Seulgi lingered in the doorway to the room that was too sparse to be Wendy’s, but there she sat nonetheless. Her deep brown eyes scanned the bare walls, the lone bag of belongings looking pitiful in the otherwise empty space.

Wendy waited for Seulgi to speak first, not knowing what her friend wanted to hear, not knowing whether to start an argument or an apology. Where would she begin, anyway?

After the high energy chase of yesterday, the girls had retreated to separate quarters without a word—Wendy had assumed Seulgi had gone to her own home after meeting with Joy, but from the slightly disheveled look of her hair and creases on her shirt, perhaps Wendy was wrong.

“Hey,” the woman eventually said.

Wendy let out a puff of air, corner of pulling up. “Hey.”

Seulgi clasped, then unclasped her hands. Opened , closed it. She looked at the ceiling and shook her head--and Wendy deeply wished she’d known what Seulgi was struggling to say. “Can I come in?” Seulgi asked instead, using her shoulder to push herself off the side jamb.

Wendy nodded mutely, offering her the desk chair.

“So,” Seulgi said.

Wendy nodded, but Seulgi did not continue. “So.” A few more moments passed in tense silence.

“This is painful,” Seulgi sighed. The chair squeaked gently under her weight. “This isn’t us.”

Now there was a truth. “How are you?” Wendy asked, in lieu of a reply.

Seulgi shrugged. “Confused. A bit excited. I don’t know. This is a lot.”

She nodded, forming her sentences slowly and carefully. “Are you sure you want to do this? I don’t know these women, Seulgi. I don’t know if they’re trustworthy.”

Her friend furrowed her brow, looking too young and kind-hearted to be where she was, doing what she was doing. “I think they are.”

“Seulgi…”

“I just have a good feeling about this,” she insisted. “I slept on the couch last night. Here. In this house.”

Wendy’s brows raised. “Why?”

Seulgi shrugged, running her fingers around the grooved design of the armrest. “I think I can trust them, that’s all.”

Can I still trust you? It went unspoken, a mere echo of Wendy’s insecurities, but it hurt as much as if Seulgi had spoken the words.

“I think you’re just more jaded now,” Seulgi continued, slowly. “You have the mind of a mercenary, but I know you. You have the heart of a hero. The years haven’t changed you that much, Seungwan.”

“I’m sorry,” Wendy whispered, throat constricting. “Seulgi, I’m sorry that—“

Seulgi shook her head. “Don’t. It’s okay.”

“No, listen, I’m sorry. I thought it would protect you if you didn’t know. I didn’t want you to get involved. I didn’t want you to…” Wendy breathed deeply. “Change. I didn’t want us to change.”

Seulgi offered a small smile, punching Wendy gently. “But here I am.”

“Here you are,” Wendy echoed, voice weaker than she would’ve liked to admit.

Seulgi looked at the ceiling, inhaling deeply before saying, “Really—I really, really believed for a moment that you were gone. It wasn’t fair.”

“I’m here,” Wendy said, wishing she weren’t so eternally grateful to have her closest friend back in her life. She was being selfish, and she knew it. “and if you’re in, I guess I’m not leaving.”

Seulgi let out a laugh, sniffling slightly. “Sounds like we went through a rough breakup.”

“If breakups involved guns and getaway vehicles and two other women,” Wendy laughed, doing a quick wipe under her eyes. “Speaking of which… Your driving,” Wendy stated, question dangling in the air. “You’ve done this before.”

Seulgi scrunched her face a little, suddenly becoming a small child being reprimanded for stealing cookies after dark. ”Ah… Street racing,” she explained, equal parts confession and apology. “It was an easy way to get a lot of money.”

“Street racing,” Wendy echoed, a pure deadpan. “Did I hear you correctly?”

Her friend scratched her cheek, pulling her feet under her. “It was an accident! I was just walking home from work a few months ago, but took a detour because of the construction on main street, right, and ran into a bunch of guys…” Seulgi trailed off for a moment. “I knew one of them, he lives in my apartment complex, and so I asked him what was going on.”

Wendy paused. “That’s not… the end of the story, is it? There’s a difference between stumbling into a underground ring and becoming its reigning champion.”

Seulgi laughed at that, rubbing the back of her neck. “That… well, some… some absolute germ said I was too pretty to be walking alone at night, and… I didn’t want them to think that was fine to say to a girl, and I don’t much like the guy that lives near me anyway...” she trailed off.

Wendy stared, waiting for a punchline.

“Well,” Seulgi went on, “so I said ‘I’m doing fine on my own, thank you very much,’ and they said something like ‘Prove it,’ and…” She shrugged. “So I got in one of the cars and won, I guess. And then I kept coming back.”

Wendy blinked, eyes watering from staring too long. “You’re joking. You are pulling my leg right now. There is no way.”

Seulgi shrugged, sheepish. “What else was I supposed to do?”

“You’re serious! You really--accidentally--got into illegal street racing because some guy bugged you. You couldn’t have told him to buzz off, like a normal girl?” Wendy kicked the armrest of the desk chair, causing Seulgi to spin towards her.

“I didn’t know! I didn’t even know it was illegal until about a month ago,” she cried, slapping away Wendy’s foot. “I just know they gave me a lot of money for it, and I guess I was pretty good. It got the boys off my back, anyway.”

Wendy smiled weakly, trying a joke. “You didn't know it was illegal? I mean, sure, I’d be humiliated too, getting beat by a rookie like you.”

Seulgi rolled her eyes, her smile betraying her. “Well, it got me here, anyway. That’s the story, you’re all caught up on the life of Kang Seulgi.” She finally met Wendy’s eyes. “So what about you?”

And for once, without restraint, Wendy pushed back the curtain of her life, telling Seulgi about the jobs she’d done for years, the people she had met, and her final decision to quit. Nothing was held back--not even the first botched job (not her fault) or the time she nearly got caught by local authorities (also not her fault). She stuttered her way through explaining meeting Bae Joohyun again after all these years--her confusion, her hesitation. The only thing she refrained from mentioning were her thoughts on Joohyun herself.

To her credit, Seulgi was the perfect audience, gasping and laughing in all the right places. In some sort of twisted way, Wendy recounting her double life was the closest to feeling “like old times” as she had ever felt. It was nice.

But, Wendy thought, she would sooner be caught dead than thanking Irene for reuniting the two of them.

Later, when Bae Joohyun asked Wendy to follow her, she expected one of the other women to eventually join them. By the time she slid into her car and Irene closed the door on the other side, a knot began twisting in her stomach--from what, she wasn’t sure.

“Where did you say we were headed?”

Irene didn’t even spare a glance at her, which was somewhere between offensive and completely expected. “I didn’t, I suppose.”

Her knuckles turned white, seams of the leather steering wheel leaving shallow imprints on her fingers. She risked a glance at the woman. The car engine roared to life. “Why don’t you ever just answer my questions?”

There was silence, for a moment, and while Wendy was far from dropping the matter, she had already acknowledged she wasn’t going to win this time. Perhaps she wasn’t bound to understand Irene, and—really, what did it matter? One last job. Local mastermind Bae Joohyun could brood or plot all she wanted after Wendy was long gone, paycheck in hand.

“I wouldn’t want to say the wrong thing,” came the quiet, nearly imagined reply.

“That sounds like a regret, not a reason.”

Irene’s eyes held fast to the road ahead, impassive. Her voice became thin, a house of cards balanced precariously on a crooked foundation. “Those can be the same thing.”

They both knew that wasn’t an answer at all. A single puff of air could bring the whole house down, she thought. What was to be learned from knocking down the structure? Wendy had a sneaking suspicion that the card back would be printed on both sides, and she would still walk away with nothing new gained.

“We’re picking up Yerim,” Irene added in the silence—as close to a surrender as Wendy figured she would ever get. “Just us.”

It didn’t matter to Wendy what thoughts went through Irene’s mind, or what regrets ran so deep through her core. It shouldn’t have, anyway.

When Wendy found herself pulling into a quaint diner on the side of the highway, she gave Irene a questioning glance.

“I told her to meet us here after class. She’s already inside, I imagine.”

The snow crunched under her boots as Wendy got out of her car, beginning to dust a fine layer over her windshield. She moved to grab the front door of the diner, stopped by Irene’s hand on her arm.

“And Seungwan, don’t scare her off, please,” Irene added, and was she--amused?

Wendy looked down at the point of contact, stopping all of her movements. “Did I look like I was going to?”

Irene dropped her hand to her side, actually letting out a puff of air through her nose. Wendy was startled--Irene was laughing. “Yes, actually. Your neutral expression is far more friendly than this. Relax, Seungwan. Kim Yerim prefers to work in a more laid-back environment.”

“I can be laid-back,” Wendy argued quietly as the bell above them rung, announcing their entrance. Coffee and butter attacked her senses in the most pleasant and familiar way possible, feeling nostalgic and homey all at once. Perhaps Wendy could come back here, after all this.

“And I’m positive you do that excellently in other circles of your life,” Irene murmured. Her eyes scanned the room before she looped her arm through Wendy’s and pulled her to a small booth near the windows, leaving Wendy wondering at what point they were on arm-linking terms.

“Bae Joohyun,” she was saying, offering her right hand to a young girl sipping away at a milkshake with her shirt tucked into a high-waisted poodle skirt. She was the picture of teenage culture, and Wendy was wary of it all.

Irene slid into the booth, letting go of Wendy. “Thanks for coming out here to meet us.”

Suddenly, Wendy realized Irene hadn’t given her a script—she hadn’t even received instructions. She was simply an accessory Irene had worn along, and she suddenly felt self-conscious of herself. Why would Irene bring her and not the rest of the group?

“And this is Wendy,” Irene was saying. At the acknowledgement, Wendy gave a two- salute as she slid in next to Irene. She cleared uncomfortably.

The girl picked the red-and-white striped straw out of her disposable cup, pointing the end at the ceiling. “Yeri,” the girl offered, saluting Wendy back with her empty hand, “and I’m only here because you—“ she pointed her straw at Irene, leaving drips on the table—“said this was gonna be fun.”

Fun? That was not the first word that came to Wendy’s mind. Irene had thrown words like morals and integrity at her when they had met.

“I think you’ll have few regrets about joining us,” Irene said, smiling more sincerely than Wendy had seen. It was easier to ignore that when she kept her eyes across the table instead of next to her.

“Velvet Agencies. I haven’t heard of you guys before. You guys don’t look like crooks.” Yeri paused for beat, considering. She pointed her straw back at Irene. “Actually, well, you kind of do. Am I getting kidnapped right now?”

This girl was certainly a character. “By all means, don’t hold back. Tell us what you really mean, Yeri,” Wendy said, bemused.

“Plus, is it just you two?” Yeri asked, scrunching her nose. “No offense meant, but you both seem pretty boring.”

Irene gave Wendy a sidelong glance, saying either ‘what do we do with her?’ or ‘see why I chose her?’ and Wendy had no idea which she meant.

“I think you’ll get along with our friend Sooyoung just perfectly, actually,” Irene replied. Her eyes were sparkling with amusement. The use of the word our before friend seemed rather generous to Wendy, but she kept mum.

Then Irene snapped her fingers, putting a frown on her lips. “Ah, see, but she’s back at the house. If you’d like to learn more, we have to go somewhere... else.” Irene glanced behind her, eyeing the decrepit old man sitting alone three tables over. She scooted to Wendy’s end of the seat--and Wendy quickly scrambled off the bench before Irene came too close and let her stand.

The man in question had not so much as been a blip on her radar--Wendy hadn’t been remotely concerned about him. He must have been near eighty years old, skin and tweed jacket sagging equally. The food fell off his fork before it reached his mouth, landing squarely in his lap. The man didn’t seem to notice.

Yeri also stared at the man, narrowing her eyes. “Fine. I’ll come with, hear you guys out. That’s not an agreement yet, by the way, so don’t quote me on that. Just don’t sell me to the cops. Or a creep. But mostly the cops.”

Irene nodded, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Excellent. With that, I have to make a call. Seungwan, take her to the car in a few minutes. Grab a bite to eat, if you want. I’ll meet you two out there.” And like that, she was gone, heading to the phone booth off the side of the parking lot. Wendy watched her enter the booth, turning herself to face away from the diner.

“So,” Yeri drawled, sticking the straw back into her cup. “How long’s she gonna be?”

Wendy shrugged, dragging her eyes back to the girl. “As long as she wants.” Frowning, she rapped her fingers against the glass top of the table. She thought her memory would jog at the sight of the girl, but she was still pulling a blank on why Kim Yerim was familiar to her. “Do I know you?” Wendy asked.

Yeri chewed on her bottom lip, eyes searching the ceiling. “I don’t think I’d know someone like you. Why?”

An unnecessary jab, but Wendy ignored it. There was no way she would have been tasked with or by this girl on the job, but--"Oh, Kim Yerim! I remember now.” She felt a rush of victory despite the irrelevance of the epiphany. "You were at the top of your class last year, weren't you?"

Yeri gave a bark of laughter, spinning her now-empty cup between her hands. "That's what you know me for? I never even went to class."

"It was on the radio a few months ago," she added, trailing off. Folding her arms, she had to give Irene more credit. The woman knew how do to her research. “Still, you’re an odd choice. Why would she pick you?”

Yeri squinted, looking more her age than ever. “Why would she pick you ? She’s clearly the brains and the beauty, so you must be the brawn. And you don’t look all that impressive.”

If she weren’t so busy fighting down irritation, she might have been fighting down a smile. If Yeri’s hands were as quick as her wit, perhaps Irene had picked well. “You are treading on some thin ice, kiddo,” Wendy warned, threat entirely empty.

The girl laughed. “You’re one to talk.” Wendy’s eyes followed the point of Yeri’s straw, looking once again at the phone booth. “Did you shove the pole up her , or is she just like that?”

Wendy actually snorted at that one. “Your guess is as good as mine. She’s probably waiting for us, anyway. Let’s go.”

Yeri gave a long ah, dragging the vowel for longer than strictly necessary. She made no effort to move. “I get it.”

Wendy pursed her lips. A second passed, and Wendy’s wristwatch ticked loudly. She shifted her weight. “Okay, I’ll bite. What?”

“You are absolutely whipped for her.”

She was thankful she wasn’t drinking anything, because she would have spit it out. She still coughed, which certainly wasn’t helping her case. The professional side of her was bewildered at her own actions. “Excuse me?”

Yeri smirked, honest-to-god smirked with all the confidence in the world. “Right? Am I right? I’m so right.”

“That is not how this operation works, Kim Yerim.” Flabbergasted was a weak word for how she felt at the moment.

“Oh, oh, it’s one of those strictly professional kinds of things, huh? That’s a shame.” Yeri finally slid out of her seat, tossing her cup in the trash. “For you, anyway.” And with that, she stalked off to the phone booth, throwing her hand up in a peace sign as she went through the diner’s front door.

One of these days, Wendy dreamed of catching a break. Lord knows she hadn’t gotten one since the moment her empty coffin settled in the ground, when Joohyun waltzed back into her life.

Seulgi, to say the least, was surprised when Yeri walked in the door behind Irene. She closed the file in her hands, tilting her head. “Who’s this?” she wondered, no malice in her voice.

Wendy opened to speak, but Yeri beat her to it. “Yeri. What do you do around here?”

Surprised, Seulgi glanced at Wendy, then Joy. “I--um--”

“She drives,” Irene supplemented, somehow encouragingly. “Fast.”

For what it was worth, Yeri gave Seulgi another once-over, wrinkles in her brow smoothing. She clapped her hand on Irene's shoulder. “That’s the most exciting thing you’ve said all day. If I agree to help, would I get to try driving?”

“No,” Wendy said, as Irene said, “Absolutely not.”

“Lame.” Without prompting, the girl wandered the house, flipping through various stacks of paper shamelessly. The other women looked around at each other silently, not entirely sure how to approach the girl.

“Anyway, I guess I’ll help you guys.”

Wendy blinked. “What? Why? We haven’t even told you anything yet. You have no idea what we want. You don’t even know who we are.”

Yeri picked up the file with her own photo taped to the front, running her thumb under the flap of the folder. She stepped around the small dining table, fascinated. “Yeah, well.” There was a noncommittal shrug as she flipped it open. Her eyes scanned the page. “You seem to know plenty about me, so let’s start evening that out.”