It had been a while since Bomi had started walking comfortably again, and although she felt fairly confident in her ability to fight, she hoped to God that her body wouldn’t betray her and crumble when she needed it the most.

Just as Seungri had said, the Shadow Clan was having a meeting in an abandoned gas station in the dead of night. Bomi and the rest of her team were crouched against the wall of the small gas station convenience store, watching the dim flickering light inside. She, Chorong, and Eunji were on one side of the door, while Namjoo and Hayoung occupied the other side. Silently, they prepared their weapons and waited for Chorong’s signal.

Chorong, who was in front of Bomi, carefully peered through the clear door. She pressed a finger to her earpiece and whispered, “Seems like there are a little under two dozen people in there.”

“Armed?” Hayoung’s hushed voice buzzed through their mics. 

“It’s hard to tell. Let’s just assume that they are,” Chorong replied. “Eunji-ah, do you have the smoke grenade?”

Eunji quietly sifted through her jacket and handed the grenade to Chorong. 

“Good,” said Chorong. She inched forward a bit more. “You all know the drill.”

Bomi cocked her gun and carefully eyed Chorong in front of her. The leader had pressed her back fully against the wall of the store. Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell once, twice, and then a third time before she opened her eyes and leaned forward, inching the door open with her foot. It took Bomi a second to realize that that must have been the breathing technique that her old comrade, Minho, had taught her to calm her nerves before a battle. It was a bittersweet and oddly endearing sight.

Once she had inched the door open wide enough, Chorong pulled the pin from the grenade and rolled it into the store. Immediately, shouting erupted from inside the store―their signal to jump up from their positions and charge inside. 

Chorong burst into the store first, gun raised and bullets already firing. They shot blindly into the white smoke, but from the painful screams and sound of bodies falling, Bomi knew that some of their bullets had hit their target. 

It didn’t take long before the Shadow Clan members began shooting back; one bullet narrowly missed Hayoung, just barely grazing the side of her arm. She let out a painful hiss and ducked behind an empty shelf. Bomi nearly ran to her to check on her, but Namjoo was there in the blink of an eye. Hayoung quickly assured Namjoo and the others that she was fine and was back up without delay.

Before long, the smoke began to clear from the store, and everyone scrambled to take cover. Silence filled the store from the sudden ceasefire. Bomi crouched against a shelf with Eunji and quickly reloaded her gun. Her heart was beating rapidly inside her chest and adrenaline coursed through her veins like electricity, but her fingers remained steady and nimble.

“Are you okay?” Eunji asked.

“I’m fine. My wounds have healed and I can fight as good as new,” Bomi replied. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m always going to worry about you, Bbom-ah,” Eunji whispered. 

Bomi turned to Eunji. “I know.” She nodded her head forwards. “Go around that side. I’ll watch your back.”

Without saying another word, Eunji stood and moved to the other side of the shelf. She peered over the side before rounding the corner and disappearing to the other side. Not a second later, sounds of fighting and shouting began ringing inside the small store again.

When Bomi stepped out from the cover of the shelf, she had no time to take in the scene before her. An armed woman immediately charged at her with a long dagger, and Bomi swiftly side-stepped to avoid the strike. In a few quick and skillful moves, Bomi had disarmed the woman and knocked her unconscious.

It had been less than ten minutes since Chorong had thrown in the smoke grenade, and blood, fallen objects, and lifeless bodies (none of which, thankfully, belonged to Bomi’s teammates) were already cluttering the floor. Only about ten Shadow Clan members were still standing, and it seemed like Bomi and her teammates had the upper hand, despite their lack of number.

Together, they fought with the harmony and synchronization of a team that had been together for years. From an outside eye, it must have seemed that way; they must have looked like they had grown up training with each other. It made Bomi proud knowing that most of them had practically been strangers that had only recently been thrown into the same team together. 

It had been a little over a month since Bomi had met her entire team, and she already knew most of their fighting styles. If you would have asked Bomi a month ago if she thought that she would be able to work so well with her teammates, she would have probably said no. Fighting alongside her teammates now, Bomi knew that she would have been horribly wrong.

As the Shadow Clan members fell one by one, Bomi had a growing feeling of imminent success. That is, until a loud shout echoed throughout the store, forcing Bomi to stop and turn―and lay her eyes on a sight that terrified her more than the thought of her own death.

All of the Shadow Clan members were scattered on the floor around them, either unconscious or dead in a pool of their own blood. 

All, except one, who was currently behind Chorong, pressing a knife so deeply into the leader’s neck that it drew a bead of blood. Chorong, despite the knife digging into her neck, didn’t look frightened. Her expression was serious and deadly still as she gazed out at all of her teammates, who stood frozen in front of her, unsure of what to do. 

“Drop your weapons!” the woman holding Chorong shouted. 

Chorong didn’t look frightened, but Bomi couldn’t say the same about herself. Horrible images and thoughts flashed through her mind, and the sight of Chorong’s blood being drawn from her neck only amplified them. Bomi’s lips felt dry as she stayed rooted in her position, aching to surge forward while also restraining herself. One wrong move could mean Chorong’s death.

“Drop your weapons or I swear to God, I will end your friend’s life right here, right now!”

Bomi and her teammates waited for Chorong to do something, and she did. She gave the slightest of nods, a movement so miniscule that the skin of her neck didn’t even press deeper into the blade of the knife. 

On Chorong’s command, not the Shadow Clan woman’s, Bomi and the others slowly dropped their weapons to the floor.

“How the hell did you find us?” the woman demanded.

“Put the knife down and we’ll talk,” Eunji said, raising both of her hands in surrender. They were shaking slightly―something that Bomi rarely ever saw. 

“How?” the woman repeated with much more vigor. She pressed her knife deeper into Chorong’s neck, drawing more blood. Bomi nearly sprung forward, but Chorong shot her a look, wordlessly telling her to stay still. 

“We pieced together information from various different sources,” Eunji lied smoothly. Before their mission, they had decided to keep Seungri a secret from the rest of the Shadow Clan, both for the sake of his family and for their advantage.

Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to convince the woman. “You work for the royal family, don’t you?”

“We do,” Eunji answered. “So you understand that there will be dire consequences for what you aim to do.”

“Like I give a sh**,” she spat. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll give you two choices: you can either call your pretty little princess over here and hand her over to me or you can watch me kill your precious friend right now.”

Bomi wanted to scoff. How in the world did she expect that plan to work? For one thing, Naeun was smart enough not to answer their summons to an abandoned gas station, and even if she did, she wouldn’t come alone. There was also no way in hell that Bomi and her team would just sit and wait for the princess to arrive when their leader literally had a knife to her neck.

As absurd as the woman’s demands were, the sight of Chorong being held with a knife to her neck frightened Bomi beyond belief. She didn’t know what Chorong’s captor was capable of, and she certainly didn’t want to find out.

“That might not be the smartest move,” Namjoo said. “The princess wouldn’t come alone or unarmed.”

“Does it look like I’m playing with you?” the woman shouted. “Do you think I won’t actually hurt your friend?”

All of Bomi’s teammates said nothing and stood frozen in place, no doubt trying to figure a way out of this mess.

“I asked,” the Shadow Clan member repeated, “Do you think I’m playing with you?”

Before Bomi could register what was happening, the woman drew the gun from the holster on her waist, pointed it at Chorong’s thigh, and pulled the trigger. Bomi swore that her heart stopped dead in her chest.

The gunshot was like an explosion in Bomi’s ears, but the sound of Chorong’s anguished cry, a sound that Bomi had never heard before―that was the sound that sent a tsunami of fear, anger, and pain through Bomi’s body. To her side, Eunji let out an audible shout. Chorong fell to her knees, bright red blood already soaking through her pants. Thankfully, the woman moved her knife so Chorong’s neck wouldn’t dig right into it.  

Bomi and all of her teammates sprang forward, but Chorong yelled, “Stop! Stay where you are!”

Her teammates might have stopped because of the sheer force in Chorong’s command, but Bomi stopped because of the crack in her voice. Her voice sounded strained, like she was trying desperately to channel her strength and ignore the seething pain of her wound.

“Unnie,” Eunji said, almost in a plea. She looked pale and extremely perplexed.

“Stay,” Chorong said again. “Don’t take another step.”

The woman roughly pulled Chorong up from the floor, and Bomi had to bite down on her tongue when she saw the excruciating pain in the leader’s face. She pressed her knife against Chorong’s neck again and barked, “Do you still think I’m playing with you?”

“No,” Hayoung replied quickly. “We don’t.”

“Then call your princess right now. Pull out your phone, turn on your mics, press your magic tracker or something, just do it!”

Bomi, Eunji, Namjoo, and Hayoung glanced uncertainly at each other. Reluctantly, Eunji reached into her jacket pocket and shakily pulled out her phone. She looked at Chorong with desperate eyes, as if searching her expression for some sort of command. They were all doing that, waiting desperately for an answer to come to them, but Chorong said nothing. Her wound quickly grew slicker with blood.

Then, Chorong looked straight at Bomi with those eyes that Bomi had spent countless hours staring into. Her gaze flashed down to Bomi’s thigh and then returned back to Bomi’s eyes so quickly that Bomi thought she might have imagined it. But real or not, Bomi suddenly knew what she had to do.

The woman had commanded everyone to drop their weapons, but she had not told Bomi to remove the throwing knives strapped to her thighs. Moving slowly so it would not raise the alarm of Chorong’s captor, Bomi’s hand shifted down to her thigh inch by inch, until it finally rested atop her knife. 

She had never missed before. All her years working as a royal family agent, she had never missed her target once. 

Still, that terrifying fear that she would now miss for the first time made it difficult for her to breathe. Her heart thud so rapidly and heavily inside her chest that it began to hurt. Her fingers closed around her knife’s hilt.

Bomi looked at Chorong for confirmation, and the leader gave the tiniest of nods, so small that Bomi was only able to catch it by the movement of Chorong’s pupils.

In one swift motion that her body was so used to performing, Bomi pulled her knife from its sheath and flung it at its target. The move, as always, happened all in one breath.

She had never missed before. 

And she did not miss then. 

Her knife sliced through the air and struck its target right in its bullseye, just as Bomi had expected.

A second later, Chorong collapsed to the floor.