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A buzzing, rattling sound invades his dreams. He’s reaching for something, someone, fading into white distance, the rattle-buzz getting louder as the slim figure warps and fades before his outstretched fingers. He clasps his hands to his ears, hunching his shoulders against the sound. It’s deafening now. There’s a tug on his arm and a sharp sting.
He’s in a white room, a white bed, blinking to try to keep his heavy eyes open, to try to make sense of his surroundings through the fog that blankets his mind. There’s a light, if he can only focus. It’s the buzzing. It’s urgent, if he can just…
He reaches for it, or he thinks he does. His arm barely seems attached, floating through endless time as he drops his hand on top of the thing, fingers clutching, holding, grasping tightly. He tries to lift his hand and it slips. He grabs again, pushing it against the white surface to hold it in place because he knows that if it falls, it falls forever.
Then he’s hauling it close to him; there’s a glowing light. He knows there’s something he should do, but he can’t quite focus enough. He’s aware of movement, of footsteps nearby. A threat. He clutches it to him, even though it’s silent now, dead and dark against his chest.
“Now, now, Detective, it’s all right,” a voice says soothingly, and he blinks until the figure of a woman comes into focus. She’s bending over him, and then she takes the thing from him. He tries to resist, but his fingers are too weak.
“I’ll just pop your phone in the drawer here,” she says, still in a reassuring tone. “See?”
The sight of the phone disappearing upsets him, but when he tries to ask for it his tongue is made of cotton. His mouth doesn’t seem to want to work properly. He’s parched.
The nurse makes a tutting sound and holds a straw to his mouth. He sucks obediently, grateful for the relief, for the cool liquid trickling down his dry throat, and then the nurse is looking down at his side, doing something. He squints down at the tube going into his arm.
“Sleep now,” she says, and he does.
He wakes with a sense of something missing—something he needs to do, perhaps, but he’s foggy still. He can’t make sense of his surroundings; it’s dark and the buzzing is barely audible, perhaps his imagination. It follows him as he sinks back into dreams of warm rain and dark eyes.
When he’s finally strong enough to check his phone, the battery is, not surprisingly, dead. His sister brings a charger and plugs it in for him. There are four missed calls from a private number. What if it was her? He can’t risk trying to trace the number. Not now he knows how high the corruption goes. Joong-Ki Bak’s still free. For now.
His captain visits. He tells Mun that it’s all over the news. That Sun Bak, infamous fraudster and prison escapee, attempted to murder her brother but was foiled due to the renowned businessman’s quick thinking and bravery. The Captain tells him that Bak is hiding behind his political connections, but there is a suspicious silence and not a single complaint filed by the Bak family lawyers. He tells him there’s a police officer stationed outside his hospital room, just as a precaution.
His partner’s on desk duty while Mun recuperates. He visits regularly, but doesn’t talk about the case. The one time Mun asked how things are going, Keun-suk freezes and his eyes dart to the corners of the room. Mun takes the hint and enquires about Keun-suk’s son’s volleyball team. He doesn’t ask again.
He’s been told he was lucky; a gunshot wound to the chest at near point-blank range should have done more damage. For a long time he doesn’t feel lucky. He’s in pain unless he’s drugged so much he can’t focus, and then it’s a long, slow wait while his body knits itself back together. Once his medication’s reduced and he can concentrate, he searches for information, clues, sightings on news sites and social media platforms. It doesn’t surprise him to hear about Sun’s high speed motorcycle chase after her brother, although the eyewitness accounts of her throwing the metal bar like a spear to disable the steering does make him wonder how much the events of the night have been exaggerated.
The temptation must have been great, but Mun’s glad for her sake that she refrained from killing her brother. Not because he wants Joong-Ki Bak to live, but because he believes he knows Sun well enough to know that she would regret it. She’s not a murderer.
The internet has decided she’s a superhero. There are memes and t-shirts with artwork of her underwear-clad figure astride the motorbike. Sales of silver hotpants have gone through the roof. There’s even a manhwa in print. He’s glad for the saturation in a way; the more false reports and sightings, the harder it will be for her brother’s assassins to find her.
The news services run an interview with Joong-Ki Bak. He looks noble and earnest as he again pleads for his sister to turn herself in, assuring her that all is forgiven. Mun resists the impulse to throw the phone across the room.
It’s like she’s vanished off the face of the Earth. There’s not been a single verified sighting of her since that day. Either she’s gone completely to ground or she’s left the country somehow. He hopes it’s the former, because otherwise he has no idea where to look. The idea he might never see Sun Bak again causes a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with the gunshot wound.
He’s impatient to get out of hospital so he can start looking. He’ll go back to Sun’s old trainer—ask him to pass on a message at least. He knows better than to try to leave before the doctor signs him off though—he needs to return to active duty to access police department resources—so he focuses on his physiotherapy.
One day he’s unenthusiastically regarding the onion soup on his lunch tray when his phone rings. He looks at the screen and his pulse rate picks up when he sees the call is from a private number.
“Hello?”
“Detective.”
Her voice is low, husky. It shivers through him. He grips the phone tighter against the urge to demand to know where she is, demand she let him help her.
“Are you alone?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Do you trust me?”
An ominous question, but he doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“You are in danger. You need to get out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Your protective detail was called off, correct?”
How does she know that? Does she have him under surveillance? He’d probably do well not to forget that the woman he cares about and wants to protect, is a still a Bak. He shouldn’t underestimate her resourcefulness.
“It’s been weeks and there’s been no sign that Joong-Ki plans to try to kill me again. My captain was not able to justify the need any more to his superior.”
“Your captain’s superior has been paid off,” Sun says. “It is likely that there are men on the way to kill you even now.”
“How do—”
“There’s no time, Detective,” she says, and there’s real urgency in her voice. “You have to leave now. Please.”
It’s the please that decides him. She’s never asked anything of him before. He grabs his jacket and pulls on his shoes, and makes his way downstairs as quickly as he can, scanning his surroundings for danger, his heart racing. Even this small amount of exertion leaves him breathless, reminding him that he’s not fully recovered yet.
He’s no sooner made it out of the front entrance than a sleek black luxury sedan pulls up beside the kerb. He half expects a chauffeur to leap out to open the door for him, but that doesn’t happen.
The windows are tinted dark of course. He can’t see what awaits him. Leap of faith time.
Mun opens the door. There’s a slim figure seated inside. Fashionably large sunglasses obscure more than her eyes and she’s either wearing a wig or he was stuck in hospital for even longer than he’d thought because her hair falls in a long sheet on either side of her face. His heart racing, Mun gets in and takes the seat next to her.
The car pulls away smoothly.
Sun removes the sunglasses and folds them away neatly in a small black shoulder bag tucked into her side. She turns her head to look at him and, slowly, reaches out and takes his hand.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come earlier,” she said, holding his hand just a little too tightly.
“I understand.”
“I had to go away for a while.”
“You shouldn’t have come back.”
Sun blinks slowly. “You wanted me to give myself up. To trust the law.”
“I’ve changed my mind.” He’s not proud of it, that his conviction isn’t stronger than his fear for Sun’s safety.
“I’ve seen the evidence you’ve collected against my brother. It’s not enough.”
“It was enough for a warrant.”
“Now he knows you are on to him he will take extra precautions. He has powerful friends.”
“We’ll get him. No one’s above the law.”
“You still believe that.”
“I do.”
“I know my brother. He’s a foolish, careless man, convinced that he can get away with anything, because he always has,” Sun says, contempt in her voice. “Now he doesn’t have me or our Father to protect him he will have made mistakes. I can help you find them.”
“How?”
Sun’s eyes’ narrow. “Because I know my company’s financials better than anyone and because I have powerful friends too,” she says fiercely.
Mun is transfixed. The determined girl he’d fallen for all those years ago has grown into a confident, powerful woman. One that doesn’t need protecting.
It’s because he’s watching her closely that he sees it, the way her eyes go blank for a moment, as though listening to something far distant. She turns to look out the back window, and Mun realises that their driver is checking the mirror again and that it is the fourth time in the last minute or so.
The driver turns his head and says something that Mun doesn’t understand. He’s not speaking Korean, and Mun realises the driver is a white guy and the language is a European one, German or Dutch by the sound of it. Then he forgets to be surprised about that oddity, because Sun has reached under the seat and brought out two handguns and a semi-automatic pistol.
“Are you crazy?” Mun gasps.
Sun doesn’t spare him a glance. She places the semi-automatic and one of the hand guns on the seat between them and turns to look out the back window again. The gun she’s holding looks like an extension of her hand. He has no doubt that she knows how to use it.
Mun’s heart rate picks up with the spike of adrenaline and he turns to look out of the window himself. The twinge in his chest reminds him that he’s not fully healed yet; he’s supposed to be taking it easy.
There are a couple of dark-coloured SUVs behind them. They don’t appear to be doing anything suspicious. But Sun isn’t taking her eyes off them. Mun turns to ask her what’s going on and he sees it again, a slight tilt of her head and the way her eyes lose focus, just for a split second.
He hears a whirring sound behind him, as of the side window is being lowered, and then Sun is pointing her gun at him. He flinches, a split second of horror and the gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal. She fires, once, twice, past him, and then she’s swinging back to look out of the rear window again. Mun turns to see what Sun had been firing at out of the side window.
There’s a third SUV alongside them, the body of a man sagging down out the window. Beyond him, Mun can see the driver, hanging onto the steering with one hand and clutching his bloody shoulder with the other. The SUV keeps pace with them a moment longer and then it’s losing speed, dropping back and pulling away. The other two are accelerating now, coming up on either side of their vehicle, forcing the traffic around them to swerve to avoid being hit.
Their driver suddenly slams on the brakes. Mun has to throw out his arm to brace himself as the car swings into an abrupt turn and then accelerates again down a side street. Their pursuers are left behind in the distance, stuck in the traffic congestion they created. The driver laughs, a joyous sound.
Mun stares at the back of his head in disbelief. The driver meets his eyes in the mirror and smiles. He says something cheerfully to Sun, and he’s not speaking in German now. Mun doesn’t know what the language is, maybe an African one?
“All right,” Sun says, apparently in reply and she’s calmly packing the guns away out of sight again. Their driver turns the car back onto a busy road, merging with the traffic. “We’ll swap cars shortly,” she announces briskly. “They know this one now.”
“Are you a spy?” he asks incredulously, because the idea is crazy but how else to explain the range of skills the daughter of a financier should have no business knowing.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sun says dismissively. She takes off the long wig and tucks a few stray sweaty strands of hair behind her ears. She looks like herself again, the girl he sparred with. Sun takes his hand again. She leans towards him, and for the first time he sees her truly smile. “The truth is much more unbelievable.”