“It’s been weeks since I told you to eliminate the rat situation, but for some reason, the rat is still alive.”

Sehun rolled his eyes over the phone. How Baekhyun was trying to step all over him made him want to reach through the line and smack his head until it was upside down. He had just gotten home from doing a bit of investigation for a potential client. Sehun got the call as he pulled up the car in his garage. Because he was talking about the “rat situation” and not upfront asking “Did you kill Byul yet?”, Sehun figured that someone else was in the room with Baekhyun. He imagined his assistant standing across the desk from him and waiting for an order.

“Listen to me,” Sehun began. “If you don’t agree with my methods and how I do things, we’re going to have a problem. I’m trying to wait for a good time.”

“I just don’t understand why you haven’t killed off the rat yet.”

Sehun felt a throb in his head. “She’s a young woman. Her disappearance would make the news. There will be posters of her in the streets. It’ll go national. The public doesn’t care if a grown man with a terrible background is missing, but it’s her you’re telling me to take out. It’s harder to cover up a murder the more people know about it. It’ll be traced back to one of us.”

“Still, I paid you the seventy-five.”

“Actually, I gave that back to you. Right now I don’t owe you anything,” Sehun said, laying down the facts.

There was a sound in the other end that made Sehun imagine Baekhyun throwing a pen across the room. “Yes! I offered you seventy-five thousand. Just figure something out. It’s your job.”

Before Baekhyun could go crazy and send people after him, Sehun softened the harshness in his voice. “I know she quit the bakery, but I tracked down where she works now. I’ve been keeping an eye out,” he said just to convince him that he was still investigating Byul. “I’m just waiting for a good time. Maybe I’ll make it look like an accident. Just be patient.”

“Alright, bye.” Baekhyun hung up without waiting for a response.

Sehun stepped out of his car and locked it with the remote. He tossed the keys in a crystal bowl upon entering his house. Sehun sighed deeply as he took off his shoes by the door. He was only half-surprised to see Chanyeol lounging around on his living room sofa.

“I should not have told you the passcode to get in my house,” he told him.

Chanyeol ignored him. “So what’s the report?”

“What report?” Sehun threw himself across the other sofa, propping his feet up against the armrest.

“I know you’ve been going back and forth between Byul’s apartment and Baekhyun’s building just in case he sends more people to spy on her.”

Sehun tossed him an accusing glare. “Have you been tracking my car?”

“HA!” Chanyeol bounced on his seat, pointing a finger. “So it’s true! That was just a guess. I wanted to see you admit it.”

That night after Sehun and Byul’s fight, he had driven home soaked in rage. He stepped on the pedal, zipping down the road and violating every possible traffic law because he didn’t give a damn about anything anymore. A minute later, however, Sehun found himself sighing and returning to her apartment block despite their argument. He checked around the area and went back to Baekhyun’s house and office. He was nowhere to be seen. Sehun concluded that he was too drunk to send a whole crew after Byul in the middle of the night.

Sehun hadn’t seen Byul for a full week, but he was doing good work by keeping tabs of Baekhyun through phone calls and texts.

“What’s the deal?” Chanyeol flopped on his belly and looked at Sehun. “I thought you two are friends. Usually, you’re out getting burgers or something. You never see her anymore.”

Sehun mindlessly began tossing a softball against the wall and catching it repeatedly. “I don’t need to see her to keep her away from Baekhyun. It’s easier this way,” he said, scoffing at Chanyeol’s claim.

“Okay, I get it.” Chanyeol grinned devilishly. “You two fought over something and now you’re pathetic because I’m the only other human being you have normal conversations with that doesn't involve you shooting me.”

“I wouldn’t call our conversations normal,” Sehun mumbled. His life was never really normal. It revolved around his job. Everything he did had to do with his job. There were moments with Byul where he felt like a normal guy doing normal things that everybody else did. Sehun never knew life could be like that.

Too bad they weren’t on speaking terms and that was all over. Sehun was okay with it. Or at least he told himself he was.

“So what happened?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I just want to,” Chanyeol pressed on.

He was pesky as a fly. Sehun wondered why he was so bad at picking friends. Even though, he gave in anyway and decided to speak. “She ran into Baekhyun at a party last week.”

“What? And he didn’t try to kill her?”

“You know how Baekhyun is. He doesn’t want to get his own hands dirty, which is why he hired guys like us to handle things for him.” Sehun continued the motion of tossing the ball back and forth between him and the wall. It somehow calmed his thoughts and arranged them in a more orderly fashion rather than the swirl of words they usually were when he was upset. “Anyway, let me finish.”

“Sorry, I won’t interrupt.”

“I picked her up after she left the party and I told her that she shouldn’t have left her apartment like I warned her. This van was hanging around her building and I followed it back to Baekhyun’s office. There was something happening and I just… I just—”

“Wanted to protect her?”

Sehun didn’t like how Chanyeol was putting words in his mouth for him. “You said you wouldn’t interrupt.”

“Oops, go ahead.”

“I just got mad that she could have shown up to her own funeral at that party.” At that, Sehun hit the ball slightly harder against the wall. When he caught it, his hand stung a little. “Then the next thing I know is that she’s yelling and telling me that I’m too controlling because I always tell her what to do, apparently.”

“Urgh,” Chanyeol groaned. “She sounds like a big baby.”

“Shut up. Don’t say that about Byul.” Sehun almost threw the ball at him.

In disbelief, he scoffed. “Jeez, why are you defending her? I thought I was supposed to be on your side.”

“I guess she’s right. I shouldn't get directly involved.” Saying it out loud made Sehun’s insides feel hollow. “Plus, I told her that she should be dead, so that pissed her off.”

Chanyeol did a double-take. “No it would piss her off.”

“I meant it like…” It took him a moment to correctly gather his words. “I meant it as in she would have been dead by now if it weren’t for me, but I accidentally said it in a way that sounded like I wished she was dead.”

“Girls are just trouble, man.” Chanyeol fished his phone out of his pocket to probably send some girl a text despite saying that.

“I think it’s better if I don’t talk to her at all and stay away.” At hearing his own words, Sehun had stopped trying to catch the ball. It hit his chest and rolled away on the ground.

Chanyeol looked at him as if he didn’t believe him. “Good luck with that.”

It was the late afternoon with the sun beginning to set when Byul finished her work shift. She rolled up her blue vest and tossed it in one of the staff lockers. Leaving through the front of the store, she unknowingly stopped by the road, as if waiting for something to happen. She hated herself for expecting Sehun to show up and insist they do something together. It has been a full week and he’s been a constant no-show. Byul asked herself why she cared if he didn’t come to see her. She should be mad. Beyond mad. He told her to go die.

Convincing herself that she hated him, Byul continued her walk.

On her walk to the train station, she went through the alley as a shortcut. Byul ignored the fact that Sehun told her to never go through those alleys because it was a good place for cars to hide. As if trying to prove to Sehun that he could no longer push her around and tell her what to do, she continued through the alley with her chin held high. Those alleys connected together almost like a maze. There were many dips and turns. Each corner was always holding some kind of mystery, though Byul knew enough about it to not get lost.

That day, she felt a chill crawl up her spine des