The cold, calculating Shin Ryujin somehow had a soft spot for the bright, slow-moving baker Yeji. 


The tender gaze of that woman was captivating, her careful her hands treated every object with precision and respect, as if every object that her fingers touched was important and a relic to be kept for the ages. Every piece of bread was sold with a smile and a gentle bow, every idle chatter filled with enthusiam and life to it. Yeji had the potential to be a magnificent baker with thousands of stores expanding across the state, if not the country. 
Well, at least Ryujin thinks is her name, having overheard it from a regular customer that called her that one time. Ryujin’s head sprang up when that man called that name, it felt foreign to her ears at first. When she noticed Yeji’s head lift up as well, she realized she now knew her name; she knew that those dazzling eyes had a name and a history, she knew that smile had brightened up the lives of her parents, perhaps the lives of thousands of costumers. Those dainty hands worked bread for a long time now, they had other skills, they had ambitions, a life to lead, those eyes had seen life pass before her eyes like Ryujin’s very own. That woman, her name was Yeji and she was a human.
 

To Ryujin, she stopped being just anybody. She became the object of her anguish, though the woman was not aware. The woman had a respectable life, a career that wouldn’t become obsolete in the years to come.


Ryujin was nothing like that. She was nothing but a hitman for putrid companies to off each other, an industry spy that consistently and persistently double-crossed (or even triple-crossed) her clients to boot. Ryujin was a freelancer of death, now nearing her thirties and fearing the whip of punishment—feeling the heavy remorse weigh down her back. Brought up from nothing, spoiled with riches at the cost of other’s suffering, Ryujin couldn’t understand what happiness was like, what affection truly felt like. Just after she arranged the accidental death of a CEO (and, without noticing, his wife and his youngest son), Ryujin laid low in a town far away from where that happened. That was a few months ago. 


In doing so, she has grown insanely infatuated with the baker. How the tables turn. Now, she understood what it meant to want affection, to crave it. 

 

She suddenly wanted it from this woman, this Yeji. A gorgeous, peaceful woman with a passion to create; contrast to Ryujin who was a somber, chaotic woman with a talent for destruction. Note that I didn’t say passion, because that is not what Ryujin wants. She was gifted with the talent for war in an age where war was underground and not heroic, not even presentable. Think Achilles in the modern era, bound to fight nothingness for the rest of his life and to awkwardly dismiss any questions about his hobbies talent. Ryujin was like that, she could not have a conversation with any normal human without internally cringing at the question.

 

Her infatuation with the baker was far beyond just a case of envy, but rather a strange pull that she felt. She wasn’t one to believe in the paranormal, the spiritual or the extraordinary, but rather to keep very grounded with two feet on earth. However, when her eyes glanced at Yeji and connected with hers for a brief moment, she felt that electrifying sensation, that human sensation—a fluttering feeling in her stomach dancing along with her rumbling tummy. That moment, Yeji smiled and commented on her hungry stomach, asking if she could help with that.

 

That day, Ryujin walked home with a loaf of fresh bread in hand and another in her stomach, her tongue enchanted by that taste and delighted with that crisp sensation. To have another bite of that masterfully made bread was a blessing, a small pleasure in this big world of disasters.

 

Now seated by the Café across the street from the Sun’s Bakery, Ryujin quietly sipped into her hot coffee, watching the Bakery’s activity by the rim of the cup, breathing into that scent of freshly brewed coffee. This morning, however, it tasted incredibly bitter and it burned her scalded . Her tongue could barely register the taste, but not that it mattered. She placed the cup down, sighed, and got to thinking. 

 

Thinking, thinking, but nothing was coming to her. A creature of nature burdened with the endless questions of morality that she once never paid attention, a creature that was now shaking—trying to steady her jittery fingers—like a coward. She could never stop thinking, and now that she wanted to think for a solution, nothing came to her. Putting a good use to her fingers, she decided to let the coarse fingertips drum impatiently on the smooth wooden table, watching the steam of her coffee sway to the cacophony chanted in her head. The steam was not going to bring her any divine answers to soothe her anguish and dilemma, but she still stared at it with her eyebrows mildly knit together.

 

She wondered then if she could really carry out this task. To bomb Sun’s Bakery and to possibly take Yeji with it. And not only Yeji, but Yeji’s friends who she fondly treats as family. People...

 

People with history.

 

People with families, people who deserved to live.

 

People.

 

Shin Ryujin, not for the first time in her life, felt like disappearing off the face of earth. Her once cold mask ironed to her face was slipping off, just right when her heart started to function. She should’ve left town weeks before they called her, she should’ve declined. But perhaps Ryujin was afraid of saying no.

 

The hitman slowly glanced up, watching Yeji wipe the squeaky clean window, watching her bright smile light up the town. It was a cold, cloudy morning with gray mist wishing to rain down and strike the town with its thunder. A day to set off a bomb, to let the rain wash away the flames and the blood...


Could Ryujin do it? She could not, physically unable to push the button and start the countdown.


But a whole different timer went off when she decided not to.