CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Meetings

Yuri had a two-bedroom apartment before the war. She lived with Sunny, each having their own room. Jessica took one side of the sofa bed in the living room, and Taeyeon took the other. They had no belongings and took up zero luggage space. Since they had arrived at YG in nothing but soaked underwear, Yuri lent them each a set of clothes. Jessica secured toiletries and more clothes after helping out at the makeshift clinic.

The first day in Yuri's apartment, Taeyeon woke up with Jessica already gone. The wheelchair that Yuri provided was a standard hospital contraption with dark blue synthetic leather. She had climbed out of it onto the bed the night before, so the seat was facing her. The brake wasn't set, and the chair rolled when she tried to get on it. She fell to the ground and the jolt was like being shot in the chest again. " you, chair."

"That's my wheelchair you're insulting."

Taeyeon turned. A woman with strong eyes and short hair was sitting at the dining table with papers laid out in front of her. Taeyeon hadn't seen her the night before. This must be Sunny. "Hi. Sunny, right?"

"Hello." Under the table, Sunny had a prosthetic right leg and a shriveled left leg. She was sitting on a gray motorized wheelchair with thick cushions and a headrest. She watched as Taeyeon pulled herself along the ground by her hands to the front of the chair to get onto it, and said, "Sorry, I'd help if I could."

"No worries."

"Most newly paralyzed people have to go through days of physiotherapy to get onto their chairs like you did." No shock or suspicion, just a statement.

"I'm from the Marines," Taeyeon said.

"I was talking about soldiers, and they all took a long time," Sunny said. "What rank were you?"

Were? "Corporal."

"I was Sergeant First Class." SFCs were noncommissioned soldiers, like Corporals, but three ranks higher, and in charge of lieutenants. Which meant that Sunny would have been responsible for training officers like Sooyoung and been a tactical advisor for platoons. "How many years were you in for?"

"Going on two."

"I served fifteen years."

"Okay." Taeyeon typically had mad respect for noncomm long timers, but at the moment she was unwilling to show it.

Sunny broke into a wide smile. "You should see your face. Don't worry, I'm not one of those ty seniors. I was just messing with you. Come here. There's extra breakfast in the microwave. I'll prepare it for you."

The electric motor buzzed as Sunny went into the kitchen. Taeyeon rolled over to the dining table and she heard a microwave going. She looked over the papers on the desk. There were to-scale civil layouts of areas in Seoul, a large fold-out map of the city, and piles of handwritten, color-coded notes. 

"I help plan for our offensive and defensive efforts. It's not the army, but the squads listen pretty well by now," Sunny said, setting a plate of kimchi fried rice before Taeyeon, before buzzing back to her side of the table.

"Thank you." It was the first real food Taeyeon had seen in days, and she was instantly hungry. She grabbed the spoon stuck in the rice and started shoveling the food into . "What do you guys do?"

"We do two main things. Offensively, weed out North soldiers that have burrowed into the city to go dark. Defensively, get other civilians who want out of Seoul but haven't managed to leave yet. It seemed to be the two things that need doing that the military's left out."

"It is." It hadn't occured to Taeyeon that there were these other facets of the war that the military had not been fighting, but now that Sunny brought them up, they seemed important and obvious. "How many of there are you?"

"When we were a gang, Yangban Guns used to be a hundred and fifty strong. Almost everyone stayed when the war started, so the force reduction is mostly casualties. There are a little less than one hundred of us left. We've made a lot of mistakes because of the lack of training, but the ones who are left have experience now."

"You were here before the war?"

"Yes, I was injured three years ago and was discharged then. Yuri took care of me. She happened to have a brother in YG, and once the war started we got involved with what they were doing."

"I didn't think gangsters would be so civic-minded."

"But it makes sense, doesn't it, that they'd be the ones to get involved like this."

"I guess so." Taeyeon scraped her plate clean. Her appetite could have taken three more servings, but Sunny wasn't supposed to know that. Besides, she didn't know if Sunny was telling her all of this sensitive information because she was a useless, crippled loser at the moment.

"Leave the plate in the sink."

Taeyeon wheeled herself into the kitchen, the spoon on the plate and the plate on her lap. There was a mug and pitcher within reach, and she poured herself a cup of water. She rested for a few minutes in the kitchen until the pain of the strain against her injuries dulled.

Out in the living room, Sunny had kept the papers in a briefcase. "There's more fried rice in a tupperware in the fridge. Help yourself to lunch and dinner, but be reasonable about it. We're tight on food."

"Okay. Thanks."

Sunny buzzed her way out of the apartment. Taeyeon wheeled around the house. The bedroom doors were locked. At the living room coffee table, Jessica had laid out the clothes they were going to share. Two hand towels, which they would use as bath towels, were drying on a hanger. Two toothbrushes and one tube of toothpaste was in a plastic cup. 

Taeyeon took the cup and went to the bathroom to wash up. Reaching and turning the tap took great effort.

There was nothing else to do in the apartment, so she left. The corridor was open-faced on one side and lit up with sunlight. Encouraged, Taeyeon wheeled to one end. Beside the elevator was a staircase. She pressed the button for the elevator and descended to the ground floor. At the lobby, she was intimidated by the exposure to the outside world, trapped in a wheelchair. She hurried back into the elevator, and realized that she didn't remember what floor Yuri and Sunny's apartment was on. 

Taeyeon spent the next half hour rolling and resting through the three middle floors of the ten-storey building before she found the apartment again.

The second day, Taeyeon hated the people at Seongnam Base for an eternity, but even then her rage bored her out of her mind, so she got to thinking. 

The night Jessica and she got caught, Major Lee had burst through the door. It was as if he knew what to expect behind the closed door and was simply confirming that they were making out on the rooftop. How had the major suspected her? They hardly spent any time around him, and never saw him at the barracks, which meant that somebody had told on her.

It can't be Sooyoung. It can't be Yoona. Those two hadn't even known. It can't be Tiffany, either, because she's Jessica's friend. Someone had seen them, and it could be any soldier who saw them making out by accident. The only person that Taeyeon could name was Kang Hodong.

It was the missing puzzle piece. Everything fell into place. Firefly was the military's best weapon, and breaking it apart would be a North Korean spy's most glorious course of action.

The first time she met Hodong was with Yoona and Seunggi. They had talked about their morning mission to Anyang. Not the details, but that they were going to Anyang. An administrative sergeant like Hodong would have been able to gather the specifics and pass on the information to lay an ambush for them at Cheonggye.

The second time she met Hodong was to ask for Soojung's release petition. It had probably attracted his attention, and he could have easily seen her leave base. Then Yoona and she had been caught sneaking out of base by the major when they got back. Hodong could easily have assigned Firefly an early morning mission to indirectly inform the major and get them into trouble.

The third time she met Hodong was after screwing around with Jessica on the rooftop. She saw him with his mag and thought their mutual silence would be kept, but when she got caught she hadn't been able to react, much less retaliate. She didn't even have the wits to think that Hodong was the one who snitched on her. 

Now she knew who the spy was, Taeyeon had to get the message to Sooyoung. Hodong was an active mole and another day might get them killed. There was no knowing when Hodong would strike next, and it might not just be Firefly, but the rest of the South Korean military as well.

She was trapped. She could leave the apartment, but what then? She didn't know where the clinic was. She couldn't make it to North Korea in a wheelchair. Taeyeon cursed in frustration and made it to the house telephone. To her surprise and relief, there was a dial tone. YG must have hooked up their own telecommunication network. She didn't know any phone numbers, but there was a Redial button. Maybe Yuri or Sunny had last called the clinic. She waited at the ring tone.

"What's up?" A man's voice, thin and drawling, on the other end.

Taeyeon kept silent. She didn't know who he was.

"Hello? Yul?"

Someone close to Yuri, but she still had nothing to say to him. She hung up.

Taeyeon wanted to scream. Instead she prepared a coded message with a paper and pencil. If Yuri or Sunny came back, she could ask them to pass it to Jessica, who wouldn't understand the message but would have the sense to forward it to Tiffany or someone who could pass it along to Sooyoung. If Jessica came back first, then even better.

In the time it took her to come up with and write the message, the doorbell rang. Not Yuri, Sunny or Jessica. Those three had keys. Taeyeon dropped the pencil and folded the paper into her shirt pocket. She picked up the kitchen knife she had placed on the table, put it on her lap and wheeled cautiously towards the door.

The doorbell rang again, three times impatiently. She had a hand on the lock when she heard a key slide in and the door jerked in. Taeyeon retracted her hand to avoid the door, and grabbed the knife.

A skinny man with a Glock in his hand stared at her. He then took his gaze off her and scanned the room. Satisfied that the rest of the apartment was empty, he stepped in. Two other men, one shorter and one taller, both with puny slit eyes, came in as well. The taller one closed the door and locked it.

The skinny man poked his head through the kitchen door while the others checked the rest of the living room and the bathroom, with guns in their hands.

Taeyeon thought about how to kill them with the kitchen knife. Throwing it would eliminate one, but the action would probably tear open her bullet wounds and incapacitate her. Better if she could stab one of them in the hand and steal a gun. The only problem was getting close enough to do so, especially since guns allow a non-melee attack already. Taeyeon was banking on them being sloppy since she was in a wheelchair.

With the attack plan stowed at the back of her mind, Taeyeon observed them. Most likely, she didn't have to kill them. They had the key to the apartment, and seemed to know the place well. One of them was probably the man who picked up the phone when she hit Redial.

"Did you call?" The skinny man asked. The same reedy voice from earlier. The barrel of his Glock wasn't pointing at her, but the gun was still in his hand.

"Who are you?"

"Did you call," he repeated.

"Yes. Who are you?"

"What did you want?" He stuffed his gun in his waistband, behind him. The other two men followed suit.

"I needed to call Yuri's clinic, but I didn't know the number," Taeyeon said. "Who are you?"

"Excuse my manners. I'm Kwon Jiyong, Yuri's older brother." He thumbed at the shorter man, "that's Dong Youngbae," the taller man, "and that's Kang Daesung."

"I'm Kim Taeyeon."

"We know. Daesung is the one who spotted you falling into the river the other night," Jiyong said. "We got you and Jessica to Yuri. Just fast enough, luckily."

"Oh." She bowed slightly at them. "Thanks."

"It was an awkward first meeting," Daesung said, and Taeyeon wanted to chuck the knife at him if he was referring to seeing Jessica and her in underwear at the river bank, "so let's forget that and make this our official first meeting instead. We're glad that you made it."

Taeyeon forced a smile back at him and wheeled away from the door towards Yuri's brother. Youngbae and Daesung were big, so Jiyong was going to be the easiest to get a gun from. For now, they were friendlies, but who knew how gangsters rolled.

Jiyong pulled out a flip phone and called a number on speed dial. He held the phone out to her. "Yuri's clinic."

Taeyeon took the phone. 

"Hello?" Yuri was on the line.

"Hi, Yuri. This is Taeyeon. Could I talk to Jessica?"

"Oh, hey. Hold on a second."

Jessica answered the phone quickly. "Taeyeon? What is it?"

"Jessica, I have a really urgent message I got to send to Sooyoung. Could you help me with it now?"

"What's wrong?"

"It's super important but I can't explain it."

Jessica caught on fast. "Alright. What's the message?"

Taeyeon unfolded the paper in her pocket and read off it. "Sixteen, sixty-one. Take care of her. Hyung."

The military used numeric codes for short form radio communications. 61 meant 'personnel in vicinity' and 16 meant 'domestic problem'. Together, with a little creativity, they could be interpreted as, 'the spy in your midst'. Internal to Firefly, the phrase 'Take care of her' could only refer to Yoona's smitten puppy, Seunggi, whose hyung was Kang Hodong. It was the shortest message that she had been able to come up with.

"What?" Jessica was lost.

Taeyeon repeated the message, and said. "You have to say it like that, exactly. Got it?"

"Okay. I'll try to get in touch with someone who can help us. Tiff, most probably. You just need someone to reliably repeat this, right?"

"Yes. Thanks, Jessica."

"No problem."

"Bye," Taeyeon said. She flipped the cell phone shut and handed it back to Jiyong. 

"What was that about?" Jiyong asked.

"Nothing."

"Sounded like code."

"You know I'm a soldier. It's military classified and none of your business."

Jiyong's Glock stayed where it was, and his face was relaxed. He wasn't bothered by her refusal, which was rational. Or it could be complacency, because made men proud.

"Something's our business though, since you're living in my sister's home," Jiyong said. "You and Jessica are obviously military. Since she sounds American and you don't sound North Korean, you're supposed to be on our side, correct?"

She nodded.

"Then how come she didn't call for support once your condition stabilized? Why does it seem like you're running away from the army, and what the does that even mean?"

A/N: Bang bang bang, let's see the end of this night. Thanks for the comments/upvotes/subs last chapter! Let me know what was good/bad about this one:))