Seulgi felt something drop onto her lap. She looked down. It was a wrapped box with a clumsily tied bow on top. She looked up again. Irene was looking away. Seulgi picked it up and examined it.

“There isn’t an explosive in here or something, right?”

Irene glared at her.

“Okay, okay, sorry.”

Seulgi grabbed onto one end of the bow. It easily became untied. The wrapping paper was almost completely covered in tape. Seulgi had to literally pry it open with her fingers. She crumpled up the tape and flimsy wrapping paper in her hand and dropped it on the bench next to her. It was a box made out of velvet.

“Am I getting proposed to?”

“Just open it,” Irene said.

“Right.”

Seulgi put the box back down on her lap and rubbed her hands together. The initial heat from the alcohol was wearing off and it was getting colder by the minute. She picked it up again and opened it. It was an orange keychain with a small, plush bear attached to it.

“Hey, are you - are you crying?”

Seulgi sniffed and wiped at her face. “No, it-it’s just c-cold. D-Don’t be ridiculous.”

They stayed quiet. Then, for the first time, Irene broke the silence. “It feels nice to give someone a gift. You know, I wasn’t always like . . . this. I wasn’t always “icy”. I was born into this agency. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known. I was born into the life of justice and action. I never had a normal civilian life. My,” she paused. “My parents. They were agents here. I learned everything that I had to know from them. When I was seven, I didn’t learn how to ride a bike, I learned how to kill someone with my bare hands. By the time I was ten, I knew how to wield a knife and shoot a gun and I could speak five different languages.” Irene laughed lowly. Seulgi stared at her. “When I was sixteen, my parents and I, we went on a mission together. There were hostages and my job was to free them while my parents fought the captors and arrested them.” Irene took in a deep breath. Seulgi shifted closer to the woman. “Everything went wrong. Just as I was cutting through the ropes, I got knocked out from behind. And when I woke up, I was in a strange room, tied to some metal beam, and a woman was standing beside me. My parents were tied onto chairs and the look in their eyes. They weren’t scared. They looked at me like everything was going to be okay - like this was just another simulation from the agency. And that’s exactly what I begged it to be.” Tears were falling freely down Irene’s face. Her expression was stoic. Seulgi felt a pang in her chest at the tough exterior the woman stubbornly kept up. “But it wasn’t. She shot them. She shot both of them. Right in front of me. You know what she did after that? She let me go. Her men untied me and then they left. They left me alone with - ,” Irene broke off with a strangled sound.

Seulgi gently maneuvered Irene’s head to rest against her shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. You shouldn’t have been forced to go through that.” Seulgi chuckled demeaningly at herself. “And I here I was all that time, thinking that you were some upper-class that thought she was too good for everybody else.”

Irene laughed weakly.

Oddly, through the rest of the night, Seulgi didn’t feel so cold anymore.

It was New Year in Korea. The Maple Leaf decided to screw it all up. Joy pulled out the cartridge of her gun, then put it back in her holster. She checked her access to the weapon. Easily reachable, and swift.

They had the orphanage under hostage. They’d made a public announcement: Frost, for the safety of all the children of the Nam Orphanage. An exchange was to be made. There hadn’t been a single ounce of hesitation in the agency.

Joy wanted the orphanage to go up in flames. But not the children. They didn’t deserve it. She wondered if it was simply a coincidence that the orphanage the Maple Leaf had under their threat was the one she and Yeri had been in, or if they had figured it out somehow.

Joy stepped out of the agency doors. It was cold, but barely noticeable in the agency-issued bodysuit she was in. It was made for the ease of movement and to moderate body heat. Seulgi and Irene walked up beside her.

For the past few days, the two oldest of the group had been uncharacteristically friendly to one another. She looked away. Watched the straight road that led from the agency to the city. Only one straight road for security purposes.

“Where are the others?”

“Wendy’s talking to Lee about something, Yeri said something about bread,” Seulgi said.

Joy rolled her eyes. She watched one of the agency’s garages slide smoothly up and a van back out. Their van. Then, a separate car. Presumably for Frost. The two vehicles stopped in front of the stairs leading up to the agency’s doors.

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