DAY 1

For the first time ever, you were going to be late to work. And you couldn’t blame it on the busses or your alarm clock or the weather, it was just because you’d never been to the fourth floor before. You’d assumed it would have the layout of the three floors below it, but what a mistake that was.

                “Great. 10 minutes late to the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. Perfect.” You huffed as you pulled your satchel higher on your shoulder, adjusting your blazer and trying to walk faster on your heels. “410A, 410B, 410D… where is 410C?” You looked around helplessly, who on earth designed this floor? A wheeling sound caught your attention, and you rushed over to where an old woman was pushing a janitorial cart. “Hi, excuse me, do you know where conference room 410C is?”

                The woman gave you a once over, obviously unimpressed, “Mr. Im’s private conference room?”

                “Yes! That’s the one!”

                “It’s attached to his office, come this way I’ll show you.” The woman left her cart in the hallway and set off on a brisk pace which you thankfully followed like a lost puppy. It was three hallways away, addressed with a small white plaque unlike the others which had all been brass, no wonder you’d missed it. “Now come here.” The woman turned to you and began fixing your hair. “Can’t have you going in to your big meeting looking like a disaster, can we?” She gave you a winkled smile and clasped you upper arm, “good luck.”

                Oh great. So you looked a disaster.

                Nothing you could do now, you were 15 minutes late already. You knocked briskly on the door, and there was a heavy moment of silence, you gut clenched, but then the door opened and another older woman was looking out at her. But this woman looked almost regal, wrinkles obviously treated with expensive face creams, clothes obviously chosen with care.

                You gave what she hoped to be a confident smile. “Hi, I’m Kang Eunji, I’m here for the meeting.”

                The woman gave you a long once over, before smiling widely, “come on in, we’ve been waiting.”

                Ok. This was good. The woman seemed nice enough… on the outside. You stepped into the room and bowed, “I apologise for my lateness.”

                “It’s alright, this is your first time on the fourth floor isn’t it? It’s natural for you young ones to get lost. Have a seat.”

                You quickly lowered into the only available seat, avoiding the scowl of the woman on your left, and trying not to feel too belittled by Mr. Im’s comments about your age. Sure you were the youngest one here, but wasn’t that a testament to your skill, not something to be insulted?

                You’d always envisioned the fourth floor to be luxurious, all high-wing-backed chairs, big windows, glass decanters of brandy. But really, it was the same as all the other meeting rooms, too many chairs in too small a space, a table with one leg shorter than the rest so it wobbled. You imagined this room might be comfortable with 5 people in it, but there were 9 of them including yourself, and including Mr. Im.

                Mr. Im was not quite a legend, but he was on the way to becoming so. Especially if he solved this case. The Lotto case.

                He cleared his throat, and immediately the room sharpened their attention on him. “Right, as you all know the media is clawing each others’ throats out for information about this case, so nothing we say leaves this room. I’m passing out the case packages, feel free to open them and just take a few minutes to look over it.” This was your first time being in such close proximity to Mr. Im, usually you only saw a brief glance of him if he happened to be on the third floor. He was one of those older men with the tidy handlebar mustaches, the kind that always sat straight backed in chairs and carried a briefcase.

                You took the envelopes from the scowling woman beside you and passed them on, keeping the one with KANG EUNJI typed in big letters on the front.

                The papers started with a breakdown of the situation, where they’d found the suspects, all the stuff you already knew by heart. You skipped over until she found the pages on Subject 8.

                Alias: Chen.

                “You’ll each be working with one of the subjects. Yoona,” Mr. Im addressed the nice woman who had let you in, “I’ve put you with Baekhyun, I checked on him this morning and I can tell he’s going to be a handful, keep a tight leash on him.” He looked at the scowling girl beside you, who looked even more fowl now, her eyes darting between the picture of her subject and the picture of Yoona’s ‘Baekhyun’. Obviously, the girl would have preferred a different subject. “Sora, you’ve got Xiumin, he seems the type to play mind games, I’m trusting you to keep a clear mind as usual.” Finally, he turned to you. “Sorry, your name was…?”

                “Eunji,” you said, “Kang Eunji.”

                “Right, Eunji, I’ve given you Chen, he seems a bit more low-key than the others so he should be better for your first time. Still keep your wits about you though.” He addressed the room, “Right now, you all know as much as I do. We received an anonymous tip Thursday evening that something was going down in the old warehouse off sixth street, and we made a move to send in our best forces. Once there, we found and apprehended 8 men in various states of violence, arson, desecration of property, the whole works. We later found the last one attempting to leave the premises with Park Ha-Young. If you recall, she’s been missing for a few weeks now. Once apprehended, we identified this man as Chanyeol – Jisoo that’s your case – and sent the girl on to the proper authorities, we’ll get to speak to her when they’ve done with her.” He looked carefully over each member of the team, “remember, these guys are members of the biggest crime syndicate going. They run everything, drug cartels, gambling, casino’s, they’re violent and greedy and they will not hesitate to lie or take advantage of any weakness you show them. Do it however you see fit, but keep it legal. I want to know everything, where they’re from, what they’ve done, future plans, what they’re involved in, when their cat’s birthday is, everything. We’ll be meeting every couple of days to see what you’ve found out and discuss between us what the next steps should be. It’s a fast pace but we have to find out everything we can before the court sessions. We need to find out what they did to that poor girl. Everyone clear?”

                There was a round of ‘Yes sir’s’, and Mr. Im nodded, “you’ll find your subjects room numbers in the files. Feel free to start interrogations as soon as possible. Dismissed.”         

                Chairs screeched against the floor as everyone unanimously began to stand, you hurriedly put your file back in its envelope. You’d barely gotten through reading a single page, everyone else had it tucked away in briefcases already… did everyone here have a briefcase?

                “Miss Kang, stay behind for a moment please.”

                You sat back down in your chair quietly. Was he going to kick you off the case already? It was obvious he was already regretting his decision, he hadn’t even remembered your name…

                The door closed with a loud click, and then there was only you and Mr. Im. The room seemed too large now, impossibly big, like one of the first-year lecture halls at university.

                “Miss Kang, how are you feeling about the case?”

                “I’m feeling fine sir.”

                “Not worried, intimidated?”

                “No sir, I feel ready.” Did you sound confident or cocky? Hopefully the first.

                “Good, good. Have you ever been a primary interrogator before?”

                “No sir, this will be the first time.”

                “Right, yes, well how about you wait a day or two before you start interviewing? Look over the files, talk to the rest of the team, maybe watch one of their interviewing sessions? Yoona is very good if you wanted to ask her any questions.”

                “Alright.” You kept your tone even, why did he even put you on the team if he was going to baby you through it?

                He nodded, pondering, “and your desk is… where?”

                “On the third floor, south side.”

                “You’re on the open floor?” He looked surprised, and you were beginning to doubt that he had even heard of you before now. The third floor had one row of closed offices, but the rest of it was just split with a low divider into north side and south side with desks lined up. It was to both promote teamwork and capitalise on space. Why on earth would he have thought that you would have one of the closed offices?

                “Yes sir.” Again, you made sure to keep your voice steady.

                “Hmm… I’d move you to fourth but we don’t have any open space right now… hold on.” He pulled a thin black phone out of his pocket and dialed a contact, “are there any available offices on third?” Wow, not even a hello, who did this guy think he was? “Yes, right, reserve it for Kang…” He covered the phone, and looked at you expectantly. You barely resisted the eye roll.

                “Eunji.”

                “Kang Eunji. Yes. Effective immediately. Yes. Mhmm. Indefinitely.” He pocketed the phone and looked at you again, “When you return to third in a moment I want you to take everything from your desk and relocate to office 3-19. I need you to have a lockable room while you’re working on this case.”

                “Thank you, sir.” You said, surprised. Who knew you’d be getting an office out of this case?

                “Alright, do you have any questions?”

                What, did he expect you to be acting like the child everyone thought you were? “No, sir. I understand everything perfectly.”   

                Back on the third floor, you were putting your things in a box when the inevitable happened.

                “Nooooo!”

                “They fired you!”

                “We knew it was too good to be true!”

                You rolled your eyes, cracking a smile. “Thanks for the vote of confidence you two.”

                Hei-Ran and Yun-Hee were your best two friends in the office. They were your age, both incredibly smart, and loved nights on the town as stress relievers. They’d known each other pretty much since they were born, but they’d quickly adopted you into their little group.

                “Thanks again for the shoes, Yun-hee.” You said, “I’d have died going in there with flats.”

                Yun-hee nodded wisely, “see, I know these things. And you can keep those, they’re too low for me, I’ll bring you all of my other low heels tomorrow.”

                Yun-hee now only wore heels of 4 inches or higher. Somehow she managed to float like a goddess in them.

                “So… what’s with the box?” Hei-ran asked, picking up a stapler on your desk and packing it away.

                You grinned, “help me and find out.”

                As expected, Hei-Ran picked up the other two boxes of files and Yun-hee walked beside her, following you as your walked to 3-19.

                “No way…”

                “They gave you a corner office?!”

                “It’s got windows!”

                Yun-Hee collapsed into the wheely chair and began lying back on it. Hei-Ran was still captivated by the windows that covered half of the walls, showing the skyline of the city. This was a killer office.

                “Spill.” Yun-Hee said, narrowing her eyes at you, “who’d you have to screw to get this office? Mr. Im?”

                “Ew! No!” You said, “you’re so disgusting!”

                “Don’t say you’ve never thought about it, the man’s a silver fox! Plus,” she smirked, “have you seen the bulge in those -”

                “Ok, that’s enough.” You said, “this man is my boss now.”

                Yun-Hee just roared in laughter as your grumbled at her.

                “come on Yun,” Hei-Ran said, “I’m sure Eunji has work to do now she’s on a fourth-floor level case. Besides,” she gave you an identical grin, “she can tell us allll about her life later.”

                “Yes! Drinks later!”

                “I can’t do today, I’ve got stuff to catch up on.” You said.

                “Tomorrow then! No excuses! Dress y!”

                You pushed the both of them out of your office and shut the door. What a nice feeling to have a door.

                The office itself was actually really nice, a desk larger than the ones out on the floor, a big lamp to allow you to work late into the night, silent serenity. You slipped off the heels (low though they may be, you still preferred shoes that didn’t require muscles) and curled into your chair. You reached into your satchel and pulled out the classified case file. You paused, wheeling over to inspect the door… YES! It has a lock! You locked it and wheeled back to the desk, feeling safer about opening the document.

                You flipped back to where you had left off, noticing that there really wasn’t a lot of information…

                Age: unknown.

Approximate age: 25.

                Birthplace: unknown.

                Height: 173cm. Taller than you were then, not like it was particularly difficult.     

                Weight: 64kg

                Blood type: B. You snickered, you were AB, did that mean the two of you were compatible?

                Holding room: 613.

                Most of the rest of the information was unknown, he was apparently very good at hiding his tracks and never getting caught. You flipped over to the back-page and WOAH this guy was gorgeous.

                You’d seen Baekhyun’s picture briefly in the meeting so you were expecting something but… just… wow.

                This had to be photoshop right? No one actually had cheekbones like this in real life. Of course not, no one photoshops a mug shot. But could this really count as a mugshot… it looked like it belonged in GQ.

                His hair was swept up over his forehead looking effortlessly windblown. His lips turned up in the corners to give the whole picture an air of devilish mischief, and god those cheekbones! And his eyes were straight at the camera, dark and enticing and promising…

                You snapped the folder shut. You’d been on the case barely an hour and you were already ogling how gorgeous this murderer was.

                Well he’s not been proven a murderer… a little voice in your mind piped up, but you swiftly shut it down, looking at secondary documents on interview techniques.

                This was the biggest case of your career, this was the case that would decide if you could keep this office. You the desk lamp, ready to spend the rest of the evening here, ready for what tomorrow would bring.