Bomi was early. It had only taken an hour to reach her destination, and she had arrived thirty minutes before midnight. As usual, the Shadow Clan had chosen an abandoned warehouse, but unlike the previous location, this warehouse was located quite literally in the middle of nowhere. She was far from the city, and nothing else was around them, aside from large fields of grass and shrubbery.

As Bomi walked up to the warehouse, she felt trepidation settle low into her gut. Her heart beat heavily, like a solemn drum pounding in anticipation. There were no lights outside the warehouse, so her only guides were the moon, stars, and a dim light coming from the warehouse. Not for the first time, the urge to turn around and run back to the palace rose up, and Bomi fought to force it down. She was sure that whoever had summoned her had probably already seen her approaching the warehouse. There was no turning back.

Bomi kept her hand on her gun by her waist as she walked up to the front door. The letter hadn’t told her that she wasn’t allowed to come armed, which was slightly suspicious. It also hadn’t told her how to enter the warehouse; she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to knock or just walk in. 

She turned the doorknob. It moved freely. Bomi took that as a free invitation, so she cautiously opened the door and stepped into the warehouse.

There was no one inside. At least, no one that she could see. The warehouse was large, with high ceilings and several aisles of empty shelves. Old boxes and even abandoned forklifts were scattered throughout the space. Someone had managed to turn on the ceiling lights, which flickered a measly, eerie yellow light, so someone must have been there.

Bomi walked further into the room, her footsteps echoing off of the walls. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to catch any sign of movement.

“You’re quite early,” a voice said from within the shadows. Bomi whipped around and saw a tall man emerge from the darkness of one of the aisles. He had a muscled body, short dark hair, and, to her slight dismay, two working eyes.

“Who are you and why did you call me here?” Bomi demanded.

“Set aside your weapons first,” the man said. “Then we’ll talk.”

Reluctantly, Bomi tossed aside the knives strapped to her thighs. Before tossing her gun, she emptied it of all its bullets. The man watched with serious eyes as the bullets clanged to the ground, useless. She didn’t move to remove the knives hidden in the soles of her shoes; as far as she knew, the man did not know about those.

“There,” Bomi said, kicking aside the fallen bullets, “happy?” The man began to approach her, but she held up her hand. “Stop. Take off your jacket.”

“I’m not armed,” the man said, but he still did as he was told. He removed his jacket, revealing a burning sun tattoo on his bicep and no hidden weapons. Bomi dropped her hand, and the man continued to get closer to her. “My name is Lee Seungri. I’ve come to propose a trade.”

“What do you want?”

“Isn’t it simple? What has my clan been after for the past several years?”

“The princess,” Bomi answered tightly.

“Correct. We want you to give us the princess, so this war between us will finally be over.”

“Is that all you have to offer? The promise for the end of this feud? If the Shadow Clan overtook the throne, the entire nation would be ruled by chaos and violence. Wars would break out both within and outside our borders.”

Seungri tilted his head. His nonchalance bothered Bomi on unspeakable levels. “You’re quite the pessimist, aren’t you?”

“I try,” Bomi said. “Why me? What does your clan want from me?”

“What makes you think we have a special interest in you?”

“I’m not stupid. You expect me to think that your clan would go through the trouble of kidnapping me for nothing? Your little lackeys were keeping me alive for your leader. You also sent a man to deliver a message to specifically me. And for what? Just for disrupting a few meetings? No, your clan would normally just immediately kill people for that. And now you have summoned me specifically to this warehouse. You guys want something from me. Your leader wants something from me.” Bomi bravely stepped forward. “What is it?”

Seungri twisted his lips to the side. “You’re right. You’re not stupid.”

Bomi pulled out the letter that had been left on her desk. “Before your lackey died, he told me to wait for a message. Is this the message?”

“Perhaps,” Seungri said. 

“What do you want from me?” Bomi demanded again, this time more forcefully. She put the letter back into her jacket pocket.

“It’s not what we want from you,” Seungri replied. “It’s what you would want from us.”

Bomi scoffed, “What could you possibly have that I want?”

Seungri stepped closer towards her and reached back into his pocket. Bomi tensed, expecting him to pull out a weapon, but he only revealed a phone. “I believe you know her,” he said, lifting his phone up to Bomi’s face to show her a video.

The moment Bomi saw what was on the screen and recognized who was in the video, her knees nearly buckled underneath her.

It was Yookyung. She was tied up and sitting in the corner of some dark cell. Her hair fell over her face and she was noticeably skinnier, but Bomi could recognize her friend easily.

Seungri returned his phone to his pocket and smiled cruelly. “Hong Yookyung for Son Naeun. That is the trade I came to propose.”

Bomi didn’t respond. Even though Seungri had put his phone away, Bomi could still see the image of Yookyung, bruised and battered in the corner of a gray-walled cell. Alive.

Yookyung was alive.

Bomi felt sick to her stomach. Her arms and legs felt completely numb. How? She had seen Yookyung die before her eyes. She had been shot fatally twice: first through her heart, second through her forehead.

“How?” Bomi managed weakly.

“We found her lying outside in a puddle of her own blood. The bullets had missed her heart and brain, and she would have died if we hadn’t found her.”

A scream remained trapped in Bomi’s throat. Yookyung had been alive, and Bomi had left her behind. “One of your men said that he burned all of my comrades,” Bomi said hoarsely.

“All of them except Yookyung,” Seungri replied. He looked disgustingly pleased by Bomi’s obvious despair. “Your friend for the princess. How does that sound?”

Bomi didn’t hear his last statement; she was too busy seeing her worst nightmares right in front of her. She saw the flames, her teammates’ faces, their ashes, and Yookyung. Yookyung, her best friend, who was still alive. Yookyung, the friend that Bomi had left behind. She could hear her comrades screaming as they burned, and amidst it all, she heard Yookyung’s voice echo throughout her thoughts.

Get out of here, Unnie.

Unnie, please. Live.

So Bomi had done just that; she had gotten out of there and lived. And now Yookyung was as good as dead because of her.

Bomi’s mind was a mess of despair, regret, and fear, and she was too busy quarrelling with her own thoughts to notice Seungri raise his hand and snap his fingers. Immediately, Bomi felt arms grab her from behind, and she suddenly snapped back to reality. She and Seungri were now surrounded by about a dozen armed men, who were all staring at Bomi with hungry eyes.

Bomi threw Seungri a look of betrayal, and the man simply laughed. “You really didn’t expect to come out unharmed, did you?” He stepped back and allowed the men close in on Bomi, telling them, “Have your fun.”

“You bastard!” Bomi shouted. She struggled to break free from her captors’ arms, but their grip was too strong. A man approached her from the front, his fists raised. Bomi stomped on her captors’ feet with as much strength as she could muster. She swore she heard some cracks. The men immediately let her go, and she ducked just in time to dodge the other man’s punch. His fist ended up colliding with one of the other men’s jaws.

Bomi stumbled out of the way and quickly surveyed her surroundings. The men had surrounded her so tightly that there was no way she could break free. The only weapons that she had on her were her two hidden knives. The odds were severely against her.

She still wouldn’t go down without a fight. One man charged at her, and at the last moment, she revealed one of her hidden knives and flung it directly at his heart. Before his body could even fall, she surged forward and took the gun on his waist. She began shooting as soon as the gun was securely in her hands. She was able to shoot down three men before one snuck up behind her and struck her back.

Bomi fell forward, and the gun clattered away from her. Swiftly, she pulled out her last knife and jumped up, driving it down the chest of the closest man. He screamed and dropped to the ground, clutching at his bleeding chest.

The men fell upon her like predators devouring their prey. She had no time to breathe as she found herself fending off ten men at once. She would push back one man, just to turn and find another man already charging at her. They came in a disorganized mess of attacks, and Bomi had no time to think about her next attacks. Her body moved practically by reflex, blocking one attack while dodging another.

One man threw a punch at her, but she grabbed his wrist, used his momentum against him, and twisted him around. She drove her knife across his neck and felt his warm blood spurt onto her hand, then pushed his body towards an oncoming wave of attackers. They stumbled back against his body, and Bomi used this chance to scoop up a fallen knife and fling it at one of them.

She moved to charge forward, but she felt a hand grab her arm and pull her back. A fist flashed before her eyes, and a second later, she felt herself tumbling back, an intense pain blossoming in her nose. There was no time to recover; she felt a hand from the other side grab her and pull her into a kick.

Bomi fell to the ground, pain coursing through her body. The wound on her arm had healed for the most part, but it had begun to sting like a fresh wound. From the corner of her eye, she saw feet approach her. She quickly swung her legs out, kicking their feet out from under them. They fell to the floor with a loud grunt, and Bomi rapidly flipped her knife on its hilt and buried the blade straight into his chest.

Slowly, Bomi staggered up. The remaining seven men circled her, now regarding her more cautiously than they had before. All around them, blood and the dead bodies of their comrades crowded the floor. Bomi held her knife up, beckoning them to come, despite her labored breaths, bloody nose, and blurry vision.

But they didn’t come. Instead, they allowed Seungri to pass through them with that filthy smirk of his. He made a signal with his hand, and suddenly two hands grabbed Bomi from behind, holding her in place.

Seungri stopped in front of her. “You’re an excellent fighter,” he said. “It’s a shame that we’re on opposite sides.” Then he jammed a knife into her lower belly. For the first time during the battle, Bomi let out a pained cry. Seungri just kept his eyes on her face as he dug the blade deeper into her belly, forcing even louder shouts from her. She felt blood begin to soak through her clothes, and it slowly became incredibly difficult to breathe.

In one swift movement, Seungri wrenched the blade out of Bomi’s body and pushed her back into the arms of the man behind her. He stepped back and signaled to the others. “Continue.”

The pain was so overwhelming that Bomi could no longer fight back. At the first punch, crumbled to the floor. They punched and kicked her so much that eventually her vision became blocked by her own blood. One man landed a kick directly to her stabwound, and the pain was so devastating that for the first time, Bomi truly wondered if she would make it out alive.

But the thought of her death wasn’t what frightened her the most.  It was the fact that Yookyung was still alive, and Bomi couldn’t do anything to help her if she was dead. It was the fact that she wouldn’t see Eunji again. It was the fact that she would never see the rest of her team again. It was the fact that she would never hear Chorong’s nagging again or get to prove to her that she had kept her promise.

Bomi didn’t know why, but that last thought frightened her more than she’d expected.

Just as her pain became too overpowering and she shut her eyes, she heard screaming from the men around her. One by one, the amount of kicks and punches she was receiving lessened, until suddenly she was no longer being attacked.

Bomi’s eyes fluttered open, but her vision was still too clouded by her blood to get a good look at what was happening. A pair of boots fell to her side, but they did not move to kick her. Instead, the person fell to their knees and gently cupped Bomi’s face into their hands. Their thumbs gently wiped the blood from Bomi’s eyes, and though Bomi’s vision was still blurry, she could see Eunji’s face staring down at her.

“We’re going to have to stop making a habit out of this,” Bomi said weakly. She coughed, and blood spurted from her lips.

“Stop talking,” Eunji said, her voice shaking. It sounded like she was on the brink of tears. She heard her friend swear and saw her take off her shirt and press it against Bomi’s open stabwound. “We have to get you out of here.”

“They have Yookyung.” It hurt to even talk, but Bomi had to tell Eunji.

Eunji’s hands stiffened around Bomi’s face. “What?” 

“Yookyung. She’s still alive.” Bomi coughed again, but she forced herself to go on, “The man with a sun tattoo on his arm. He has a video of her on his phone.”

Eunji didn’t reply right away, and Bomi assumed that she was looking around for Seungri. “I see him. He’s still breathing. We’ll bring him back with us.”

Bomi nodded. The effort it took to talk was now too much.

“Bbom-ah, stay with me!” Eunji cried frantically. “Keep your eyes open. Don’t say anything. Just listen to my voice. I have a car outside. I’m going to carry you there, okay?”

Bomi nodded again, but even that simple act was becoming too difficult for her. She felt Eunji heave her up into her arms by some miraculous feat of strength. Eunji loaded her carefully into the passenger seat of her car, then left and returned with Seungri’s body dragging on the ground behind her. She threw his body into the backseat much less carefully than she had with Bomi’s body.

“I’m going to take you to the nearest hospital, okay? Hang in there, Bbom-ah.” Eunji strapped herself into the driver’s seat, and beneath her, Bomi felt the car’s engine rumble to life. 

Eunji began talking to Bomi about random things, and in the beginning, Bomi tried her best to stay attentive. Over time, however, it got more and more difficult to stay alert. Eventually, Eunji’s voice melted into a dull buzz at the back of her head, and Bomi could no longer hear nor see anything. Her pain faded away with all of her other senses, which she thought was a small mercy. Bomi felt her hold on reality slip away into a dangerous void, and there was nothing she could do to stop her descent.