V

Jihyo loves each and every member of their little ragtag group. She cares for them like how a family should and would do anything to keep them satisfied despite the world they live in. It was never easy but she accepted and embrace the role of being their make-shift leader. There are times though that her patience was getting tested.

“Jihyo-ya! How many times should I remind you to tell the others to always clean up after their own mess?” Jeongyeon asked irritatingly while entering the leader’s planning room.

For the love of everything holy, she adores her neat-freak friend and adviser but sometimes the constant nagging of hers gives such a headache. She truly understands her dilemma. The others tend to forget about one of their set rules. She already had explained the situation a while ago but it seemed it had only fallen on deaf ears. They had scheduled to discuss supplies and strategies on how to gather them but of course, cleanliness comes first for her friend.

“Jeongyeon-ah, I already told you. It was no one’s fault. It was all spick and span till our new inhabitant decided to have a walk, bleeding and all. I sent Mina to help you, was she of any help?” Jihyo sighed as she lay a map of the forest where their headquarters lay, looking closely at certain spots. Determined to tackle at least one or two issues that were bugging her.

“Of course she was. The penguin had done her job well as always…quietly. What did she do again for you to throw her to me?” The taller woman said as she lay her own set of maps next to Jihyo’s.

“She got hungry and went to do a Judo move on the poor little cub.” The leader chuckled a bit. It had become her default reaction every time she was reminded of the incident. “You should have seen Sana’s face when she realize what Minari did.”

“Shame that I missed it,” Jeongyeon said in a joking manner but turned serious in an instant when she notice something different on the leader’s map. “What’s up with the red marks?”

Jihyo looked up, demeanor turning tense as well. “This was all the areas where a homunculus had been spotted and killed. It’s just that for the past two months, it was all isolated incidents only. The locations were also far from each other but recently our patrols encountered them much frequently and much nearer to our base. It is making me suspicious. I doubt that this is all just coincident. Something is not sitting well to me.”

Jeongyeon nodded absorbing all the information given while studying the map as well. Jihyo was right about the encounters. She had experienced it too, too much for her liking. “You know I will always trust you and your decision-making skills. I have a feeling that this is not something we should be careless about. Did you send Momo and Dahyun to check things out?”

“Yeah,” Jihyo confirmed. “I just can’t shake this feeling that this was all planned. What if the others were just scouts and someone or something is trying to sniff us out using all those monsters? Mina was the one who pointed out this possi