“Unit 443, backup is on their way. 15 minutes ETA.”

Yoo Ayeon, bright eyed, hard working and sleep deprived, couldn’t stop her knee from bouncing as she turned the dispatcher’s words over in her mind. “That’s going to take too long. Let’s go in first, see what we’re up against.”

She cocked her gun and moved slowly around the perimeter of the seemingly abandoned dry cleaner’s her heart pounding so hard that it dulled out every other sound. 6 months she had been on this case, a minor league drug cartel making moves on a territory that didn’t belong to them. They were in spitting distance of a full-on turf war and that would mean drugs flooding into the city, vulnerable groups being the main source of spreading and a bloodbath when the current dealers in the city wanted revenge at an organization trying to take over.

They had been tracking this group for months and finally, they had zeroed in on a location.

“You know, when I imagined us out together at night, and trust me I imagined it often, I always fantasized about it with fewer guns, but I’ll take what I can get.”

She clenched her jaw and hissed as she looked over at Lucas’s blinding grin, “ing hell, really? You’re doing this now?”

She wouldn’t call Lucas her number 1 choice but with her own partner currently on maternity leave, this was what she got. The only person in the entire precinct that flirted with her like it was an Olympic sport and he was trying to medal.

All things considered, he was harmless and never seemed upset, vindictive or offended when she unflinchingly turned him down. He would just laugh and say, “it was worth a try.” And maybe she should’ve made more of an effort to stop him, but he was friendly, nice to her and even though she hated to admit it, the other detectives seemed to be kinder to her when they learned that Lucas liked her.

It helped when the Golden Boy crowned you his favourite.

His smile didn’t shake, it never did, he was a bloody ball of sunshine and sometimes it made her eyes hurt. There wasn’t a single person in the entire precinct who would have a bad thing to say about him. How could they?

Which is why people couldn’t fathom why she kept saying to no to someone like him. Handsome, kind, treated her like some kind of a goddess just for breathing. But it felt simple to her.

She didn’t like him.

At least not like that.

Quite frankly, she didn’t think it was humanly possible for her to feel that way about anyone.

She just wasn’t wired that way.

“What better time than the present? Life is fleeting.” He chirped as he checked the rounds in his gun.

She had only rolled her eyes and muttered something like “fleeting my ” but she had wished she’d said something more profound to him.  

Maybe she should’ve paid more attention, a good writer, a good director, a good audience would’ve seen the foreshadowing from miles away. She would torture herself by letting his words repeat in her head forever when she watched in horror as his head snapped back when a bullet came from nowhere and clipped the side of his skull.

She’d think about it when she let the cartel leader escape out the side door as she rushed to Lucas’s side, praying that somehow everything would be okay, and he’d just be laughing again with that idiotic smile. It wasn’t much of a surprise, however, that her prayers went unanswered.

Her entire body was shaking, her voice didn’t sound like hers, she just gripped him in her arms, every bit of training slipping her mind as she tried to shake him awake. “Lucas! Please, don’t do this. Open your eyes. What the ? Holy . Come on.”

She’d think about his words when his head rolled to the side and she felt sickness creeping up her stomach as he struggled to keep his eyes open. His lips hitched and if blood wasn’t gushing out of the side of his face, she imagined it was a smile and the thought of that made the sickness move up faster. His fingers twitched, his lips formed words, and tears filled her eyes as she kept shaking him in the foolish hope that it would revive him.

His eyes shifted over her shoulder and she saw them widen but had no time to react when a bullet pierced through her shoulder, sending her to the ground with a scream of agony lodged in . Her breathing was short and desperate as she tried to navigate through the pain, but her eyes stayed on Lucas as he smiled at her, his lips moving again, repeating what he had said earlier.

It was a nightmare.

So why the wasn’t she waking up?

She tried to count to 10. It used to work when she was a child. Whenever she was angry or sad, or happy or excited, she would count to 10 and dim her emotions down to nothing but an impassive shrug. It’s what kept her out of her father’s wrath. She tried. She counted to 10.

But it only made her feel worse.

She heard the door swing open and people yelling, they sounded like police officers, she could see their flashlights moving but honestly, nothing else made sense to her as she locked eyes with Lucas again.

Ayeon had never seen anyone die before.

-----

 “Well? How was your first official week back? Amazing? An explosion of love and support?”

Ayeon propped her feet against her desk as she balanced her cellphone between her ear and shoulder. Quite frankly, it surprised her that her best friend hadn’t called every hour on the hour to check up on her. It seemed to run in her blood as a lawyer to keep tabs on everyone, especially when it was someone who she knew since she was a teenager. Soya wasn’t your average best friend. She was your smothering, overbearing, helicopter friend whom you couldn’t live without.  

“It depends. Either people are looking at me like I’m newly orphaned, which I’m not since he wasn’t my partner or they’re looking at me like I’m the great who survived when the guy they liked died.”

Soya’s voice was firm, “Ayeon.”

“And I’m not going to lie, I get it. People actually liked Lucas.” She said lightly as she pretended not to notice the obvious shift in atmosphere when she walked in on her first day. It never felt like anyone was actually happy to see her.

She could hear the frown in her Soya’s voice, “Ayeon, that’s not true. They’re probably grateful that you’re okay.”

She had to laugh at that one, “No, they’re wondering why the cheerful, friendly, charming Lucas that everyone adored died on duty meanwhile the sour who constantly rejected his advances managed to survive. They’re probably wishing he was the one finishing his first week back and that I was laying in a mortuary getting prepped for my funeral.”

“Yoo Ayeon.” Her tone was sharp and callous, one of a pissed off lawyer, “You watch your ing mouth. I’m not going to sit here and listen to you about being alive when I was staying up every night in that god-awful hospital praying to lords above that I don’t even believe in, that your arm would work and that you wouldn’t bleed out. I had to live with the very real fear that I wouldn't get to see my best friend alive. So, shut the up.”

Ayeon let her legs drop to the floor and sighed, feeling guilt creep up , “I’m sorry. I was being ty.”

Soya was silent for a moment before huffing, “So am I. That was unfair of me. I know today is going to be harder than most. I’ve taken the day off. I’ll be there for you. I’m always there for you.”

Blinking, Ayeon sat up when she heard the feedback through the phone and turned in her chair to see Soya strolling into the precinct in an expensive green blazer and heels so sharp, they could double as weapons.

“Boo.” Soya sang with a wink as she hung up. “I thought I’d stop by before heading to the funeral.”

Ayeon frowned, “In green?”

“I’m going to change. Duh.” Soya said with a roll of her eyes. Her smile softened as she reached out to fixe Ayeon’s hair, “How are you? Truly?”

Ayeon’s lips curved peacefully, “I’m fine Soya. He wasn’t my partner, he wasn’t my long-lost love, he barely registered as a friend. He was that kid who would flirt with me every now and then. I’m sad that a colleague is gone but that’s it.”

She shouldn’t have been surprised that it wasn’t enough to appease a lawyer, “But still, he was part of your life in some way. You don’t have to over-complicate it. A loss is still a loss.”

“I’m fine.” It was starting to sound weird in her head. Repeating that word over and over again.

Soya chewed on her lip, “I worry about you.”

“Don’t you always?” Ayeon said with a grin. “And is it fair to assume you’re not only here to see me?”

As if on cue, the door flung open with a bang and Kim Jinah, team lead extraordinaire, stormed into the precinct with eyes ablaze and her face flaring red the way it did when someone, most likely one of the “bureaucratic rats” pissed her off. Soya grinned, her eyes warming at the sight of her girlfriend who had yet to spot her.

It was a love story for the ages, a young detective meeting a young law grad over a case that bound them together in a way that fate never cou