Rule #9: Don’t blow your cover.  Or, at least, cover your in case that happens.

            “OW!  Holy Mother of God!” Kyuhyun hollered as Saeun used antiseptic to clean out Kyuhyun’s wound.  He was sitting on the couch beside her, his shirt off after taking a shower and changing into new clothes, and narrowed his eyes at her.  “You told me it was just a scratch!”

            “It is just a scratch,” she assured him, continuing to work on his wound.  “I cleaned out Wookie’s wound and wrapped it while you showered and his is much worse than yours.”

            Ryeowook laughed from inside the kitchen, clearly overhearing their conversation.

            “Mine is fresh and it hurts more.”

            “His was starting to get a little infected so I had to scrub it and peel away some of the dead skin,” she informed Kyuhyun.  “It was bleeding pretty good by the time I finished with it.  But Ryeowook never even made a peep.  In fact, he was asking what I’d done to the baby’s room since he was over last.”

            Kyuhyun stuck out his bottom lip.  “I liked you better when we first arrived.  My opinion of you has been dropping since.”

            Saeun only laughed at this, knowing that it wasn’t true. 

            “When do you expect Sungmin back?” Ryeowook asked, walking back into the living room with Saeun’s new tea set on a tray.  He set it down on the coffee table and poured them each a cup of tea. 

            She shook her head.  “Any minute.  He just went to visit Yesung in the hospital.”

            “At this time of night?” Kyuhyun questioned.  “Isn’t it past visiting hours?”

            Saeun waved her hand.  “Only if you’re following their rules.  Sungmin can sneak in without getting caught.”

            “He’ll probably give him a heart attack,” Kyuhyun muttered.

            “That’s sweet of him to visit,” Ryeowook said, downing his tea and setting it back on the table.  “I’ll have to ask how he’s doing when he returns.”

            “He keeps complaining about the food, so Min brought him some homemade soup,” she told them.

            “That was sweet of you,” Kyuhyun admitted.

            “Actually, my husband made it.  I’m a terrible cook.  He does all the cooking,” she confessed. 

            “Oh,” Kyuhyun said, even more befuddled than he already was by the couple’s relationship.  He already thought it a little odd that Saeun’s husband left her alone and pregnant in the middle of the night to go visit his old secret agent buddy in the hospital.  Then again, nothing about the last couple days had turned out to be ordinary.

            “Are you in a rush, Wook?  Do you think they could track you here this fast?” she asked.

            Ryeowook shrugged.  “Probably not, but I’d hate to be wrong and put you in danger.  I wanted to borrow a few supplies from the storage room.”

            “You can just grab the keys and take whatever you need, Wookie.  Kyuhyun and I will be safe enough on our own for a few minutes.  Won’t we?” she said, raising her brows as she looked directly at Kyuhyun.

            Kyuhyun looked her over.  She was probably halfway through her pregnancy—at least, considering how slowly she walked around—and looked about as intimidating as a cocker spaniel puppy.  I mean, maybe she was a little y, but Kyuhyun assumed that was because there was a watermelon sized growth attached to her stomach that kicked her from the inside.  It would probably make him a little crabby too, if he were in her shoes.  But he didn’t exactly feel the greatest about being left alone with her when they had a city full of thugs chasing after them.

            “Sounds good!” Ryeowook agreed, jumping to his feet and heading to the door.  “Was it the green key?”

            “Yep!” Saeun said, dabbing the wash cloth in the antiseptic again and running it over the wound.

            Kyuhyun hissed in pain, scrunching his eyes together as he heard the door shut.  Only a moment later, Saeun grabbed his face and looked him directly in the eyes. 

            “Now that we’re finally alone…”

            Kyuhyun’s eyes widened in panic.

            “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on between you two!”

            Kyuhyun let out a breath he didn’t realize that he was holding and grinned wide.  “Such as?”

            “When I asked you earlier how you got the bruise on your cheek, you laughed and told me that Ryeowook hit you, but you wouldn’t tell me why.  Spill,” she demanded.

            Kyuhyun laughed at this, looking down at his lap.  “I kissed him.  He got mad and hit me.”

            “Get out!” she nearly shouted, smacking his chest with her hand in her excitement.

            “Ow!” Kyuhyun complained, frowning and rubbing his chest.  “You hit hard for a girl.”

            “You kissed Ryeowook?”

            Kyuhyun nodded. 

            “Just once?”

            “No.  I’ve kissed him a few times.  I kissed him in the hall before we arrived at your apartment too.”

            “Did he hit you then?” she asked, tilting her head in curiosity.

            “No,” Kyuhyun admitted.  “Do you think that means something?”

            Saeun nodded.  “Totally!  I was already suspicious because he talked about you almost the whole time that you were in the bathroom, except for the minute or two he asked after Sungmin and the baby’s room.  But that was more out of common curtesy than anything.”

            “What did he say about me?”

            She started laughing and began to wrap his arm.  “Well, he complained about you most of the time.  He said that you tried to kill him in the car and that you’re afraid of guns and that you run slow.”

            Kyuhyun sighed, reaching for his tea and taking a sip.  Maybe she wouldn’t notice him blushing then. 

            “But then he also mentioned that you seem to be really smart—about technology and computers—and that you realized that his coffee was drugged when he didn’t and that you saved him from falling off a building, although you were terrified of being up so high.  And he said that he’s a nervous wreck that the Omega Operation’s going to get you, just like they did his old partner, Zhoumi.”

            Kyuhyun nearly choked on his tea.  “Zhoumi was his partner?  I heard him call his name in his sleep…he was crying about it.”

            Saeun nodded, wrapping the gauze around Kyuhyun’s arm.  “Zhoumi and Ryeowook were trying to find contacts of a trafficking ring in Beijing when they were caught.  Their coworker, Qian, managed to help get Ryeowook out of China, but Zhoumi was killed.”

            “Is Zhoumi a former lover of his?”

            Saeun shook her head.  “We think that he and Qian were starting to date, actually, but we’ve never asked her about it.  She now works for the NIS under a different identity.  But back to my point, I think that Ryeowook is really worried that something will happen to you and I suspect that it has to do with more than just your ability to decode the disc.”

            “He told me he isn’t interested in a relationship.”

            Saeun leaned close and whispered in his ear.  “He’s full of .”

            Kyuhyun smirked and took another sip of his tea just as Saeun finished wrapping his arm.

            “There.  That should heal nicely now.”

            Kyuhyun set down his teacup and then grabbed his clean shirt and pulled it over his head.  “Honestly, I didn’t even know that I was shot until Ryeowook pointed it out to me.  Does that make any sense?”

            Saeun nodded.  “Actually, it’s happened to me before.”

            Did he just hear her right?  Just as Kyuhyun opened his mouth to ask her what she’d just said again, the door to the apartment was kicked open and four men dressed in black suits rushed into the room.  One of them held up a gun and shot the teapot.  It burst into pieces, spilling tea all over the tray and table.  Kyuhyun backed up against the couch as one of the men approached and grabbed him by the collar.  He was pushed across the room and slammed into the opposite wall.  The same man, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, demanded, “Where’s the disc?”

            “What disc?”

            The man punched him hard in the gut and Kyuhyun coughed incessantly for a minute, holding his stomach, until the man grabbed his throat again and forced him back up.  “Where’s the disc the NIS stole from the Choi Corporation?”

            “Oh, that disc,” Kyuhyun managed to choke out, his eyes watering from pain.  He shook his head.  “I don’t have it!”

            “Who does?”

            “I don’t know.”

            The man behind him pulled a gun and aimed it at his head. 

            “I hope for your sake that isn’t true.”

            “Pretty sure...the NIS...hid it somewhere safe,” Kyuhyun said, gasping for air.

            “You better hope they did,” the man said.  “But that’s not going to help you any.”

            Just then, Saeun screamed in rage.  “You ruined my teapot!  I got that for a wedding present!”

            All five men looked back at her, completely perplexed. 

            “You ing bastards!  That is irreplaceable!” she hollered as she reached behind the couch and pulled out a large gun.  The next thing Kyuhyun knew, she started firing her gun at the four men standing in her living room.  His vision was beginning to spin from lack of oxygen as the head of the man holding his throat blew up in front of him.  Then, suddenly, everything went black.

            Ryeowook had run into Sungmin on his way to the storage room and the two had leisurely gathered supplies for roughly ten minutes until they headed back upstairs, chatting about how Yesung was recuperating and what crazy Ryeowook had been through the last couple days.  When Ryeowook and Sungmin walked into the apartment, their arms loaded with supplies, they froze in confusion.  Four men were on the ground, each with a single bullet hole in them, dead and bleeding onto the floor.  Kyuhyun was also lying on the floor, unconscious but relatively unharmed.  Saeun knelt beside the coffee table, tears in her eyes, as she picked up the broken pieces of a teapot. 

            The pair dropped their supplies on the floor.

            “Honey,” Sungmin said, walking over to his wife.  “What just happened?”

            Saeun sniffled.  “They shot my new teapot!”

            Sungmin crouched down and wrapped his arm around his wife.  “I’m very sorry, love.  I promise to buy you an even better one,” he swore, kissing her temple.  “Are you and Kyuhyun okay?”

            She nodded, wiping her face with her sleeve.  “He just passed out.  They were trying to choke him to get him to reveal where the disc w