Seulgi peered from the comfort of her car, obscured by the shadows cast from the setting sun. She glanced at the time on her dashboard, knowing that the exchange was to happen anytime soon.

There were two ways this could carry out. Seulgi could just observe and take pictures of the trade, or she could confront them when everything was happening. Doing the former meant a complicity that would only allow for more instances to happen in the time that Seulgi got her evidence processed with Jihoon’s team, but taking on the latter was risky for pretty much every reason she could think of. She had wanted to send people undercover into the company and/or order the miracle vitamins to do a substance test on them, but Jihoon pointed out that his team was the only one who could do the former and the latter wasn’t foolproof, because the company administration wouldn’t have been stupid enough to swap out every order. This left Seulgi with the boring task of spying on individual cases of people buying the vitamins, which left a bitter taste in due to the possibilities of the order being a fluke. She wasn’t really in the mood to wait out multiple exchanges until she found a swapped order, and she could never really be sure at the scene either, since she didn’t have the extensive drug testing kits on her person.

Jihoon’s team worked fast, however, and they organized a list of places where exchanges commonly took place. The tricky part was that selling products in itself to someone was not illegal, and there was no way to prove that someone was in a pyramid scheme or distributing illicit substances in that single action. Seulgi played around with the buttons on her camera, wondering if pictures were really the way to go. She had just resigned herself to photography duty for the night, when she saw a familiar figure through the lens of her camera.

Her finger stopped from exerting pressure onto the button. The small girl in her frame peered around, eyes shifting up and down the streets quickly before she disappeared into an alleyway that Seulgi couldn’t see from her current position. The detective carefully got out of her car, setting down her bulkier camera in favour of her phone, and the camera application, recording as she placed her device in the shallow front pocket of her shirt so the lens was showing. Hands now free, she grabbed her Glock and tucked the semi-automatic weapon into the holster hidden under the back of her shirt. There weren’t many vantage points, so Seulgi decided to wait behind her car until the customer entered the alley, then she would follow and watch from the entrance of the alleyway.

Soon enough, a young man wearing a ratted navy hoodie and impeccably white basketball sneakers s his way into the alley. Seulgi crossed the street a good twenty feet away from the entrance and walked close to the walls of the buildings until she reached the location. A quick glimpse told her that the two were talking, the man making big hand gestures as if to explain an urgent situation. Seulgi watched silently, waiting for the moment that either figure reached into their pockets to pull out the items she needed to get evidence up, but things took a turn when the man shoved his seller on the shoulder, making her stumble and hit the wall behind her. Seulgi took a step forward to intervene but thought better of it and stayed put. Moments later, during which the woman made gestures trying to appease the buyer, both individuals reached into their pockets, which gave Seulgi the signal to step into the alleyway. She placed her hand on the grip of her gun as she inched forward in a lowered position, taking advantage of the darkness to conceal herself. With hopes that her phone could make out the silhouettes in the distance, Seulgi continued onwards, slowly straightening when she heard the two voices.

“Stop moving and put your hands up where I can see them.”

They froze and turned to Seulgi, who could make out the whites of their surprised eyes in the dark. She didn’t pull out her gun, but her threatening aura was enough to make them drop everything and do as she commanded. Seulgi walked over to them, keeping a hand on her Glock the entire time, and bent down to pick up the money and pill bottle without turning her back to them. The man gulped but didn’t speak as Seulgi stood up and regarded both of the people in front of her.

“Are you able to explain what’s happening? Because from what I can tell, it doesn’t seem to be the most legal exchange.”

Irene squeezed her eyes shut, having an inner conflict before she started to speak. “This man was just buying one of my products.”

Seulgi raised an eyebrow, undeterred. “And what exactly is it?” She examined the pill bottle, which advertised some sort of lemon-flavoured, cancer-fighting vitamin. FDA approved. Seulgi scoffed. The FDA meant jack in Korea.

“I swear, I just wanted to get those for my grandma,” the man pleaded. “I don’t care if they don’t work. We’re desperate. Please.”

The man did seem sincere, but Seulgi couldn’t just take his word for it. She confiscated the pills, returning the money to the man. “Sorry, but I’m afraid I’ll have to take both of you in.”

The man cried out and tried to make a run, but Seulgi reflexively kicked the back of his knees, making him drop down immediately. She turned and gave a pointed look at Irene, daring her to do the same. The smaller girl merely looked away.

After handcuffing both of them, Seulgi hauled them to her car, mentally torturing Jihoon in her head for making her take on menial heavy duty. If these pills didn’t turn out to have traces of lord-knows-what in them, she was going to do something that would probably rob her of her uniform.

---

Seulgi’s eye twitched as she saw the lab results. Negative for all substances. Just a ton of citric acid, artificial flavouring, and sugar, that’s what it was. Hyoyeon and Yuri looked sympathetically at her silent rage over the paper and offered a simple slap on the back as they passed behind her. She stormed over to her desk and threw the papers onto it, clenching and unclenching her fists. Seulgi called Jihoon.

“Negative. For everything.” She sighed. “Are you kidding me?”

Jihoon let out a low whistle from the other end. “Yeah, seems like this one’s a fluke. You’ll have to let them go.”

“I’m still gonna ask them some stuff separately. Milk what I can, while I can.”

“There probably isn’t much you’ll be able to extract from the buyer. We checked up on him, and he’s clean.”

“Damn, okay. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Anytime. I’ll get in touch if anything else comes up. Bye.”

“Bye.” Seulgi ended the call and pinched the bridge of her nose. She got up to let the man out, gently warning him that buying miracle vitamins wasn’t going to help his grandma. He apologized and said that he wouldn’t do it again.

“Irene.” Seulgi turned to the older girl huddled in the corner of her cell. “I’m going to ask you some questions, so please co