I'm out for the year, so I can and will be updating much more often before I leave for a service trip. Enjoy!

(And please don't question the strange logic of this...I'm trying TT^TT)

It can take years to get a gun license. 

It takes about three days for ricin to kill a man.

Chanyeol watched somberly as police officers carried the body of Jeremy Hatchman from his penthouse, arms heavy by his sides and shoulders pulled back hard. Each movement was practiced just for this occasion, drilled into his body enough times for it to feel real. He sniffed and rubbed his nose, then shoved his gloved hands into his coat pockets.

A female police officer stood nearby. 

"It's terrible," she said, giving a sidelong glance to the tall, distraught-looking man. "There're such horrible people in this world, huh?"

Chanyeol sighed, breath choppy, and shook his head. "Jeremy, of all people. He...what did he ever do?"

"It's terrible," the officer repeated. 

The ambulance pulled away from the curb silently, and the police tape across the door snapped in the breeze, as if to make up for the lack of noise.

"We'll catch the guy," the female officer promised. She patted Chanyeol on the arm as she passed by, headed back for the car parked at the curb.

Will you?

No one looked twice at Chanyeol, the handsome man in a well-fitting peacoat and polished shoes with the purposeful bedhead, walking quickly with his head down underneath skyscraper shadows and a sky threatening snow. He blended in among the other people, grey and black and ties and jackets, headed back from work and hoping to get back to their warm apartments before the storm. 

Warm was a subjective term, though, it seemed. Chanyeol climbed up the dirty steps to the old apartment building of the man who commissioned Hatchman's murder, drawing his limbs closer to his body and noting with discomfort the cloud his breath made.

The single apartment door on the top floor squeaked open, and the man inside--the real murderer, Chanyeol thought--peered out.

Just like the first time Chanyeol had seen him four days prior, his eyes were bloodshot and his hands shook, this time as they held out the wad of money Chanyeol had demanded. "I h-heard th-the sirens," he stuttered, alcohol heavy on his breath.

Chanyeol took the grimy bills from the drunkard's hand, counted quickly, and put them away. "That was me."

The man stared hard into Chanyeol's eyes, scratching the stubble on his chin mindlessly. "Y-you got the wife, t-too?"

"I took care of her first."

"You're s-sure?"

Chanyeol sighed. "Yes, I am."

"G-good."

And with that, the door closed.

Chanyeol stood there for a moment longer, mind carefully blank, then his heel and raced down the steps.

This was the worst part, the few hours right after killing someone. The guilt Chanyeol had learned to suppress always threatened to spill over, but these few hours, the locked box he kept it in threatened to explode. He returned out onto the street and hailed a cab before anything could happen. It was easier in public.

How people found ways to contact him, Chanyeol would never know. He groomed his outward appearance with the fastidiousness of a spoiled cat, kept a steady job with a well-known fashion magazine, maintained relationships with people of all backgrounds, even gave money generously to the poor. Yes, he had grown up in a family of assassins, and yes, Highmont was a city notorious for private crime among the higher class, but he had worked to get out of it.

Though, as his father said, you can never leave the vessel you were born into. Especially when there's money involved.

An unknown number appeared on Chanyeol's phone one day while he was brushing his teeth. It skittered around on the coffee table in front of the TV playing the news silently. He groaned; all he had was a towel wrapped around his waist, and his apartment was never warm enough no matter how many times he called someone in to fix the system. With his toothbrush still in his mouth and paste threatening to drip onto his meticulously cleaned carpet, he picked up the phone.

"'ello?"

"Park Chanyeol."

The voice on the other end was unfamiliar and familiar at the same time, strong and commanding like his father's with the cool nonchalance of an assassin. Like himself. 

"This is he. Who am I speaking to?"

"Inconsequential."

Chanyeol stiffened. "Sorry?"

The person continued. "I know your address, and I can pay you through the mail. What I need is for you to kill the man whose picture I have sent to you."

Chanyeol turned towards the front door, half-expecting someone to appear. His patience dissipated. "Who the f is this?"

"I can pay you well."

Whoever it was on the other end hung up, and Chanyeol dropped his phone onto his couch, suddenly terrified. He had enemies in this city, and the person he was talking to could very well have been one of them. 

In the end, Chanyeol put on a baggy sweatshirt and jeans and, with his trusty Taurus 700 tucked into his sleeve, crept into the hallway outside his apartment.

He had chosen a new but plain high-rise building to live in, where he could look over the back alleys of Highmont. Even better, the halls were always well-lit, the security guards cared about their job, and cameras were set discreetly in the corners, and the security guards liked Chanyeol enough to let him view the CCTV tapes whenever he wanted (though it didn't hurt to have some money to throw around). 

But at the moment, the place didn't feel so safe. 

Chanyeol took the stairs down, where he could hear everything from the door shutting several floors up to the couple fighting on the second floor. He relaxed only when he reached the lobby. 

Karen, the young lady at the front desk, waved at him coyly with her impractically long painted nails. "Hi, Channie. Had dinner yet?" Her smile dripped of honey and plastic, the kind of smile Chanyeol had seen too many times on the lips of evil upper-level women.

He turned the grimace that had started forming into a smile. "I did."

"Figures. It's already eight." Karen turned her attention back to the computer monitor before her. 

Chanyeol crossed the fake marble tiling over to the mailboxes. His box swung open with a small click, and he sifted through the ads to find a large yellow envelope at the bottom, taped shut and with just his last name written on the front in an elegant script. He took the whole pile out, hiding the large envelope underneath the restaurant flyers. 

"Karen, have you seen anyone...sketchy come into the building today?" Chanyeol asked as casually as he could manage.

Karen looked up, confused. "Sketchy? In what way?"

"I don't know, just...strange."

The woman chewed on her bottom lip. "Not that I can remember...well, there was one girl wearing just a bikini walking around outside, but that's it."

The air in the lobby suddenly felt charged, and the back of Chanyeol's neck prickled.

"Alright. Just wondering."

Chanyeol dashed up the stairs, locking the door to his apartment behind him and leaning against it with a huge exhale. He pulled the yellow envelope out, dropping the rest onto his dining table and sitting down in front of his TV, still playing CNN's recount of the Hatchman murder, subtitles still a few sentences slow. Some pretty blonde girl was speaking passionately about how Highmont's violence rate had spiked to record levels. Chanyeol changed the channel to a cooking show before slicing open the envelope and tipping its contents out onto the coffee table.

A photograph. A packet of paper, crinkly from being wet and then dried quickly. Another envelope, this time the regular thin white one. Chanyeol opened the envelope first.

Inside was a thick stack of twenties, adding up to eight hundred. A Post-It stuck to the front read, Just a taste.

The packet of paper was a handwritten description of the target, though it did noticeably lack a reason. Chanyeol read the whole thing with a sour taste in his mouth. He knew the name, and he knew what the target did. The fact that he, an active member of all the charities in the city and owner of the city's first targeted low-income school, disturbed him. 

"What did you get yourself into?" Chanyeol asked into the chilly air.

Badmouth one of the big Highmont corps, probably. Or insult a family. Fing monopolies.

Chanyeol finally reached for the photograph, printed on high-quality glossy paper, and turned it over. A smiling face looked back up at him.

In the bottom corner, the name: Byun Baekhyun.