger is about to take another shot. Sunghoon’s heart rate quickens when the bullet casings fall to the ground beside him. You clutch onto him until you’re able to find leverage and push him off of you to a spot you deem safe enough.

There’s a single driver; no designated person as a gunman sitting shotgun and you’re sure this is an inexperienced soldier who’s out for blood. If not for the reckless aim, then for the insults he shouts at you when the bullets hit everything but you and Sunghoon.

Sunghoon reckons your body is a mixture of adrenaline and strategy from your years of experience. It’s almost as though you move on autopilot and maneuver your way to the safest vantage point. He, on the other hand, is the polar opposite. He’s frozen in his spot and his body feels heavier than it is when you try to pull him to safety. Because of this, the last bullet from the gunman’s device ricochets off of a hard surface behind you and a small fragment of it becomes lodged in your arm.

You yell in pain and clutch yourself when the metal touches your skin. When the gunman realizes his ammo is depleted, he swerves the car until his headlights blind you. Without a moment’s notice, you grab onto Sunghoon’s sleeve and pull him along with you, running until you see a crevice that’s small enough to fit the two of you.

You run and run, ducking behind buildings and keeping Sunghoon close to you as you take cover behind dumpsters and other large objects that could shield you from the gunman’s vehicle. Your arm is in immense pain and you can feel your blood start to trickle out of your wound and down your elbow.

When the gunman ceases his attempts to run after the two of you, you exhale.

You check to see if the coast is clear and slide down the hard wall behind you until you’re perched upright when you deem it safe enough. The jacket you’re wearing does nothing to shield your arm from the bullet fragment and your skin looks like a bloody massacre when you take it off.

Sunghoon can only stare at the wound. He’s at a loss for words when he sees your face contort in pain as your head hits the brick wall behind you. The tears pricking at your eyes damage his psyche and he feels utterly helpless.

He watches you rummage through your backpack and tear off a portion of an unused shirt and as you wrap it around your arm. The blood’s soaking through the grey fabric and it causes him to panic. You aren’t screaming the way Sunghoon wants to. It scares him half to death.

“Direct pressure on the wound cuts off the blood supply,” you tell him with a huff. He wants to help, but the sight of your blood dripping down your arm and onto the pavement below makes his feet stay planted where they are. Sungoon watches as you pull it tight with your teeth and secure it to the best of your ability.

“Blood,” Sunghoon stutters. “There’s so much blood. We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No,” you immediately refute. “No hospitals. Going to a medical center means I’m documented, Sunghoon. They have to take my name and identification. Maybe yours too. We can’t risk going somewhere with security feeds to avoid being caught.”

“So what do you propose we do, then? You’re fucking bleeding because you got shot!”

“It’s just a graze wound,” you say through your teeth. “It hurts like hell, but I’ll be fine.”

“Where do we go from here?” Sunghoon asks.

“Back to your apartment.”

“But you said it’s dangerous if we go back.”

“It’s less dangerous than going back to our hostel or finding a new one. People who see my arm are going to call the cops and going to a medical center is out of the question. I just need a safe place to fix myself.”

Sunghoon knows better than to suggest hailing a taxi or using the metro to get back to his apartment. He pushes all morals aside when you instruct him how to hotwire a car from the street when he sees your bloody arm. When he successfully gets the engine to run, you climb into the passenger seat and he’s off retracing his steps to take him back to his apartment as best as he can.

You try to stay awake. It hurts Sunghoon to hear you gasping in pain with your high-pitched cries when he hits a road bump. From the corner of his eye, he can see you biting your lip to keep your tears at bay as best as you cany. Your head rests against the car door as you watch the lights pass by you and he wonders what you’re thinking right now. For all of your reassurance that this is a normal part of your life, Sunghoon wishes it wasn’t.

Eventually, Sunghoon finds his way back towards Seoul. As he approaches his former neighborhood, he can’t help but feel displaced. It’s odd to see familiar streets and department stores he frequents after making peace with the fact that he’ll likely never return. The lights that keep each billboard sign on feels foreign after spending days looking at wastelands. Sunghoon never imagined that he’d get the chance to see his old haunts. Not in this lifetime, anyway.

It’s the dead of night and the lights surrounding the apartment are dimmer than usual. He’s grateful, in a way, because it means you two can get into the building from the back without being detected. Sunghoon leads you up the stairs, leading you by the sleeve of his jacket that he’s letting you wear. It’s soaked with your blood and you’ve had to use the fabric to prevent any more bleeding. He avoids looking at it, hating that you’re in so much pain and that you don’t even show it.

“Hang on,” Sunghoon says when the two of you approach the door. Your face is growing weaker but he can hear voices coming from inside the room. “I hear someone inside.”

They’re just loud enough for Sunghoon to recognize them.

“Shit,” he mutters. “My friends are inside.”

“Doesn’t matter,” you say, stumbling over your feet to press your forehead against his back. “I need to get in there and fix my arm before I pass out.”

“Okay,” he says with a final nod before pushing the door open.

Sunghoon’s guilt and shame wash over him when he sees Jay and Jake sitting inside. They look at him with anger and disappointment flashing across their faces as they see him standing in the threshold of his doorway. They don’t comment on the spattered red blood that’s halfway dry on his sleeve. Seeing his friends look at him with such betrayal makes Sunghoon feel like the worst person in the entire world.

“What the actual fuck,” Jake speaks, cutting the silence. “Where the fuck have you been, Sunghoon?”

“We’ve been worried sick,” Jay adds. “You’ve been gone for a week. Where the fuck were you and what happened?”

“How did you guys get in here?” Sunghoon asks quizzically.

“You gave me your spare key.” Jay fishes it out of his pocket and throws it on the counter beside him. “For emergencies, remember? We come in here to see your apartment is a mess. I’d count this as an emergency.”

“Guys, I can explain–”

“You fucking better!” Jake exclaims, raising his voice a notch. “We were worried sick about you! Didn’t you check your texts? Why didn’t you call us? Are you in trouble?”

“Guys—”

“Cut the shit, Sunghoon. Friends don’t do that to other people, especially when we came here and saw your bedroom. It looks like a storm blew in here.” Jay shakes his head. “What the hell happened to you?”

Sunghoon tries to apologize amidst the chaos. “You guys, really, I’m sorry–”

“You better be fucking sorry!” Jake shouts back at Sunghoon, who has dared to inch closer to the angry man in front of him. “Sunghoon, I swear to God. We’ve been brothers since college and I’ve been by your side through everything. The least you could have fucking done was let us know that you’re okay and–”

“All of you better shut up unless you want to deal with me passed out on the floor,” you warn, slamming a gun on the table. It makes a horrendously loud noise that startles all three of them but it’s enough to garner their attention.

Jake’s eyes are first to see your arm. You’ve taken off Sunghoon’s jacket and discarded it on the chair beside you, revealing the blood-soaked spectacle underneath. He sputters over his words, while Jay remains frozen in his spot.

“Sunghoon,” you speak, voice heavy with your eyes shut together. “Do you have any alcohol?”

“I-I have vodka” Sunghoon stutters. He stumbles backwards and grabs all of the bottles he can find.

“Sunghoon,” you say again through broken words and heavy breaths, “can you please get my backpack and the medical kit sashed underneath your touch?”

“What the fuck?!” Jay exclaims. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No hospitals,” Sunghoon answers, putting the backpack on the table in front of you. He pulls out the kit and opens it for you. “Too much attention. We can’t afford that right now.”

“What the fuck do you mean?” Jay retorts. “She’s clearly bleeding out! Y/N needs to see a doctor to get her arm patched up. She’s bleeding all over the fucking table!”

Jay averts his gaze from Sunghoon when he hears you fish out a needle and thread. The gauze from your kit sits atop the counter and he winces when you peel back the fabric to reveal the wound.

“Holy shit,” Jake mutters. “How are you still alive?”

“It’s not fatal,” you explain. “It’s a flesh wound at best. Hurts like hell, but at least the bullet fragment didn’t lodge itself inside of me.”

“Bullet?”

“Can you make yourself useful and get me a cup?”

Jake moves to the kitchen, too afraid of what you’ll do if he doesn’t obey your command. The sight of your bloody arm is enough to make him equal parts sick and panicked. The three boys in front of you are silent as they watch you unpack what you need. The room smells of sweat and iron, but neither of them dare to take their eyes off of your arm.

“Do you have any spare towels I can use?” you ask Sunghoon. He wordlessly grabs them for you.

“This is crazy,” Jake mutters.

“It’s about to get crazier,” you mumble, patting the blood on the skin that isn’t damaged.

“Don’t tell me–”

“Yeah,” you say, unscrewing the top to the vodka bottle and pouring yourself enough liquid to temporarily calm your nerves. The boys watch as you tilt your head back to consume the vodka. “Somebody please put my hair up.”

“How’s this gonna work?” Jake asks as Sunghoon ties your hair for you.

“Whenever the alcohol starts to kick in, I’m going to use the vodka to disinfect this arm and clear it to the best of my ability,” you explain. “Then, I’m going to stitch myself up.”

“What the fuck.”

“I’ve been in worse situations. I’ll be fine.”

“You…You’ve done this before?” Jake asks.

“Too many times to count. Now, I ask that you keep quiet and do as I say unless you want me to pass out. Do you understand?”

Jay and Jake mumble agreements under their breaths. Sunghoon only nods.

When you feel your shoulders start to relax, that’s when you force your body upright and grab the vodka again. You’ve done this enough times but the searing pain of alcohol being poured into your wound still hurts. Everybody hears the sound of the liquid dripping onto the floor mixed with your short whimpers of suffering.

The boys feel helpless as they stare at you cleaning yourself up without assistance. It kills them to sit so immobile as you fight your pain in front of them. Your composure starts to crumble as the alcohol cascades down your arm and everybody is shocked to see you aren’t doubling in pain.

It kills Sunghoon to sit so powerless like he did when you first convinced him to leave with you. He can barely look at the blood spilling from your arm onto his table. His friends try to look away but can’t, eyes glancing back at you every so often. Sunghoon hates seeing you in pain like this and he resents that there’s nothing he can do to help you. He decides that he should look around his apartment for any listening devices in case the assailant comes back to finish the job.

He comes back a while later after searching the entire place, overturning even the smallest piece of decor he owns. His limited experience follows him from room to room, searching for audio devices in unassuming crevices and obvious places. When he feels confident that he did a thorough job, he returns to the living room to find the blood-soaked towels on the table and Jay holding a roll of paper towels.

“I searched my place,” Sunghoon informs. “There should be no bugs or anything.”

“Bugs?” Jake asks quizzically.

“Audio devices or anything that could be used to listen in on us. You can never be too sure.”

“Good,” you comment weakly. Jay does his best to throw away everything he can in the trash and clean up too.

The three boys sit in silence once more. Your winces short pained breaths are the only audible sound in the room. Sunghoon looks away every time the needle pierces your skin and wonders how you’ve built up a tolerance to this type of pain. His heart aches when he thinks about you doing this alone.

“I need to eat or else I’m going to pass out. Do you have anything?”

“All the food in the fridge is probably rotten by now,” Sunghoon mumbles. “One of us should get some food for tonight.”

“I’ll go to the store across the street and get something,” Jake volunteers, his stomach churning from the sight before him.

“Take Jay with you,” he hears you instruct. “From now on, we need to stay in pairs.”

“Sure thing,’ Jay nods.

The two of them come back in record time. Sunghoon helps you sit upright when you fail to compose yourself and tries not to think anything of it when your head leans on his body. Your mouth quivers like you’re trying to keep yourself from crying in front of him.

Sunghoon opens a few of the packaged foods that his friends had bought, setting it far from where your arm is on the table. He beckons you to open your mouth and feed you flavorful crackers and other dry foods that won’t distract you from stitching yourself up. He feels your lips touch his fingers when he feeds you and Sunghoon feels like his body is on fire.

You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. “I’m sorry you have to see this.”

“So this is why you’ve been gone?” Jay asks Sunghoon. “What the fuck happened to the both of you?”

“I guess now’s the best time to explain,” you say after a long beat of silence. “I owe you guys that much.”

“That would be nice.” Sunghoon glares at his friend but you put your arm on him and shake your head.

“Maybe we should let her concentrate so she doesn’t injure herself any more than she already is.”

“Talking distracts me from the pain.” They sit in front of you quietly. Jay anxiously bounces his leg in his seat when you pull the needle through.

Jake stares at your arm before looking up. “Who are you?”

“There are a lot of bad people in this world who want to acquire power to the point of being drunk off of it, and there are bad people who carry out orders to ensure this power is transferred from one entity to another.”

“Which one are you?” Sunghoon stands from his seat when Jay looks at you with a hard expression but you shake your head. He backs down, sitting in his seat without a word.

“The latter,” you say honestly. “I’m an independent contractor, of sorts. I’m somebody who has the physical means to push power in any direction my Command tells me to without question.”

“Command?”

“Command is the organization that employs me.”

“None of this makes sense, Y/N. Who are you working for? What line of work puts you in this kind of danger?”

“I do things that get the job done,” you say, gritting your teeth as you pull a stitch taught. “I fight, steal, and harm anyone who gets in the way of a successful mission. My job is to succeed, Jay. My purpose is to win.”

“H-Harm?” Jake chokes on his words.

“By any means necessary.”

“You’re not serious,” Jay comments. “None of this is real.”

“All of it is real and it’s my life. It’s all I know and it’s what I grew up with.”

Jake shakes his head. “All of this is so confusing to me. You’re saying that there’s an organization called ‘Command’ and you’re an independent contractor that carries out orders to complete a job. Just what kind of job do you have?”

“Do you see the state of my arm?” Jake nods. “What I do in my day to day life is serious business. My job changes everyday and there’s nothing I can’t accomplish. I do whatever is necessary to ensure that Command gains as much power and money as possible to keep a balanced order as we know it. I do bad things for bad people. Did, I should say.”

Sunghoon quirks an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

The last stitch stings. You tie it to the best of your ability and clean the wound until you can’t bear to stand the pain anymore. The boys in front of you gawk at you.

“I used to harm people if it meant serving the greater good according to Command.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Sunghoon’s voice quivers and you cast your eyes to the table.

“I think you know.”

“That guy who broke into your apartment and tried to strangle you to death works for Command too, doesn’t he?”

“I assume so. I didn’t recognize him but his combat style is similar to mine. I can only assume we come from the same place.”

“That doesn't explain why he tried to kill you.”

You shake your head. Sunghoon watches as your eyes become wet as you pat your wound dry, throat constricting from the pain in your arm and within your heart.

“He didn’t try to kill me. He was trying to kill you.”

“Why me?”

You speak above a whisper.

“Because I was taking too long.”

The gears in his head turn as he looks at you from where he sits. Sunghoon feels like the reality around him has shattered into a thousand pieces. He can't seem to stitch back together as he looks between your arm and your face. For the first time since he’s known you, you can’t look him in the eye.

It clicks for him.

“Me?” Sunghoon asks incredulously. “You were sent to kill me?”

You bite your lip. “That thumb drive your boss gave you contains years worth of documented payroll. Your colleagues and investors have been diverting funds from the company into a shell bank account for decades. This portion of money is used by Command to fund our missions and carry out any necessities to ensure anybody who petrays this organization sees the end of their life.”

“That’s fucking crazy.” Sunghoon stands from his chair and walks around the living room. He looks at you like you’ve shattered his heart, as if the pieces are scattered onto the floor before him. “You tried to kill me?” The crack in his voice brings tears to your eyes.

“I wasn’t going to. I’ve been like this since I was thirteen and didn’t know any better. If I wanted a roof over my head and food to eat, I needed to work for it. But you, Sunghoon…You are somebody I could never hurt.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to believe that when you lived next door to me for months, waiting for the right time to kill me? What, were you gonna murder me in my sleep?” He runs his hands over his face. “Oh god, were you going to do something to me the night you came over? Is that why you agreed to hang out with me?”

“No!” you exclaim. “You were my daydream too, Sunghoon. You were the most normal part of my life where I didn’t have to think about my fake job as a security guard or mission updates on your wellbeing. You were my friend. You were somebody I wanted to trust.”

Sunghoon shakes his head. “I-I don’t believe you.”

“I’ve wanted out for so long,” you plead. “I don’t want to live this life anymore. I was sent on this mission with the hopes of acquiring that thumb drive but I don’t give a shit about that anymore. I don’t care about obeying orders. I don’t care about who holds power because only the worst of the worst are the ones who run the show.”

“You’re the worst of the worst!” Sunghoon exclaims. “God, I actually let myself fall for you even though we barely knew each other. I let myself trust you when we were on the run, and now what? Are you gonna rat me out to your Command? Are you going to bring my head on a silver platter to your master?”

“I would never,” you plead, hot, fresh tears rolling down your cheeks and the side of your face. “I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“Yeah, well you’ve hurt me. Congratulations, Y/N.”

Sunghoon walks into his bedroom with his back turned to you. Jay and Jake watch as you aggressively wipe the tears from your eyes and wince at the pain in your arm now that the alcohol is starting to subside.

“That’s really fucked up, Y/N,” Jake says. “You were going to murder our best friend. How did you think Sunghoon was going to react?”

You shake your head. “My entire life is order after order. I never make decisions for myself. I don’t live for myself. You have to understand that disobeying orders means you get killed and saving Sunghoon was the biggest risk I have ever taken in my life. It’s the first choice I’ve made for me, not for Command. The person who tried to kill us probably knew I went rogue. There’s a reason why he was shooting at both of us. I’m a target too.”

“Wait, so someone tried to kill you tonight? For real this time?”

“Yeah, well you’ve hurt me. Congratulations, Y/N.”

You nod. “It won’t stop either. They’ll come looking for me and Sunghoon. He’s somebody who saw something he shouldn’t have and I’m a rogue assassin who betrayed her people. My head is on a platter too. The last thing I want to do is see Sunghoon dead.”

Jay sighs. “This is really hard to believe. You can’t seriously think any of us will trust you after what you just told us.”

“You have to,” you croak. “I wouldn’t risk my life by betraying Command to save Sunghoon and bring him out of town if I wanted to see him dead.”

“You have a point. But this all seems…far fetched.”

“It’s a lot to take in, I know. I don’t expect either of you to think positively of me or to believe in me. But I’m asking you to trust me if you want to see Sunghoon live. I can’t protect him if he doesn’t want my help.”

“What makes you think you could protect him? Your arm is damaged and you don’t even know what you’re doing.”

“I know people,” you tell them. “I have contacts all over the globe for doing favors and spending time in places for months at a time. And in the meantime, I have a friend who might be willing to help us start escaping Korea and find refuge where Command won’t find us.”

“How do we know this person is trustworthy?” Jake asks.

“We talk about this life, Heeseung and I,” you explain. “We grew up together. We’ve known each other since we were four and grew up learning how to fight hand-to-hand combat together. He’s seen me bloody and broken far too many times than I can count. You can’t trust many people in this line of business, but he’s saved me too many times for me to not trust him.”

“This Heeseung person, is he close by?”

“There’s an abandoned warehouse in the most southern part of Korea. Heeseung was supposed to oversee its demolition but told me he never did in the event that somebody needed refuge. As far as I know, the warehouse is still functional and he still operates from over there.”

“So, what, are you and Sunghoon going to meet up with Heeseung and life will suddenly be fine?”

“I don’t know.” You swallow harshly. “But I know that Heeseung is good at fixing wounds and funneling people and hiding. He is the only person I would risk my life to save and I know he’d do the same for me.”

“You saved Sunghoon’s,” Jay comments.

You bite your lip. “I would risk my life for him too. He was the first person that made me feel like a human being, like I didn’t have to be ashamed of my flaws or shortcomings. Everyday I imagined a life where we could be friends instead of leading the life that I do. Talking to him made me feel like I finally had the privilege of freedom. But then someone broke into the wrong apartment and involved both of us. I risked my life by saving him and now that Command likely knows I’m on the run with him, they’re out to kill us both.”

“Be honest with us. Are you willing to sacrifice your life to protect Sunghoon?”

You meet Jay’s eye and answer him without hesitation.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know if we can really trust you fully,” Jake stars, “but it sounds like you’re in trouble too. Killing Sunghoon now wouldn’t save your life, would it?”

You shake your head. “Once a traitor, always a traitor.”

Jay sighs. “Well, it’s not like you could kill any of us with a damaged arm. You should probably get some sleep and disinfect the arm. Sunghoon’s shower is just down the hallway. The towels are in the cabinet beside it.”

They watch you stand up and bow in a ninety-degree angle despite the pressure it puts on your arm. You stand up to look at them with eyes full of sorrow and regret, the kind that has your lips trembling and eyes watering.

“For whatever it’s worth, thank you for listening to me.”

“Yeah, well we needed answers.”

You let a tear fall. “I’m sorry.”

“Answer this for me,” Jake asks. “Why did Heeseung keep the facility and what’s he using it for, really?”

You bite your lip. “I heard through the grapevine that there have been talks about an uprising to take down Command. There are dozens of people like me, people who are tired of being ordered to kill and perform other horrendous acts against humanity. Heeseung and I often talk about abandoning our post but neither one of us had the courage to actually do it.”

“But you did.”

“After I met Sunghoon, yeah. I’ve never lived in an apartment before. It’s always small hostels or hotels until the job is over, and then I return to base camp where everything feels like a prison. Living next to Sunghoon let me develop a routine where I deluded myself into thinking I could have a future like that someday.”

“So you just…gave up that life?”

“I suppose so.”

“This uprising,” Jay says, “what’s it going to accomplish?”

“If done right, then Command will be wiped out of existence. This means no paper or digital trail. All backlogs are demolished and everyone who wants to be free, will be free.”

“That’s a lot to ensure no one targets your back.”

“There’s only one person who gives out orders,” you explain. “Everyone else are pawns who’ve been kidnapped and bred to become the type of people we are today. Nobody wants to live this lifestyle. Nobody wants to die a killer.”

“Okay,” Jay says after a moment of silence. “But I think it’s best if you freshen up and get some sleep.

Jake sighs when he hears the bathroom door close.

“What are we gonna do? If Y/N hadn’t stitched herself up in front of us, I’d call bullshit and tell Hoon to move out of this building.”

“I don’t know what to feel either,” says Jay. “I don’t trust her because she just told us she was sent to kill him but you saw how well she kept herself together just now. She could’ve killed him and gotten that thumb drive whenever she wanted to.”

“I don’t trust her either, but she said her life is on the line whether or not Sunghoon is dead. She could’ve done something to him but she hasn’t. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Jay sighs for the umpteenth time. “For now, let’s just try to make sure Sunghoon and Y/N aren’t anywhere near each other tonight. I know she could probably kill us all in our sleep but we would’ve been dead by now if she didn’t trust us.” The two boys look at your gun, which is still sitting on the table.

“You’re right,” Jake agrees. “She should take Hoon’s guest bedroom and rest up. I can’t imagine how much pain she’s in. You should probably be the one who talks to him, too. He always listens to you.”

Jay laughs humorlessly. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s stay the night just in case. Lord knows we don’t need those two killing each other.”

Jake leaves to prepare the guest bedroom and calm his nerves away from the bloody table. Jay walks to Sunghoon’s bedroom door and raps his knuckles against the wood.

“Hoon, open up,” Jay beckons. “It’s me.”

It’s quiet for a moment until he hears Sunghoon’s feet shuffling behind the door.

“If you’re going to tell me to forgive her and move on, forget it.” Jay walks into the room when Sunghoon doesn’t close the door in front of him.

“I wasn’t going to. You have every right to feel the way you do. I wanted to check in and see how you’re doing.” Sunghoon bites back a snarky comment, knowing his anger isn’t redirected at Jay.

“I feel so fucking betrayed. I feel like my life is over and there’s nothing I can do to get back the time I had. I wish I never met Y/N and I wish I never opened that stupid fucking thumb drive because then I wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Take is easy, okay?” Jay says. “I know that’s virtually impossible given the circumstances, but there’s nothing you can do right now. Y/N’s in the shower and Jake’s preparing the guest room for her now.”

“I want this to be over. Or better yet, I just want someone to end my misery.”

Jay sits next to Sunghoon on his bed, knocking his shoulder against his. “Don’t say that. You’ve survived and gotten this far. It’s only fair that you see it through and make it out alive.”

“But what does that even mean?” Sunghoon asks, exasperated. “The end could be years from now. I don’t even know what I’m fighting for. I can’t stay here long or they’ll find me and murder me. I don’t even know what Y/N’s end goal is. We’ve been running for so long and I didn’t know any of her intentions until tonight.”

“I can’t speak for her and I won’t because who she is, isn’t someone I’d want in your life,” Jay begins. “But she’s dead whether or not you are. If you die and the mission is complete, her head is still on a platter because she disobeyed her orders.

“I’m not telling you to trust her because of who she is, but I’m telling you that it seems like she truly doesn’t want you to get hurt. She waited for months to even talk to you and never made a point to involve you in any of this before you disappeared. Y/N told us she has a contact that could potentially help the two of you with your predicament, and that’s the best that I can see for the time being. Part of me thinks she means what she says.”

“What if she’s lying?”

“No one can be sure of that. But what I know is that it’s late and you look like you haven’t slept in ages. Take a shower once Y/N’s done and get some shut eye. Jake and I will be here when you wake up.”

“I hate that she’s using my shower,” Sunghoon grumbles.

“What you hate is that you still like her, even after all of this.”

Sunghoon groans. “Stop reading me. You’re a freak for always being right.” Jay laughs.

“I’m really glad you’re okay. You had us worried sick and we thought we’d never see you again.” Sunghoon opens to talk but Jay shakes his head. “You don’t need to explain anything to me after what we just went through with Y/N and her arm. Get ready for bed and then get some sleep.”

Jay departs from Sunghoon’s bedroom, leaving him alone with his thoughts. He can hear the sound of their feet shuffling outside when the impending tiredness overwhelms him unexpectedly. When he’s sure you’re not occupying the bathroom, Sunghoon takes a quick shower and relishes being in his own bathroom with hot water. He lets the steam soak into his skin before drying himself off and brushing his teeth.

Sunghoon chooses to slip underneath the covers in his bedroom. You’re out cold in the guest bedroom next to his while Jay and Jake volunteered to take watching shifts. The only thing he can hear is the soft hum of the wind from outside. It feels peaceful and serene. But this tranquility makes him uncomfortable. He’s starting to understand why you work well under pressure.

As he melts underneath the covers, Sunghoon allows his heavy eyes to close shut. He dreams of nothing.

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

The smell of sausages brings Sunghoon out of his slumber. Being somewhat well-rested feels foreign to him as he walks out of the bathroom performing his morning routine like any other day. It feels odd to look at himself in his mirror, putting on face products that have sat untouched for a week.

Jake is frying eggs when he walks into the kitchen area while Jay is prepping the bowls and utensils. Sunghoon watches silently as the two work in tandem to prepare gyeran bap with sausage on the side. The scent makes his mouth water.

“Morning,” Sunghoon croaks. “Is Y/N still sleeping?”

“Last I checked,” Jay says with a nod.

“Good. I don’t know if I can face her right now.”

“You’ll need to eventually.”

“I know.” Sunghoon sits in a chair and slumps over the table, which is significantly cleaner than when he last saw it. “Everything feels too fresh.”

“Y/N probably feels the same,” Jake says. “She sounds like she wants out of whatever business she finds herself in. I’m not defending her or anything, but you heard her. She grew up in this lifestyle so I can’t imagine how hard it must be to break away from something you’ve always known.”

“Still.”

Sunghoon eats his breakfast in silence with Jay while Jake volunteers to wake you up and help you with changing your bandages. They’re done eating by the time you emerge and Sunghoon can’t find it in himself to look at you, keeping busy by playing with his fingers. He feels your eyes on him and ignores the guilt that gnaws in his chest when he pretends you aren’t there, eating your breakfast next to him.

“We need to talk about next steps,” Jake says, cutting the tension. “You two obviously can’t stay here since it’ll be a liability for your safety. Hoon, you probably can’t go to your parents’ and neither Jay or I have enough space for you guys in the long run.”

“Y/N mentioned an abandoned warehouse that was salvaged and is fully operational,” Jay tells Sunghoon. “She knows someone there she trusts that might be able to help you two escape Korea or stay hidden long enough.”

Sunghoon huffs. “Trust. Sure.”

“It seems like your best bet.”

“Please Sunghoon,” you beg. “Please choose to continue living.”

He sighs. “It’s hard to hear you, of all people, say that to me.”

You nod. “I know. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’ll ever say anything that will make things better but being on the run is what I’m good at and this isn’t an opportunity we can pass up”

He looks up at his friends. “So this is it, huh? I’m just…never going to see you guys again?”

Jay and Jake share a look.

“Well…” Jake draws out, rubbing the back of his next. “Not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re coming with you,” Jay says.

“What?” Sunghoon says incredulously. “No you’re not. You guys can’t risk your lives just to save mine.”

“Y/N told us about this uprising,” Jay explains, “to take down Command and end this organization for good. I’d be a fool not to be part of it after knowing what they put you through.”

“Our lives truly mean nothing if we ignore this and pretend people aren’t suffering,” says Jake. “Y/N can’t carry the burden alone.”

He finally looks at you. “You’re going to take down Command?”

“I’ll probably die trying, but yes. We can leave Korea but I can’t in good faith leave it here where more people die and suffer every single day.”

“This person she knows is someone who’s all for the uprising too,” says Jake. “If your next logical step is to hide away in his warehouse until life becomes more quiet, I think we should go too.”

“You can’t,” Sunghoon says, shaking his head. “You two have lives here, for God’s sake.”

“None more than you did.”

He looks at you. “Why are you encouraging them?”

“I’m not,” you say. “But I know two ambitious people when I see them. If they’re willing to help me with my mission, I’d be stupid to turn them down.”

“This is batshit. You can't just leave everything behind for me.”

Jay smiles. “It’s what friends are for, right?”

He knows there’s no use arguing when his friends are looking at him like they’ve already made up their minds. Sunghoon averts his eyes to see you with your arm slung on the table and then back to his friends, and sighs.

“Welcome to the team. Let’s pray we don’t die.”

*✧･ﾟ─────────── *✧･ﾟ

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snowdice · 2 years ago

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Big Bang Editing Story [Day 109]

I started writing this fic while editing my Big Bang story years ago, but am going to continue doing it for other things now that Kill Dear is out. I will write and publish 100 words of the story every time I finish doing whatever task I’m doing. If you’d like to block these proceedings, please feel free to block the tag ‘proofread stories.’ I will reblog this post with the parts of the story I do today. Edited chapters are linked; everything else I’ve done so far is under the cut.

My Master Post Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21 Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44 Part 45 Part 46 Part 47 Part 48 Part 49 Part 50 Part 51

Not going to do this for much today, but I want to finish the chapter.

Chapter 52 (Mr. Deknis)

It was Jeffers Deknis’s second busiest time of year right after the fall harvest. However, unlike the fall harvest, not all of his workers were yet at the castle. The winter had been harsh and while the last snowfall had been a month ago, many of his workers whose families lived far from the castle had sent word they would be late arriving for various reasons. A few were dealing with sick relatives and others had to help fix things broken by storms for their families before making the trek. One who lived in the mountains up north was still snowed in.

So, he was dealing with only about 70% of his usual staff, meaning he was even busier than he usually was in the spring.

However, despite how busy he was, he didn’t mind taking a bit of time out of his schedule to help plant a little plot of land he’d reserved for a special selection of plants.

Virgil has spent a lot of time deciding on what plant he wanted to grow in the plot Jerffers had given him. He’d combed through multiple books even though it quickly became clear he couldn��t read well and talked to Jeffers about his options extensively before finally coming to a decision.

He’d decided on a flower called Zygopetalum maculatum which was a type of orchid. It wouldn’t be an easy flower to grow considering they didn’t naturally have the right climate for it, but with a bit of magical fertilizer and ruins in the ground near them, it was feasible.

Since Virgil had chosen his flower, Jeffers had dedicated a bit of his time each day to explaining what they needed to do for it to grow and had set him up with the correct materials. Virgil had spent a good chunk of the last two weeks outside on his marked off plot of land doing as instructed to get the soil in the right condition.

Sometimes Logan and Patton joined him and sometimes he was alone, but he was clearly dedicated to his task. Jeffers had stopped by and tested the soil the day before and found it was adequately prepared for planting Virgil’s flowers and had told the boy as much.

Despite being already very busy, Jeffers had allowed for an hour out of his schedule to help Virgil plant his flowers this afternoon.

Even though Jeffers had told him exactly where in his schedule he’d made time for it, Virgil had come early.

Very early.

He’d stalked Jeffers’ footsteps all day. If the boy were a cat, Jeffers would have assumed he’d accidentally left a slice of meat in his back pocket after breakfast.

Jeffers ended up letting him help with a few other things in the morning which he seemed to enjoy. He seemed to appreciate planting things even if they weren’t his flowers. He was also good at it if a bit slower than necessary in his caution to make sure he didn’t mess anything up.

Jeffers ended up sending Patton to get an extra packed lunch from Helen for Virgil (as people didn’t like when the gardeners tracked mud into the dinning hall) and they ended up eating while sitting on the base of the fountain by the plot of land Virgil had been tending to.

The water in the fountain was now flowing, having recently been cleaned and turned on and birds were chirping in the distance. It was a nice, calming environment. This was why Jeffers liked to spend so much time outside. Or at least, it was one of the reasons.

There was a soft meow from beside them that drew Jeffers’ attention. Jeffers looked down to see one of the castle’s many cats standing on its hind legs with one of its paws on the fountain’s base. It was staring at them expectantly. Jeffers recognized the yellow stripped cat as one of the friendlier ones that Patton had tamed as a kitten. It meowed again when it saw him looking.

“What?” Jeffers asked it, raising one eyebrow. “I know you’re not starving.”

It meowed again in complaint. Then it turned to Virgil. Virgil was instantly tearing off a bit of his chicken sandwich to feed to the cat.

“You don’t need to feed him,” Jeffers said. “Patton takes care of that plenty well.”

Despite what Jeffers had said, the cat gobbled up the piece of chicken Virgil had fed him like he was starving.

“It’s Buttercup,” Virgil informed Jeffers. The name vaguely rang a bell.

“You remember all of Patton’s names for them?” Jeffers asked, honestly impressed. There were so many cats.

Virgil nodded and ripped off another piece of chicken. The cat went flying at it with gusto.

“Keep some for yourself too,” Jeffers said. “You look less fed than the cats.” Thankfully he was looking more fed than he had at the beginning of winter.

“But he’s hungry,” Virgil replied with a frown.

“He’s a glutton is what he is,” Jeffers said. “He’s already had his lunch by now I’d imagine and is more than free to hunt down rodents in the barn if he needs a snack.”

Virgil frowned and gave the cat another piece of chicken.

“You’re too good of a kid,” Jeffers said with an eyeroll.

Virgil just frowned at him and took a bite of his sandwich for himself this time.

“Make sure to eat extra dinner if you’re going to feed the cats your lunch,” Jeffers said. “Though I’m sure Helen will be feeding you extra by default when she hears you’ve been helping me in the garden all day.”

“I’m fine,” Virgil said, stubbornly. He took another bite of his sandwich and fed another to the cat.

Jeffers considered him. ‘Fine,’ was a very vague word and his powers didn’t ping on it as a lie because it could mean a variety of things. He had a feeling Virgil knew that.

Jeffers wasn’t a fool. The kids had been talking around his powers about something all summer, though he couldn’t figure out what exactly it was about. Virgil was almost as good at it as Logan. Maybe he was even better.

“Not hungry enough to eat the entire sandwich by yourself then?” Jeffers asked.

Instead of replying verbally, Virgil just shrugged. Clever little bastard.

Jeffers sighed. Helen had packed some of the canned peaches in their lunches, so Jeffers pulled his out and set the container next to the boy. Virgil looked at the offering in surprise.

“Cats don’t eat peaches,” he cautioned. “It’s bad for their digestion.”

“I don’t need to take your food,” Virgil said with a frown.

“Yeah, you do,” said Jeffers. “I’m and old man, not a growing boy. You should eat them.”

Virgil frowned and looked like he was about to argue.

“Eat your lunch so we can plant your flowers kid,” Jeffers huffed.

Virgil hesitated, but the idea of getting to plant his flowers seemed to trump his desire to argue with Jeffers about lunch and he picked up the dish of peaches.

Jeffers went about finishing what was left of his lunch as Virgil continued to eat his own. The cat ran off when it noticed there was no more meat available.

Jeffers rolled his eyes. The thing was probably running off to go scam more people out of their lunch. Patton had spoiled them far too much and they were too good at making cute starving expressions.

“Alright,” Jeffers said once they were done. “Are you ready to plant your orchids.”

Virgil nodded eagerly and Jeffers packed away their trash before getting up.

“Good,” Jeffers said. “You have all of the supplies I told you we needed gathered?”

Virgil nodded and started to list off everything that Jeffers had said.

“Then, we can get started planting,” Jeffers said with a smile.

Chapter 53 (Virgil)

Virgil and Mr. Deknis took their time planting the orchids. Virgil had done everything Mr. Deknis had instructed him to do with the plot of land prior to planting. He’d had Mr. Deknis write it all down, so Logan could read him the instructions each morning, and had dutifully followed each step. The sheet of paper was in Virgil’s pocket even now. He knew the words so well at this point that he could have recited each list item even if it had words he still couldn’t read.

It had been hard work getting the soil just right for the flowers he wanted to plant, but it was fun hard work. Working hard was different when he didn’t have to do something but wanted to do something. He’d also noticed it was easier to do physical labor when he wasn’t hungry, something he hadn’t been all winter in the castle.

He’d thought since he hadn’t been training as much as usual over the winter months that he’d be weaker when Spring came, but he actually felt stronger and had much more energy.

He’d also grown taller without realizing it thanks to Logan’s nutrition potion. He’d noticed when he’d been in the shed earlier. When he’d first hid in the shed upon arriving at the castle the previous fall, he’d been able to walk under all of the hanging tools in the back. Today, he’d hit his head on some of the them.

His body had changed a lot in the past few months. It made planting with Mr. Deknis much easier.

Virgil had already helped Mr. Deknis with planting some vegetables this Spring, but he still was careful to pay attention as the gardener showed him how to plant the first few orchid bulbs.

Then, Virgil was handed the container of bulbs for himself to try planting. Mr. Deknis watched him plant the first few orchids and Virgil glanced up for approval before moving on each time. He always got a nod and small smile.

Eventually, Mr. Deknis took a few bulbs himself to the opposite end of the patch of soil and started planting some himself, trusting Virgil to plant his portion of the flowers right without supervision. Virgil couldn’t help but be happy about the show of trust given to him.

“Good job,” Mr. Deknis said after the two of them had planted two rows of orchids. “You’ve got an eye for planting things.”

“Thanks,” Virgil said bashfully.

“How old are you again?”

“I’m 14,” Virgil said, unsure why he was asking.

Mr. Deknis nodded. “Maybe in a few years you’ll want to get a job as one of the gardeners here,” he said. “I could always use one who knows how to respect plants like you and with how much you’ve been volunteering to help already, you’ll know a good amount by then.”

“Really?” Virgil asked.

Mr. Deknis nodded.

“Why not now?”

“You’re only 14,” Mr. Deknis said. “You don’t need to worry about working. I’m happy to let you tag along and watch or even help a bit with planting when you want, but you should just be a kid.”

That confused Virgil. He’d been considered out of training to be an assassin as soon as he’d turned 14-years-old last fall. Now he was being told he needed to wait a few years to help plant seeds?

“I could do it,” Virgil said.

“I know you could,” Mr. Deknis said, “but you don’t need to. Have a little fun this summer.”

“But I want to,” Virgil said.

Mr. Deknis huffed out a laugh. “I know,” he said, “and you can feel free to care for your orchids and help me out all you want, but no jobs until you’re at least 16.”

“It’s better than any other jobs I’ve had,” Virgil muttered, honestly annoyed he couldn’t become a gardener right now because of his age.

Mr. Deknis raised an eyebrow. “And what other jobs have you had?”

Virgil froze. That was not a good line of questioning. “Uh…” Virgil said and Mr. Deknis’s expression was changing in an alarming way. “Different things. I’ve carried things for people and, uh, cleaned.”

“Carried things and cleaned, huh?” Mr. Desknis said. It felt like he wasn’t only testing Virgil’s words for lies but observing his face and posture too.

Virgil should be good at lying. He should. That was a major part of being an assassin, but Virgil had started to slip after spending so long around people who were not a danger to him.

At least not a danger to him as long as he didn’t get caught in a lie.

He’d been sloppy with the way he’d frozen when asked a question and with the stuttering. He should have been prepared; he was prepared for the next question.

“You only had to carry things and clean some things up?” Mr. Deknis asked, his eyebrows still raised.

Virgil carefully smoothed out his face, forcing his shoulder to relax as he shrugged. “And some other things,” he said easily. Not a lie. He could feel his heart race anyway.

Mr. Deknis’s eyes bored into him for a long moment and then he titled his head to the side and squinted at him.

Virgil just shot him a small smile. “Can we finish planting the flowers, please?” he asked politely. “I was very excited about it and would like to finish it today.”

Mr. Deknis did not reply for a long moment, and Virgil was careful to keep his expression blank.

Finally, the gardener relented, breaking his stare. If this was because he believed Virgil or not was unclear.

“Yeah, kid,” he said slowly. “Let’s finish planting your flowers.”

Virgil nodded, and he didn’t have to lie as much now as cautious eagerness returned to him. He really did want to finish planting his flowers in addition to stopping Mr. Deknis from asking uncomfortable questions about where Virgil had come from.

Mr. Deknis nodded to the bag of bulbs. They went back to work planting the flowers, but Virgil could feel Mr. Deknis’s eyes on him almost constantly. He had a feeling that this time, he wasn’t watching for how well Virgil was planting the bulbs, but something else.

Virgil was careful to not let his mask slip at all the entire time.

When they were finished planting Virgil’s entire plot of land, they cleaned up the equipment and stored it back away in the garden shed.

Another day Virgil might have stayed and helped Mr. Deknis with other things. Today he was still trying to cover for his bad lying earlier, however, so, Virgil decided to just go back to the castle and shower.

To his surprise Mr. Deknis also started walking off in the direction of the castle.

“Don’t you have more planting to do?” Virgil asked when they got to the door. He knew the man was very busy and his workday was only a bit more than half over.

“I do,” Mr. Deknis confirmed, “but I needed to talk to the king about something first.”

“Oh,” Virgil said. “Okay. I’m going to go shower.”

Mr. Deknis nodded. “I’ll see you sometime later then,” he said.

“Thank you for helping me plant the orchids.”

Mr. Deknis smiled slightly at that. “Anytime, kid.”

Chapter 54 (Patton)

“I still can’t believe he’s allowing this,” King Thomas said from next to Patton. The two of them were standing at the edge of the arena outside the horse stable, watching from a safe distance.

“If he hadn’t tried to bite me earlier, I’d think he was a different horse,” Patton agreed.

“He doesn’t even let Logan ride him,” the king said. “At least not ride him and give him directions.”

Patton was very aware of that. Logan did on occasion choose to get up onto Mr. Apple’s saddle. However, Mr. Apples was always the once who got to decide where they went after that. Logan had no say.

With that in mind, Patton, Logan, and every stable hand who’d heard about the prospective riding lessons had tried to convince Virgil to learn to ride on a different horse. Virgil was just as stubborn as Mr. Apples however and had insisted. Logan, being the only one who could be around Mr. Apples without risk had become his defacto tutor.

Not even Logan could have expected that within a week, Virgil would be able to control Mr. Apples. Though perhaps ‘control’ was the wrong word. Nothing could control Mr. Apples, but for some reason, Mr. Apples seemed willing to do as Virgil asked.

Even right now Mr. Apples was trotting around the training arena like he was a well-trained trick horse warming up with its rider.

“Logan told him we could go on an actual ride today if the lesson went well,” Patton told the king. The lesson seemed to be just getting over because Logan said something to Virgil and Virgil started to climb off. Mr. Apples was patient and still as he dismounted.

“Do you think he’d mind if I went with you?” King Thomas asked.

Patton shrugged. “Mr. Apples might.”

“Mr. Apples definitely will,” the king replied. “I’ll come anyway.”

Logan had walked over to where Patton and the king were standing while Virgil fed Mr. Apples some apple pieces as a reward.

“I hear you are going to go riding today,” king Thomas said.

Logan nodded. “Mr. Apples seems to listen to him well enough,” he said.

“I might join you if that’s alright. Where are you kids going?” the king asked.

“I was thinking the main forest path,” Logan replied. “It’s not a particularly difficult route, but it’s also a part of the castle grounds Virgil hasn’t been able to see yet. Loraine told me it has been recently cleared after the winter.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” the king said. “Are you going now?”

“Once Patton and I saddle up our horses,” Logan said. “You can come.”

“Great,” the king said with a smile. “I’ll ask for Bella’s saddle to be brought out. I haven’t gone on a ride yet this week.”

He turned then to walk towards the stables leaving Patton and Logan alone.

“Do you think he’s been acting weird?” Logan asked, turning towards Patton.

Patton frowned. “No,” he said. “Not really.”

“I’m just wondering why he wants to go horseback riding with us.”

“He likes spending time with you?” Patton guessed.

“Yes,” Logan said, “but typically in a setting that doesn’t involve Mr. Apples.”

Well, that was fair.

“I mean, it’s not too weird,” Patton said, thinking back through the last couple of days. King Thomas had been a bit… clingy.

“He’s been hanging around a lot,” Logan said, echoing Patton’s thoughts with narrowed eyes. He glanced back at Virgil. “You don’t think Virgil let something slip, do you?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Patton said. “I think your dad would say something if he let slip he was an assassin somehow.”

“Unless he let slip something that didn’t quite implicate himself but invited suspicion.”

“Your dad doesn’t seem suspicious,” Patton said. At least, Patton didn’t think he did. He hadn’t been acting mean in any way. In fact, he might have even been acting nicer.

Logan frowned. “We should keep an eye on him, especially around Virgil.”

Patton bit his lip.

“What?” Logan asked.

“Are we ever going to tell your dad about Virgil?” he asked.

Logan hesitated. “I don’t…” he trailed. “I’m not sure.”

“It just feels weird lying for so long,” Patton said. Patton didn’t lie a lot. Sure, maybe he’d pretend to not know what Mama was talking about when sweets went missing from the kitchens or he’d pretend to not know what Logan’s birthday gift was, but he’d never lied about anything serious before now.

“I know, but,” Logan glanced back at Virgil once again, “even if we did decide to tell, we’d have to convince Virgil everything would be alright beforehand. I don’t think we’re at that point yet. He was terrified of Father until a few months ago, and he’s still cautious around him sometimes.”

Logan was right, of course. Virgil was getting more and more comfortable around the king, but he figured any of the progress made would go down the drain as soon as they brought up telling King Thomas about where exactly Virgil had come from. Patton didn’t know if Virgil would ever be comfortable enough.

“We should go get our own horses,” Logan suggested, and Patton nodded.

Patton and Logan’s horses had already been saddled by the stable hands in anticipation of their ride and it didn’t take long for the king to saddle his own horse, Bella.

The forest path at this time of year was very pretty, Patton thought. The tree branches now had small green leaves on them after having been barren for the entire winter and flowers were starting to grow. In a few weeks’ time it would be even prettier, but it would also be harder for the groundskeeper to maintain as well as it was right now.

Virgil really did seem less anxious around King Thomas now. The path was only wide enough for two horses to go at once, and he didn’t seem to mind that he and the king ended up next to each other while Patton and Logan lagged behind. In fact, he and the king seemed to be having a nice conversation about the local wildlife.

However, if Patton looked close enough, he did sort of see what Logan meant. Virgil may not be anxious talking to the king now, but the king himself seemed just a little bit nervous at least at the beginning of the ride.

He seemed to relax a bit as they rode (even laughing when Mr. Apples tried to bite him when he got too close).

Logan had been teaching Virgil the basics about things like animals, but there was still a pretty big gap in his education when it came to anything that wasn’t about training to fight and kill. King Thomas seemed more than willing to answer any of his questions when it came to the animals and plants around them even if they were sometimes a bit silly.

He’d seen a bird that looked like a dove. (It may have even been a dove, but Patton hadn’t seen it.) This had been a source of endless confusion for him.

“But shouldn’t it live in the dovecote?” Virgil asked.

“Not all birds live in a dovecote,” the king explained again.

“But it’s a dove,” Virgil said with a frown.

“Not all doves live in a dovecote,” the king replied.

“But it’s a dovecote,” Virgil argued. “It’s for the doves.”

“Yes, but there are also wild doves,” the king said.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Virgil replied.

“What about it doesn’t make sense?” the king asked with a laugh in his tone.

“Doves go in the dovecote,” Virgil said.

Patton was starting to have trouble following this argument.

“Dovecotes are made for doves,” the king said, “but not all doves go in dovecotes.”

“Why?”