A mirror was empty a few seconds ago.

Now, it has a girl staring back at it.

“Gah, what the-- the particle reconstruction on this teleportation thingy definitely has some bugs..” Miyeon says to herself as she tries to fix her stray hairs.

“No, it’s perfectly fine. I just made it like that for you.”

“You purposely made it so I have a 100% chance of a bad hair day??” she says to the Minnie that just materialized behind her.

Minnie sighs, “Sarcasm. You’re just paranoid. There’s literally no difference.”

“That’s cause you came after I flattened it! Ah whatever, the sun will rise soon so Imma take a power nap. Also, last time I checked, this is MY room. So out out outtttt.” She says as she tries to push her mouse away.

Minnie couldn’t care less so she just rolls her eyes after she crosses her arms.

“Why didn’t you answer?”

“Answer what?”

“When I called you earlier. I know you declined it because the ring was cut short.” 

“Oh that. I was dealing with that guy.”

“Which guy?” 

“That newbie, remember?”

“I thought you said he left like a long while ago though..?” Minnie questioned.

Miyeon scoffed, “Newbie remember? The dude forgot his walkie-talkie so he came back 30mins later out of breath to grab it right around when you called. He worried he missed some calls or I answered some of them haha.”

“Give the guy a break. Sounds like his first day.”

“Remember this was the guy that tried to pull a fast one on me earlier? Yeah no, he doesn’t deserve my sympathy so he should be grateful he got some at all.”

Minnie isn’t dumb. She knows Miyeon gave her a lame excuse, but there’s no point trying to get the truth out of her right now, they’re both exhausted anyway and the sun is starting to creep up from behind the horizon.

“Whatever. Let’s just have a power nap before we gotta head over to HQ in the afternoon. Be ready for like 12.”

“Yes mother.” Miyeon says as she watches her best friend leave her room. She knows Minnie isn’t satisfied with her answer but hopefully by the time they’re fully rested, she would’ve forgotten to even interrogate Miyeon further on the matter.

Still standing in front of the mirror, she looks around at her bed while she tries to remove her boots and toss them to the side. She would normally undress and change into some pyjamas but the bed has her so entranced, almost like it’s calling her name, she disregards her attire as she belly flops onto the soft mattress, snuggling her head into the comfiest pillow.

She was about to drift off to dreamland when her mind brought her back to the events at the warehouse. Specifically, the girl at the warehouse. 

“C.U.B.E Agent 0106 : Yeh Shuhua. Sector S.” 

You really tried putting up a front at first huh, Miss Yeh Shuhua. It’s no surprise to me I cracked it within seconds haha

It was a bit of a surprise to her, to be honest, but Miyeon prides her ego so she doesn’t even let her thoughts tell her otherwise most of the time.

I really convinced you to meet me again tomorrow huh? Or rather today I guess since the sun has already risen.

She repositions her head on her pillow to look out the window, where the sun peeking over the horizon allows for the rays of orange and yellow to spill onto the city and into her room.

Why did I do that?

Miyeon shifts her entire body so she's flat on her bed, looking up at her ceiling this time.

Why did I try so hard to get her to meet me again? At the time I thought it would be fun, I guess? Maybe I just want to learn more about her, or at least give her a chance to get to know me. The parts I can tell at least, since I didn’t really give her much to go off of besides the fact I’m a bit cocky I guess, and that I’ll meet her in the evening.

Miyeon pulls out her phone while she continues her thoughts. Before she knew it, she searched up C.U.B.E Inc. and hopped on the basic mobile website.

What if she doesn’t show? I mean, she didn’t give me a confident answer and I just accepted that, stupidly saying I’d “take my chances.”

She cringes a bit at her “greasiness”, surprisingly.

What if she doesn’t want to show, would that mean I’m getting stood up? Wait no, this isn’t a date or anything, why am I even bothered? I have nothing else to do this evening anyway.

As she finally pauses her thoughts for a second to focus on her phone screen, she notices a button on the taskbar.

[Students]

She clicks into it. The first page is an introduction to student life, how to apply, and the basics. She scrolls down and at the bottom, there are some highlighted and underlined blue texts that read “Student Profiles [K-8]”, “Student Profiles [9-12]” and “Agent Profiles”.

Seriously?? There’s no way it’s this easy to access the information of ALL your students and agents?!

She clicks the first one and is taken to a catalog table of contents where the students are sorted by grade.

Thinking back to the number and sector Shuhua told her, Miyeon goes back to the previous page to click on the bottom link, “Agent Profiles”.

The table of contents page is different from the last one. And by different I mean non-existent. Instead, Miyeon is at a login-screen. It appears she needs the login-in info of an alumni of sorts, perhaps simply an agent themselves.

Miyeon is no hacker extraordinaire like her best friend, but she has dabbled in the field after she got lessons from the genius herself. She rolls over on the bed so she can reach her arm and pick up her laptop from the floor, without leaving the comfort of her bed, as only a psychopath would do such a deed.

She opens up the basic hacker program Minnie taught her how to use and tries to put her skills to good use. After staring at the code for a few minutes and testing different combinations, she finally put in the right ones to do a scan and produce a random set of agent credentials. A satisfied smile makes its way onto her face as her login info actually let her in. 

The files are ordered by letter, ranging from A-F grade. She scrolls down to see if she can find the S grade section, only to have the glory of her previous achievement leave her in an instance. The S file has some sort of “double encryption” over it, popping up with the text “This file is only accessible by the S agents or head of C.U.B.E. Please enter your username and password.”

Dammit, why did I think this would be easy…

The exhaustion she was feeling a few moments ago has disappeared. In its place is the determination to crack this code because if she sleeps on it now, she won’t be bothered to tackle it later.

Knowing this is as far as she can get with her own capabilities, she goes to shoot Minnie a text.

                                                                                                                    {General MinMin}

                                                                                                                                                                                                                          [Mother I need ur help]

[Weren’t you supposed to be napping? It’s     

8am u have like 4hrs to sleep and be ready.]

                                                                                                                                                                                                               [Sleep? Who’s she, idk her :/]

[Alright spit it out. What do u want.]

                                                                                                                                                                                                                [Ur guidance and wisdom :D]

[I guide u to put ur phone down and sleep]

                                                                                                                                                                                                     [Rude. Fine, I’ll ask my other hacker 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     friends instead.]

[I’m your only hacker friend. Tbh ur 

only friend when u think about it.] 

                                                                                                                                                                                                   [Shut up. U gonna help or not genius]

[Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn u bout        

the time. I am NOT waking up ur when u        

sleep in. U can b late and yelled at by ur dad  

on ur own, I have nothing to do with it]

                                                                                                                                                                                                     [So less chatting and cutting into my 

                                                                                                                                                                                                          nap time and more getting ur  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             over here.] 

She only gets to stare at her phone screen for about a second longer when she hears a knock at her door.

“Finally decided to knock huh?” Miyeon says as she enters her room. 

“At least you heard a knock. Would you like me to re-enter, knocking your door down instead?”

She looks past Minnie’s shoulder at her slanted door, barely holding itself up with its half screwed-in hinges.

“Chill, don’t get your fur in a knot Mousey. Alright take a look.” Miyeon scoots over on her bed, patting the spot next to her for Minnie to sit, and then hands her the laptop.

“Ah. Cascade ciphering. Not bad.” 

“Um, simple English please Miss “Wikipedia Advanced”” 

“Fancy way of saying multiple encryptions. Why are you looking up the C.U.B.E agent profiles anyway? Did you run into one of them?” Minnie inquires.

“Not exactly. One of the guys I met mentioned they had a run-in with one of them, apparently, they’re on the hunt for us, but I mean that’s expected when you're at the top of the most wanted list huh?” Miyeon grins at the “achievement”.

Minnie just rolls her eyes. “So basically, you wanna know what our opponents look like, even though they don’t know you either.”

“Smart right? One of us should have an advantage.”

“Yeah, I guess there’s nothing lost in identifying the enemy.” Minnie turns her attention back to her program she let run in the background while talking to Miyeon.

“Ok good news and bad news.”

“Good first.”

“I can crack the AES encryption since it’s what you call a symmetric algorithm. This basically means it uses the same key for both encryption and decryption so it’s pretty easy for me to crack.”

“Great! So what's the bad news?”

“It’s near impossible for me to decrypt the other encryption; RES. Although it’s not as protective as AES on its own, it’s an asymmetric algorithm so I may have the public key but only the creator can generate a private key. That’s why it’s the smartest to combine the two encryption methods for the strongest protection”

“Ok, a lot of big words but I think I understood your point. Basically, you can unlock one but not the other unless you get the code thingy from the creator?”

“Basically. I would assume based on the pop-up text, “This file is only accessible by the S agents or head of C.U.B.E. Please enter your username and password.”, that although not many, there are multiple users with the access code.”

“So how can we get in?”

“Well I have two plans in mind but they both have their cons. The first one seems more complicated and out of the question, we’d have to get the decryption code from the head, and likely, that would mean we’d have to invade C.U.B.E Inc. I think by that point there would be no need to search up on our opponents when we’d be fighting them face to face. The other option is I could try to get some login info by some other method like hacking into someone’s personal computer or hard drive. The only issue with this is that I’d have to know who to access, aka, I need to know at least one agent’s identity which I don’t.”

Although Miyeon could’ve easily told Minnie about Shuhua, she chose not to. She could’ve passed it off as info one of the men she met up with told her about but since she didn’t mention it all at once earlier, Minnie is bound to catch on. Not to mention, she definitely would disapprove of Miyeon heading out in the evening to meet with her. Just thinking about it, Miyeon knows how bad it sounds. How traitorous of an act it is. But, it's just this once. Once in her life to meet someone not as a criminal, not for business, but as a friend? For fun maybe? Is that so wrong?

“Eyo, earth to Ramyeon. I know the wall isn’t that interesting to stare at, what were you spacing out about?” Minnie says as she literally snapped Miyeon away from her thoughts.

“Oh, uh, nothing really. Just I guess a bit bummed we got to a dead-end in a sense.”

“At least you got a mini tech lesson out of it. Aw , I should’ve told you to take notes, there’s no way you’ll remember that now…”

“Wow. Thanks for the encouragement Teach. I really feel motivated right about now.”

“Motivated to melt back into your pillows?”

“Yup. Night night.”

Minnie sets the laptop on the desk next to Miyeon’s bed, the more logical spot it should be kept in comparison to having to bend and grab it from the floor all the time.

“3 hours.” she says as she opens the door.

“Yesh Genherhalll.” Miyeon says in a very muffled tone, due to her face refusing to move an inch from her pillows.

Minnie taps the small digital clock on a table by the door, pointing to the time even though it’s out of Miyeon’s eyesight from her sleeping position, before closing the wobbly door behind her.

————————

I can see?..

Her déjà vu hit her quicker than it usually does. The reason being, Shuhua finds herself in a room with light, contrary to the pitch black room she's normally used to. It’s more of a dim ambiance to the room though, not the best visibility but at least she can kind of see her surroundings. To her surprise, it’s not the usual square room she expected she was in. And the door isn’t visible, or at least the sliver of light she would use to locate it.

Instead, the room she’s in has only three walls. The side without a wall looks kind of familiar but it’s still hard to tell for sure with her limited visibility, even when she squints.

She walks up to it until she can reach out and feel it for herself. Something wooden, kind of like...

Crates?

Almost on command, her vision seems to brighten ever so slightly. She backs up to see the big picture. It’s almost like in the midst of the darkness, there’s a light with no actual source that’s just brightening up the image in front of her.

Crates. I’ve seen these before, haven’t I?

Before she can recall the crate labyrinth she was in earlier, she catches a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye. Although normally this would freak her out, to see any sort of sign she isn’t alone in this weird desolate nightmare dimension, her curiosity is overwhelmingly powerful and she feels pulled towards the figure she ever so slightly got a glimpse of. 

She tries to run after it, only to turn the corner and see the faint outline of the figure just turn the other corner up ahead.

This seems oddly familiar…

Even though she’s picking up her pace, her subconscious kicks in and warns her to be cautious. After all, she doesn’t even know who or why she’s going after this person, assuming it’s a person, I mean, all she could make out was the apparition of someone, not really any distinct features to identify them by.

After she rounds the corner, the sight she faces makes her wish her gut instincts kicked in way sooner.

The figure stands at the end of the hallway. It’s hard to tell since it’s almost like a black blur in the lighting when they stand still but it seems like they’re facing Shuhua. Not moving, not saying anything, just, there.

An uneasy feeling starts settling in her stomach and she decides this is probably her cue to leave. The situation seems a bit eerie now, her curious cat mentality has been replaced with a scaredy-cat and she kinda just wants to “tuck her tail between her legs” and bolt.

She only manages to take a few steps backwards before something else pulls her away from the figure.

The hands.

The grip is a bit stronger this time.

————————

Coldwater droplets start to form puddles as they splatter across the bathroom floor. The ones that didn’t get soaked up by the bath mat at least. 

“The wonders of 3 hours…” Shuhua says in sarcasm as she looks at her eyebags in the mirror, the result of the minimal sleep she got from the time they arrived home till she was pulled back to reality. Lowkey, her shoulders feel kinda sore.

After she lets out a groan whilst stretching back her arms, she flings her hands forward to grab her brush and start her standard makeup routine.

“Conceal. Don’t feel. Don’t let it show.” She says dramatically as she applies the concealer and foundation to her dark circles to do just that.

Looking back in the mirror at her seamless work, as per usual, she smiles to herself and mutters,

“They’ll never knowwww.” 

With the end of her dramatic Frozen monologue, she exits and changes before she heads downstairs in search of sustenance. 

As she makes her way down the staircase, she hears the sound of water being boiled.

To her surprise, the woman responsible for the kettle isn’t Soojin Unnie like she thought.

“Look who showed up.” 

“Surprised I’m not last today.” replies Shuhua as she looks around the rest of the kitchen. “Where’s JinJin Unnie?”

“How would I know? No one seems to tell me where they are these days anyway.” says Yuqi. She continues to stir her ramen with the water she just poured in, having not lifted her eyes from her cup since the younger girl arrived.

Shuhua senses a bit of tension and tries to avert the conversation from the topic she thinks it’s heading to, which she really wants to avoid bringing up at all. 

“I’m gonna go check on her.” she says as she makes her way to head back up the stairs.

“I’ll come too, my ramen needs to sit for a bit anyway.”

“Where’s mine?”

“You can do it yourself, you seem very independent these days.” she replies, deadpanned, as she follows Shuhua up the stairs.

Yeah, I shoulda just kept quiet. Even though Song Yuqi ain’t a snitch, she’ll definitely hold a grudge that’s for sure…

Since she was in front, Shuhua gets to Soojin’s door first so she’s the one to give it a knock. It’s silent for a moment but then they hear a sneeze. Shuhua opens the door.

“God bless you-- oh my gOD JINJIN WHAT HAPPENED?!” she blurts out when they both find Soojin lying on her back in bed, face flushed and surrounded by a sea of used tissues.

“Oh god, grosssssss, where the hell is the trash can in this room??” Yuqi says as she scans the room for the garbage. Once she finds it, she picks it up as well as the tissue box sitting next to Soojin and tries to use it to edge the used tissues into the trash, as to not make the poor girl move too much since she already seems quite weak. 

“It’s summer so it wasn’t even that cold yesterday… Are you allergic to anything JinJin?” Shuhua asks.

Yuqi scoffs, “Yeah, your cooking.”

“HEYYY, WE THREW THE BURNT OMELETTE AWAY OK!!” 

“SHE PROBABLY GOT SICK FROM THE DAMN SMELL WHEN SHE HAD TO CLEAN UP YOUR MESS!!!” Yuqi fires back.

Witnessing the two girls growling at each other like dogs isn’t helping Soojin combat her splitting headache one bit.

“Listen, I’m clearly not in the best state to break you two apart today and I don’t know why you guys are more fired up than usual but can you please calm down for a second.” 

The two puppies calm their gritting teeth for a moment to listen to Soojin.

“I didn’t get food poisoning or anything, I just feel a bit under the weather, that's all. I haven’t gotten sick this whole year. It was bound to hit me at some point and I guess I was kinda sensing it coming yesterday but I didn’t want to jinx it.”

“Do you want us to make you something? Yuqi just made ramen.” Shuhua offers, ignoring the stare she can feel from Yuqi who is currently burning a hole into her back for offering up her self-made breakfast.

“It’s ok Shu. I’m not that hungry right now, but if you don’t mind, could you just bring me a glass of warm water?”

“On it.” Yuqi says, even though Soojin likely asked Shuhua, she takes this as an opportunity to excuse herself before she gets any more agitated. 

Shuhua pays her no mind and keeps her attention on Soojin as it’s just the two of them in the room anyway. She looks over at Soojin’s desk clock.

“It’s almost 7:30am, want me to tell Soyeon you’re sick?”

Soojin pauses for a second to think.

“Not unless she asks. She’ll probably think I’m in the kitchen or something so let her believe whatever she wants unless she directly asks about my whereabouts. No need to worry her unnecessarily right?”

“I see, but why do you feel like hiding it Unnie? You know the Chief just really cares about you.”

“I know, I just don’t want to add to her troubles. Sometimes she can care a bit too much.”

Shuhua doesn’t get much further with this conversation as Yuqi returns with the glass.

“Thanks Yuqi. You two get ready for the follow-up call.”

“Alright, if you need anything just ask Unnie.”

“I know Shu.” Soojin says with a smile as she watches the two leave her room. 

She lets her body relax back into the comfort of her mattress, still beaming at the thought of how grateful she is to have caring partners, caring friends, like these two around her.

————————

“Good sleep girls?”

“As good as you can get for a little over 3 hours, absolutely chief.” 

“Haha, don’t worry Shu, after today you guys will get a few days free I promise. We’re just hot on the trail right now and I have a feeling last night was quite a successful mission yes?”

“On the dot as usual Chief.” Shuhua replies jokingly.

“I try. So, what’s the scoop girls?”

“Well to start, Soojin found some old records on Miyeon that might be useful? I don’t know, I’m sending you over the details. It’s decent info but I can’t say it’s our most solid lead.” Yuqi says as she transfers over the PDF scans taken of the files they found back at the tattoo parlor.

“Speaking of Soojin, I assume she’s getting delayed over making breakfast, yes?”

Shuhua and Yuqi look at each other, like confirming whether or not that question was direct enough for them to need to give the honest answer. Through their brief wordless conversation, they come to the conclusion they better not start digging a hole for themselves and just come clean.

“Not today Chief.” replies Shuhua.

“She still in bed?” Soyeon says, raising an eyebrow in confusion, as she knows if anyone out of the three cares the most about punctuality, it’s Soojin, so it’s quite odd to hear she's still in bed…

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