Peace.

It was a foreign concept to Seulgi, even with how established she was in life. For a decade, the young woman had lived in a turmoil of distressing events, some forced upon her and others brought about to her own volition. She had tried to alleviate herself of her misery by meeting people and going to therapy, but no one was able to pull her out of the dread that had been set in motion the moment her father died. It was a dread that she now recognized as a self-hatred, not of herself necessarily, but of her priorities and what she would become, had become as a result of such beliefs.

Twenty-five was still a young age, she reasoned with herself. She thought that eventually she’d come to terms with the harshness of reality and learn to live with it like everyone else did, but perhaps twenty-five was also too old for her to only finally embrace that mindset. Her life was a paradox in every sense, and Seulgi found herself on the crossroads with every decision she made.

“Seulbaenim!” a new recruit called out to her, using the station’s affectionate mashup of her name with the term sunbaenim. Seulgi looked away from the files she was studying to see Jennie and Krystal waving at her, stopping momentarily to do a mock salute as Seulgi raised a hand in acknowledgement. Much to everyone’s surprise, Jennie switched routes from pursuing fashion design with her boyfriend Kai to becoming a police, where she met Kai’s best friend and hit it off with her immediately. It led the two girls to get acquainted with Seulgi, who had transferred yet again to a police university to finish up her degree not in law but rather law enforcement.

“Hey, girls. What’s up. Back from patrol?”

Krystal nodded with a huge smile. The cold-looking beauty was affectionate, especially to her friends and Seulgi, which Seulgi finally understood as the root of Jisoo’s suspicions towards her intentions with Kai. Fortunately, the three maintained a stable relationship, especially after Jennie became Krystal’s best friend, much to Kai’s playful complaints that his girlfriend was abandoning him for his best friend.

“Seulbaenim, you won’t believe what we saw today!” Krystal nudged Jennie. “Jendeuk-ah, tell her about the bridge!”

“I’m still not super familiar with the geography here, can you do it?”

Seulgi smiled at Jennie’s shyness and Krystal’s matching enthusiasm. She’d moved away from Seoul to Busan, not really wanting to stay in the city or her hometown in Daegu either. However, she’d been able to get in touch with her old college acquaintances, including Jisoo, whose sister was at Seulgi’s station, Sunmi, who was working in Busan, and Byulyi, who was just a two-plus-one item with the other girls. She’d cut contact with everyone else instead, including Wenjoy, Yeri, and Minhyuk, especially after her mother died four years ago from a . This left her pretty much a social recluse until she finished schooling and moved south.

“...and the guy was twerking on top of the railing! So we tell the woman that he doesn’t seem to be trying to do anything drastic, just stupid, and Officer Kwon must have heard us over the radio, because I just heard a bunch of cursing and the guy stuck his tongue out at us before jumping onto the sidewalk and running away. Of course Jennie and I were wondering if we had to chase him, since technically he didn’t commit a crime, but he was being a public disturbance, but even that had ended when he ran off, and I was honestly still reeling from the fact that he hadn’t plunged into the water, because you have to have amazing balance to not fall off of that railing when you’re freaking twerking, but props to him for that. So yeah, we lost him, but hopefully he isn’t a threat to anyone, right?”

Seulgi nodded absentmindedly, half of the information floating in one ear and out of the other. She was overworked lately, being the only detective in the department after a bunch of others retired and because people were taking on other specialties at a higher rate, and that meant that Seulgi was taking on cases right and left as she waited for the station to hire more people. She loved her hoobaes to death, but she couldn’t find the energy to seriously pay attention to their wild patrol stories at the moment.

“Hey, you two! Stop chit-chatting and go to work!” Officer Kim scolded them as she walked in. She placed a coffee on Seulgi’s desk and shooed the recruits away.

“Thanks, Hyo.” Seulgi inhaled the scalding coffee at record speed, hoping that the placebo effect would work even though she knew she was too tired for the coffee to wake her up. She noticed files in Hyoyeon’s hands. “What’s that? More for me?”

Hyoyeon chuckled. “Sorry, Detective. You know there’s been a lot going on around this neighbourhood recently.”

Seulgi nodded in defeated acceptance. “At this point, I’m thinking there’s a drug ring or something going on at the harbours.” She looked longingly at her empty coffee cup. “I’ve half a mind to just go blazing into a random warehouse with a machine gun in hopes of catching a secret meeting or something.”

“Well, sorry to tell you, but this one’s in the resident areas.” Hyoyeon patted her shoulder, smiling sympathetically. “Hold tight. We’ll hire some people soon, Seul.”

Seulgi raised a tired hand to see Hyoyeon off as the latter bounded away, secretly glad that she didn’t have to work on investigating the cases. The disheveled detective shifted her bloodshot eyes to the very thick stack of papers that had been placed on her desk, gritting her teeth in frustrated exhaustion. Nevertheless, this job paid well enough for her, so she was resolute in her determinacy to do well.

“Huh, missing persons…” Seulgi flipped through the papers quickly, scanning over the most necessary information and making a mental note to look at the finer details later. “Physical confrontation?” She frowned, checking to see the notes on avai