Chapter Text
She wakes to the sound of her phone chewing her ears off.
Well not really wakes so much as snaps her eyes open. She doesn’t actually need to sleep, but she does enjoy closing her eyes.
There’s a stream of notifications one after another of where are you and get your ass down here and Nayoung just sighs, tossing the phone towards the edge of the bed and turning to face the other way.
It's a routine she's so, so tired of.
--
It’s the third time she’s dozed off -- she knows because Mina kicks her chair all three times. Pay attention, she hisses, and really, why is she even in this class to begin with (it’s not my fault you had to repeat calculus twice, Mina deadpans). Sejeong just flashes her a semi apologetic smile.
She tries not to nod off to the rhythmic stabs of chalk against the blackboard and the professor’s droning speech pattern. But in just minutes, her head is already drooping and the chalk etchings on the board were starting to blur together. It reminds her of a chalk outline, Sejeong notes idly.
Instantly, she’s taken back to the events of last night.
It’s the second crime scene this week, where she slipped out after midnight to canvas. Mina’s either a heavy sleeper, or just doesn’t care that her roommate’s sneaking out in the middle of the night. Either way, both crime scenes were on the edge of the city, taking her farther from her dorm than she would have liked.
It’s the same M.O. both times, and she can see the worrying looks exchanged between the policemen on scene. Both victims were pulled from a garbage disposal. Post-limb churning.
She’s hiding on top a storage container, steering clear of the light. But even from her restricted view, it’s still a grisly sight. Severed limbs and dangling flesh. She watches one of the policemen hurl.
It’s sort of hard to fall asleep after that, so she tosses and turns in her bed until dawn, and the two hours of sleep she grabs in between sends her into a zombie state. Mina should cut her some slack, really.
“- pop quiz today.” She catches the tail end of the professor’s sentence and the consecutive groans that followed.
She hands in the quiz at the end of class, sheet half blank, and makes a note to beg Mina for a good tutor.
--
“Hyeyeon-ah, I thought we talked about this.” Mina sighs. She’s written up a proposal this time, with bullet points .
“You’re the one who always complains about being too boring,” Hyeyeon argues. “This is a perfectly legitimate hobby okay. And look, it’ll make you more popular with the girls.”
Mina shrieks a little, or high pitched whines, and elbows her in the side. “Okay sorry, boys, whatever.” Hyeyeon rolls her eyes.
“Point is, starting a detective club is a great idea and you need to stop being a hater,” Hyeyeon counters. “Let’s actually make use of all that brain intellect we’re hoarding.”
“And where oh where are you getting that idea from?”
“You were runner-up valedictorian okay, and I’m pretty damn smart,” Hyeyeon retorts, ignoring Mina’s blatant roll of her eyes. “Two of us is probably more competent than half the police force.”
“I thought you were just planning on taking small cases. Like, missing cats and hamsters.” She takes another look at the printout Hyeyeon gave her. “Or at least that’s what bullet number four says.”
“Baby steps. It’s all about working our way up.”
She’s long since realized there’s no point in arguing with Hyeyeon. She’ll always get the last word in, age difference be damned.
Mina sighs. “Let’s go over this sheet again,” and Hyeyeon beams.
--
“You’re late,” Hana says without looking up from her desk. “Again.”
“Bad commute, you know,” Nayoung replies dismissively. It’s a lie that Hana doesn’t even bother acknowledging.
“You know, you could just live here. Commute-free and rent free like the rest of us.”
The voice catches her by surprise and she doesn’t have to turn to know it’s Mimi skulking in the corner. No one else can catch her off guard like that.
“I gotta live up to my rep as a tried and true rebel,” Nayoung drones, drawing a hint of a smile from Mimi. “What are you doing here though?”
Hana clears her throat authoritatively, redirecting their attention to her. “It’s about your new mission. Get the door.” She gestures.
Mimi haphazardly looks at the wooden frame before it clicks shut with a glance. She’s always been handy with the party tricks.
“What’s up,” Nayoung inquires. It has to be serious if Hana called Mimi in. Mimi, who ignores the majority of summons unless it’s directly from Hana.
“It’s about a recent…disturbance,” Hana explains. Her eyes flicker quickly to Mimi before resettling on Nayoung. “Someone’s been interfering with some of our big name clients. And they’re not exactly happy about it.”
When are they ever, she hears Mimi whisper under her breath.
“Either way,” Hana continues, ignoring Mimi’s grumblings. “They want us to take care of it.”
“You mean kill them?” Nayoung interjects. There’s no point in tip-toeing around it, she figures.
“Yes.”
“Why am I here then?” Nayoung asks. “You know I don’t do kill missions.”
“That’s why I’m here, darling,” Mimi chirps in, in that annoying sing-song voice she knows Nayoung hates. “You just need to find them.”
Nayoung squints at her. “So as always, I do all the hard work and then you swoop in for the finish.”
“Yep, that’s about right,” Mimi answers cheerily.
Nayoung shakes her head. Sometimes she finds herself admiring the way Mimi stays so nonchalant about taking a life, until it dawns on her how fucked up that was. But we’re already fucked up as it is, is what Mimi always reminds her..
“Just give me the file,” Nayoung mumbles, and Hana slides a folder towards her.
The folder’s light. There’s not really much information on their mystery person aside from the fact that the “interferences” as Hana penned it, all centralized around a particular college campus.
“So it’s not unreasonable to conclude that our target’s associated with this college somehow. Could be a professor, staff member, or –“
“A student,” Nayoung finishes.
“Yes, precisely.” There’s a new touch of guardedness in Hana’s voice. “Whoever they are, they’re extremely cautious. We have nothing so far amounting to any kind of description. None of the victims have been able to identify a single quality of their assailant.”
“How’d you link the victims together then?” Nayoung frowns.
Hana nods at the folder, “Turn the page,” she directs. “Our target left a single flower at each of the scenes, as a sort of signature.”
“How tacky,” Mimi snorts, and Nayoung has to agree. It's a sort of movie-esque brand of vigilantism.
“They’ve managed to round up more than a few of our clients’ employees, anonymously gifting them to the police each time. Our clients are starting to worry about possible exposure.”
How very Good Samaritan of them, Nayoung thinks. It’s inspiring almost, if Nayoung weren’t working from the opposing realm of morality.
“So how do you want to proceed?” She’s read the brief, and usually a mission outline follows the target profile. But there’s nothing there.
Hana nods to Mimi, who leans back and presses her palm against the glass, instantly fogging it. Nayoung’s fairly sure she also soundproofed the walls in the process.
“This whole operation needs to stay off the books,” Hana explains. “There’s some potential sensitive information involved that we don’t want to come to light. Not for our investors.”
Mimi makes a sort of obnoxious ka-ching noise that they both ignore.
“So am I supposed to just snoop around campus, like what’s the plan?”
Hana hesitates before answering, which sets her on edge. “We want you to be fully assimilated with your surroundings, since you don’t want to potentially spook your target. And we figured it’d be best to give you a cover.”
She could hear Mimi snickering in the background, which has never led to anything good.
“Here’s the full file on your cover.” Hana hands her another folder that she kept conveniently hidden under a stack of papers.
Nayoung pries the folder open. In bold text it reads, Kim Nayoung, transfer student.
Oh hell no.
--
She’s exhausted, her legs functioning solely on autopilot. There’s a mountain of assignments she has to catch up on, not to mention she’s still knee deep in the case of the severed limbs. Prioritization is an impossible decision. It’s either be screwed by her grades or by her guilt.
And on top of that, Mina texted her about some “important business” with Hyeyeon (remember that terrible friend I was talking about, she says) that apparently warranted her involvement. Sejeong regrets being so agreeable and promising to talk to her about it.
She briefly contemplates how many codes of social acceptance she’d be breaking if she just passed out on the pavement for awhile.
Her thought is cut by a shrill scream. Sejeong whips around towards the source of noise, a mother waving frantically at her child. Her child who was making no effort to move out of the way of an incoming truck.
She’s read those articles before, citing the heroics of people pulling children out of train tracks. It’s reflex, they’d say, in the post interviews. Instinct, duty, whatever.
It’s the same for Sejeong, except she’s also got superhuman speed on her side.
To the naked eye, her movements are indiscernible. There's only a slight rustling sound before she gently places the child on the sidewalk next to where the truck ran its course. She's already escaped halfway down the block by the time the boy's mother realized he was unharmed.
Sejeong watches the mother scoop him up in a hug, surrounded by bystanders who were scratching their heads at the scene.
Sometimes she thinks about staying and taking the credit, maybe letting some of that gratitude warm her ego, but then she also thinks about her nightmares -- the ones where she’s standing in her mother’s lab, her mother lying unconscious by her feet.
She thinks about the figure in the shadows that she could never identify, the voice that coos it’ll be over soon.
Her chest stings a bit, a polite reminder not to over-do it with her speed. She must have maxed out on it by accident. She wasn’t going to hold back with a kid’s life on the line.
Her phone rings in her pocket. It’s Mina.
“Hey, you got time now?”
She groans.
--
It’s rare that Mimi gives any operation more than a second thought. She’s not the type to get hung up on specifics because after hundreds of files like this, every operation starts to look the same. She’s long since stopped with the questions, a quality that puts her in high standings with the company.
But it’s been awhile since she’s taken one of Hana’s “off the books” jobs, especially one where Hana was so obviously withholding information from the two of them. Not telling Nayoung she gets, because telling that intermittent moral compass too much could potentially sabotage the mission. But she can’t remember the last time Hana withheld something from her.
It bugs her for the entire day and she ends up circling back to Hana’s office.
“Are you really not going to tell me the whole story?” She barges through her door, arms crossed, voice demanding as can be.
Hana looks up from her screen. “What are we talking about.”
“Earlier, your super shady project for Nayoung, or whatever.”
Hana raises an eyebrow. “Since when did you start taking an interest in operational details?”
“Are you really gonna keep stonewalling me?” She challenges. Because she could probably find out, or at least she knows where Hana archives all the really dirty work.
Hana stares at her, half in contemplation, and long enough that it triggers Mimi’s impatience. She’s halfway out the door when Hana answers.
“Wait.” She sighs, the same exasperated sigh reserved for when Mimi makes those inappropriate jokes during board meetings. “Okay okay, I’ll tell you. I wasn’t trying to hide anything. From Nayoung yeah, but not from you.” Hana clarifies. “The information’s not fully vetted yet, so I didn’t want to jump the gun.”
Well now she’s curious. “What is it?”
“It’s not that the victims couldn’t identify their attacker, it’s more like any memory associated with their attacker was removed. Like there are just blanks of time they can’t account for,” Hana explains carefully, pausing to gauge her reaction.
Oh.
“You think it’s her, ” Mimi remarks quietly.
“Yeah,” Hana answers, tone equally as solemn. “You can see why I didn’t tell Nayoung.”
Mimi nods. It’s been a hell of long time, enough that they’ve given up searching, and now she just pops up conveniently on their radar? There’s no way.
But those memories of the four of them keep trickling into the forefront of her mind. Hana, who always mediated their arguments (it’s Nayoung’s turn to be a cop, she’d announce, to the two unhappy now-robbers), who held down the fort even when they took the three of them to hell and back.
It’s just Mimi, Nayoung and Hana now. And none of them talk about her. Well, those of them who can still remember.
“If it’s her.” It surprises her how raspy and hollow her own voice is. “Are you still going forward with the objective?” It’s the most subtle way of asking, are you going to kill our friend?
Sometimes Mimi thinks she’s the only one who remembers Hana in the before, the bright and kindhearted girl who always had a glow on her face. These days, it’s a sort of artificial glow from all that makeup she puts on for press conferences. And somewhere along the line, she trades kindness for confidence.
“I don’t know,” Hana slowly admits.
And it’s the truth of those words that chills her.