1. Red

‘I really truly hate that guy,’ Hye Jin bit out, keeping her face purposefully calm and expressionless. She could hear giggles behind her and didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction.

Following up with some choice words under her breath, she crouched down to the ground to pick up her notebooks. Or what was left of them. They were now a blood red colour, thankfully reeking of paint rather than actual blood.

At least he’s getting creative, she thought humourlessly. There were only so many days in the week that your shoes could be thrown into the lake. She was running out of shoes but she had plenty of notebo— mother eff…

Hye Jin could barely control her anger as she spotted a lone droplet of red paint on her shoe. It wasn’t enough to ruin a shoe but these white Chuck Taylors were her favourite and now they would always have a reminder of that horrible guy.

In her angry haze she just barely noticed a hush come over the corridor and she knew that could only mean one thing.

‘Ready to quit?’ 

He was tall, he was lithe and he had that bad boy smirk that everyone on campus seemed to find soooooo damn attractive. And while she didn’t disagree, she also whole-heartedly believed that he was the most annoying, tedious person she’d ever met.

Oh Sehun. 

‘Can I ask you something, sunbae?’ she straightened up, leaving her books on the floor.

The silence was now deafening. Not all the time did she have something to say back to him so of course the onlookers were anticipating a real show.

She took a few steps right up close to him until was nearly touching his shoulder. She tilted her head up until she could smell that popular cologne where his neck and ear met.

‘Do you think that if you invested as much effort in your training as you do in playing these childish pranks on me that you could possibly score a point on me?’ she whispered deliberately.

The self-satisfied smile faded into a stony glare.

‘I’m going to kill you,’ he muttered under his breath.

Hye Jin didn’t doubt that he would give it his best shot. 

+++

But apparently she was going to have the first attempt...

Kendo training was hard and Hye Jin just wanted to crawl back to her tiny apartment and collapse into bed. 

The kendo club captain Suho was away at the Korean world championships squad training for the week and unfortunately that bastard Oh Sehun was the vice captain. For this week his bullying wasn’t limited to outside of the dojo where Suho would have none of that. For this week it would be psychological and physical.

Well bring it on. She’d rather die than show him that he was starting to win.

But for now she was at some seedy bar masquerading as a restaurant, in a poorly lit (different from dimly lit, because the effect was just due to wear and tear rather than on purpose) booth, facing her Boss.

'I don't wanna,' Hye Jin sounded more like a petulant child rather than a 19 year old woman. 

But looking down at the profile that was slid across the table to her, the moment she saw that smug face looking up at her-- she wanted to throw up. 

'You seem to think that you get a say in this,' Boss showed no reaction on his face. Eyes swollen as though lacking sleep, he was the 45 year old man who organised meetings at random intervals to assign her jobs to do. From eliminating someone, to protecting someone, to tailing someone… all on behalf of her actual employer the League. 

‘There is no reason for me to want to protect this guy,’ she took the knife from the table setting and stabbed it on top of the picture to accentuate her point.

Boss was unmoved. 

‘Just do it,’ was his reply, ‘you know that we don’t ask questions. Everything happens at a higher level than you or me. There is a reason that they want him, and there’s a reason that we can’t let that happen. You signed up for this cause.  None of us have the right to pick and choose our missions.’ 

Hye Jin wavered. If there was one thing she hated more than Oh Se Hun, it was a dangerous and sinister vampire clan which referred to itself as Superior... So? She had to protect her mortal enemy? The person who made every day of her supposedly youthful life, a living hell? That jerkface who held a stupid grudge due her resistance to leave the kendo club as he wanted her to?  

The last thing she wanted to do was protect Oh Sehun from anything. 

Before she could even make a decision, Boss slid out from his seat and left with the job profile sitting there with finality in front of her. It turns out whatever happened to Oh Sehun was now in her hands.

She looked under the table to her shoes. Scuffing the plastic toe of her left shoe against the heel of her right shoe was always a thinking habit of hers. And then she saw it. 

A tiny spot of red paint that made her decision for her.

A/N: Thanks to everyone who subscribed to my story, and to superdupper who left the first comment! I hope you enjoyed and will come back for the next chapter!! - Kei 

I thought I'd leave a fun fact about kendo: that to score a point is not easy - with most matches playing best of 3 points, although there are those that are sudden death, first point wins :)