[http://daematos.tumblr.com/post/153224376893]

Yongguk adjusted his tie before looking at himself in the mirror. The heavy navy blue blazer, which he used to wear with pride, now felt like it was weighing him down. He hadn’t been eating and sleeping well, and no matter how smart the uniform looked, it couldn’t take the attention away from his gaunt cheeks and the bags under his eyes. His eyes trailed over the badges that decorated his chest. While he used to collect each one as if his identity and self-worth depended on it, the colorful little flags now held no meaning.

“You feeling okay?” a small voice asked beside him, and Yongguk turned his head to see Doojoon standing two lockers down from him, giving him a strange look.

Yongguk shrugged half-heartedly. He couldn’t exactly define the feelings he had lately, but ‘okay’ didn’t really seem to fit in any of the categories. He swung between extreme pain and complete numbness, but never in between. He pulled a manila envelop out of the locker before closing the door. Neither men missed the large print on the front of it that read ‘Disciplinary Committee’.

“You did a good thing,” Doojoon said nervously. “They need to carry out the investigation because of protocol, but you’re the star of the force right now. You pulled off the biggest bust in recent history. You just need to apologize, tell them what they want to hear, and they’ll let you off the hook in a heartbeat.”

Yongguk turned to look at the other man again, and he figured out what Doojoon’s strange expression was motivated by; it was pity, mixed with some semblance of guilt. Yongguk almost scoffed. They weren’t friends. There was no reason for Doojoon to talk down to him like that.

He merely let out a grunt of acknowledgement before smoothing his hair down and putting his hat on. Without making another comment, he exited the locker room.

The walk to the conference room was long. As he made his way down the corridor, his leather shoes clicking on the cold linoleum floor, he was conscious of all the eyes that were on him. They were all staring while pretending that they weren’t. A few lower-ranked officers saluted him as they passed, but Yongguk paid no attention. He didn’t feel much compulsion to. He’d imbibed enough alcohol in the past days that his body didn’t feel like it was his. He felt like a spectator outside of the body of Officer Bang that was now walking down the corridor.

He’d just reached the gray double doors beyond which his fate would lie when someone stepped in front of him to block his path. A hand reached out to hold his forearm, and Yongguk slowly looked downwards at it before looking up at the face of its owner.

Senior Inspector Kang Minsik. Soon-to-be Section Chief Kang.

“I saw the questions,” Kang said in a hushed voice. “They’re all in your favor. You just need to say the politically correct things and apologize for any oversight or negligence. After all, this was your first undercover mission, and Ji Eun was an inexperienced handler, so some of the processes may have been a bit unclear to you. A lot of times, you had to work within the constraints of the gang, or risk blowing your cover. At the end of the day, you took down the Black Dragon. Play your cards right and you can still get your promotion.”

It was funny. A year and a half ago, when Kang had put forth the idea of a promotion, it had seemed like an incentive. Right now, it meant nothing to him. Absolutely nothing.

Yongguk shook off his hand and wordlessly opened the door in front of him.

He hadn’t felt much lately, so he was a little surprised when he felt intimidated by the aura of the room. There was a long table at the far end, at which three men sat. Their blazers, decorated with rows and rows of flags, indicated their seniority. Their grim expressions displayed how reluctant they must have been to spend a day out of the office, trying to keep an errant junior in check. Yongguk saluted them, and they gestured for him to sit. His seat was a single chair, placed some distance in front of the table. He felt strangely exposed, with nothing in front of him to shield him from their scrutinizing gazes. He removed his hat and placed it in his lap, folding his hands over it.

As they read out the procedures of the hearing and the code of conduct, Yongguk meekly listened and nodded. The principles of the police force that he used to believe in no longer resonated with him. After all that he’d experienced, he knew now that they were just hollow ideals. They’d been drilled to believe that their jobs were to uphold justice and to always do what was right for the people, but nobody ever taught him that justice took many forms, and that there were varying definitions of right and wrong.

“On the 25^th of November, 2014, at approximately a quarter past midnight, there was a fire at a drug storage facility in Sam Cheon Po. Were you, or were you not involved in the arson and subsequent altercation with two policemen who were on duty?”

Yongguk could remember that incident. It felt like a lifetime ago. It was the first time he’d had to come face to face with police officers in his new identity, and he’d struggled internally about having to go against them even though they were on the same side. However, his moral dilemma quickly disappeared when he saw Nara in danger. He wasn’t proud of it, but it hadn’t take him much to decide that his old allegiances held lower priority.

It was also the night that he’d asked her to be his girlfriend. He’d been struggling with his feelings for a while at that time, because he knew that he wasn’t supposed to really feel anything for her, and that was the night that he knew for sure that he was doomed.

“I was.”

“Were you conscious that your actions were against the law, and did you take any precautions to ensure that no civilians were harmed by your actions?”

Yongguk wanted to laugh. He’d watched so many people get harmed by the actions of gangsters and the police alike, and nobody seemed to care then. Did he have to take responsibility for that now?

“Yes, I was,” he answered quietly, his head bowed. “However, I had to comply in order to maintain my cover. There were no civilians present when the fire started.”

As lame an answer as it sounded to him, that seemed to satisfy the disciplinary committee. One of the officers cleared his throat and moved on to the next question.

“From the 12^th of January 2015 to the 28^th of April 2015, you left the country and were out of contact with your handler for the entire duration. You also did not keep a detailed and regular log of your activities in Thailand. You not only failed to abide by protocol, you could have potentially jeopardized your own safety and compromised the entire operation. Can you explain why?”

Whenever he thought back about the past year, he always remembered that time he’d spent with Nara in Thailand as the happiest time in his life. Since there was no way for him to get in contact with his superiors, he’d spent that time living selfishly, as if he really did not have a care in the world. All the stress that plagued him in Korea went away when he set foot in Thailand. If he could, he would have stayed there with Nara forever and just disappeared from his old life. If he had, maybe Nara would still be alive. Maybe he wouldn’t be as miserable as he was.

He swallowed hard, hesitating as the pain in his heart started to spread and consume him again. “I… I was sent there as punishment,” he said slowly. “I didn’t have my own phone, and I was contacted through the landline when there were instructions for me. I had gang members around me at all times. There was no way I could have contacted my handler or kept a log without raising suspicion.”

“30^th of April, 2015. The violent gang fight at a warehouse in Namyangju, in which another undercover officer died…”

Jang Hyun Seung. He’d always remember his name. The first person he’d killed. In a strange twist of fate, it was another police officer.

Was this the beginning of his fall? Probably. He remembered feeling like his entire world was crashing around him. Before then, he hadn’t considered that he’d have to kill anyone. Sure, he’d fought alongside the gang, and he’d done a lot of other illegal things for them, but he’d thought that he had a line he wouldn’t cross. He didn’t know at the time that the man was another officer, but he wasn’t going to shoot anyway. He’d only pulled the trigger in a momentary bout of panic, when the man had shot Nara. At that moment, all he could feel was fear at the thought of losing her, and he was blinded by a strong desire to protect Nara. Even on hindsight, he still wasn’t sure if he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t fully understand the situation. Maybe he didn’t know who she was because he was on his own mission with the Red Eagles. Did he have a plan? Would he have arrested her? Or had he gone off the deep end like Yongguk? Would he have killed her and gone on pretending he was a Red Eagle? There was no way to find out.

His mind swimming, Yongguk chose to lie. It had been chaotic. Nobody had to know that he’d shot the guy.

“2^nd of May, 2015. You made an anonymous phone call to report a drink-driving incident…”

He lied again.

“7^th of May, 2015. Your safe house was compromised…”

And again.

“8^th of May, 2015. The identities of two other undercover officers were compromised…”

That’s right – nobody knew what had happened to Ji Eun and Butler Lee. Their bodies were never recovered, so they were still classified as missing persons. He was sure everyone on the force who knew about the operation knew how they had ended up, but nobody wanted to talk about it. Nobody was going to take responsibility for the mistake that cost two officers’ lives. The two of them were not going to be honored for the sacrifices that they’d made, and they were going to disappear like they never existed so as not to tarnish the reputation of the police.

That was when Yongguk knew that he’d had enough.

“They’re dead,” he said, interrupting an officer in the middle of reading out the case. The three men had been monotonously reading off the scripts in front of them, expecting him to deliver politically correct answers, but at his sudden declaration, all three of them looked up and stared at him in shock.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“They’re dead,” Yongguk repeated hollowly. “They were caught and tortured by the Black Dragon’s Yakuza allies. There was no way they could have survived. I shot them both because it was the most merciful option. The Yakuza guys dumped their bodies at sea.”

There was a minute of shocked silence before one of them finally spoke up.

“Officer Bang… do you understand the severity of what you have just said? Why have you not reported this earlier?”

At this, Yongguk felt all the feelings of anger and injustice that he’d been suppressing rise to the surface, boiling over uncontrollably. “Do I understand the severity? Two people died and I was forced to kill them with my own hands! You’re asking me if I understand the severity? Of what? Of breaking the goddamn rules?” he asked, his eyes blazing. “With all due respect, do you know the severity of what this entire operation has done to me? To those two officers? To tens and hundreds of other lives who have been lost in the process of this game? Every day I spent was filled with fear, wondering when my lies would be exposed. Every second was spent trying to survive. Do you think I had time to think about which rules I was breaking? When every decision I made could cost another person on whichever side of the law his life, do you think I had the bloody code of conduct going through my mind?”

“Officer Bang, I need you to calm down…”

Yongguk found himself getting to his feet, his hat falling to the ground as he did so. “Calm down?” he exclaimed, his voice raising as he got more agitated. He could feel himself start to shake with rage. “Am I supposed to sit here and apologize for all these rules that I’ve neglected when I don’t believe in a single one of them? I’m so sick of all this bull! Yes, I ed up. I made a lot of bad decisions that compromised the operation, and I started acting more like a gangster than a cop, but how else was I supposed to act? How else was I supposed to think and feel and behave, when it was so difficult to distinguish what was right or wrong? When I saw things that were unjust happening to the gangsters, or when I saw the cops doing things that weren’t right, was I supposed to stand there and just blindly play my part?”

“As a police officer, you are an enforcer of the law…”

“But even the police twist the law to their own advantage!” Yongguk pointed out. “Is it just for me to assume another identity in order to deceive and betray a group of people in the worst way possible? Is it just to send a man to live with a family for 20 years and expect him not to feel attached to them? Is it just that we instigate two rival gangs to massacre each other in order to achieve our agenda? We say we are enforcers of the law, but we are just gangsters in uniform. We’re monsters masquerading as heroes.”

“Officer Bang, you sound like you have not yet fully recovered from the mental strain of the operation. We can adjourn this hearing.”

“There’s no need to adjourn the hearing,” Yongguk stated. “I stand by everything I said, so go ahead and charge me.” He bent down to pick up his hat before turning to leave the room. “By the way, if you were going to ask about Choi Nara’s escape at her father’s funeral, I let her go. She was right in front of me, holding her hands out for me to cuff her, but I let her go. It was the most humane thing I’ve done in the past one and a half years.”

“Officer Bang, are you aware that if you walk out of this room right now—”

He didn’t stay to hear the rest of the sentence. With a loud slam, he allowed the door to close on his last chance at salvaging what was left of his old life.

“What are you doing, Himchan hyung?”

Himchan looked up from his laptop to see Junhong poking his head into his room. “Nothing much,” he answered with a smile. “Just taking stock of damages.”

Junhong entered the room and stood behind Himchan, looking over his shoulder at the screen. It was just CCTV footage of random places that he didn’t recognize. In some of the windows, he could see uniformed police officers searching rooms.

“You still have access to the cameras?” he asked curiously. He’d thought that the gang had gone down and they’d lost everything, but judging from how Himchan had been cooped up in his room, seemingly hard at work, ever since they’d arrived at Daejeon, he must have been mistaken.

Himchan nodded. “We set up the security company ourselves. We financed lots of legal companies. The police can’t possibly find all of them and shut them down.”

Junhong nodded. “So, what happens to the rest of the gang that weren’t caught?”

“They’re laying low for now,” Himchan answered. “I’m trying to get in touch with some of them, but I have to be cautious in case I lead the police to us.”

“So they’re still going to be working for the gang?”

Himchan shrugged. “Well, kinda, I guess? The business doesn’t stop just because the heads are gone; it’ll just continue on a smaller scale. There’s still going to be a demand for illegal goods no matter what. Now that our supply chain has a dent in it, it’s just going to push up the prices. Whoever is still there working the ground will just have to stick it out and be more resourceful. Like I said, the police can’t find everything. We still have enough goods going around in the market, and we still have allies. A strong organization doesn’t just fall once its leadership is removed.”

“That’s a relief,” Junhong said. Over the time that he’d been working in the gang, he’d formed many friendships. He’d hate to think that they’d all be lost with no means of making a living without the leaders.

He lay down on Himchan’s bed as the elder man went back to work. He was bored. Back in Seoul, he had friends that he could hang out with, and if he wanted to be alone, he could go to the Han River and skateboard. Daehyun had promised him that they’d get him a new board once they had time to go shopping, but till then, he didn’t have much to keep him entertained. He missed having Jongup to play video games with. He wondered how his hyungs were doing in prison. Thinking about them made him sad.

“Hyung, do you think we can ever visit Jongup hyung and Youngjae hyung in prison?” he mused aloud.

Himchan paused for a moment before answering without turning his head. “No. It’s too risky. Everyone will know who they are, and any guests will raise suspicion.”

“Won’t they be lonely if no one visits them?”

Himchan sighed. “They’re strong. They’ll make it. Besides, they won’t be in there for long. We have good lawyers, and the prosecution doesn’t have a strong case against them. The sentence won’t go beyond ten years.”

Junhong frowned. “Ten years is a long time.”

“Not for all the things we’ve done.”

Junhong swung his legs back and forth as he thought about Himchan’s words. He supposed the way they had chosen to make a living was one that few people could understand and accept. It wasn’t that he didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong. He just didn’t see any other way he could have done any better. “Will we ever go back to Seoul? Back to the Black Dragon?”

“That’s the plan,” Himchan answered. “We can’t just let everything we’ve built just go down like that. We can rise again, when nobody expects us to. That’s why we can’t let go of all our people yet. Besides, we still have Nara. She’s officially our leader now.”

“But now that she’s um… pregnant, won’t that change things?”

Even just looking at Himchan’s back, Junhong could see him visibly tensing up. He turned to face Junhong. “That doesn’t change things. It just means that we need to be more supportive so that we can help her cope with her additional burdens.”

Junhong bit his lip. “But what if she doesn’t want to go back anymore? What if she’s done with the whole thing? After all, it’s only brought her so much pain.”

Himchan’s expression turned dark and Junhong could tell that he’d hit a nerve. It was clear that Himchan had thought about that too. “She doesn’t have a choice. It’s her father’s legacy. If she doesn’t want to do it, she has to hand over the leadership to someone else that the remaining elders agree with.” He knew what the late Chairman had written in his will, so he knew that the next successor was himself, but he had no intention of revealing that to anyone. He didn’t want it for himself; he was going to do everything he could to make sure Nara could sit in that spot comfortably.

“Some way or another, no matter how long it takes, we will rise again.”

Daehyun hummed to himself leisurely as he unwrapped a slice of cheese to put in his sandwich. He looked up as he heard someone stomping down the hallway towards the kitchen, just in time to see a furious Nara approaching.

“Hey, you want a sandwich?” he asked, but she ignored him as she stormed through in a blur of curses, her hair flying. He stared after her curiously as she opened the back door and exited the house, letting the door shut with a loud slam.

He blinked. What was with her? Deciding it was one of her pregnancy mood swings, he shrugged and returned his attention to his sandwich. He’d just picked it up and was about to take a bite when a series of loud bangs startled him, causing him to drop his sandwich.

Gunshots!

As soon as he realized this, he dropped to the ground and covered his head, his pulse racing. Had they been discovered? Then, his heart sank. Nara! Panicking, he forced himself to his feet, stumbling towards the door. He’d just pulled the door open when he came face to face with Nara, tears streaking down her cheeks and a gun in her hand.

“What the hell?” he exclaimed. “Are you okay?” He looked above her shoulder, scanning the backyard, but there was nobody there. Then, he spotted a large tree with chunks of its bark stripped off and what looked like bullet holes in its trunk. “Was that you?”

Nara said nothing, merely slinking back into the house before her legs buckled and she collapsed to the floor, leaning against the side of the kitchen island.

Daehyun knelt in front of her, putting a hand to his chest. “Christ, you scared the hell out of me.” He reached out and slowly took the gun out of her hand. “You really need to find another way to manage your anger.” He was glad that Himchan and Junhong were out of the house on a grocery run. He was sure they would have freaked out and over-reacted. Strangely, he seemed to be the only one who could keep up with Nara’s emotions. “What’s wrong?”

Nara curled up, hugging her knees and closing her eyes. “I’m just so sick of feeling so sick all the time,” she groaned. “It’s all your fault. You convinced me to keep this baby and it hates me.”

“It doesn’t hate you,” Daehyun said, sitting down in front of her. “Morning sickness is just a phase that all pregnant women go through.”

“But I feel giddy and nauseous 24-7,” Nara protested. “And I read up. Not everyone has it this bad. I don’t think I’m meant to have this child. It must be like this because it was conceived out of lies and not love.” She looked hopefully at Daehyun. “Maybe it’s not too late to get an abortion?”

Daehyun’s eyes went to her tummy, which was starting to be visibly rounder. “It’s probably not too late,” he agreed. “But is that what you really want?”

“I don’t know,” Nara admitted. “At times, I feel like it’s alive, you know? I feel like we can sense each other and I feel this urge to bring it into this world and love it and see it grow. But then, I keep wondering if I’m being selfish, because I’d just be bringing it into a world filled with pain and uncertainty. I’m not sure I can even keep the three of you alive, much less try to raise another person.”

“Okay, firstly, we don’t need you to keep us alive,” Daehyun corrected her. “The four of us are family, and we’re going to work as a team to make sure we rebuilt what we lost. Secondly, who says you’d be bringing a child into a world of pain? I’m sure you’re going to love it with all your heart, and it’s going to have three awesome uncles. Five, when Jongup and Youngjae are released. It’s going to be the luckiest kid in the world.”

“You think so?” Nara asked uncertainly.

“I know so,” Daehyun answered firmly. “Stop doubting yourself. You’re going to be a great mother.” He grimaced. “But please stop crying. You look hideous when you cry. No kid can love a mother that looks like this.”

“Ya!” Nara smacked him, but she cracked a smile.

“When was the last time you went for a check-up anyway? Maybe a doctor can give you something for this all-day sickness. I’ll come with you.”

Nara groaned at the memory of the last time he’d accompanied her to a gynecologist. “No way. I’m not letting you anywhere near a women’s clinic.”

“I swear I’m not going to freak out again,” he insisted, holding up his hand. “As long as you don’t mention abortions.”

Nara laughed. “You’re an idiot, Jung Daehyun.”

It was a relief to see her laughing. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen this sight. Grinning, Daehyun rolled his eyes dramatically. “You’re the idiot. You nearly gave me a heart attack, and you made me drop my sandwich! I don’t care, you’re making me another one!”

Nara stared, entranced at the screen before her. She’d seen it before on TV, but experiencing it in real life was completely different. It felt surreal.

“You see this?” the doctor said, pointing to a slight movement on the screen. “That’s the baby’s heartbeat.”

Nara couldn’t hold back her smile as she looked at her two companions. Both Daehyun and Junhong had the same look of amazement on their faces.

The doctor moved the ultrasound scanner and pointed at the screen. “I think the fetus is big enough for you to tell the gender.” She smiled at Nara. “Congratulations, it’s a boy.”

Nara couldn’t find the words to describe the wave of emotions that swept over her. Although it didn’t really matter to her, seeing her child on screen and knowing that it had a gender, that it had some form of identity, strengthened her bond towards it. It made her want to love and protect it for the rest of her life.

“We’re having a boy,” Junhong said in awe. As if having two men with her in the examination room didn’t already raise eyebrows, that statement made the nurse and doctor give each other a strange look, but for the first time, Nara didn’t care what others thought of her. Her child wasn’t going to have a father, but he would be the most loved child in the world.

“Yes, we are,” she said, beaming at Junhong and Daehyun. “We’re having a boy.”