It was a typical summer day – the heat was merciless and unbearable, and though the sun would set soon, its rays seemed to be carrying millions of degrees of heat with them - degrees of heat which were all getting absorbed by the silly clothes Jong Aeri was wearing.
 

It didn't help the least that the clothes were black – her shawl which served like a makeshift camouflage mask, long-sleeved shirt and pants, and the jacket she had to wear in order for all of the weapons tucked into the waistband of her pants and her pockets to remain invisible. Although most of the clothes were made of leather, spending so much time exposed to the sun’s rays heat them up and made Aeri feel as if she was in a furnace. Everything smelled of sweat and unbearable heat that had gotten into the very depths of her body and seemed like it would linger forever, disabling her from ever feeling cold again. She couldn’t make her body remember how it feels to be shivering in the winter cold. There was nothing but the merciless heat all around her, slowly seeping into her skin and threatening to make her burn out.
 

Although she was probably exaggerating in her mind, nobody could blame her - sitting like a statue for the whole day left her no other entertainment but talking to her self. She was situated on the long, firm branches of an old oak tree, high in the air and hidden from the eyes which could compromise her mission, but which she knew would not be looking for her anyway. She had climbed the tree when the day had just begun, the sun beginning to rise on the horizon while she jumped over the wall as the sluggish guard slowly made his way to the watch house where his substitute was sleeping, oblivious to the fact that he was giving her the chance she had been waiting for.
 

She had been observing the property for quite a long time, considering how long it usually took to identify the patterns of the guards' duties and find a safety breach that she would use to her advance. Considering the fact that this was Kris Wu's residence, though? She'd say that she had managed to do this in record time indeed. Even at the compound, she could hear the voices of trainees and other junior assassins whispering impossible, she would not be able to do it, this was too much for her. She snorted to herself. Amateurs.
 

She would be praised when she returned to the base for sure, but that wasn't what was driving her to do this craziness in the first place. No, she definitely wasn't playing a guinea pig for the newest method of boiling eggs in the sunlight by wrapping them in black fabric. She didn’t even want to be praised by her coworkers for this. Kyungsoo always praised her anyway, and she didn't need to give him a reason to make his usual speeches about her extraordinary abilities any longer than they were now. She almost cringed inwardly, remembering the 15-minute speech he delivered during her birthday a couple of months ago, stuttering and gasping for air every five seconds. She didn’t even remember any of his words - she just nodded along, not wanting to make things even worse for him. Definitely not something she wanted to have to go through again.
 

She sighed – the day had been a long one indeed, and since she couldn't carry anything (like a book, perhaps) with her in order not to compromise her mission, she'd spent it in boredom; she was so bored that the occasional passing by of the guard on duty seemed like the end of a long suffering, since it announced that fifteen minutes had passed by. It also made her feel just a little bit less crazy by reminding her of her mission. Her patience would be rewarded, and soon.
 

The guards were trained very well: they were punctual and serious, and for several weeks she couldn’t find a single thing that she could use in order to get past the wall without getting caught. If she disabled the alarm system, she would have only a minute before the guards came running and discovered her for sure, and no matter how much she observed them, she couldn’t find a pattern in their change routines. They exchanged places at a different time every night, so she couldn’t know when to start disabling the alarm because by the time she would be done with it, the other guard would already be arriving to his post by the door and she wouldn’t be able to cross the wall and get to the tree safely in time.
 

But after a couple of weeks, the perfect opportunity presented itself to her – it seemed like one of the guards had gotten a girlfriend which wanted to keep things super-secret between them, so she demanded for them to call each other at a certain time of night. A pattern finally started to emerge – he would receive a phone call somewhere around 2 AM, run into the watch house for the substitution as he answered and give Aeri some time to climb over the wall and get into the safety of the darkness as she climbed the tree unnoticed.
 

Last night, she started disabling the alarm system a little bit late (she blamed it on the girlfriend, who decided to call him at 1:58 AM, cutting off two precious minutes from her), so by the time she was done, the guard had already reached the watch house. She knew she didn’t have much time, and that it wouldn’t be easy to pull it off and remain unseen, but her hands were steady as she climbed the reinforced concrete wall and jumped over it swiftly.

 

Her beating heart was loud in her ears, though, especially when she heard the footsteps of the approaching guard while she was still out in the open, about to be caught in the zone specifically meant for such situations, without any place to hide and too far away from the big oak tree that would bring her to safety.
 

But the night was dark, without any moonlight and the guard hadn’t seemed to have woken up completely yet, because he didn’t catch a glimpse of the hooded silhouette quickly making its way to the tree, her feet not making a sound, just like she had been taught such a long time ago.  She knew lady luck had been on her side last night. She also knew that tonight, she would not be able to count on it to help her again. But she would pull this off. This wasn’t her first mission - she knew how to keep a level head and do her job with her eyes closed. Now that she was in, this would be a piece of cake.

 

So she sat on the branch, about to burst from the heat accumulated in her dark clothes and waiting for the sun to finally set so that she could carry out her mission and leave this forsaken place without making a ruckus. Especially not like last time I went on a mission, she thought to herself.

 

An hour went by, and the heat slowly subsided, which she was thankful for. She did not turn to watch the sunset, though she imagined it to be a beautiful mixture of pink and purple and red and blue. She couldn’t let her guard down for a single moment, though, not after she’d spent so much time analyzing and preparing everything. She needed to get everything right – for the sake of the guards below her, too, because she did not want to have to kill them.
 

She would sneak into the house when the substitution took place – hopefully the girlfriend wouldn’t choose this night to change her super-secret pattern of calls with the young guard – and then she would find the safe, break into it and take whatever was inside. She would try to get out without being noticed, and even if she failed, she would put the guards to sleep and avoid any unnecessary confrontations. Piece of cake, she repeated to herself. If only she could bring herself to believe in it.
 

The thing was, the last time she thought up such a plan, her hands ended up so bloody that she still saw the image of it all behind her closed eyelids sometimes. She’d done fieldwork afterward, insisting she was fine, but never something this serious. Never something this similar. And after weeks of waiting around, not communicating with anyone and not having eaten anything or slept since last night, she knew her nerves were on edge. It would take only a minor disturbance to ruin the whole plan. It would take only a slight breeze of the wind to set this whole place on fire. And just like the last time, she knew she would do it, if push came to shove. She would kill the guards to protect her mission. She would do anything to protect her clan.
 

Even if it came to it, she hoped nobody would end up dead. Her previous mission ended with her firing a gun at a guard who’d sounded the alarm. She’d genuinely thought she’d killed him, and it was only weeks later when Soo found out he was actually alive after having several surgeries. She still checked on him sometimes. He was getting better, but it would take a long time to heal from getting shot straight into the chest. She shuddered, remembering how the blood splattered all over her face. How she’d scrubbed it a million times daily for at least a month, not being able to chase away the feeling of it. How she still couldn’t look at the mirror.

 

Kyungsoo insisted that she was too soft for the job, and that she should hide between paperwork and never get out into the field again. Although she wasn’t punished - not officially, at least - nobody would say a word if she decided to change her position in the clan. Because training for six years and finally managing to become an assassin didn’t mean a single thing. She sighed again. Life was so complicated sometimes.

 

He was probably right, but she had no choice. She needed to pave a path for herself that would someday lead her perhaps even close enough to be able to meet the Oh heir, securing her position and the position of what she cherished the most in the whole world. Her family. And when she thought about it, she really, honestly did like her job. Not the assassination part, of course - only a sadist like commander Jongade would be capable of enjoying murdering others - but the part where her skills were constantly tested, when she was always provided with the sneakiest tasks and where she needed to use her imagination and figure out how to get out of tough spots. She also liked getting the opportunity to fight hand-to-hand with the Han clan members, although sadly, it happened very rarely. People preferred using guns, long distance weapons which would not bring their own lives in danger. So she wrapped herself up like a sushi and practiced her patience for weeks in order to steal things from rivaling clan members instead of actually assassinating anyone.

 

Thankfully, she didn’t have time to reminisce on her rocky past for long – the night still hadn’t managed to fully envelop the world in darkness when she heard the guard yawn as he stopped right above the tree she was nestled in, which was the usual sign that he was going to go get the substitute.
 

She was already edgy, prepared to jump as soon as he left his post. But she didn’t even get a moment to prepare for jumping off the tree, because the moment the guard’s feet moved, he made a sound of surprise and fell onto the ground as if someone had zapped him.
 

She was confused. Was he luring her in by faking the whole thing? Was this some new anti-espionage tactic and was she going to fall for it?

 

She couldn’t risk the possibility of it being real, though. She quickly secured the veil to the shawl’s hem, determined to not get into the situation of having to get rid of witnesses again, and started to get up and help the man before it was too late and he died of whatever had happened to him.

 

But then she heard a rustle directly below her, and a hooded figure passed by the man and headed towards the house.

 

Every hair on her body stood upright as she watched the figure move swiftly through the dark. He was not an amateur alright. He was a fully-trained assassin, that much was evident just from the fact that he hadn’t made a single sound and that if she didn’t know where to look, she wouldn’t have even noticed him. Her brows furrowed. But why would an assassin be here? What kind of mission was he on? Would he interfere with her own?
 

As she slowly made her way down the tree, she knew the answer to the question was Yes, absolutely, of course. Not just because of her ill luck; this place was a freaking beacon to people of her kind - and others who were much worse. The scoundrel had probably heard of the Kris Wu’s newest special painting and decided to take the money for himself. Or, he was actually there to assassinate someone - for example, Kris himself. Did that mean he was coming back home tonight? Or is he going to break into the house and set up a trap for Kris? She couldn’t know what his plans were yet, but if she was going to disturb a senior assassin while he set up a trap set to murder someone, it sure wasn’t going to end well for her. Her mind spun with more questions. Was he working alone or not? Who was he working for and why?

 

All she knew was that she needed to proceed with maximum precaution as her feet touched the ground and she continued down the same path the assassin had taken, but not before checking the guard’s pulse – he was just out cold, thankfully, which solved half of her dramatic-exit problems. At least I won’t have to take the blame for murdering anyone, she hoped.
 

She would’ve fought the two guards over the assassin any time of the day. Although something in her gut told her he wasn’t here to steal anything, there was still a possibility that Aeri was wrong in her judgment, and that this guy was also a thief - just like her. If he was here for the painting, she would have to fight for it, and she did not know anything about the person below the hood. Was he stronger or smarter than her? He didn’t look very tall, but the darkness could cast weird shadows and therefore she could not know. For all she knew, this guy could be some bulky Dwayne Johnson who could take her out with a single punch. She winced, absolutely not wanting to confront such a person. Or was the person under the hood a softy? Would he have a sense of chivalrousness and let her go with the painting?

 

She had a feeling she would find out soon, as she followed the assassin’s path carefully and made her way to the house of the famous Kris Wu, a worldwide-known artist whose newest painting she had to steal in order to send a clear message to the Han clan that they knew he had joined their ranks and that they wouldn’t get away with what they’d done so easily.
 

She didn’t know much about the matter, except that Kris was an important figure in the business world, mostly supporting the Han clan through money and having joined them just recently. He’d married the Han princess, the sister of the Han clan leader Lu Han. She did not know the details of the marriage or whether Kris even knew what he was getting himself into when he decided to do it, but he seemed like a very important link in the chain of their rival clan and they needed to send a very clear message to them – they could not mess with the Oh clan.
 

The Oh clan and the Han clan were always in some kind of war and the whole rivalry thing had started long before she had joined their ranks. She considered all of it ridiculous, because no small argument or getting offended would be solved by murdering people and doing all kinds of atrocious things, some of which she’d participated in. She hoped the war would be over soon, so that she could actually take Soo’s advice and start burying herself underneath loads of paperwork, but she doubted it would ever happen. These clans lived off the pointless wars they kept getting themselves into – the higher-ups were apparently bored when things were good and they had a business partner instead of a shooting target.
 

Well, it wasn’t like her opinion mattered, anyway, because she was just a pawn in the game, without any real power over her life or her decisions. She’d gotten a task, and she was going to complete it – the clan did not put a time limit on her mission, so unless she got approached by another Oh agent telling her the mission was canceled, she wouldn’t be able to come back until she completed it.
 

It was a strange law, but it was one she respected. She just hoped that she would be able to steal the painting tonight, and that she wouldn’t have to go through the whole chilling-on-a-tree-in-the-unbearable-heat thing again. She yearned to go back to the compound, back to her routine, hand-to-hand combat training, chilling with Soo in his lab, teaching the trainees everything she knew, avoiding commander Jongdae. Soon, she promised herself. This was just another mission, the same as any other - wait for the perfect moment, get in, take what you need to, get out. It would be a piece of cake. Right?
 

As she entered the house through the window which the mysterious assassin had previously disabled and opened, she again wondered why he was there, and if it was really just for the money from selling the already-famous painting. Perhaps he really had to carry out the mission of assassinating Kris Wu? But he wasn’t even in the house – he went to China for some kind of awarding ceremony and would be away for the next couple of days. That’s why she set the plan in motion tonight – she wanted to avoid the possibility of having to decide whether it would be better for her clan if Kris died, or if she could live with the risk of leaving a witness alive. It would be a tough decision to make, and she wanted to avoid getting herself into that situation in the first place. It would be easy to put the knife under his throat, but taking his life… taking anyone’s life… She shuddered, not wanting to go there.
 

The house was quiet, so her hopes of at least avoiding Kris propped her to move forward more eagerly. The guard in the watch house would keep looking at the video camera footage, having already mistaken her for a shadow at the edge of the cameras’ view. He would not suspect anything until 2 AM, when the other guard was to make that phone call, and only sound the alarm when the guy didn’t arrive to change posts. That left her plenty of time to work. Since the house was empty and the other guard out of the picture, she would have the breathing space she needed in order to be able to fight the assassin if she had to. She hoped it wouldn’t get to that, but she had a strong feeling that the assassin would not just give the painting to her if she asked him to do it, or even give her time to explain that she wasn’t here to interfere with whatever mission he was there to carry out.

 

She got up the stairs without making a sound, having seen a glimpse of the all-black figure at the top of it upon reaching the living room a moment earlier. Did he already know she was there? She didn’t know how he possibly could. Whenever she was on a mission, she tried to stay wary of her surroundings even when the goal was in front of her face, but she’d never encountered another assassin interfering with her business. It was highly unlikely and something she would’ve never even considered, had this situation not occurred.
 

But it had, and now she had to play smart if she wanted to get out of this unharmed and victorious.

 

At the top of the stairs was a long hallway, and though it was dark, she could see expensive things everywhere – from the huge paintings hanging off the walls to the china vases she had to be very careful not to break and the chandeliers hanging off the tall ceiling. The whole place smelled of newness and careless spending, but the odor was soulless and artificial – this mansion was not used very often, and it was not a home in the true sense of the word. She scoffed, much preferring the sounds and smells of her compound.

 

She did not know which room the safe was in, but Kyungsoo always made sure she had a bag full of tricks, so she opened the too-heavy and too-big jacket she was already much too sick of and found the little device quickly. She didn’t have a lot of time, and with no sign of the other assassin anywhere, she had to rely on her skills of being completely silent in order to manage to find the painting and take it before the assassin had the time to do the same - or ruin her plans.
 

She activated the device without it beginning to blare in alarm, which she was proud of – she now understood fully well why her teachers were so strict on her during practice time. She’d thought moving around silently was absolutely unnecessary and meant strictly to make things harder for her, but she was thankful for all her struggles as she began moving through the hallway slowly, with the device in her hands. It looked similar to an old mobile phone, giving off the X-ray image of everything that was in front of her.
 

If the situation wasn’t so serious, she would laugh from joy – she felt like a smaller version of James Bond, seeing through walls and stealing things from rich brutes in order to achieve a noble goal. At times like these, she could pretend she was a secret agent instead of a mafia clan henchman, so she continued on with a small smile on her face.
 

It took her a couple of rooms and false alarms – her nerves were becoming very strained – until the safe showed up on the screen, seemingly camouflaged by a large painting of some Chinese guy with a bald head. She had no idea who it was, and judging by his appearance, she definitely didn’t want to find out.
 

This was her day, and her five minutes of glory. Her shoes did not echo on the polished wooden floor as she entered the room. The door didn’t creak. The device slipped back into her pocket without falling down onto the ground or starting to make unexpected sounds. Things were more perfect than during any practice, and if she’d had time, she would’ve actually been proud of herself.
 

But she didn’t have time.
 

As soon as she made the first step into the room, she found herself turned around and her front pinned to the wall, rough arms pushing her back so she had no free space to breathe.
 

“Who sent you here?” a deep, raspy voice said from behind her, and it didn’t sound the least bit happy about her arrival to the room.
 

She knew immediately what was going on – she’d failed. Now, on top of all of her other worries and problems, she had to worry about an assassin trying to take away the painting and murdering her in the process. Wonderful.
 

“I said, Who sent you?” the voice repeated, louder and angrier because she hadn’t given any kind of response. But what could she say? That she was sent here by the Oh clan, which would probably only end up getting her in more trouble? No, she knew silence was safer. She would not betray her brotherhood, even if the assassin started beating her up. She wasn’t afraid of pain or torture. She was aware that she was just a pawn in a very important chess game, and she would do her part, even if it meant having to deal with the consequences. Just like any pawn, she had no choice.
 

Instead of answering the assassin, she focused on trying to slip a hand into the inner pocket of her jacket – it was full of all kinds of guns, but she was searching for something else, something much less fussy and much more effective.

 

“Nobody,” she muttered, trying to shift the man’s focus from what she was doing. “I came here alone.” She fidgeted, trying to make it seem like she was struggling against his hold. She needed just a little bit of time.
 

“You liar,” he whispered loudly, his voice thick with disgust. “Trained assassins never work alone. They also don’t possess X-ray scanners.”

 

His hands wrapped around , putting some pressure onto it, but not enough to make her suffocate. “I swear I will kill you if I have to. Just answer the damned question, Who sent you?” His voice gradually turned from a whisper into an angry snarl, and it promised that the words he was speaking were true.
 

But it was too late for him and his threats, because she’d managed to find it. Having gone slack to trick him into thinking she was surrendering, she’d let him press into her in a way much too intimate for her liking, but the sacrifice was worth it, since now she didn’t have to make a strong move to be able to get him out of her way.
 

The smallest push and the turn of her arm was enough. The taser zapped his torso with a buzz, and he made a pained sound as he started shaking, his hands unwinding from her neck as he fell to the ground.
 

She did not say a word as she skipped over his spasming body. She could see nothing but closed eyes and pained creases around them. She kinda felt bad, but considering the fact that every breath hurt from what he’d done to her neck? She kinda didn’t feel bad about him getting to experience some pain, too. “Jerk,” she muttered under her breath.

 

She was quick on her heels, removing the painting of the condescending-looking Chinese guy and beginning to work on the safe. She put Soo’s newest invention onto it, a content smile on her face - she felt cool, and she most definitely looked cool, too. She would maybe even become a legend, the amateur whom she’d zapped beginning to spread the story about the heroine who’d tased him and then proceeded to crack open the safe within a minute, using some unknown alien technology.
 

She glanced at the assassin, just to see him out cold on the floor. She snorted to herself. So much for his alpha-male threats.

 

Just like Soo had promised, the device was quick to work on the safe and almost soundless, the only indication that it was even doing something being the little crackling that could be heard when she leaned in closer to the safe. Soo had called it The Cracker - very innovative - but the name seemed to fit it, considering that it was using its needles to keep turning the wheels of the safe’s mechanism until it hit the right combination.
 

It would save her a lot of time and effort, and she didn’t doubt its success for a second, leaning against the desk behind her with her arms crossed when the safe opening magically after a minute.
 

Thanks, Soo. The guy was a genius, and perhaps she would take up the offer of transferring into his branch if she could learn how to actually make this stuff. She had no idea how it worked, not really, but she she was perfectly content with just getting to use these toys and baffle everyone who was there to witness it. She would trust Kyungsoo with her life. If he said it worked, then it worked. Something her superiors - Jongdae especially - couldn’t seem to understand no matter how hard he tried.
 

She glanced at the assassin again - he was still lying down on the floor, like an old brick, and she was glad that he’d really lost consciousness from the electric shock he’d received. Again, Soo had saved her a lot of trouble and effort, and when she was back at the headquarters, she would praise him so much.

 

The smile remained on her face as she took out the painting - her mission’s objective - from the safe and put it on the table to inspect whether it was really the original. Kris had a specific signature, one she’d seen around a million times, but she’d brought a copy of it anyway just to make sure that it was right. She would not mess this up.

 

She wanted to start humming to herself - the mission was going even better than expected, and this would return her to her earlier glory. Perhaps she could put her mistakes where they belonged in the past, and perhaps they would all stop looking at her as if she was a pointless, incapable doll that would break under even the slightest pressure. She could feel victory all around her, could already feel the content gazes of her brotherhood, their appreciation, how content they would be with her. That was all she’d wanted - to belong.

 

But as she took out a small flashlight and shone it over the painting, it all went away, replaced with a dreadful feeling crawling up her spine.
 

It was not possible.

 

Someone was joking with her.

 

She blinked, but the painting remained the same.

 

It was a child’s drawing of what looked like an… animal snowman? With… a hat and what appeared to be deer’s horns and a very, very indistinguishable Christmas tree.

 

And a giant signature of Kris. She looked from the example signature to the one plastered onto the painting back and forth, not knowing what to think. All thoughts, all plans, they’d been erased from her mind instantly.

 

“What the hell?” she couldn’t help but screech.

 

She returned the comparison signature into her front pocket, and gulped.

 

The safe was empty.

 

No matter how much she touched its walls, it remained empty. No false bottoms, no hidden compartments. No other painting to steal.

 

She turned to look at the painting again, praying that when the flashlight shone a light on it, it would become a real painting and stop making fun of her and this whole mission.
 

Instead of the animal version of the snowman, the flashlight lit upon two brown eyes and a masked face.

 

The flashlight fell from her hands, and she lost her balance, but two hands caught her before she fell onto the ground.

 

“Hey, hey,” the voice said, now completely different than when it’d told her he would kill her for sure. “Are you okay?”

 

As soon as her feet was steady on the ground, she wrenched her hands out of his. They began tingling, so she rubbed them against each other distractedly.

 

“Okay, I might have…” Why was he still talking? She took on her standard fighting posture, ready to fight it out with him the old-fashioned way and just get this over with soon. They didn’t have much time before the clock ticked 2 AM and they were inevitably caught. So why would he draw things out and try to talk with her? She looked him over, noting how he was just slightly taller than her. He looked nothing like Dwayne Johnson, thankfully - from the dark hair to the lean arms and an obvious lack of bulkiness to his shoulders. She sighed in relief inwardly. She could kick this guy’s with her eyes closed.

 

“I might have made a mistake when I’d attacked you, but I thought you were sent to kill Kris, not steal his stuff. You see, I don’t like assassins, especially not those who work for mafia clans, since they all write your name down in some notebook and start chasing you to the end of the world just because you’d seen their face and…”

 

He kept talking, but she zoned out, too caught up on what he’d just told her to be able to process any more.

 

“Wait,” she interrupted his ranting, “You are not an assassin?”

 

She couldn’t think while she waited for him to answer.

 

He shook his head, and she immediately relaxed, still not quite able to understand what this person was doing here, but the only thing that mattered was that this wasn’t an assassin - just like he’d implied, she didn’t like them, because they were strange people with strange habits and they were hard to shake off once they caught onto someone. Not that her rank was technically an assassin or anything. In the Oh clan, to be an assassin meant to be ready to kill if it came to it - they wouldn’t throw a mission like this to someone with Soo’s qualifications, for sure. But none of them killed unless they were forced to, or if the mission specifically required it.

 

She’d once dreamed of becoming an Oh clan assassin. She could not imagine that she would become just a henchman there to do all kinds of dirty jobs and nod her head at whatever the Oh clan wanted from her, so she wanted to avoid all assassins - sometimes it didn’t work, and then she had to get her hands dirty in order not to compromise her whole clan, but it was just part of the job, after all. Everything they told her to do was a part of the job.

 

She blinked, coming back to Earth from the clouds which she used to straighten her thoughts out, and the hooded figure just stared back at her, the crack in his mask where his mouth was taking on the curve of a cocky smile. “You are here to steal Kris’ newest painting, right?”

 

She immediately took on her karate stance again, to which he straight-out laughed. He raised his arms back in the air, and the smile didn’t disappear; instead, it seemed to be growing wider and wider. “Whoa, whoa, take it easy. I won’t take it from you. But it seems that, just like me, you’ve been tricked - you see, I was supposed to take some expensive stuff, too, but it seems that everything in this house is fake.”

 

A frown appeared on her face, and she looked around herself. Now that she thought about it, the stuff did look kind of strange… And she couldn’t shake off how wrong everything smelled.

 

She walked over to a nearby china vase and turned it around, just to find a large Made in China stamp on its bottom.

 

“What on Earth…” she whispered, unable to wrap her mind around what was going on. First the fake painting, now the fake furniture? But why…

 

Then it all became clear to her.

 

“The house is a decoy,” they said at the same time, and she turned to look at him, just to see him grinning at her.

 

“But that means that I’ve wasted weeks on nothing,” she whispered, putting a hand on her forehead. So the Han clan wasn’t that stupid after all. Even though Kris was a relatively new member, they had gone through all that trouble to create a decoy house for fools like herself and the not-assassin guy to waste time on. “How could I miss something as big as this?”

 

This was not good. Her higher-ups wouldn’t be content about her findings, not at all, but at least she could hold her head up high because she’d managed to get into the house and discover that it was a decoy without falling into the trap. Her mind began to spin. She couldn’t believe that Jongdae would assign her to a decoy. Perhaps this was a test? Perhaps they wanted to see if she was capable of carrying this out successfully before allowing her to go on a real mission again?

 

“I’ll be going, then,” she whispered, finally glancing at herself and becoming aware of her own looks. She froze, horrified.

 

The shawl wasn’t a successful disguise anymore, no longer serving as a veil to protect her from an assassin’s eyes. It had fallen away from her face in all the commotion, and now the man standing in front of her knew how she looked. Freaking hell, she thought to herself. Why always me?

 

But that was not what she was most worried about, as silly as it was to feel that way. She was very much bothered by the way she looked, with the giant jacket and the black leather clothes wrapping around her curves in all the wrong ways. She did not want to be seen by any young man like this, like a savage with all the weapons and devices Soo had devised for her and made her carry with her. She probably looked like an overweight person. A very stupid overweight person.

 

Then she remembered the taser, and how she’d knocked him out by zapping him. Her cheeks heated up as she turned to stare at the ground. “And, uh… I’m sorry about the taser thing,” she barely managed to say somehow, immediately turning towards the doorway to make a quick exit and disappear before she managed to make herself look like more of a freak.

 

“Wait,” the guy said, his voice now velvety and pleasant, as he caught her wrist before she’d managed to make her retreat. She looked at the hand that was making her skin tingle again, and noticed a tattoo on the light-toned skin.

 

Mundus vult decipi, ergo.

 

“There’s no reason to feel bad about it - you were just defending yourself. I shouldn’t have attacked you, but I’d seen you when you crossed the wall and your movements were so well-trained that I thought you were most certainly an assassin…” He trailed off, his voice still light, as if he could laugh at any second. She wanted him to laugh again.

 

She could not understand the urge, but she couldn’t deny that she liked his voice very, very much. “Your movements were so good that I thought the same thing,” she said, wanting to compliment him the same way. “I’m sorry that neither of us could carry out our missions.”

 

“Goodbye, then,” he said gently. Even his eyes seemed to be smiling at her.

 

“Goodbye,” she said back, with the wave of a hand. He had let go of her wrists as soon as she turned, but her wrist was still tingling. She fought the urge to start rubbing it to make the strange feeling go away.

 

As she left the house soundlessly, she realized that she hadn’t asked him for his name.

 

But she wouldn’t need it to recognize him, if they ever met again.

 

No. She would be able to recognize him even if he never took off his mask.

 

Just like he would be able to recognize her.

 

The world wants to be deceived.

 

So let it.