It was getting late, the coffee machine was broken, and Kris was in an altogether foul mood.

“Why does this guy send so much mail?” he grumbled to himself, rubbing at his eyes. "I just want to go to bed early, is that too much to ask?"

After successfully hacking into Korea Post’s online database, no small feat itself, he was now struggling to sift through the haystack of sent mail records. Kim Jongdae, apparently quite the Luddite, sent more snail mail than the average Korean citizen, and Luhan wanted Kris not only to find the Fifth Tunnel correspondences, but also to check all Jongdae’s correspondences in the last year for any link to Jade Dragon.

So far, he’d found mail addressed to Brazil, Taiwan, Belarus, Zimbabwe, and Antarctica, all sent within the last two days. And now, he was staring at a postage receipt for a letter addressed to Gotham City.

Who the hell is Kim Jongdae, even? What kind of practical joke is this?

Curious, Kris clicked into the letter’s tracking information, hoping to find where it was at that very moment. “Address not found,” he read aloud, frowning. “Letter sent back to return address.”

So the letter was on its way back to Kim Jongdae’s residence. That made sense, considering none of the addresses Jongdae had chosen were real. Was this all part of an elaborate plan, then? Had Jongdae intended to send Luhan on a wild goose chase seeking out imaginary addresses to find the papers, only to have the papers all returned by default to his own house where they could be kept safe and sound? What if Jongdae really was part of Jade Dragon, and he had another agent stationed at his house to collect and pass along the letters as they returned?

“Goddamn, I should have trusted Luhan’s gut instinct,” Kris grumbled, fingers tangled in his hair. Things weren’t looking good. The letter was already on its way back, which meant there was very little time to plan for its arrival back at Jongdae’s residence. If they didn’t intercept it before it reached Jongdae’s agent, there was a high probability it would be lost to Jade Dragon.

Navigating through the rest of the letters Jongdae had mailed in the last week, he found that all but four of them were already being sent back to Jongdae’s house. Jongdae must have accidentally chosen four addresses that really do exist, he thought, tapping mindlessly at the keyboard. Or maybe he’s got agents waiting at those locations for the papers just in case the agent at his own house falls through? He’s got to be smart enough to have a backup plan in case his own house gets raided first.

So now, Kris had two major goals to accomplish: one, to intercept all the letters being returned, and two, to get to those four remaining addresses before anyone else. The only problem was, he was stuck in a bunker in the South China Sea with absolutely no mobility, and Luhan was busy dealing with Jongdae and Im Chaeyoung. Tao was needed to hold down the fort in Korea, and Yixing was already working on a mission with Im Yoojung.

How the hell am I going to pull this off?

As if some higher power knew he was in a bad mood, Kris nearly jumped out of his chair when a voice piped up behind him.

“Ayo, Kris! What’s got your all in a bunch?”

Kris clutched his chest, feeling his heart leap into his throat, and tried to suppress the overwhelming wave of shame sweeping over him. Really? You’re so out of it you’ve let Henry sneak up on you not once, but twice?

“Hey, Henry,” he sighed once he’d recovered. “What do you want?”

His supervisor shrugged, pushing up his glasses and spinning in stationary circles on his wheeled chair. “Dunno. I’m just bored. And you looked really constipated, so I thought you’d be good entertainment.”

Kris glowered. “Well, my bowels are working perfectly well, thank you very much, so you can leave me alone now, unless you’ve got actual work-related things to discuss.”

Ignoring him, Henry pushed him aside and grabbed his keyboard. “Hey, wanna watch llama videos again?”

“Don’t touch my keyboard!” Snatching up the keyboard to his chest, Kris glared at his supervisor. He was a possessive man, especially when it came to his technology, and he wasn’t about to let Henry get his sticky man-child fingers on his precious keyboard.

“Whoa there, fine! I’ll just… hey, what’s that on your screen? Is that… is that Korean?” Henry leaned in closer to the screen and squinted.

Crap. Not good.

While Kris had managed to close out of the window showing the tracking information for the letters, he hadn’t closed out of the Korea Post website. There was nothing incriminating on the screen, but Henry would definitely find it strange that he was checking out the website for South Korea’s national post service.

“Uh, yeah. How do you know Korean, Henry?” Kris knew the answer already, but he was hoping Henry would get distracted and drop the question.

“You know the answer to that already, Kris.” Henry frowned, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “We’ve all got to pass the language test MSS gives every year, and basic Korean knowledge is part of that. But why are you on Korea Post’s website?”

Damn. He picks today of all days not to be an oblivious fool.

“I’m just… just tracking a package.” In his head, Kris thanked his lucky stars for still holding on to his ability to generate lies at the snap of his fingers. “My girlfriend’s vacationing in South Korea, so I bought her a gift online and sent it to her temporary address there. I wanted to see if her present’s arrived yet.”

“Oh. Well, has it?”

“No,” Kris said grimly, “not yet.”

There was a pause, and then Henry sent Kris a strange look, eyebrows raised. “So that’s why you’re so grumpy today? Don’t worry, man, the package will get there eventually, right?”

He relaxed, and the lie tumbled out of his mouth effortlessly. “Yeah, sure. I just hope it gets there soon.”

Little did Henry know, if Kris had his way, the letters he was tracking would never arrive at their intended destinations at all.

---

Much like Kris, Chaeyoung hoped those letters would never reach their destinations. Unlike him, however, she had further decided it would be better for the world at large if those letters were all conveniently dropped into the ocean and eaten by a shark en route to their recipients.

Unfortunately, this was rather unlikely to happen, Chaeyoung thought with a heavy sigh.

“Would you please stop sighing?” Jongdae rolled on his side and frowned at her. “You’ve been sighing every few seconds since Luhan left us here, and it’s been at least six hours. I can’t sleep with the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing away next to me.”

Slightly surprised he was talking to her at all when he had remained silent for the last few hours, Chaeyoung glared at him. “You shouldn’t sleep anyway. You might never wake up if you fall asleep, at this rate. Head injuries are serious, you know.”

“Wow, that’s kinda morbid.” Jongdae arched an eyebrow, still managing to look far too handsome considering he was sideways, bloody, and an absolute nuisance as far as Chaeyoung was concerned. “I’m not going to die anytime soon, so chill.”

“Only because I patched you up with the medical supplies I got Luhan to give us,” she shot back, crossing her arms and pouting like a five-year-old throwing a tantrum. A part of her was cringing at how childish she sounded, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. What was it about this man that brought out her nastiest side?

“No,” Jongdae corrected calmly, propping himself up on his side, “I got Luhan to give us those medical supplies.”