- Yoon Doojoon -

I didn’t know why I was decided to stay for a while outside Aegi’s apartment building. I was thinking that I was lucky to team up with Aegi’s team for this case. Somehow, her presence was giving me a morale support during a time like this. She often gave me a support when we had our small ‘fights’ during the cases. But, to have her on my side, it was a great support for me.

If the case can make us come closer, probably I can win her heart again.

I smiled with the thought and started my car’s engine. But it was possible to do. I always wished that I could reconcile again with her. Even though 3 years had passed by, I still loved her.

But that was just my selfish wish. I knew that I had to put the case on my top priority.

I drove my car away from her apartment.

As I drove, I took my handsfree earpiece. I needed to call Hyunseung and asked him about the funeral. I dialed his number and waited for him to pick up the phone. Hyunseung picked the call after few rings.

“Hyunseung, it’s me, Doojoon.” I told him. “How’s Mrs. Lee?”

“She’s keeping her self together,” Hyunseung said. “She’s stronger than we thought.”

I could hear some voices behind Hyunseung. I guessed it was the voices of the guests on the funeral home. Hyunseung was present there as a acquaintance of the Lee’s family, replacing Gikwang’s place since he was on the hospital right now.

“Good,” I said.

“How’s Gikwang?” Hyunseung asked.

“He has come out from the operation room. But he’s still unconscious. Junhyung is staying with him right now.”

“Mrs. Lee was asking a permission to see her son,” Hyunseung said. “I told her that I would need to speak with you first about it.” He paused again. “…since Gikwang is still unconscious.”

“I guess it will be fine. But we must wait until Gikwang awakes.”

“Yeah, I thought so too,” Hyunseung said. “And how’s the investigation?”

“Aegi and Yoseob are still working on it. But I asked Aegi to have a break for tonight so Yoseob can rest.”

I heard Hyunseung scoffed amusingly.

“Do you want Yoseob or Aegi who takes the break for tonight?” Hyunseung teased me.

I chuckled with the question. “Seriously, I want every members of my team not to overwork theirselves, including Aegi, Moon and Kyuri.”

“So, they are part of our team now?” He teased me again.

But before I could reply his words, I heard the incoming message tone on my phone. I looked at my phone and saw that I had received a message. I looked at the sender name and it was Aegi. I felt confused to see the name appreared on my phone's screen.

Probably because she was my girlfriend, I knew her habit. Aegi was rarely called me even though she knew my phone number very well. If she called me, it meant that she might have very urgent matters. But when it came to text or multimedia messages, Aegi had never used it to me. She might look patient whenever she took care of the cases. But she wasn't patient enough to wait for answers especially for cases. It was the reason why she never sent messages to anyone that connected or handled the cases with her. So, a message from her on my phone raised my suspiscious and curiousity.

Why does she send me a message?

Somehow, I felt it was weird. And, I couldn’t help but to feel that something bad had happened. So, I pulled my car over on the side of the street and stopped.

“Hyunseung, I’ll call you back later,” I told Hyunseung and cut off the line.

I took my phone off from its stand on my car’s dashboard and opened the message. It was a multimedia message with a picture attached on it. I scrolled down to see the picture.

But then, the picture was making my worry increased.

On the picture, I saw Aegi was lying unconscious on the floor. Her hands were tied on the back. From the carpet and floor behind her, I was guessing that it was her apartment. The carpet was familiar for me since Aegi was using the same carpet for the past 5 years on her own apartment. I scrolled down again and found a message on the bottom of the picture. The message was saying that I would need to come alone to a place where it was all started.

As I saw the message and the picture, I assumed that the message was personally addressed to me from Kang Heejoon and Pink Arjuna. I found that it was weird that they didn’t ask me to drop off the case or everything like that. They just wanted me to come to a place.

And they were taking Aegi which was meant that they knew if Aegi was someone special for me. I didn’t know why Kang Heejoon and Pink Arjuna knew about me. But somehow, they knew personally about me and my life. So, I guessed that they had investigated about me or even my team, including Aegi, Moon and Kyuri. If it was so, it meant that all of my team members would be in danger.

But what they didn’t know that I had never given up and I wouldn’t let them hurting my team members. So, probably I would need to face them by my self.

But then, I was thinking where I should be heading.

A place where it was all started.

It was a clue that they left for me. But if it was about me, then it must be a place where I was started something.

But what?

I released a sigh. If I was Aegi, she might solve the clue faster. But I wasn’t Aegi. So I took my time to think for a while.

I had nothing special about my past. I came from a normal family without any police background. I was interested to become a police officer since I was watching a show about Police officer when I was a child and thinking that the police officers were cool. But nobody knew about my reason to become a police officer. So I cast that thought aside.

Then I started to think about when I started the academy. At first, I joined a normal Police Academy before I was recruited to join the Special Force Academy. I met Aegi there. I was amazed by her talents. She was smart and beautiful. Her tactics and strategies were efficience and effective. Not to mention that she had medical education background before she joined the Special Force Academy. I was the best of my batch on the Police Academy. But, I became the second because of her on the Special Force Academy. She had raised my competition instinct and also my curiousity. But because of that, I became closer to her and we started to date.

Then, our first mission…

I stopped as something struck in my mind.

The place where it was all started.

I repeated the clue. Suddenly, I remembered the first time I and Aegi went to a field assignment. It was for investigating human trafficking case. We were undercovered as husband and wife who needed to smuggle out of the country. To make it all perfect and valid, we made legal documents to show that I was legally married to Aegi. I remembered that we were hiding on a storage house on the pier before they could smuggle people out of the country by boat. The Interpol broke in to the storage house before they could smuggle us. We started our chase for Pink Arjuna from that point.

Now, from what I knew, the storage house that Pink Arjuna had used before was released from Interpol’s custody after the case was closed. It was abandoned and unused until now. No one on Interpol or KSTF cared about that place anymore. But if you wanted to hide someone, that storage house was a perfect place to go.

I my car and drove away. I was heading to the pier where the storage house was located.

On the pier, I stopped my car outside the fence. I took my gun and made sure that it was loaded. I closed it and put it back on the holster. I came out from the car and went toward the fence. I jumped over the fence and walked toward the storage house. I hid my self to watch over the place.

As I thought before, the storage house was fixed and used. The electricity was occupied the building and I saw two or three guys were guarding outside the place. One of them went in while the others were still at their place.

I was sure that they were waiting for me. But I felt very reluctant to surrender my self to them. So, I needed to sneak my way in to find Aegi. Besides, I really wanted to know who the mastermind behind Aegi’s kidnapping was.

I walked tip-toeing toward the storage house under the dark parts so they wouldn’t see me. I immobilized the guys who were guarding the door when they were looking away. I did that bare-handed since I didn’t want to cause a ruckus. I was grateful that I mastered hand-to-hand combat on the academy. It was helpful a lot on my missions. And, I was proud of it since it was something that I could do better than Aegi.

After I brought the second guy down, I looked around and opened the door carefully then snuck in. I closed the door again.

Inside, I saw some guys were gathering on the room. They were talking and drinking while playing cards. I looked around. As long as I could remember, this storage house had a basement where they kept people. I was sure that they kept Aegi down there. If the recent Pink Arjuna didn’t change the place layout, I thought I knew where the door was. But then, to reach the place, I would need to go through the office part on the back of the storage house.

But then, something caught my eyes. A guy was carrying something on his shoulder from the office part. I was soon realized that the guy was carrying a person. Or, probably I should say that he was carrying an unconscious girl.

He came to his friends and put down the girl. That was when I found out that the unconscious girl was Aegi.

Actually, I didn’t want to surrender my self and rescued Aegi in silence. But then, when I saw Aegi in the middle of them with my own eyes, I started to worry that they might hurt her if I didn’t show up or if I resisted. To see Aegi in danger or hurting was something that I wanted to avoid the most. Even though I knew that Aegi could take care of her self very well, I would give up everything just to make sure that she was safe.

I released a sigh. Sometimes I wished that the target of my cases never knew anything about Aegi. But I guessed this case was a special case.

I took out my gun and hid it behind the box near the door. I couldn’t give up my gun to them. I might need it later so I knew where I could find it later. I exhaled again and prepared my self. I stood up and walked toward them.

“Hey!!” I shouted at them to gain their attention.

They were looking at me and quickly drew out their weapons. I stretched out my hands.

“You’re looking for me, aren’t you?”

One of them looked to a guy. “Tell boss that he’s here,” he said to the guy then he approached me and searched my body for weapons.

“I don’t bring any weapons,” I told him as he was searching my body.

Well, at least I didn’t lie completely at him. I was bringing a gun. But I hid it and didn’t bring it to see them. So, I just smirked when he got nothing. I looked at him.

“I’ve told you,” I said.

The guy seemed to piss.

“You got a lot of guts…”

The words made me turned to see who the one that talked. It was a guy and he was walking down the stairs from the second floor. I recognized the guy as Kang Heejoon.

“…to come here alone without any weapons,” he said as he stopped at the base of the stairs. He walked toward his men and stopped beside Aegi. He turned his gaze to Aegi. “I was told that she could bring you here. And it’s proven right.” Kang Heejoon looked back at me. “She’s a beautiful girl, you know.” He smirked.

I clenched my fist as I restrained my self. I was afraid that I could bring harm to Aegi if I fought. “I’m here now. So release her.”

“Release her?” He scoffed. “Both of you are the team leaders that go after our organization. So what made you think that I would release the two of you?”

“So why do you want me here?” I dared my self to ask.

But then, Kang Heejoon just smiled slightly. “I was told to keep you away from your team members.” He looked at his men. “Tie him up and put them on the basement. We will carry out the plan tomorrow.”

Then, two men held me and wanted to tie me. And something struck on my mind. Kang Heejoon said that he was told to keep me away from my team members or probably to keep both of me and Aegi away from our team members. It meant that they were planning something to harm our team. I couldn’t let it happened. My team members were my second family and I didn’t want to see them in danger as much as I didn’t want to see Aegi in danger. I looked back at Kang Heejoon. He wanted to walk away.

“Wait,” I said.

Kang Heejoon stopped and looked back at me.

“You said that you were told to keep me away from my team members,” I said. “Then what will you do to my team? And how about Aegi?”

Kang Heejoon looked at Aegi for a while then looked back at me. “You can say goodbye to her while you can,” he said as he smirked.

So, he was planned to keep only me away from my team members. He was planned to kill Aegi and also our team members. I didn’t know why he was planned to keep me alive and killed my team members. Probably it was because we were a hindrance for his crime. But then, even though I knew that I would have the biggest chance to survive, I couldn’t let him to kill Aegi or my team members.

So, at the moment, I fought back.

I escaped my self from the men who wanted to tie me. I took the gun and shot the other man. I turned and shot some guys that stood around Aegi. I also saw Kang Heejoon went away to cover himself.

“Get the girl!”

I heard him said. I looked back at Aegi and saw a guy dared himself to get Aegi. I tried to shoot but the bullets seemed to run off. I threw away the weapon and ran toward Aegi. He was reached Aegi before I did but I kicked the guy away from her. I tried to keep the enemies away from Aegi.

But then…

“Yoon Doojoon!”

I heard someone called my name. So, I turned to see him. As I looked at him, I saw that a guy was holding a gun that pointed onto Aegi’s head.

Damn, I was too busy to fight with them until I didn’t notice that someone was sneaking toward Aegi.

“Don’t resist or I’ll shoot her,” he said.

And with Aegi on his hands, I couldn’t do anything. So, I released my fighting stance and gave up. Then I felt someone was stood beside me. I looked around and saw Kang Heejoon throwing a fist to me. I was punched on my cheek. It made me stumbled. But then, Kang Heejoon grabbed my collar and pushed me to face him.

“You better be obedient or I’ll shoot your girl to death in the front of you right now.” Kang Heejoon was threatened me.

I clenched my teeth and my fist tightly. I couldn’t risk losing Aegi at this moment. So, I’d rather to give up now and thought about a plan to escape later.

But then, I wish that someone from my team will find out my distress signals.

From Author:

Sorry for taking a long time to think about this chapter. I already thought about this part in mind, but had a hard time to write. I hope you enjoy it now.

If you have twitter account, please feel free to follow me on @AFFalize_sakura. Feel free to comment there too ^^

Thank you for subscribing, reading and commenting to this fic~