Chapter Text
YiHyun wakes up before dawn. He turns to stare for a moment at SaeBom’s sleeping face and gives her a soft kiss on her forehead before rising out of bed. He has an early morning stakeout of the massage parlor with his new partner Bora. He tiptoes to the door but just as he is about to turn the knob, SaeBom stirs.
“Hyun-ah, were you going to leave without saying goodbye?”
He turns around saying “No, I did say goodbye with a kiss.”
She frowns trying to remember this supposed kiss. Having no memory of it, she beckons him back to her side with a wave of her hand.
He returns to her side of the bed, and she beckons him again to lean down so she can remove the sleep from his eye. He gives her a quick kiss of thanks, but unsatisfied, she puts her arms around his neck and pulls him down for a longer one.
When they finally come up for air, she asks him if he must go right away. He glances at the time and then back at the mischievous grin on SaeBom’s face and scrambles back into bed.
YiHyun and Bora are sitting in a borrowed car from the impound sipping on their morning coffee across the street from the massage parlor. His hair is still wet from the impromptu morning shower, and he has an air of contentment around him. They are tracking all the people coming and going from the parlor including the workers.
Although she is whip smart and very good at her job, frequently people underestimate Bora because of her looks. Most of her male colleagues have trouble acting normal around her. YiHyun is the exception and has always treated her like one of the guys. Bora is curious to learn more about the woman who managed to capture the heart of this man so thoroughly. Truthfully, she wasn’t interested in YiHyun romantically, but was just intrigued to learn more.
After that memorable brief encounter with YiHyun’s wife, Bora asked several colleagues about her and was met with astonishment and disbelief that he had a wife. Then they preceded to ask her who it was. When she told them it was Yoon SaeBom, they seemed only slightly less surprised. From them, Bora learned that SaeBom was one of a few members of the SOU who managed to join without being part of the military special forces first by passing the nearly impossible physical exam test. Although she had left the police force nearly a decade ago several of the older detectives still remembered her for her physical prowess.
Bora tries to figure out how to broach the subject to break up the monotony of this stakeout. As she is about to speak, YiHyun suddenly starts to take rapid fire pictures of something happening at the entrance. It is still early in the morning before the parlor has opened and they had been watching a few employees enter. Now one of those male employees exits the parlor escorting a slightly disheveled appearing foreign looking woman with a suitcase clutched tightly in her hands.
“Have we seen this woman before?” he asks Bora.
She shakes her head and muses “I think she looks Chinese or maybe Malaysian but definitely not Korean.”
The reason they are both sitting in this cigar smelling beat up old car staring at a suspicious massage parlor is that during their investigation of the murder crime scene YiHyun had noted an excessive amount of food and discarded toiletry items within the dumpster. When he had gone to the massage parlor to interview potential witnesses, he noticed some bedding and clothing suggesting that people were living in the massage parlor. Now the appearance of this woman seems to confirm their suspicion that there is more than meets the eye.
When Bora and YiHyun had met the medical examiner, he had revealed that the murder victim was a Chinese national. They sent her fingerprints and images to the Chinese Embassy to try to identify the victim. Her cause of death had been strangulation, but she also had ligature marks on her wrists suggesting that she had been restrained as well. The medical examiner said that the victim was malnourished and probably had not been outside much as she was pale in appearance despite having old callouses on her hands suggesting a lot of manual labor.
Back at the police station YiHyun and Bora are poring over hundreds of surveillance pictures of the people coming in and out of the parlor trying to sort through repeat customers, workers versus newcomers. YiHyun notes a pattern where there is one particularly muscular male worker who comes out of the parlor with a different woman on his arm each time. The man is good at hiding his face from the CCTV cameras and appears at variable times of the day which is why the multiple surveillance teams hadn’t noticed. YiHyun grabs the suspect’s picture and goes to ask the clerk to run an ID and background check.
He looks up at the clock realizing that it is nearly midnight and quickly bids Bora goodnight. He grabs his jacket and heads home. This is the first time since being back at work that he is returning home so late.
He pushes the door open and comes face to face with a glaring SaeBom who is standing there with her arms crossed.
“Do you know what time it is? Have you even eaten dinner?” She reprimands him for not taking care of his health given that he only recently recovered from the infection and gunshot wounds. She drags him to the table, checking his forehead for a fever and then grabs a pot from the cabinet and angrily slams the door shut.
As she is standing at the sink adding water to the pot, YiHyun comes up behind her encircling his arms around her waist and resting his head on her shoulder. “I’m sorry Bom-ah, I lost track of time. I didn’t mean to make you worry.” He tugs at the pot in her hands and tries to coax her out of her bad mood by teasing her. “Let me make the ramen before you burn the house down again.”
She playful smacks him for reminding her of that incident from their youth but relinquishes the pot. She then pinches his side and warns him that if he ever makes her worry like this again, he will be dead. She tells him that she couldn’t eat dinner because she was sick with worry and now, she is starving so he better make something more than just ramen.
He agrees to at least call first if he’s going to be this late. He quickly turns back to the stove to hide the grin on his face. He never gets tired of her endearing antics when she worries about him which he now recognizes as a sign of her love.