Twenty-One Days | IV

As the professor went on about William Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter, Chaerin was trying to think of a way to get Sandara to let her guard down. She thought back to her previous assignments of undercover work: all of the targets were men. She seduced, she threatened, and she killed to get her way through their barriers. Here, she felt almost out of her element.

A notion she found to be utterly ridiculous.

After all, she was one of the youngest agents out on the field and she had plenty of experience already. She had a strong suspicion that whatever Yang Hyunsuk was hiding, it was big. She could almost feel the urgency from General Sosa to find out what Yang had gained; if they played their cards right, it would be her team that took the enter operation down—not some senior agents with more “experience.”

She’ll be damned if she was going to let some girl stand in their way.

As the professor began writing examples of how rhythm is created through the use of stressed and unstressed syllables on the board, Chaerin leaned over to Sandara.

“Look,” Chaerin whispered, “I don’t know what other people are saying about you that seems to have been the source of this hostile front you put on,”—Sandara scowled—“but I’m not the kind of girl who listens to what other people are saying,”—aside from the fact that that was what half her job consisted of,—“I prefer forming my own opinions.”

While Sandara’s expression softened only infinitesimally, it was enough to let Chaerin know that this was the exact approach Sandara would respond to.

But before Sandara could answer back, Chaerin felt a sudden sense of intrusion—like someone was watching them; like someone was watching her to be exact. When she saw that even Sandara noticed it, Chaerin turned her head and locked onto a set of eyes—attached to a bigger-than-what-was-comfortable grin.

She immediately recognized his face as the one she had literally run into early.

An agent should never forget a face. A seemingly random face could be essential to a mission.

However, she highly doubted that this face was.

And she was already ticked off at his interruption right as Sandara was about to open up to her.

“Can I help you?” she asked, in a tone she hoped didn’t reflect how extremely impatience she was feeling at the moment.

He didn’t speak a word; only continued to stare with an increasingly irritating grin.

If it wasn’t for that grin, Chaerin would have figured the guy wanted to scold her for knocking him down earlier—but his expression gave no indication of anger.

She decided to apologize again anyway, hopeful that it would quickly get him to turn back around and let her focus back on her task at hand.

“You’re the guy I bumped into at the Coffee Bean, right? Sorry about that again. I didn’t mean to do that. I’ll watch where I’m going from now on.” For some reason, she was now beginning to feel a slight resentment towards the guy. Her training had made her quick on her feet, her senses and coordination were topnotch—so it made her slightly annoyed that this guy could possibly see her as clumsy.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said coolly.

That was supposed to be the end of it, and yet he didn’t turn back around.

“What’s your name? I’m Kwon Jiyong, 22.”

Chaerin looked at him strangely. Can this guy not take a hint?

“Lee Chaerin, 22. Look I’m—”

“Same age. Cool. Let’s be friends.” Great. I made a friend. Only it’s not the one I need.

“Look,” she said a bit more curtly than she meant to, “I’m trying to have a conversation here, so do you mind turning around?”

“Can we be friends?” Jiyong persisted.

“Sure, fine,” Chaerin said hurriedly. She didn’t have time to deal with this guy right now.

Jiyong nodded happily before sparing a quick glance at Sandara.

“Hey, Dara,” Jiyong greeted before turning his head back towards the front.

Chaerin heard Sandara quietly say “hello” to the back of Jiyong’s head. Chaerin turned back to Sandara and saw that her expression had turned somewhat…demure.

Gone was the hostile girl she had been talking to only moments ago. Here was a girl who seemed somewhat smaller—shier, perhaps.

“Are you okay?”

Suddenly Sandara was back on defense once more.

Glaring, she replied, “I’m fine.”

Chaerin shrugged, in an attempt to seem casual about the fact that Sandara had just done a complete 180, leaving Chaerin to reexamine every instance that had just happened between then and now.

Chaerin watched as Sandara walked briskly out the door ahead of her. She didn’t run after her—after all, she didn’t want Sandara’s suspicions of her to grow any further, so she’d leave her alone for now. She’d come up with another approach soon; she just needed to reanalyze the situation for a more ideal outcome.

As the wheels in her head began turning, Chaerin abruptly halted—only half-a-second away from collid