“This is just a scratch?” Bomi hissed the moment she saw the wound on Eunji’s arm. It was far from a scratch; it was a deep, dark red gash that looked about half an inch deep and three inches long.

“If this is just a scratch to you, then I would like to see what you consider a stab wound,” Chorong mumbled. She pulled out gauze and some wrap from her pocket. “I brought these from the van. Come here.”

“We don’t have time for that. I’m fine.” Eunji tried standing up, but Chorong forced her back down.

“Sit your a*s back down,” Chorong demanded. “We have to keep pressure on your wound.”

“Unnie, I’m fine,” Eunji protested. “We don’t have a lot of time before the others realize that one of their companions has been gone for a long time.”

“Let her see your wound,” Bomi said rigidly. Eunji looked at Bomi in surprise, as though she hadn’t expected those words to come from her. Bomi only gave her a hard look, and that was all it took to make Eunji give in and hold her arm up to Chorong.

Eunji winced as Chorong carefully bandaged her wound. “You think this is bad? You should see what I did to the other guy.”

Hayoung looked down at the dead man on the ground. Blood was seeping from a bullet wound at the back of his head. “Namjoo-unnie killed him, not you.”

“I kept him in an easy position for Namjoo-ah to aim at.”

“You said that you found a way in,” Bomi said. “Where?”

Hayoung simply pointed to a door to their left. “The man came from this door, meaning it must be unlocked. All of the other doors around the building are locked, so this is our best chance of getting in without making a loud sound.”

The door was in a very dark corner and was practically hidden in the shadows. It was no wonder that Namjoo or Hayoung and Eunji hadn’t been able to see the man in time. 

“How do you know we won’t just be walking straight into where the others can see us?” Bomi asked.

“I peeked through the door,” Hayoung replied. “It’s just a side door that leads into what looks like a backroom for storage. The man was holding a cigarette, so we think he was coming out for a smoke break.”

Bomi looked down, and sure enough, there was a dropped cigarette not too far away from the man’s fallen body. “Why out this door and not the front, though?”

“We don’t know,” Eunji answered. “But that doesn’t matter now. This is our best way in.”

“Stop squirming so much,” Chorong uttered as she finished wrapping Eunji’s wound. “We’re going to need to disinfect this and stitch it up later. For now, try not to move your arm too much.” Chorong stood and helped Eunji up.

“Will you be okay to fight?” Bomi asked Eunji.

“I’ll have to be,” Eunji said. “Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t worry, I still have one good arm.”

“You’re still as stubborn as ever,” Bomi sighed.

“I’d like to say that I’m even more stubborn than ever.”

“Agreed,” Chorong confirmed. She walked over to the door and held up her gun. “Everyone ready?” Everyone held up their guns and nodded. Chorong clicked her earpiece and said, “Namjoo-ah, wait five minutes after we go in before you come down. We’ll have no use for a sniper once we’re inside. I’ll mark the turns we take with tape so you can follow us.”

“Understood,” Namjoo replied.

Chorong eased open the door slightly and peered through the crack. She turned to the rest of them. “Follow my lead,” she said, then slipped through the crack as stealthily as a shadow.

Eunji went in after Chorong, followed by Bomi, and lastly Hayoung. The room was completely dark and had a stale scent, which was expected of an abandoned building. Chorong clicked on her flashlight to its dimmest setting and continued forward.

For a few moments, Bomi and the others walked blindly in the dark, following the weak beam of light from Chorong’s flashlight. Wherever the light shined, Bomi caught bits and pieces of the room. She could see why Hayoung believed that this was used for storage; it had been cleared out for the most part, but some empty boxes, carts, and shelving units still populated the room.

They reached another door on the opposite side of the room. Chorong marked the door with a piece of blue tape for Namjoo and shined her light through the small glass window in the door. “It leads to a hallway,” she whispered. She gently turned the door handle. “It’s unlocked.”

One after another, the four women slid into the hallway and continued walking until they reached the other end. They now stood in front of a solid door. Chorong pressed her ear against the door and listened carefully.

“I hear voices,” she said quietly. “This door must lead to the rest of the store.”

“Look.” Hayoung pointed at the bottom of the door, where a dim light was visible through the small crack between the door and the floor. 

“Well, at least we won’t be fighting in the dark,” Eunji murmured.

“We should wait for Namjoo here,” Bomi suggested. “We’ll stand a better chance if we go in together.”

Chorong nodded, raising a hand to her ear. “Namjoo-ah, are you almost here?”

“I just got off of the roof,” Namjoo answered. By her panting, Bomi could tell that she was running. “Give me a few minutes.”

“The door leads to a small storage room. You’ll find a door that leads to a hallway if you keep walking straight. We’re at the end of the hallway. We’ll wait for you here.”

“Got it,” panted Namjoo. “I’ll be there soon.”

Chorong cocked her gun. “Remember, we need at least one of them alive to interrogate. Don’t let any of them escape. Our final count should be nineteen when we’re done. Twenty, including the man outside.”

“And if one of them does escape?” asked Hayoung.

“Chase after them and make sure that they don’t,” Chorong answered simply.

“How’s your arm, Eunji-ah?” Bomi moved closer to her. Chorong shined her light on Eunji’s bandage. With dismay, Bomi noticed that blood had already soaked through the white wrap.

Eunji turned her shoulder, removing her arm away from the weak beam of light. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about the nineteen people in the other room.”

Trust me, Bomi thought sullenly, I don’t want to be worrying about you. And yet here she was, anxiously thinking about Eunji, even after everything that had happened.

“Come here,” Chorong said. Eunji began to protest, but Chorong just glared at her, and she shut up right away. “Bomi-ah, unwrap her bandage and keep pressure on her wound.”

Bomi did as she was told. Hayoung took the bloodied bandages and discarded it to the side. Bomi watched as Chorong held her flashlight in her lap and used her knife to tear off a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt. “I still have some of the wrap left, but I don’t have any more gauze, so this will have to do.”

Chorong folded up the cloth and replaced the damp gauze with it, then used the rest of the wrap to secure it in place. Eunji focused on Chorong’s quick, yet gentle hands. When she was done, Eunji said softly, “Thanks, Unnie.”

Chorong took her flashlight out of her lips and stepped back. “I’m not going to let you bleed to death on my command.”

“I wouldn’t have bled to death,” Eunji muttered. “I just would have bled...a lot.”

A sudden click and quiet footsteps diverted their attention from Eunji’s wound to the end of the hall. They all swung their guns toward the sound. Chorong shined her light in that direction, and Hayoung cautiously stepped forward.

A second later, Namjoo appeared from the darkness, her gun pointed at them. When she saw who was in front of her, her shoulders sagged, and she lowered her gun. The others did the same.

“You have no idea how glad I am to be indoors right now,” Namjoo said, her chest still rising and falling rapidly. 

“You might change your mind in a few seconds,” Chorong said. “Hayoung-ah, hand me the smoke grenade.” When Hayoung pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to Chorong, Chorong murmured, “Hopefully this will provide a good enough distraction.” 

Quickly and silently, she pulled the pin of the grenade, cracked open the door, and rolled the grenade into the room. She shut the door immediately after and stood up, pressing her ear to the door. She didn’t have to press her ear to the door to hear the shouts that followed, though. Through the door, Bomi could hear alarmed shouts, cursing, and even gunshots.

“On my lead,” Chorong said. Bomi heard all of her teammates ready their weapons. She held up her own gun and nodded at Chorong, who nodded back and flung open the door.

Light washed into the hallway, and the others didn’t wait for their eyes to adjust to the sudden change of lighting before they charged into the store and began raining bullets into the white smoke. Bomi heard painful shouts, bodies falling to the ground, and desperate orders to take cover. Through the smoke, a disgruntled woman appeared with a knife in hand. Eunji, unfazed, unsheathed her sword and struck down the woman. 

A bullet spun past Bomi’s cheek, narrowly missing her face. She whirled around, trying to find the source of the bullet, but she couldn’t find it through the thick smoke. 

“Take cover!” Chorong shouted just as their enemies began shooting back at them. 

Bomi ducked behind an empty metal shelf, Chorong joining her shortly after.

“Are you alright?” the leader gasped. “Have you been hurt?”

Bomi shook her head. “You?”

“I’m fine,” Chorong answered quickly. She leaned over the side of the shelf and began shooting again. Across from them, Hayoung and Namjoo had taken cover behind another shelf.

After a few minutes, the smoke cleared, revealing a bloodied floor, overturned chairs and tables, and several fallen bodies. Standing amidst the mess were five women and seven men, looking around wildly. Three of them held their guns out in front of them, while the others either held knives or were empty-handed.

“Where’s Eunji?” Bomi asked in a hushed voice.

Chorong began to reply, but promptly stopped when Eunji emerged seemingly out of nowhere with her sword in hand. She disarmed one of the men with a gun and shoved his body at another man nearby. Behind her, a woman raised her gun and aimed at Eunji. Fear gripped Bomi, and she lifted her gun, but Namjoo beat her to it. There was a loud pop of a gun, and the woman fell shortly after.

One of the unarmed men scrambled for the fallen woman’s gun, but Eunji kicked it away. Just as she was about to bring her sword down on him, the man grabbed one of his dead companion’s sword and swung it up to block her swing.

Cursing, Bomi jumped up from behind the shelf and ran to join Eunji. As she ran past Namjoo and Hayoung, she saw them drop their guns and stand up to join her. It would be too difficult to aim correctly with some of their teammates facing the Shadow Clan members head-on, so they had no choice but to engage in short-range combat.

Only one of their enemies held a gun now, so Bomi went to him first. She ran in zig-zags towards him, occasionally taking cover from his fire behind tables and shelves.

She heard the man grunt, and when she peeked over the table she was hiding behind, she saw him scrambling to reload his gun. She took that opportunity to unsheathe her knife and fling it at him. It sliced through the air with uncanny accuracy and landed home right in his chest. He dropped his gun and looked down at the knife protruding from his chest in shock, and in that split second, Eunji turned around and delivered a neat killing blow to his neck.

Bomi kicked the man’s gun away so none of his companions could grab it and made her way to Eunji, jumping over fallen chairs and bodies. Eunji pressed her back against Bomi’s, and together they surveyed the remaining enemies around them. There were nine left, and they were all either unarmed or holding knives.

“Don’t you miss this?” Eunji asked.

“What part of this should I be missing, exactly?” Bomi mumbled.

Their enemies charged before Eunji could answer, and suddenly they launched into a frenzy of blocking and dodging attacks from nine different people. Chorong, Namjoo, and Hayoung joined the fight shortly after.

A woman with a very angry face closed in on Bomi with her dagger pointed straight at Bomi’s heart. Bomi sidestepped, deflecting the woman’s blade with her knife. The woman was quick to recover and immediately pounced on Bomi again. The ferocity in her attack caught Bomi off guard, and she just barely dodged the woman’s knife. She felt a sharp pain blossom in her left arm, but she had no time to see what had caused it.

The woman charged again, and this time, Bomi was able to catch her wrist and twist into a painful position. Her enemy’s face contorted in pain as she dropped her dagger. With her other hand, Bomi caught the dagger by its hilt, flipped it around, and drove it straight through the woman’s armpit. She screamed in agony, and Bomi quickly ended her life with her own dagger.

Just as Bomi released the woman’s wrist and let her fall, she heard a loud grunt behind her. She spun around just in time to see a man crumble to the floor, a knife wedged in the back of his skull. She looked up and locked eyes with Chorong, who was looking at her breathlessly and slightly bent over from the momentum of her throw.

“Watch your back,” Chorong simply said, then turned back around to help Hayoung.

Bomi heard another sharp gasp behind her, and she whirled around in time to see another man collapse to the floor before her, this time with a deep gash running from the top of his neck to the bottom of his back. Eunji swung her sword to the side, flicking the man’s blood of its blade, and smiled at Bomi. “I have your back too.”

Bomi just stared wordlessly as Eunji ran off to find another opponent. She turned around in place, taking in her surroundings. To her right, Hayoung and Namjoo were fending off two men. She gazed in awe as she observed how well their fighting styles complemented each other; it was more of a dance than a fight. At one point, they were pinned back-to-back, and just as their two opponents were about to land their punches, Hayoung and Namjoo twirled around, switched opponents, and struck both men down.

To her left, Bomi saw Chorong duck and Eunji easily jump over her back, as though they had rehearsed that move several times before.

How long had it been? How long had it been since Bomi fought together with a team? It couldn’t have been too long, and yet Bomi felt as though she had forgotten how it felt like to fight in a battle with other people looking after her. Was it always like this? So organized and...right?

A woman ran up to her, and Bomi snapped out of her daze and dodged her punch. As if it materialized out of nowhere, the woman pulled out a knife and swung it towards Bomi’s neck. Bomi tried to avoid the attack by stepping back, but she tripped over the leg of a fallen man and stumbled to the ground. The woman grinned wickedly and drove her blade down on Bomi, only to be tackled by a flash of black.

Eunji stood in front of Bomi again. She held out her hand and helped Bomi up. “Have you lost your touch, Bbom-ah?”

Bomi saw Hayoung and Namjoo’s opponents fall for the final time. Ahead of her, Chorong was effortlessly dodging all of her opponent’s frenzied attacks. Bomi unsheathed her last knife. “Never.”

Together, Eunji and Bomi launched into a battle with the woman, who was admittedly a better fighter than Bomi had hoped; even against Eunji’s sword and Bomi’s knife, the woman was able to hold her own. But she stood no chance against Eunji and Bomi together. Eunji had Bomi’s back, and Bomi had Eunji’s. Whenever Bomi dodged an attack, Eunji moved to cover her open side, and whenever Eunji struck, Bomi made sure that the woman couldn’t take advantage of the second that it took Eunji to draw her sword back.

It had been a while since she fought alongside Eunji, and perhaps her brain had forgotten what it felt like, but her body certainly hadn’t. It was as though her arms and legs were moving by pure muscle memory, swinging and ducking at just the right times. She hadn’t engaged in this dance for a long time, but her body hadn’t forgotten the routine. Bomi could tell from Eunji’s bright eyes and slight smile that her friend felt the same way.

“Do you remember that move we used to do?” Eunji said to Bomi.

“We had several moves.”

“Our favorite one.”

Bomi’s tongue knew what it was before her mind did. “The Hello, Goodbye.”

“Still need to find a better name for that one, but yes, that’s the one.” Eunji shifted one foot back. Her eyes twinkled brighter than ever. “After me,” she said, then launched into a full sprint towards their opponent.

“Oh, boy,” Bomi muttered to herself. She ran after Eunji, praying that her body could still do what it was about to do.

Eunji stopped a few feet away from the woman and immediately dropped into a low crouch. Before the woman could take advantage of Eunji’s obvious vulnerability, Bomi sprang forward, vaulted off of Eunji’s back, and somersaulted over the woman’s head, landing behind her. The woman whipped around, eyes wild with confusion.

Bomi waved slyly and said, “Behind you.”

The woman spun back around, only to be met with Eunji’s blade. She fell to the floor, gasping and grabbing at her bleeding neck. Eventually the woman stopped squirming and remained still, her hands still clutching her neck.

“You were right,” Bomi said as she walked up to Eunji. She looked down at her dagger and then at Eunji’s beautiful sword. Her dagger appeared insignificant next to Eunji’s sword, but Bomi knew that wasn’t actually the case. She smiled at her friend. “I did miss this.”