Not much noise filled the air; only soft, almost inaudible whirring of the enslaved computer’s CPU cooler fan that was there. Even Taeyeon’s breath was soundless, as still as the night that perched on top of Seoul’s undying nightlife.

Bloodshot trellises crept around her brownish irises thanks to exposure from the LED monitor’s radiation, which she’d stared for last few hours. Taeyeon had much worse in the past—staying awake for three day straight with her team of auxiliary agents, famished, waiting for a reconnaissance in remote woodlands. Sitting her and tortured her eyes digging through NIS complicated database network would be pale in comparison.

The pointer arrow glided almost fluidly among tabs of NIS highly secured database network. Taeyeon had downsized her range of search to the cases and missions Yoona had participated, but the list was still long enough to make her head aching and bored from browsing and scrolling. The doe-eyed indeed, she admitted, a dutiful and active auxiliary agent. She wouldn’t be surprised if someday Yoona decided to join NIS as a full-time, full-fledged agent.

Letting her bloodshot eyes diligently flash-read myriad details of twenty five cases, there was particular one that quickly gained her attention. 14 July 2009, a raid to a business complex in Ilsan to root out one of the Seven Stars’ important middleman and intercepted important chain of narcotics shipment. A joint mission between NIS and SWAT team of Ilsan Police Agency. The case that Yoona and Seohyun participated six years ago.

It was also the only mission Seohyun took part since she resigned from NIS—three years after she married Yoona, barely a year after she gave birth to their son.

“Seohyun…?” she mumbled, drummed her fingers to her The Minions mouse pad.

Seo Joohyun, now Im Joohyun, was the youngest of her team, the kind music major student and calm intelligent sniper. The second most level-headed person among her team of auxiliary agents (the first was always undeniably the cool Jessica Jung), she always lend a hand, or rather head, helping her recomposing the awry bunches of her team. Getting married to her high school crush and fellow teammate, she opted to leave the intelligence service and worked as a music teacher—ridiculously coincidentally at the same high school where her doe-eyed wife and she studied at in their teens.

Seohyun was also the most bewildered one when Yoona disappeared five years ago. She remembered how the maknae of her former team always contacted her, desperately asking if she had found hints of her missing wife’s whereabouts.

That stopped two years ago. And at the same time, she once spotted her in the city with a tall man. Her new lover, most probably.

Her eyes drooped close once again and lulled her to milliseconds of microsleep, until her head jolted back and gave her neck a whip of pain. Time to call it a day. Yawning widely she started closing the tabs one by one and left three tabs; Istanbul case that—in vaguest way—had been closed. Barcelona incident whose fate was still undeterminable until now. Alleged international money laundering chain in Helsinki that still left many unanswered question.

The monitor flashed a pale bluish light with a beep, followed by small flickers on the text lines. Line by line of words disappeared, then paragraphs, tables and diagrams burst into disarray of pixels and faded to the background.

“What the…!” Taeyeon furiously typed firewall codes to fight back the data hacking. “Is someone hacked it or—“

Her ears caught a strange clamor outside her office. Outside the frosted glass pane of her office was dimly lit, but her trained eyes detected a shadow moved among the cubicles.

She dashed out from her office and saw an unmistaken figure of a man already ran to the corridor. Cursed under her breath Taeyeon chased ran through the corridor but footsteps was already far in her audio range.

Damn! He’s fast! Taeyeon hurtled down the emergency stairs, two or three steps a time. She strained her ears not to lose the footsteps noise, which slowly but sure strayed further and unheard. And my short legs!

Her breath raced after sprinting seven floors down through the winding emergency stairs. Right when her feet landed on the lobby, the noise trailed off from audio detection and vanished.

“Goddamnit!” She growled out loud, wildly looking around the empty stretch of floor and walls.

Her quick guess brought her running to the west hallway. One last turn before dead end, her heart was filled in dismay only to find Seulgi played with her iPad while half-listening to Baekhyun talking among his quick gulps of canned coffee.

“Seulgi! Baekhyun! Did you see anyone passing here or hear someone run around here?” The most senior of three hastily asked between her ragged breaths, almost threatening her to cough.

The girl with blonde ombre blinked in ‘I-don’t-understand’ style and Baekhyun stopped his gulps and asked, “Is there something wrong?”

“It’s just—I found someone unknown snooping out from the cubicles and ran away.” Taeyeon ruffled her hair and sighed harshly. “Alright, just forget it. You two better head home. It’s already half an hour before midnight.”

“No bus is still operating this late. Seulgi you want to tag along?” offered Baekhyun.

“No need oppa. Going to crash on a club with my friend and then I’ll blackmail her to drive me home.”

Baekhyun mouthed ‘party animal’ and reciprocated with sheepish grin from the younger girl. Skipping with giddy spirit, Seulgi waved her hands as she made beeline to the lobby’s main door, leaving her seniors for her upcoming quest of rave party.

“If I’m not wrong, you went to work with bus today, right?”

“Yes, why?”

“That means you have no other choice but to tag along with me,” the brown-haired man smiled cheekily. “I got the right to choose our destination, so let’s go to my place?”

It took Taeyeon half a minute of silence before nodding her head slightly.

xxxxx

“Is this suit your liking, miss?”

Yoona stared at her own reflected self on the mirror. Blinks a couple of times, and stared again. Her brown locks now re-colored into blonde. Never did once she color her hair outside from black and various shades of brown, and her sudden transformation as a blonde was… astounding.

I look…really weird. “I think I like it.”

The hairdresser’s tight lips loosened into a smile; a relieved and proud one. She must’ve taken notice of Yoona’s grimace earlier, when she unintentionally spilled blonde hair dye on her hair. It was too late to wash the dye off and the only way—much to Yoona’s horror—was dying her hair completely blonde. The hairdresser couldn’t stop muttering apology as she applied the dye, and somehow it transformed Yoona’s annoyance to pity and amusement.

Come to think of it… Yoona thought as she took a last look on the mirror before paying, …I’m no half that bad as a blonde.  

Even when she had finished paying and about to leave, the hairdresser still didn’t stop giving her a bashful smile. Maybe she was still worried that Yoona would sue her for her hair mishaps.

One among reasons why Yoona never thought to dye her hair blonde was because it was too standout. Intelligence agents were expected to keep low profile and blend with the backgrounds, and blonde hair did her too little merit for that. Although dyeing hair into blonde became commonplace among youths nowadays, she never felt blonde hair suited her and her new yellowish locks made her like a new person. What would Seohyun say when she saw her?

With this blonde hair, she might giggle about how un-Yoona I look.

That small musing made a miniscule smile curled her lips.

The weather was really hearty this morning. Winter showed its merit by letting the warm of sun beam escaped cool white veil in the sky. Last night’s evidence of angry snow fall left as plush pristine blanket draped the pavement and bus stops. Yoona even spared few seconds scooping some snow from a bench, deliberately losing herself staring at the white mass of snow.

“Ack!” yelped Yoona.

Snow sloshed down her hair and few more hit her back. She turned around and another crumple of snow squashed her face. A boy stood few meters from her, grinning ear-to-ear with arsenal of crumpled snow on his feet. Yoona wiped the snow and chuckled, scooping some snow and launched a quick revenge of a snowball, hitting the boy’s face. They quickly exchanged few more snowball shots and laughter on the sidewalk. The pedestrians and commuters watched as they passed, some chuckling in amusement, some lightly scoffed at the doe-eyed woman’s childishness. A middle-aged woman draped in heavy longcoat suddenly came and pulled the boy by ear, apologizing to Yoona for her son’s mischief. She only laughed and ruffled the boy’s hair before the woman excused herself and her son.

Well, that was fun, Yoona smiled and waved to the boy and his mother. Ah, suddenly I want to play snowball war with Luhan.

Her phone vibrated on her jeans pocket. She slipped out the phone and frowned slightly when she saw the display; an incoming call from an unknown number.

A scenario clichéd enough in spy action movies and such, but in her career as auxiliary agent had taught her the truth behind it. Unknown caller indeed rarely brought good tidings.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Im Yoona. You had a soundless deep sleep, I assume?”

Deep voice she didn’t recognize filled Yoona with hostility almost instantly. “Who are you?”

“You know me well—Ah, I guess I’m quite forgotten among a huge number of people you know.”

“Don’t playing games with me—“

“—Ah you’re right! We’re right in the start of a small game I set for us. A war game.” The man on the other line chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your lovely wife and cute son will enjoy the game too.”

“You! Hey—“ Yoona gritted her teeth as the line went dead suddenly. ”!” She quickly scrolled the contact list and hit her wife’s number.  

“What do you want, Yoona?”

Yoona couldn’t deny that she was hurt with bitterness in Seohyun‘s voice, but this was no time to feel such sentiment. “Where’s Luhan?” she asked in hurry.

“He’s at school—“

“Are you at work?”

“Yes and why—“  

“Just be safe!”

Keep calm. Inhale, exhale, and Yoona repeated it once again. He wants me to be panic. Yoona snug her phone to her pocket and power walked back to her apartment. Someone I know but I don’t know… Her doe eyes scanned the streets she passed and the passersby around her. Every pair of eyes flocked the city became suspicious for her, any corners and turns of the streets might hide beasts eager to tear her. Or there might be some vultures’ eyes stalking on heights of concrete trees, watching and waiting for any cracks of vulnerability on her march from the street to her apartment.

Who it could be? Her hand tingled from the cold door handle and adrenaline of cautiousness. First guesses that passed on her mind would be the accomplices of criminals arrested on her missions, seeking for revenge. But what lowlife bastards who dare to involve Seohyun and Luhan—

Bang!

“A gunshot!” Yoona gasped and ran inside the apartment building.

The landlord lied bloody on the lobby’s floor. She immediately rushed to his side, checking the pulse and gently tilted the landlord’s head. He was still breathing but his pulse getting weaker. The shot hit his upper shoulder. Her fingers gently probed the point where the bullet was lodged and found it didn’t hit too deep. He should be able to survive if he gets immediate care. “Call the ambulance!” she told some people that came in panic surrounding the landlord and ran leaving him to their care.

The assaulter should have been still near, but where would the culprit go? She noticed the number and upward arrow display above one of the lift. Someone was riding the lift upwards and she was sure it was the culprit. She sprinted through the flight of the emergency stairs and suddenly she remembered that she didn’t know which floor the culprit would stop.

Could it be…

Yoona took her chance and made her first blank guess. She rushed to the fourth floor and ran her way to her unit, only to find a man trying to break into her apartment whilst gun.

The one who shot the landlord was indeed after her, just like she guessed.

The mysterious man quickly took notice of her presence and fired a quick shot towards her. The fire missed her and Yoona didn’t take her chance for granted. She charged to him and wrangled out the gun from his grip, bashing her forehead forcefully to his. He groaned and the gun fell from his hand. Yoona would’ve ducked and grabbed the gun, but the man gripped her shoulder tightly, restraining her to move. Instinctively she kicked the gun away and mustered her strength to break free and took a step back.

The gun slid far from both of them, too far for either him or Yoona’s advantage. The man growled and dropped to boxing stance, tactfully back-stepping approaching where the gun was. I won’t let him take the gun. Let’s finish this with bare fists! She rushed forward and timely blocked his hooking punches, mauling her fist to his stomach. He whimpered and fumbled, giving Yoona an opening to grab his shoulder and kneed his navel with additional power from the rotation of her hips. Groaning he was thrown to the floor—completely distanced away for his gun—but he quickly stood up again and glared behin