She was a lightweight. She was well aware of this, but it didn’t stop her from ending up in some club anyway.

Seulgi gripped around the sink edges as she shot her reflection another look. 

She remembers this place. She’s been here with ‘him’ and their friends before, but she doesn’t remember the look she was giving herself.

In the middle of the disappointment, drunken state, and internal scolding she was giving herself, her trained ears pick up the sound of a pair about to ‘stumble’ into the bathroom.

She sighs, opens the tap, and splashes water on her face, hoping the cool will give her enough strength to actually leave the place. It wasn’t the tipsiness; it wasn’t physical inability. She was trained to endure—

But emotions.

That was a different mark to train for.

The duo—a male and a female, both recognizeable through their reflections in the same mirror—do stumble into the bathroom with the bright blonde woman’s back ending up between the redhead male’s arms as he puts her between a wall and himself.

They were probably making out now, but Seulgi really didn’t care. She closes her eyes, intending to drown them out and mind her business, when things go out of hand and out of plan (in Seulgi’s case).

“Hey—no, no—“ says the female, and strange how she sounded familiar, too.

“What?” the male of the duo sounded rather irritated, and it didn’t sit well with Seulgi.

She peeks with one eye, and sees the significantly bigger male’s arms now on both the woman’s arms, keeping her still.

“Donggun—please—you’re making me uncomfortable—“

In Seulgi’s head something clicks, but she was way too emotionally detached to connect the dots about their identities, but she knew they were probably idols.

“She said stop,” Seulgi says, both eyes now open.

‘Donggun’ and still-unnamed-female idol both turn to look at her. Seulgi’s eyes twitch at the second’s realization, now that Donggun’s relatively hulking form was off of the latter. 

Wendy was it? 

“This is none of your business,” Donggun hisses and turns back his attention to ‘Wendy’ who flinches at his mere gaze.

“And it’s not your business to be in a restroom for females.” Seulgi knew she probably should just shut up and get all this over in under a minute.

Donggun turns his attention fully and slowly to Seulgi, who doesn’t even flinch.

“Do you know who I am?” he says in a low voice. (He probably considers this his warning tone.)

Seulgi shrugs. “Sorry—”

An eye twitches and he steps forward.

“Should I?” Seulgi adds, expression as blank as the second the pair found themselves in the bathroom.

Donggun moves into Seulgi’s space, but Wendy latches both her hands onto his arm, looking more worried for Seulgi than herself now.

Then, Donggun makes his second and last mistake that night in that particular bathroom (the first being his attempt to force himself on Wendy).

He pushes Wendy off, making the poor girl collide into one of the bathroom stall doors. Wendy visibly cringes in pain, and the next thing Donggun knew, his arms were behind him in a vice grip, his face on the bathroom sink after a painful collision with the mirror, and at least two of his teeth falling off.

He was probably crying when Seulgi hisses into his ear, “you can probably tell that I don’t really care who you are, but the next time you treat a woman like that, I’d like you to remember how much glass you ate for it.”

Seulgi pulls him up, and uses his own weight to swing him crashing into one of the stalls. She watches him, making sure he doesn’t get up to cause anymore harm.

Wendy doesn’t even get enough time to respond, not even when Seulgi’s rougher hands went to pull her up, holding her on her bare arms. The girl was still visibly shaken as she staggers a little into Seulgi’s arms and warmth.

Tonight was just as tiring as all the other nights and just as cold, yet Seulgi found herself taking off her jacket and leaving the warm leather on the idol’s shaking shoulders.

The first time Seulgi actually meets Wendy’s eyes was at the outdoor parking lot of the same troublesome club on the same troublesome night.

Just as the cold night air hits her skin, somebody’s rather frigid and trembling fingers wrap around her elbow. Said person then scampers to hide behind her with their head peeking out over her left shoulder.

“Oh my god, Batgirl! Thank goodness you’re still here! He’s here! He’s—“

Batgirl?

Seulgi sighs. Of course it was Wendy, because Seulgi did think someone like Donggun who had an ego the size of his fake muscles would definitely consider finding a way at getting back at either her or Wendy. (He’s honestly a giant if he blames Wendy in any way for what he lost.)

(Which was like two teeth.)

She felt a little guilty about leaving her at the bar a while ago, but hey, she already had very little strength to take care of herself (and not to mention she spent a big percentage of that energy pummeling Donggun).

Wendy goes on and on, and honestly she retains and digests none of the information she was being shot at rapid fire with, but her eyes scan the parking lot and spots a small crowd of ten (including Donggun) in a rather heated discussion.

Feeling a figurative drill pummel her head right at the core, Seulgi finally puts a single finger sloppily on Wendy’s lips, effectively shushing the other woman.

“Did they see you?” Seulgi asks.

Wendy shuts her yapping in an instant, tilts her head a little, and not even a minute later, one of Donggun’s crewmates spared them a glance and nods his head toward their direction. Now, ten pairs of seething eyes were looking at them.

Seulgi sighs (again, again).

“This is going to be a long night,” she mutters under her breath as she looks around for anything that she can potentially use as a weapon.

Let’s see.

Dust.

Grass.

Dust.

(Tiny woman clinging on her.)

And dust.

“Listen, you’re some kind of superhero, so I really need you to save me right now,” Wendy says with a whimper as Donggun and crew intently make their way to them, bats, chains in hand and all.

Seulgi looks down at the woman clutching her arm, intending to ask her whether she was the type to carry pepper spray or not when she spots the perfect weapon. “Nice stilettos. Gucci?”

“Seriously? You’re asking me this now?” Wendy looks at Seulgi with a bewildered look. 

That was the first time they actually made eye contact, and Seulgi shouldn’t really care, but the undeniable fear in the shorter woman’s eyes somehow makes her paddle for air from her sea of misery. “Are you sponsored by any chance, Wendy-sshi?”

“Not really, no—I—do I really need to—“

Wendy doesn’t get to finish that. She lets out a little squeal when Seulgi moves to kneel in front of her.

“—um, listen—we’ve only met. So, I’m not sure how to feel about this?”

Seulgi all but ignores the point of the comment and calmly slips one footwear off the idol’s foot and promptly ask her to step back.

In the next ten minutes, former secret service agent Kang Seulgi incapacitates ten males, two of them idols including Kim Donggun, using only one half of rising star Wendy Son’s pair of Gucci stilettos.

Wendy spends the next few hours in a police station, gives her statement, and ends up staring at the woman who just got her out of a potential ambush with just a single (painfully expensive) lady stilt.

Said woman, now under the brighter police department lights (and even with all the bruises and the rather long and still bleeding gash on her right eyebrow), actually looked quite pleasing to the eyes. If Wendy met her in more normal circumstances, the singer would say her Batgirl was pretty—really pretty.

“Hey, Batgirl,” Wendy calls her attention at one point. “I’m sorry I got you into all this.”

“It’s okay.”

Was that a smile? She’d rather think it was. She really needed someone to smile right now—anyone at all.

They fall silent for a little while, and she was almost surprised when it was the quiet woman who casually broke the silence. “So—singer huh?” 

Wendy nods bashfully. She didn’t think the other girl was the type to be aware of such things. “Always been a dream.”

“It’s cute to still have dreams.”

Sarcastic as Batgirl may have been, she still held on to the comfort in being saved and smiled at, for at this point, she wasn’t sure what was going to be left of her only rising career.

Their little exchange was cut short when the detective who seats himself on the table across from them was the first to get Batgirl’s attention with an ‘Agent Kang’ (followed by a scathing scolding), so Wendy assumed that was her name—last name at least.

The detective, who introduces himself as Sergeant Kim Myung-Dae, had his stern eyes pointed right at the already battered girl who gave very short, uncommitted and uninterested responses that were really just variations of ‘yes sergeant Kim’ and ‘no sergeant Kim’.

Sometime after the rather long barrage of a hundred different synonyms of ‘disappointment’, the sergeant sighs and his eyes visibly soften. “Seulgi. It’s been a year. It’s time to pick yourself back up.”

Ah. So, it was Seulgi. Kang Seulgi, Wendy thought to herself.

“Maybe,“ Seulgi responds simply.

Her unwavering nonchalance honestly puzzled Wendy for the taller woman hit like an animal yet fought gracefully, and moved like a butterfly yet swung like a raging bear let loose.

There was a second, barely noticeable but it was there. An nth sigh from Seulgi, then Sergeant Kim forlornly looks at the grazed hands Wendy’s savior withdraws from on top of the table and onto her own lap.

Wendy feels her nails digging deeper into the soft skin of her own palms.

“What are you going to do about it?” asks Yeri, Myung-Dae’s co-detective and a friend from a seemingly long time ago, who was now tending to Seulgi’s injuries.

Seulgi shrugs her shoulders, unfazed by the disinfectants and stitching tools spread on a little pan on the table beside her and Yeri.

They were in a briefing room with three other people: Sergeant Kim, Wendy’s manager, Kim Kibum, and the singer herself.

“That girl’s in deeper trouble than we all thought she is,” Yeri adds, cringing as her eyes examine the area just above Seulgi’s right eye. “—I’m afraid she’s going to have to forego her career if she wants to be safe.”

Forego?

“Why is that?” 

It was Seulgi’s turn to ask, eyes now on Wendy whose head was bowed as her manager, spilled the news to her.

Wendy’s ‘always been a dream’ echoes in her head, reverberating in her mind, persistent enough for her to not notice Yeri raising a threaded surgical needle.

Seulgi flinches out of her reverie as the younger girl in front of her began stitching her right brow up, piercing the tender skin above her eyes without warning. She hisses loud enough for three other heads in that room to look their way.

Yeri mouths an ‘oops’, but smirks at the sight of Wendy craning her neck to probably check on her savior, looking leagues tenser.

“This will probably leave a mark,” Yeri says dismissively.

“You think?” Seulgi groans, all but melting the younger girl with a glare.

Yeri nods and responds with dubious enthusiasm, “wasn’t referring to the cut though.”

It turns out Kim Donggun and seven of the men involved in the altercation matched prints linked to a dead end of an investigation on the country’s biggest drug cartel—Atlantis.

Seulgi uses the office bathroom to take in the implications of it all, and for the second time, she looks at her reflection as her thoughts clawed deeper into her being.

Case-wise, nothing has been proven; there are no conclusions. These are only some of her thoughts.

But of all the things to think of, of all the things that suddenly bothered her, she hears Wendy.

‘Always been a dream.’

Seulgi knows the name and the nature of the game. She is reminded very, very clearly.

Behind her she sees the sun seeping into the slits between the window blinds, and as she drags her eyes back to her own reflection, she breathes in deep.

She sees the little thankful smile one idol gave her. It wasn’t the biggest, but it was bright enough to be likened with early morning light.

And before the sun could cast its crown over the city, Kang Seulgi would make her way back into the briefing room.

Kang Seulgi, ex-secret service agent since a year ago, would pledge rising star Wendy Son her services of protection.

The sun would rise soon, a thought—a tiny, tiny thought needling its way into her head, leaving stitches of afterthoughts in its wake.

The irony of it all.

Everything was rigid and firm back in boot camp. It only makes sense that she only allows herself ten minutes to adjust. 

Without rest, without further ado since giving her statement on that same night that stretched into the morning, Seulgi requests for a team. She knows she’s rusty, but Sergeant Kim was very quick to tell the whole office that Seulgi was all that was needed.

She brings a palm to her forehead at the exaggeration. She insists she needed a team, despite Myung-Dae’s excitement over her ‘comeback’ (as Yeri would call it).

Speaking of the devil—

She was assigned four of her former teammates: Hacker-turned-intelligence-agent Kim Yerim for the tech, the wonder siblings Park Chanyeol and Sooyoung for undercover and backup, and the laser efficient One-Word Sehun for anything information and surveillance. 

Seulgi looks around the office for the person who was suddenly giving her purpose like coffee on a hangover. She spots her being scolded by her manager. She should probably step in, and save her one more time this morning.

She walks over to the duo talking in not-so hushed voices, and clears , getting both their attentions.

“The force is giving her full protection,” she says rather formally. She hits herself internally for the lack of empathy in her voice. So, she tries again...

In the next moment, with the sun completely reigning over the sky like the queen that it was, Seulgi kneels before a seated Wendy, and for the second memorable time, she meets the singer’s eyes.

Tentatively, she closes her long and calloused fingers around Wendy’s soft and trembling ones—the ones the idol had been keeping between her rigid knees.

“You will sing,” Seulgi assures the singer. “I will make sure of it.”

Wendy nods timidly, tears threatening to fall as she keeps her eyes locked on the promise in Seulgi’s.

“I don’t break my promises, Wendy.”

Wendy manages a smile. “Thank you.”

Seulgi feels cold trembling fingers curl in her grasp, fingertips grazing the skin inside her knuckles, then she nods in understanding.

“You have my word.”