The hallway was quiet, and if it weren't for him and the worn out chairs plus the horrible selection of paintings that decorated the plain white walls, it would've been empty too. 

Jiyong sat lazily in the waiting area, outside of the conference room, with his leg crossed over the other while his hands fumbled around with the paper bag that used to contain an Italian BMT as he waited for the 'enter' message from his boss. It's been an hour since his arrival yet there's still no sign that he'll be let into the room anytime soon. He glanced at his phone again, groaning at the lack notifications that filled his feed. 

'What the hell is taking so god-damned long?' he thought angrily as he glared at the door. He didn't know what was more annoying, the wait or the fact that he had no clue on who his client was. After being in the business for so long, Jiyong often dealt with regulars, it's been a long time since he's had a new employer. The anticipation was killing him and the was not helping. He continued to glare at the door but eventually gave up and sunk lower into his seat when the wooden board gave no indication of combusting into dust. 

Bored, he let his eyes loom over the weird paintings that hung loosely on the walls and his mind wonder about the identity of the person who was drunk enough to purchase a painting of three greek gods playing poker in a hotel bathroom. 

As his attention went from one odd painting to another, it diverted to the soft ding that came from the elavator at the end of the hallway. He eyed the parting doors as they revealed a familiar patch of bright pink hair. 

"TOP?"

TOP looked up from his phone to look at whoever it was that called. There he saw Jiyong casually dressed, unlike himself, sitting at the far end of the hallway.

"Ah, Jiyong!" he exclaimed, holding his hand up in an awkward wave. "This is surprising, didn't expect to see you back here so soon."

Jiyong got up to greet his former partner with a handshake. "Me too," he mumbled, clearly expressing his feeling about the sudden call in his tone.

"So, you were called out here too?"he asked, wondering what brought his ridiculously tall friend all the way to this side of the building. 

TOP blinked. "Me? Nope, I came from the arsenal. Had to come by here to get the boss' signature on the report he had me do about the new shipment, you?" 

"Was called in this morning, apparently there's someone here that he wants me to meet or something," he replied, still sour about the long wait. 

"You're still doing shipment inspections? Couldn't charm anyone into doing it for you?" 

TOP barked out a laugh. "Unfortunately no, Boss was unsually specific this time round. Figured out why though... take a look." He passed the report to Jiyong. "Page 2." 

Jiyong flipped through papers and scanned the second page, his brows furrowed as he studied the numbers. 

"He's not going to like this." 

"Yeah, I know," TOP scoffed as he took back the document.

They both took a seat and fell into a pregnant pause. 

"So how's Youngbae doing?" Top asked, trying to appear nonchalant as he habitually smoothened the creases that formed at the corners of the paper. 

"He's doing fine, still adjusting, but fine," Jiyong shrugged. "He says hi by the way."

"Yeah, I'm sure he did," TOP scoffed, immediately regretting it when Jiyong flinched. 

"That came out wrong. What I meant was-"

"I'll tell him you said hi back," Jiyong interrupted, hoping that he'll drop the subject. Whenever Youngbae was brought into a conversation, things tend to go south, no matter how positive they start out, and he really was not in the mood to deal with any of it at the moment. 

TOP let out a deflated sigh, "Right." 

Another pause. 

"Ah, I almost forgot," TOP exclaimed suddenly as he slapped his knee. "Could you drop by my department later today? After your meeting of course, I need your input on something." 

Jiyong raised a confused brow, "Like what?" 

The two were from completely different branches after all, work wise-- they hardly share anything in common. Jiyong's line of business often involve killing someone on demand while TOP's area of expertise was handling the economical side of the business (the black market). So from that logic, Jiyong's confusion was quite understandable. What value could his input possible bring? 

TOP shrugged his shoulders, seemingly oblivious to his friend's confoundment. "Just a few things here and there." 

"Uhuh. Okay, sure." Jiyong answered, bewildered by the level of vagueness that he received, even more so at the fact that he still had it in him to find it bewildering in the first place. 

They fell into another pit of silence, but this time neither of them seemed to have the slightest interest of climbling back out. TOP was already into a game that he's recently installed on his phone while Jiyong was completely content with staring at his worn out shoes. 

Ten minutes had passed when Jiyong's phone vibrated, startling them both. 

Come in, the phone read. Finally. 

"That's my queue, see you later," he muttered to TOP, who was still too deeply engrossed in his game to respond with anything more than a curt nod, before getting up and turning to the door. 

The conference room was doubled doored. Not in a way that it had two doors acting as a barrier for one particular entrance, rather, there were two entrances subsequent to each other that required two seperate doors to barricade them. Dara wasn't sure why she found that so interesting to a point where she needed to point it out, but she did. 

"This room has two doors," she blurted out, immediately pulling out her notepad and pen to pretend that she was jotting down notes in attempt to mask her still growing embarrassment.

"I-I mean w-why?" Why was it designed that way? Was there a specific reason?" she added, hoping to make a quick recovery. 

There she was, sitting in the same room with one of the most powerful men in the underground business, and her first instinct was to question his taste in architecture. Stupid.

The man sitting in front of her barked out a hearty laugh, startling her. 

"Mr Yang?" 

"Ha.. you're a funny young lady now aren't you?' he asked as he rested his head on the palm of his hand, eyes glinting with amusement.  "I have to say though, if that's a legitimate question, I suggest you do some serious thinking about a career change Ms Park."

Ouch. 

The struggling journalist cleared and sat up straighter that she already was. 

"R-Right. I apologize. This is my first time covering such an.. intricate subjects you see, I've always done more 'above' ground kind of topics like the environment and such but ever since my job was threatened-- aha and you don't really need to know all that. Okay, I'll start now." 

She nervously flipped through her notes to look for anything that she could use... 

1. How/Where do you hide the bodies of the people you killed? --No 

2. Are the people who work for you emo psychos? -- You're kidding me? 

3. How many times do you go to church to repent? -- Absolutely not. 

"Um.." She's doomed. She's got nothing! How can she have nothing to ask?! She spent all night researching the guy and all she could do now was gap like a mindless fish. Talk damn it. Note to self, never rely on photographic memory when you have anxiety issues. Okay, she's got to calm down. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as started to count backwards from 10. She could feel the gears in her head start to turn again. 

"I apologize for the lack of professionalism on my part Mr Yang, it won't happen again. So, first question, how does your company identify itself? From my readings, I found that you've claimed YG to be a corporation of a sort, is that correct?"

He nodded.

"Okay, so by definition, that means this company has been legalised by the country." 

Another nod. 

"You've basically been given a license to kill, Mr Yang. Did that license come with the condition of you carrying out assasination requests for the government? Does that mean-" 

He held up his hand, "I'm sorry Ms Park but I must make myself clear on something here. I have no intention of disclosing any information about my clients and the establisment of my company." 

Wait, what? 

"I'm sorry, what? But-" 

"When I received that call from your father this morning, I only agreed to you meeting with me. I never agreed on taking part in an interview." 

Wait, what? 

"Um, I don't understand, if you never agreed on an interview, why did you agree on meeting with me in the first place?" 

"Your father mentioned that you've been having a hard time at work, and he thought I could help with that. Long story short, I thought you were a client." 

Dara blinked. "A client- you thought I wanted someone dead?" 

"As do most of my clients, yes." 

Unbelievable. Dara collapsed in her chair as she felt the remaining speck of life that's left in her leave her body. What on earth was she supposed to do now? She twirled her pen in her fingers anxiously. 

"Do I stand a chance of getting that interview if I were to tie you up in that chair and threaten you with my pen?" 

"You'd be dying of blood loss in that chair long before you could even think about your pen, Ms Park." 

"Right."

Dara wanted try her luck with a few more questions but was interrupted when his phone rang. He picked his phone up and stared at it for a while, looking as if he was thinking twice about answering it. He eventually sighed and got up. 

"I have to take this, I'll call someone to walk you out in a minute. Feel free to walk around the room while you wait." 

Then he grabbed a yellow file from his desk and exited the room. 

As the door clicked shut, Dara threw her head back and groaned, "Whyyy?"

 "What the hell is going on?!" Jiyong yelled as he dodged a punch thrown by one of the two masked men standing in front of him. They each wore respective red and blue masks and neither of the gave him any indication of wanting to answer his question. 

Jiyong backed away a few steps to maintain distance. Boss didn't mention anything about dealing with atackers, so that could mean one of two things