Rule #18: Don’t sleep with someone crazier than you!

            Sungmin knew that his little mantis would eventually come back to him.  He just wasn’t sure when.  So a month after being shot, when he got into his car in the underground ramp below NIS headquarters, he probably shouldn’t have been shocked to see Saeun sitting in his backseat when he glanced in his rearview mirror, but he wasn’t expecting her right that second and just about pissed himself. 

            He leaned back in his seat and took a deep breath, resting his hand on his heart, which was beating in double time.  “Holy !  How did you break into headquarters?”

            “You know I’m not going to tell you that,” she said, crossing her arms as she glared at him from the back seat. 

            “At least get up front,” he said, waving at the passenger seat.

            Saeun climbed from the back seat to the front.

            “To what do I owe the pleasure of seeing you again?” Sungmin asked, proceeding to back the car up and to head out of the ramp.

            “I want my knife back.”

            “Why?”

            “That’s not your business.”

            “Seeing as I took it as payment for not exposing you, it now belongs to me, and I don’t feel inclined to give it back.  But perhaps I could be persuaded if you told me why,” he said, driving to the ramp exit and stopping to open the door with his code and fingerprint scan.

            “The less you know about me, the better for both of us.”

            “Why do you think that, Saeun?”

            “Quit saying my name!  Someone might overhear you!”

            Sungmin looked around the empty ramp.  “There’s no one here at the moment.  Besides, you seem to be confusing the NIS with law enforcement.  We aren’t law enforcers.  We’re secret agents.  We don’t wear badges and we don’t enforce laws.  We collect information for the government.  They send in law enforcement if they want to arrest someone.  We’re more likely to be sent to kill someone, not unlike yourself.  But my job is legal—at least in South Korea—while yours isn’t.  Neither is it safe,” he pointed out, turning out into the street. 

            “I’m not here to get lectured from you.  I’m just here for the knife.  I went to your apartment and looked all over the damn place, but I couldn’t find it anywhere,” she confessed.

            Sungmin looked over at her and frowned.  “That wasn’t very nice, love.”

            “Don’t call me that.  I don’t care what’s nice.  I want my knife.”

            “So you’ve given up trying to kill me then?  At least there’s a little progress.”

            “I haven’t given up on killing you, but I refuse to kill you until I get my knife back.  You could have put it anywhere.  How am I going to find it if you’re dead?” she asked.

            “Indeed.  So how are you going to persuade me to give it back?”

            “I could threaten to kill who you love most.”

            “I suppose.  But I thought you seemed a little too strong-willed and pig-headed to kill yourself, even if it would be the perfect revenge,” he pointed out.

            Saeun’s eyes widened and then she scoot away from him, as far as she could.  “You’re not in love with me.  Quit teasing me!”

            “Sadly, I think I might be,” he admitted.  “But failing killing someone to accomplish your goal, how else could you do it?”

            “I could take something of yours that you valued and ransom it until you gave me back the knife,” she told him.

            “You could…and you were in my apartment for some length of time, I imagine, looking through all my personal affects for your knife.  Did you spot anything you thought might be of great sentimental value to me?”

            Saeun sighed.  “No.  You have a very nice apartment—”

            “Why, thank you.”

            “But I didn’t see anything of value.  No expensive gadgets or electronics—”

            “I could easily replace something like that on my salary.”

            “No jewelry or unique clothes.”

            “I’m not that showy.”

            “I didn’t even see many pictures of friends or family.”

            “Did it occur to you that the object that I value the most is, in fact, your jade handled knife?”

            Saeun gave him a puzzled look.  “Why would that hold any value for you?”

            “Because it belonged to you and I was given it from you the first time we met.”

            “Given isn’t exactly the word I’d use,” she grumbled as Sungmin pulled into the parking lot of a café called the Mouse Rabbit.  “What are we doing here?”

            “I thought we’d stop and finish our conversation over coffee, seeing as my place has been ransacked.  Unless you wanted to go to yours,” Sungmin suggested.

            Saeun rolled her eyes and got out of the car.  Sungmin turned off the car and followed her into his favorite local café.  They walked over to the counter.  “Medium plain latte, no flavor.  Saeun, dear, what will you have?”

            Saeun smiled warmly at the barista.  “I’ll have a large mocha.”

            Sungmin handed over his credit card and once their drinks were ready, he waved her over to a table by the window, since there was no one else sitting near there.  He wasn’t entirely sure if he was making progress yet or not, but he would keep trying until he did. 

            “I’m going to put this bluntly to you, Saeun.  I will not return the knife to you until you give me something in return of greater value.”

            The young woman perked up at this news.  “Oh, certainly!” she said, sitting up and paying more attention.  “If you would just tell me what kind of weapon you’d like better, I could even have it custom made for you.  Easy.”

            Sungmin shook his head.  “No.  I told you before, I have everything that money can buy that I care to have.”

            Saeun narrowed her eyes at him.  “What do you want?”

            “I want the same thing I wanted from you in the hospital.  I want you to retire.  I want you to walk away from that kind of work before you can’t anymore.”

            Saeun slammed her hand on the tabletop.  “I already told you that I couldn’t!  I don’t have enough money to retire on yet.”

            Sungmin grasped her hand.  “Why do you need so much money?”

            For a moment, she just stared into his eyes, hers watering over.  But just when he felt she was on the verge of breaking down her barriers for him, she pulled her hand away and jumped to her feet.  She then stormed out the door.  Sungmin was nearly ready to pull his hair out.  Then she suddenly walked back into the Mouse Rabbit and grabbed her coffee off the table. 

            “Thanks for the coffee,” she only said.  Then she left again.

            A week later, Saeun stood in front of Sungmin’s apartment.  She’d been there for ten minutes already, debating whether or not to knock.  The was home.  But two more checks of his apartment and one of this office at NIS had given her no clues about where he might be hiding her knife.  Unless he had it on him the whole time.  She hadn’t searched him and there was only one way to do that. 

            “God damn you,” she seethed, finally knocking on the door.

            Only a few seconds went by before the door opened and the agent had the nerve to smile at her.  “Saeun!  Come on in!  You’ve come at the perfect time.  I was just making dinner.”

            Saeun pressed her lips together, withholding the many things that first came to her mind to say, and walked into the apartment she was already fairly familiar with at that point.  “How long did you know I was here?”

            “About ten minutes,” he said, helping her off with her hoodie.  He didn’t even flinch at seeing the two guns on her.  Apparently he wasn’t as worried about his safety as he probably should have been.  “You know, you didn’t stay at the café long enough for me to inform you about the valuables in the kitchen.  I might have considered bartering with your knife a little over a few items in the kitchen.”

            “Oh?” Saeun questioned, slipping off her shoes and then following him into the kitchen.  “And what would those be?”

            “Either my season cast-iron skillet or my espresso machine.  That thing cost a bloody fortune,” he admitted, patting the top of it as he passed it.  “Although some of the knives in my kitchen I’m rather fond as well.”

            “I was wondering about all the crap in here,” she said, noting the intoxicating smell of baking bread and sweet-glazed chicken coming from the oven.  “So you like to cook on your down time?”

            Sungmin nodded.  “I imagine you have hobbies as well.  Assassinating people doesn’t keep you busy all the time.  What do you do?” he asked, handing her a glass of wine. 

            “I paint and do some sculpting,” she said, looking down at her wine glass with trepidation.

            “I didn’t poison it,” he said, drinking from his own glass.  “See?”

            “What if you slipped poison into my glass and not yours,” she argued.

            Sungmin exchanged glasses with her.  “There.”

            Saeun sighed heavily. 
            “If I wanted to kill you, I’d just throw one of these knives at you,” he explained, picking one up and tossing it across the kitchen.  It slammed into the cupboard door, sticking straight out.  “And if you wanted to still kill me, I imagine you’d just pull your guns out the moment I turned my back,” he said, turning his back to her as he walked across the kitchen to retrieve his knife.

            “I still plan to kill you…eventually,” she told him.

            Sungmin grinned and headed over to the stove to begin removing pots and pans.  “I suppose you’ll tell me that you still plan to kill me after you get the knife back.”

            “I will.”

            “But I already told you that you’re not going to get the knife back until you promise not to kill anyone else,” Sungmin pointed out, setting hot pans on the center island.

            “You’re driving me nuts with this.  I can’t stop working.”

            “So…have you killed anyone since shooting me?”

            “I’ve had a couple offers.  One wasn’t worth my time.  They didn’t offer nearly enough for the job,” she informed him.

            “And the other?”

            “The other offer was from the same group who offered me the money for the guy you protected that day,” she informed him.  “They have a new, cheaper target they wanted me to take out.  One that they thought could be a potential problem for them in the future.”

            “Who’s that?” he asked, closing up the oven and turning it off.

            “You.”

            Sungmin looked over at her, trying to gauge of she was serious.  “Are you joking?”

            She shook her head and drank down her entire glass of wine.  Then she walked over to where the bottle sat on the counter and poured herself another.  “Don’t you worry!  I told them that I wouldn’t take money from anyone to kill you.  I want you dead on my own terms.  But I told them if I found out that they sent anyone else to kill you, they’d have to answer to me later.”

            Sungmin’s jaw dropped.  She’d inadvertently saved his life.  Or did she know what she’d done and didn’t want t