Kai is distracted the rest of the shift, still rattled by his mission with Dyo and trying to unpack why. It’s not like he’s never navigated for a dangerous mission before. Hell, right now he’s working a case with Lay that has the agent moving from one rooftop to another through a neighborhood via balancing on wooden planks, and Kai doesn’t even break a sweat from it. Sure, Lay has great balance, but he should still have some inkling of fear from all this highwire walking his agent is doing, shouldn’t he?

“Hey, Lay. You ever been injured from these missions that have you up in the air or scaling elevator shafts and stuff?”

“Why would I get injured?”

“I don’t know, from falls?” Kai has never lead a mission where Lay had to get into direct hand-to-hand combat, but there have been plenty of operations that capitalized on his climbing abilities (and disturbingly absent respect for heights).

Lay chortles at him as he places another wire tap on a housetop. “Uh, in the future, if you could not bring up falling when I’m on roofs, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sorry!”

“But, as to your question, nothing more than a tweaked ankle. And don’t worry - I’m a quick healer.”

Kai lets the topic drop and sticks to routine navigation. He’s been working with Lay since almost the beginning of his time here at Prudence, yet he’s never once tried to push the boundaries or play games during missions. And it’s not like he isn’t fond of Lay: he is. But why is everything so… different with Dyo? He’d blame it all on the operative’s tantalizing voice and flirty demeanor, but Kai knows that he acts differently, too, whenever he has Dyo on the line. Only three days together, and he already feels closer to him than Lay or Tao.

Kai frowns. Maybe he’s not being fair to his other guys. Maybe he should at least try to get to know them a little better?

“Lay, do you mind describing your physique to me?”

“You’re being weird tonight,” he comments, a neutral observation rather than a judgment.

“I realized the other day that I don’t know any of my operatives’ body builds, and I was told that could be useful info in some missions. So… I’m asking everyone now.” Reasonable. This is a totally reasonable way to get to know each other better, right? And not at all motivated by his desire to know what Dyo’s bod is like, nope, not even a little.

“Sure, okay. I’m 177cm, about 64kg, broad in the shoulders, fairly proportional in legs and torso. Anything else?”

“No that’s good, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind. You’ve got just one target left,” he shifts back to the mission.

“Not so fast. What about you?” Lay asks. “It only seems fair that you share your build, too. I mean, what if you’re radically different from me? How am I supposed to expect you’ll understand what it’s like to deal with my body type?”

Kai grimaces, but concedes he has a point. “I’m… a little taller, a little heavier, and more legs than torso, I suppose. But on the whole, sounds like not that much different.”

“Huh,” Lay sounds surprised. “I don’t know why, but I figured you’d be a shorter dude.”

“Just because I work in the office?”

“No. I mean, partly, I guess. But also because… well, you’re a quieter, more subdued type.”

“Tall people are loud and brash?”

“No. Well, there’s this one guy I hang with, Chan-- Actually, never mind,” Lay stops mid-thought. This may be toeing the line of getting too personal. Kai feels it, too.

They finish out the mission smoothly, and Kai notices he still has a half hour before his usual quitting time. He pulls up the “In Progress” database of maps and gets to work annotating a new blueprint at the top of the list. There’s not much to do for this one, though, as it’s very sparse, only the lobby, an elevator bank, one hallway, and one office mapped out. It’s like they only have info from someone visiting the building a single time, which is typically too early to bother adding it to the database for notes. There’s a second map that’s similarly empty with only a few rooms marked out, but the notes mention it’s a ten-story building. Odd, but it makes for quick work. Kai makes limited remarks and best guesses based on the frames provided, and then signs off, ready to transform back into Jongin and leave work.

He goes through the rest of his early morning routine, a little more subdued than usual at the cat cafe. Luhan doesn’t press him for why he’s carrying the concerned face around after his first question is dodged with a terse, “I have a tight deadline for my latest project.” Luckily, he does finish his aunt’s condo blueprint, giving her a call with the news as he bids Mimi goodbye with extra scratches behind her ears.

He should be exhausted, adrenaline all spent in the stressful end of his mission with Dyo, but he tosses and turns in bed, still keyed up. What ifs keep running through his overly analytical mind. What if that security guard hadn’t been alone. What if Dyo hadn’t been able to choke him out quickly enough. What if the confrontation only happened in the first place because he was distracted, too busy fawning over Dyo and playing Twenty Questions to satisfy the innate craving he has for this operative.

Jongin flops onto his stomach and sighs into his pillow. Maybe he’s being selfish, indulging himself. He’s playing with fire, and he needs to pull back. Before Dyo gets burned.

---

The alarm goes off, but Jongin was already awake. He never really hit that restful REM sleep that he needs; oh well. Life demands he rise, so rise he does. Workout, breakfast, shower. Still a few hours to kill before work.

He does get to the public library today. A kind librarian offers to help him, probably noticing how he’s wandering aimlessly through the stacks. Jongin has no idea where to even start. Pick a hobby, any hobby. “Uh… astronomy section?” he asks, just to have something to say.

The guy cheerfully leads him to the other side of the building and down a floor. (Great, of course, Jongin would pick something totally unrelated to where he was so that he looks completely incompetent.)

“Second aisle to the right, and straight on til morning,” the librarian says, pointing to some bookcases over aways.

“Um… okay. Thanks,” Jongin replies, a little perplexed.

“Sorry. Lit humor. It’s a play on Peter Pan’s words,” the guy explains.

Jongin nods uncomfortably, and the librarian leaves him in peace after giving him a final weird look. This is why he could never do sales or anything that really required face to face conversations with people; he at human interaction with strangers. He needs a phone line and a few dozen miles between himself and someone new.

After looking methodically through several astronomy reference books that seem too detailed and beyond his interest level, he settles on a Stargazing 101 book that’s slimmer and has an equal ratio of pictures to text. Key constellations, bullet-pointed facts and tips for locating them, all neatly organized. Yes, this one will do.

Opting for an ‘early’ dinner at 9pm, he buys some chicken skewers from a street vendor as he walks along the Han river. Jongin settles onto a bench in a quiet area, cracking open the book and reading the introductory pages, explaining how ship navigators used the stars to judge distance. A few attempts at peering between the picture of Polaris and the night sky above Seoul, and Jongin’s pretty convinced he’d be a ty navigator if he was born in the 1500s. But eventually, he finds what he thinks is the North Star.

A bright spot in the otherwise hazy night sky.

He drags his feet to the office, puts on his tie and jacket in the lobby restroom, and heads up to work. The light ping of the elevator’s arrival echos through the space as Kai enters a quiet navigator floor. No commotion today, lights still off in the break room. He flicks them on, washes the coffee pot, and starts the first batch. The machine groans, and he has to slap the sides a few times to get the brew to start trickling out.

Kai leans against the counter and tries to expel his somber mood with a few deep sighs. An iced coffee for once sounds good. He goes to check the freezer to see if the ice cube tray has been filled and--

“Don’t say a word!” Baekhyun barrels out of the elevator and into the break room. He slams the freezer door shut in front of a startled Kai. “You saw nothing.”

“Okay…” Easy enough, given that Kai really did see nothing in the half-second glimpse he had into the freezer. “Uh, I don’t know what kind of organs you’re hiding in here to sell on the black market, but I need some ice cubes?”

“Later.” Baekhyun stays between Kai and the fridge, leaning back against the freezer door with arms splayed dramatically across it.

Kai opens his mouth to protest, but it’ll take awhile before his coffee will be chilled enough to serve anyway, so he rolls his eyes. “Fine, but at least tell me if there are going to be some in there when I come back later or if someone forgot to fill the tray again.”

Baekhyun considers this and turns around to crack the door open no more than a few centimeters, peering inside. “I have a visual on ice,” he confirms, rapidly slamming the door shut. “Now let’s move along.”

Kai finishes transferring some of the freshly brewed coffee into a mug and wiggles it in front of Baekhyun. “Excuse me, fridge warden, I just need to put it in the chilled section. No freezer funny business.”

Baek eyes him warily. Out of patience, Kai gestures as if to backhand the sassy navigator, and he scatters to the side so Kai can put the mug inside the main fridge.

Wendy and Chen arrive, stepping out of the elevator together laughing about something. Kai looks at Chen expectantly.

“We had a meeting. About the big operation later in the month,” he explains with a broad grin. Wendy nods, tucking her hair behind her ears shyly.

“Oh! It’s already 10pm. I’m heading to my desk,” she waves at the them and passes by the break room. Chen follows after her.

Baekhyun breathes a sigh of relief and then wrenches the freezer open. To pull out socks.

“Seriously?”

“As long as they’re in there by 9:40pm, they’re ready. And Wendy never checks the freezer. It’s a peaceful solution, don’t this up for me,” Baek says with a finger to his lips.

“Wait,” Kai reaches out to snag him back the back of the jacket collar as he passes by. “Are you getting here early every night just to have cold socks?” he asks incredulously.

Baek chuckles. “No. I’m not that enamored with fridge feet; I have my other reasons,” he says elusively before strutting out of the room, socks concealed inside his suit jacket like they’re secrets to the Bermuda Triangle. That er is up to something...

Kai knows he’s dawdling, but he’s nervous about who he might have his first mission with tonight. And how he’s going to act around him. He wipes the break room surfaces down to stretch out the time as long as he dares before going to his desk. 10:05pm.

He lets the mission envelope fall all the way down into the delivery tray, eyeing it uncomfortably. It’ll be fine. He’ll be cordial but professional. It’ll be fine.

Oh. It will. Because it’s only a mission with Tao.

Kai’s instructions only tell him that Tao may need to be navigated into and out of a storeroom multiple times. Kai snorts. Sounds like his agent is going to be clearing them out of property, something fairly bulky or at least numerous enough that he won’t be able to do move it all at once.

Floorplans set up in orderly fashion, Kai puts on his headset and connects with his operative. “Good evening, Kai here. Let me know when we’re a go.”

“Yo. Ready to help me ‘recover’ some stuff?” Tao is ready to get straight to business.

“There are dozens of people around,” Kai reports, watching the red lights all over his monitor.

“Yep. I’m blending in today, too many to try to sneak past the old fashioned way.”

Hmm. That changes Kai’s original plan. Makes it simpler, for the most part. “Okay, so you’re going to slip in disguised as one of them?”

“That’s the plan. Suit over the usual getup. It’s hot as right now; I’m eager to get moving,” Tao whines.

“But you might need multiple trips in and out?” Kai verifies.

“Yeah, it’ll depend. I won’t know until I’m at the target location.”

The room of interest is in the corner of the 2nd floor that overlooks a back alley. Only the 2nd floor… “Do you have rope?”

“A coil of thin cable. All I can carry without it looking conspicuous through the outfit.”

That should work. “Okay, I’m thinking you go in the respectable way, then in and out through the second story window if you need multiple trips, because the more you wander the halls, especially entering and exiting the same room multiple times, the more likely you are to get caught,” Kai reasons.

“Good thinking. I’ve got you only on earpiece, so don’t expect anything but taps once I’m inside.” Tao tests it by drumming a finger against his earpiece, sending Kai two dull thudding sounds in lieu of their usual puffs for silent communication.

No puffs. Suddenly, memories of Dyo from yesterday come back, unbidden. “You want me to blow, huh?” Kai shakes his head to clear it. F o c u s. “Just taps, gotcha.”

Tao suavely enters the building, heels confidently clacking against the linoleum flooring as he strides right to the target location with Kai directing him and keeping an eye on the security room, where three red lights sit stationary. The guards could be monitoring cameras or maybe sleeping, they’re so still.

Inside the storeroom, Tao is rifling through cabinets. “Found ‘em. There are four. I can’t walk out with all of them; they’ll be spotted.”

Kai contemplates this. “But you could physically carry all four, if you didn’t have to worry about being seen?”

Tao huffs at him, offended. “Yes, what kind of weakling do you take me for? See, this is why you need to know our builds.”

“It’s not an issue of being weak,” Kai counters. “I have no idea what you’re carrying! My mission brief doesn’t say.”

“Oh okay, okay.”

“But now that you bring it up, go ahead and tell me your body bui-- Wait. No, first, the plan. Can you lower all four of the whatevers out the window using your cable? My blueprints say there should be bushes down below for cover.”

“The Whatevers? Let’s call them toasters. And no, these are very sensitive toasters. I need to handle them with more care than that. I can, however, hand deliver them down below and rest them gently on the ground. Two at a time will work.”

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter