The restaurant is more of a cafe, tucked away in a back alley that they’d almost overlooked on the way in and only found because Sehun accidentally tripped over the entrance. The main selling point clearly verged more towards discreteness than high-end luxury. Sehun isn’t very surprised.

Jongin looks uncomfortably out of place in his suit and tie, but he plays it off casually, taking off his jacket and folding it over the back of his chair. Sehun and Luhan watch from the next booth over as his ‘date’ for the night shows up. Sehun grudgingly admits that she’s pretty, and promptly decides that he dislikes her. She’s dressed in a tailored black dress and painfully high heels, to the point where Sehun wonders how she even managed to walk in without breaking her ankle. Next to him, Luhan peruses over the menu with apparent interest, seemingly completely ignorant of the more than attractive girl walking towards Jongin.

“Hey look, they have milkshakes!” He pokes Sehun, whose attention is still focused on Jongin and his date (more on Jongin than the date, to his defense). Jongin smiles at her courteously as she approaches, even standing up and pulling out her chair. Sehun makes a face. Gentleman act. Like Jongin could even dream of charming someone’s girlfriend into his arms.

(Yeah, Sehun admits grudgingly, Jongin could charm someone and his girlfriend both in less than five seconds. Stupid charm.)

Luhan pokes him again and Sehun turns, a little annoyed. “Aren’t we supposed to be focusing on the mission?”

“Relax. Jongin will tell us everything later anyway. I just wanted food,” Luhan says with a shrug. He calls the waiter over and begins to rattle off a list of dishes in fast Chinese, words smooth and familiar in his native language. Sehun turns back to watch Jongin’s table, only to catch the tail-end of a makeout session, Jongin pulling away from the girl and carefully wiping away lipstick smears with his napkin. Jongin catches his eye and flashes a sleazy grin. Sehun grimaces at him and shakes his head judgmentally. So much for the I’m not easy.

“Try some of this.” Luhan shoves a forkful of a beige-colored chunk that appears to be either tofu or genetically altered meat in front of Sehun’s face.

“Um, okay.” Sehun forces down the forkful (it doesn’t taste that bad actually), then realizes that he’s just been fed by Luhan. Fed. As in Luhan decided it was a good idea to take a fork and make little airplane noises and linger too long on Sehun’s lips and smile disarmingly like a very sweet and caring (potential) boyfriend.

Help.

Before his face can get any redder, Sehun grabs for a glass of ice water and drinks about half of it before he catches Jongin leaning over the girlfriend and smiling questionably. The sight makes him nearly spit out a mouthful of water onto Luhan, but before he does, the waiter, a tall, cheerful, crazy and rather familiar-looking… wait.

“Your mapo tofu is here,” Chanyeol-the-crazy-waiter-who-gave-Luhan-the-blue-sushi says brightly, in rather bad Mandarin, grinning at Luhan as he sets down a shockingly scarlet mass of tofu covered in peppers. “Please enjoy your meal and make sure that you don’t eat too much in one bite. We are not responsible for any pepper-induced injuries. Thank you.” He bows and begins walking away.

“What.” Sehun stares at Chanyeol’s retreating figure and then stares back at Luhan. “Wait. That. That was Chanyeol. What the heck is he doing here?” He glances over at Jongin’s booth to see that the date has progressed to a (steamy) scene from a romance movie, then hastily glances back at Luhan.

“I’m not sure,” Luhan says off-handedly, already picking at the tofu. “Maybe he has another message for me.” He stares suspiciously at the dish, making sure to prod every piece of tofu thoroughly. When a detailed search returns no telltale squeaks, he starts gingerly picking apart the peppers. Nothing remotely strange pops out after ten minutes (unless you count the sheer number of peppers), and Luhan sets his chopsticks down with a slightly puzzled expression. “He didn’t even ask a code question.”

“Hey, what’s up?” Jongin slides into the booth next to Sehun and Sehun glances over to notice that his date has disappeared. “Tiffany went to the restroom for a while.” He notices the plate of malicious-looking tofu and brightens up. “Is that mapo tofu?”

“Only you would like it,” Sehun drawls sarcastically, “because the pepper reflects the evil in your soul.” He pushes the plate towards Jongin and leans back, shaking his head. “How did you even manage to get her so interested in you anyways?”

Jongin grins before he takes a huge spoonful of the tofu and shoves it in his mouth. “I used a pick up line,” he mumbles in between bites, “and she loved it so much that she let me get to second base. I guess being attractive does have its benefits, Sehun-ah. Too bad you can’t understand.”

Sehun chokes on nothing, which is lucky because he’s pretty sure if he’d taken another sip of water, it would’ve ended up all over the table. He really needs to stop with all the water-spitting. “What pick up line?” he finally manages to ask, semi-curious to see what pick-up line could have been invented that was so good it managed to win over a girl in just a few seconds.

"If I flip a coin, what are my chances of getting head?"

Sehun stares at him, eyebrow raised. “And that worked?” Standards must be pretty low these days. “What did she say?”

“She just laughed, all teasingly, and said, ‘I don’t need to flip a coin to answer that.’ “

“... I take it she meant you have no chance?”

Jongin shakes his head patronizingly. “See, this is why you can’t get laid. You’re too pessimistic. She’s totally head over heels for me.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sehun says quickly, not wanting to get into a discussion about his failure of a life in front of Luhan. “Brag about it some other time. What info did you get?”

“Well, her boyfriend works in weapons dealing for some guy who’s really high up on the mafia hierarchy. That guy has close relations with someone else, this notorious criminal mastermind or something - we’ll call him X for now, since she doesn’t know his name. But X is definitely our guy.”

“Uh. And how do you know this?”

Jongin sighs. “She knows he runs the office that we found, so at the least he’s involved in this somehow.”

“So related. Not necessarily the actual culprit.”

“Well if he’s the manager of this so-called company that doesn’t actually exist, which I just so happened to track down through the reverse alpha encryption codestream, I’m pretty sure he’s responsible. Legally speaking.”

Something about Jongin’s tone makes Sehun give him a searching look, because he’s not sure if Jongin sounds entirely sincere. The moment passes, and Sehun dismisses it as just a figment of his imagination (as what happens every time he thinks Luhan’s watching him).

Jongin looks back at his booth and stands up. “She’s coming back. I’ll be off. Don’t let her see I’ve been talking with you guys.” Before Sehun can respond, Jongin’s back in his seat already, smiling at Tiffany with an easygoing, almost shy expression.

Who does he think he’s fooling? Sehun thinks, rolling his eyes inwardly - as if the entire restaurant didn’t see them making out earlier on. He turns back to Luhan, who’s still staring at his mapo tofu in puzzlement and poking around for something strange.

“Something’s not right.”

Sehun finally succumbs to urge to roll his eyes. “Of course something’s not right. Jongin is acting like a cute high schooler facing his crush and confessing his innocent sweet first love when we’ve been watching him seduce a girl who already has a boyfriend. For the purposes of getting information. Yeah, everything’s totally normal.”

“No,” Luhan says slowly, “not that. I don’t think Chanyeol’s here to give me a message. He’s here for someone else. And he’d only know if someone else would be here if he was related to our mission. They do track on our progress sometimes, you know.”

Sehun’s on the alert now, peering at the other booths around him. There’s an elderly couple and some teenage kid staring down at the ground as if the dust is a fascinating ecosystem to study. Not an entirely threatening bunch of people, in his opinion. “What do you mean?”

“I - “

The door of the restaurant swings open almost ominously, and everyone in the restaurant looks up involuntarily in the silence that follows. Something gets caught in Sehun’s throat and he grips the edge of his table tightly, noticing that Luhan glances down momentarily to gauge his reaction.

A young man walks in, and from the way he moves, Sehun can tell he’s used to having things go his way. His clothing doesn’t seem to disprove the idea - he’s dressed like he’s a gang member, decked out in a leather jacket and skinny jeans, with thick black eyeliner to complete the look. For a second, Sehun’s amused, thinking wow, someone’s gotten a lot cooler.

And then the man sees Jongin. “What the hell are you doing with my girlfriend?”

Ah, Sehun realizes as Chanyeol suddenly appears beside their booth, looking as interested as a crazy waiter with crazy hair can be. Things are starting to make sense.

Jongin slowly steps away from Tiffany and spreads his arms out in a we-come-in-peace-aliens gesture, looking slightly bashful but more mischievous than sorry. “No need to overreact, dude. We were just having a platonic meetup over something trivial. She owed me dinner for accidentally spilling a drink on me.”

Sehun resists the urge to scoff out loud. He has to give Jongin credit for being able to make up lies on the spot, even if they’re ridiculously lame. The man is somewhat less amused, since he suddenly decides to swing a punch at Jongin’s face.

“Whoa there,” Jongin soothes as he dodges the punch and smiles disarmingly. “We were just talking - no need to get upset. Anyways, weren’t you about to break up with her?”

Sehun catches a glint of metal in the man’s pocket and frowns, not having anticipated a weapon. This could get messy if he doesn’t do something fast. He stands up, ignoring Luhan’s half-surprised exclamation (but of course only half-surprised because Luhan would have already figured it out from his reaction when the man had first walked in), and walks cautiously towards the scene.

The man turns around for a split second just to catch Sehun’s cautious smile. “You?”

Behind the table of the booth, Jongin shoots Sehun a questioning glance, but things will have be explained later. Sehun’s smile widens and he steps forward to clap the newcomer on the back.

“Hey hyung. Long time no see.”

i cannot believe we actually managed to update omg sorry for taking so long to write this chapter school caught up with us /o\