If you take the blue line from Myeongdong, and switch to the yellow line just at the first stop of Chungmuro, it would be almost 30 stops and nearly an hour and a half ride to the Geomdan Oryu station. Geomdan Oryu station, situated in the suburbs of the Incheon city, would take you close enough Sogolgol model village, which is a district to be developed in the Oryu scheme. Lee Heung Sung was headed in that direction with his suitcase full of 5 billion korean won in cash, and he was doing a bad job at hiding it. The first rule of smuggling fraudulent money across the city in broad daylight; you don’t do it like you’re actually doing it.

But Lee Heung Sung’s face was glistening with perspiration on a cold winter night.

Easy. Kim Sung gyu thought as he set his eyes on his target. The train arrived at stop 328, Anguk station. People filed out, more people filed in. Lee Heung Sung stood at the same spot by the door, hanging onto a pole for his dear life, the suitcase in his hands. 

“You got him?” A voice in Sung gyu’s ears. Sung Gyu rolled his eyes, looking away for a brief second. Jieun could get unnecessarily paranoid at times. “Target set” He muttered into his collar. “Should I get him now, or?”

“All the way to Geomdan station” Said Jieun, making him groan internally. “But, you know, that would work now. We need time”

“Okay” Sung gyu sighed and reached for his side bag. The small box was cold to his touch; by the looks of it, it's his spectacles holder. Small, long and brown, leather bound, words embossed in gold lettering. His hand still in the bag, Sung Gyu closely watched Lee Heung Sung and his very obvious, bulging suitcase of cash from a distance, waiting for the train to stop at the next station. When it did, Sung Gyu moved. Seats started emptying on the other side of the carriage, and Sung Gyu passed Lee Heung Sung just as he would pass by just about anyone. But the crowd was too thick to notice anything that happened. Not even Lee Heung Sung seemed to realise that he’s just been injected with one of the most lethal biological weapons that has ever been invented.

But not to worry, it won’t react until the end of the ride.

Sung Gyu took the seat he’d clocked in from the distance, leaned back comfortably and watched the names of the stops and their numbers coming up on the screen. There’s a poster of a construction company right in front of him and over that, some obscure juice brand. The girl seated on the opposite seat from him looked at him over her phone one too many times, to which Sung Gyu gave his brightest smile.

He fixed his glasses and pulled up the collar of his jacket. “How long?” 

“Forty minutes and ten seconds, nine, eight, seven, six-,” 

“Cut it, noona”

Jieun laughed. “Good job. Did you put it back in?”

“Packed and secured” He patted the side of his bag.

“Good, now we wait”

The stops changed from Honje, Nokbeong, Bulgwang, then the circular ride through five different stations. Soon it's just 12 more stations to their last stop. Then eleven, then ten, then nine, then-,

“Sung Gyu-ah?”

“Hm?” Sung Gyu had his eyes on Lee Heung Sung again, but his mind was on the other end of his call. 

“This would be your last assignment, right?”

Sung gyu blinked and turned away. “Says who?”

“Says your sister”

Sung Gyu stared at the poster of the construction building in front of him; the high-rise buildings of the Orion Towers where hundreds of workers lost their employment and two lost their lives. It was a nightmare, that whole apartment complex. But now it housed five different celebrity couples, a whole idol group and two politicians accused of tax evasion on two different occasions and got away with it.

With a sigh, he turned away. “I’ll think about it”

“You gave me an ultimatum” Jieun was telling him, almost desperate. “After the Juwon financiers case, after the Lee Heung Sung case, when is it now, Gyu?”

“I said I will think about it, not that I will…” He a hand through his hair in exasperation. Of all the times to have this conversation, Jieun wanted to do it right after he injected his newest target with a lethal weapon and watched him slowly perish in the subway train. “Look, noona. We’ll talk when I get back”

“Like you will”

“Noona-,”

‘Daegok Interchange, to line Gyeongui Jungang’ The controlled, robotic female voice of the train announced over their conversation. The seats emptied as most left for the train exchange. Lee Heung Sung looked visibly sick by now, his skin appalled, wet with perspiration. He looked around himself at the too many empty seats that he could take, then fatefully picked the one right next to his would be killer.

For a second Sung Gyu thought he was caught. The injection wasn’t supposed to be felt by the victim upon administration. That’s how it was made, like a quiet sniper but from the closest distance possible, slowly killing them yet fast enough. It wasn’t the first time he had done it, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Sung Gyu looked at his victim, cautious that he may have given himself away. But was relieved when Lee Heung Sung didn’t even glance in his direction but quietly took his suitcase to his lap and leaned his head against it.

“Holy ” Jieun whispered on the other end. “Did he notice? Do you think?”

“No, we’re good,” Sung Gyu muttered, trying hard not to move his lips. “How long now?”

“Thirty two minutes, twenty nine seconds, twenty eight, twenty seven, twenty six…” 

Sung Gyu sighed, leaned his head back against the glass and closed his eyes. It was going to be one hell of a long ride.

Geomdan Oryu was a station situated pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Inside, it looked the same as any other train station; the restaurants and hot food stalls, shops selling magazines, books and other little trinkets. Looking out the large glass panels, one would only see miles and miles of greenery and empty, barren lands. Sung gyu left the train just at the same time as Lee Heung Sung, who made a beeline straight to the men’s toilets. 

Then everything happened so fast. 

The weapon would have spread throughout his body by now, thickening his bloodstream which would essentially induce a heart attack. Lee Heung Sung collapsed at the foot of the second stall in the men’s bathroom, projectile vomiting across the polished tile floor.  Sung Gyu who was conveniently inside the bathroom acted fast. He asked if he was okay, massaged his chest,  and when he struggled to breathe, lost consciousness, Sung Gyu ran to the door and yelled for help. He called for an ambulance, supported the paramedics to load the man into the stretcher, and stood at the end of the corridor heaving fast breaths in panic as his adrenaline washed away. After Lee Heung Sung was transported to the nearest hospital, Sung Gyu returned to the men’s bathroom. 

A pair of station workers were inside, cleaning up the vomit with fervor. Sung Gyu walked into the third stall, took off his bag, and pulled off his jacket. Ten minutes later, he walked out of the bathroom now in a leather winter coat instead of the varsity which he tossed into the bin, sunglasses instead of spectacles, boots instead of sneakers, and a suitcase full of 5 billion Korean won in cash.

Whenever somebody asked what he did for a job, Sung gyu would tell them the truth without hesitation. He identified two kinds of people from this exercise; people who thought he was kidding, and people who thought he was out of his mind. There has never been a single person who believed him, as if being a professional killer was the occupational equivalent of the holy grail. People believe it exists, but at the same time they think it's not real. Somebody once asked what they had to do to get into it. What qualifications would they need? Do they give on-the-job training? How about prior experience? Did you send an application online, or…?

Outrageous, really. What the hell kind of a job did these people think he did? It wasn’t a like blue-collar occupation. He didn’t earn paycheck to paycheck like everybody else and go to work in smart suits in a nicely furnished office building where everyone pretty much complained the whole day and had the same lunch menu every day of the week. While his life was much more eventful than they probably imagined,  Sung Gyu would just shrug and tell them they just had to be really good at killing people. Nobody ever really questioned him if it was true.

But it was.

When Sung Gyu found out he was really good at killing people, he was nineteen years old. He had just enlisted as an active duty soldier for the 56th Infantry of the Republic of Korea Army. He had never lifted a gun before. In fact, he’d never even seen a real gun, except on TV. But when he first lifted a Daewoo K5 Standard sidearm shotgun and shot right through the target without any real effort, his platoon leader casually commented that he was born to shoot guns. He didn’t think much of it, and never imagined being repeatedly training multiple different guns, shooting multiple different targets, and later being called to the office of the head commander and being told, once again, that he was born to lift the gun. 

First off, it wasn’t anything to be proud of. Secondly, he could never go back to his mum and tell her that he was born to kill people. What would she think? Sung Gyu was pretty sure it would give her a heart attack, and then she’d call in a shaman to eliminate all cruel demons inside him. 

But to no avail, by the prime age of thirty-four, Kim Sung has become one of the most feared assassins there has ever been, and his mother would never know. 

There was no direct entrance to his home. First, he’d park his car at the cul-de-sac on the end of his street, then take about 50 meters to walk through the children’s park. He’d find the first entrance at the family home numbered 35/1/A, from where he’d take the staircase to the basement. His home was behind the second door to the right. The first door was a broom cupboard. The house upstairs was his sister’s home.

“Sunggyu, is that you?” 

Jieun’s voice echoed down from the foot of the staircase, followed by a giggle of a child. Sunggyu set the suitcase down in the middle of his dining table and pushed open the narrow window slit. The room smelled stale otherwise, and moldy like he lived in a drain.

The sound of Jieun’s footsteps came before her voice, and soon she was leaning against his doorframe, arms folded on her chest.

“Mmm, nice. I take it that’s five billion won?”

“In cash, untouched” Sunggyu took off his jacket and rested it on the back of a chair. “What did they say would be our commission?”

Usually, this kind of assignment came with a hefty sum and the added benefit of a commission for both of them. The commission wasn’t equal; for them, Sunggyu did the riskiest part. Regardless, he made sure it would be made equal once the money landed in his bank account. His sister, a single mother of two with an absent husband who also sent money to his parents back home, deserved more than him.

But this time, strangely so, the case wasn’t the same.

“It’s 10 percent the cash”

Sunggyu lifted his eyes to his sister. “And for you?”

“Same” Jieun smiled. “It’s 10 percent each”

Sunggyu whistled lowly as he reached for the top compartment of his drawers. The rubber gloves were powdery as he pulled them on, followed by a surgical mask. “What’s up with the big boss? Is he feeling generous? Or-,” The rubber slapped his skin as he pulled the gloves by its edge. “He has something up his sleeve?”

Jieun pulled her lips to a side thoughtfully. But she was silent, her eyes distant, head tilted, shoulders sagged. Sunggyu could see the way she pricked at the wood of his table with her chipped fingernails, the continuous tap of her foot. He’s known her all his life. In fact, she’s the only person he has known this closely in his lifetime. Nothing she did went unnoticed. He knew what it meant.

“Ah!” he smiled, then rested the head covering over his hair. 

Jieun huffed and rolled her eyes.

“Are you really that happy?”

“Delighted!” He chuckled, but it was soon muffled under the layers of metal over his head. “I’ll talk to you once I’m done, head on upstairs noona!”

“You’re a menace” Jieun made her way towards the staircase, nonetheless, complying with her brother. 

“Don’t do anything stupid while I’m not around!”

Once the sound of her footsteps disappeared behind the sound of the closing door, Sunggyu got to work. 

RJ71 was never to be touched with bare hands. Its toxicity would remain for a few hours even after the first administration, and the only way to discard the used syringes and waste material was controlled incineration. He had a small laboratory set up in what should have been a study room. In its small, air-conned, blue-walled expanse, Sung Gyu had all the equipment he needed. A cupboard full of tens of vials of RJ71, a sufficient supply of point-five mili liter syringes, and a small on-site medical waste incinerator. He carefully discarded the used vial and syringe into the incinerator, the one that had just killed an otherwise completely healthy man. For a second, he couldn’t bring himself to move.

There was something about killing people for a living that had a profound sense of morality. It was like living the death note. Did he save more people by killing one? Did he protect more lives and guard humanity? Where was humanity when one had to be perished to save the rest of them? Even if the man he just killed was supposedly on the way to funding an illegal construction project with stolen money that would have cost hundreds of innocent lives?

What was the difference in humanity and morality anyway? If killing was necessary just to save another?

After each of his assignments, Sung gyu tried not to have any regrets. He has never killed anyone that wasn’t a bad person. He never accepted assignments where the target was disabled, was an elderly, a minor or a woman. Even as a professional assassin, Sung gyu still had standards, he knew where he drew the line. At the same time, he knew god wouldn’t spare him in his afterlife; he has still killed people, although it was like weeding out the bad plants. He knew there was a special place made in hell for him.

But Sung gyu made his bed, and now he had to lay in that.

With a heavy, metallic thud, he pushed close the incinerator. Sung gyu turned it on to medium, and while they burned, Sung Gyu did his daily counts of the remaining stocks to be reported to the head quarters. The HQ did not always recommend using RJ17. The risk it posed on the executioner was extremely high as it was to the victim. For one, the executioner often had to administer it without gloves. Although a specialised point-five ml syringe has been developed for this purpose, it did not sufficiently protect them and lengthy exposure to the material had long term health effects. That’s why they had other forms of execution which they recommended more to avoid high chemical exposure. Gunning, sniping, knifing, and certain less fatal bio-chemical weapons. The special task force unit of ROKA were trained for this all; just a few of them, called the Hawks, served as professional assassins. Kim Sung Gyu was one of them.

Sung Gyu did not start off as a government executioner. He was a legal associate at one of the most prestigious law firms in the Seoul city. During his time studying for his degree, he could remember coming across the trolley dilemma. How was allowing one person to die to save five others, morally justified? Was it the number of people involved? Was it their level of importance? And how did this theory work if you were placed in that position to choose in real life? For Sung gyu, the trolley dilemma was the reality that he lived in. He had the choice to decide what was right or wrong, who deserved to live and who didn’t. Judges did the same thing. Law enforcement did the same thing. The only difference in what he did was that the hawks were legally obliged to kill.

“You’re up? Oh, good”

Jieun was behind the kitchen counter, chopping veggies for lunch. Seeing him, she quickly wiped her hands on her apron and approached him in quick strides.

“Mum and Dad called. They’ve made plans for Christmas this year” Jieun laughed, shaking her head. But he didn’t fail to catch the quiver in her voice. “They’re not even religious! I can’t remember the last time they ever went to church! But this year, they want to throw some Christmas dinner or whatever, feed the village people, and-,”

“Noona”

Jieun’s rambling stopped. Yet she continued to face away from him. There was a look in her eyes which was quite transparent to him. He could read her like glass.

“Where is he?”

There was silence, and she tilted her head to the side, carefully analyzing him. 

“He’s online” Jieun finally gave in.

“Oh, good” Sung Gyu traversed the corridor towards the back room, and Jieun followed right after him.

“Gyu-yah, listen”

“Hm?” He glanced at her for half a second. “I’m listening”

“Tell him this is the last assignment. This has to be the last”

“Okay,” He shrugged. He and her both knew that it wasn’t going to happen.

“And if this new one is dangerous, tell him the one you just did would be your last”

“Yeah, sure” Sung Gyu made a beeline through the kitchen, past the kitchen cabinets to what would have been Jieun’s laundry room, which was not anymore. He paused there, his hand on the doorknob, and turned to his sister.

“And I will also tell him I choose to be unemployed and homeless, how about that?”

Jieun folded her arms on her chest and rolled her eyes. “He’s going to make you work on Christmas Eve, I just know it”

“So what?” He shrugged. “It’s not that I celebrate it anyway” He made to open the door, then paused, and turned back to his sister. “Christmas is a couples holiday. What am I going to do? Sit at home and brood?”

“Oh, shut up” Jieun grumbled and pushed past him into the control room. 

Their control room was where Jieun’s equipment was set up. There were multiple computer screens, sound setups, AI functioning systems, and spyware, all of which were used to support and monitor Sung Gyu’s work. Whenever Sung Gyu was out on a mission, Jieun became his eyes, his ears, his consciousness, and his biggest protector. And whenever he was on a mission, Sung Gyu feared the day the sound she’d hear from him would be his last. He knew her concerns were reasonable. He knew how worried sick she was. But did he have much of a choice?

The man on the screen, patiently waiting for him was enough proof that he didn’t.

“Sung Gyu hyung, my man!”

Lee Howon, the chief commander of the Hawk unit of the ROKA Special Task Force knew that he looked good in his army uniform, hence appearing in it on the screen and everywhere he went. When Sung Gyu first joined the unit, Howon was already a rank higher than him, and he quickly made it to the top in a short period of time; there was no mystery behind his swift promotions. He was really that good at killing people. 

Unlike Sung Gyu, Lee Howown was never held back by sudden spurts of moral dilemmas. Also unlike Sung Gyu, with every kill that his unit achieved, Lee Howon celebrated like the next biggest win.

“Lee Heung Sung was a success, excellent, excellent work!”

There was a massive smile on Howon’s face, his thick brows reaching his hairline. He was even clapping his hands as Sung Gyu nodded and nodded, while Jieun quietly stared at the screen. 

“Indeed, the best arsenary of our unit, Sung Gyu hyung” 

Sung Gyu cleared his throat. “It wasn’t that tough”

“Of course you would say that” Howon laughed, shaking his head. “Anyway, we’ll be sending Grey Wolf over to collect the suitcase, your payment would be made soon after. Good job, the two of you”

Jieun mock-clapped, leaning herself against her brother’s shoulder. “I know that tone, Howon-Ssi. You can’t fool me”

“This is why you’re a hawk, noona”

“Cut the crap, Chief Lee”

Howon laughed, but that soon morphed into his usual businesslike tone. “You have a new assignment”

“I assumed as much”

“This would be the last one right?” Jieun interjected before he could stop her. He could tell that they’ve had this conversation before, Howon and her. He could also tell how it could have gone down without him. Howon would say yes to anything Jieun asked of him, as if he had any control over the grander scale of things. It was out of respect, out of affection. Howon saw Jieun as a sister as much as she was for Sung gyu. But he didn’t seem to understand the weight of these unattainable promises, he didn’t seem to have a sense of how words had meanings, especially those related to someone’s life.

“Of course, this one could pay him enough for early retirement!” Howon’s laughter didn’t exactly reach the two of them. Jieun furstratedly dragged a chair towards the screen. Sung Gyu leaned back, his arms folded on his chest.

“What is it?”

The sound of screen sharing resounded in the room. Sung Gyu reached out and the other monitor. Words, images, cursive letters just seemed to bounce off the screen right at his face.

“This is the assignment you said he’d have on christmas eve?” There was exasperation in Jieun’s voice. Of course, of course she’d bring up her parents’spontaneous christmas plans. She knew his next assignment was going to be on christmas eve. She just didn’t know what.

“Alumni Christmas gala night?” Sung gyu read out the invitation and blinked at Howon on the other screen. “But that’s just my college reunion”

Which happened every year and Sung Gyu knowingly never attended to. A heart could break only once. He was too weak to make it happen as an annual event.

“But why do you want him to go to his college reunion?” Jieun asked him the golden question. “What assignment would he have there?”

“Glad you asked”

Images on the screen changed and the e-invitation card disappeared, making way for a case file. The photograph was blurry in the beginning until the screen set. Details of the target; their name, age, occupation, all of it promptly followed. It took a minute of observing the screen for realisation to finally hit him. When he turned to Howon, words didn’t come out right.

“That’s-,”

“Lee Jaehyun…” His noona read out the name for him. “Hm, doesn’t ring a bell for me”

“Not for you” The screen soon changed, an a familiar logo materialised on the screen. “But it does to hyung, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah…” He muttered. Although his eyes set on the screen, his mind was drifting five years back in time. Sung Gyu knew Jaehyun, he knew Jaehyun very well. Quiet and aloof, he was one of the brightest and most diligent scientists in ‘Operation Stingray’, a secretive project run by ROKA to develop the most lethal, slow-working biological weapon that could be used, not only in warfare but also in domestic executions. Due to legal and moral congestions, the project fell through several times. The outcome, although not immediate, was RJ 71, the 71st and the only successful trial of the chemical. Lee Jaehyun was on the forfronts of its developments from the get go, only to abruptly leave the project only months before its final release.

And here he was now on the screen, listed as a target by the very organization that hired him to create what would later cause his demise.

“But why?” Sung Gyu wanted to know. Sung gyu wasn’t deeply involved in Operation Stingray, but he was in the legal advisory team that had blocked the development of the weapon on moral and  grounds of international law. He did know the leading scientists by their names and their faces. But not enough to know how they led their lives.

“We have strong suspicions…” Howon paused, backtracked and shook his head. “No, we have strong evidence that Lee Jaehyun, who is thoroughly hands-on with RJ71, has created something even stronger, ten times more lethal. It’s more dangerous than you could ever imagine”

Jaehyun was an oddball. Although his handsome face made up for his strangeness, Sunggyu thought back then that he was someone who simply had no bone of empathy in his heart. He showed no emotions. He never held back speaking his mind, which wasn’t often, but when he did speak, he had nothing nice to say. Sung Gyu had heard from somewhere that Jaehyun was probably neurodivergent. But for him, Jaehyun was the kind of person who’d run the trolley on both the tracks, just to see what happens regardless of it killing everyone in the process.

So Sunggyu could imagine the extent of the danger it posed. Someone like Lee Jaehyun should not be harnessed with something so dangerous. Now that he was, and as it was self created, there was no moral ground to stand. Lee Jaehyun had to be killed. 

“How does it even connect to Sunggyu’s annual get together?”  Jieun wanted to know. And it was Sung Gyu who had the answer.

“Lee Jaehyun is an alumni of Kyunhee University”

Jieun turned to him.

“So you know him since college?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never met him in college. I was a lawyer, he’s a scientist”

Jieun shrugged and returned to Howon on the screen.

“The party will be held at the college gymnasium,” He continued, and the slides changed to show an interior image of the university gymnasium. “The hall could make space for more than 100 people. Jaehyun’s new weapon is not made to kill just one person. And the way he choose to test that out is this”

“So that means-,” Jieun gripped his arm as Sunggyu quietly connected the dots in his mind. On the screen, Howon’s dark eyes raised up to hers.

“Jaehyun is preparing to unleash it at the college reunion; an experiment,  a mass execution”

Usually, Sung Gyu is unperturbed by information like this. He has sat through enough discussions about how some people were planning to kill others; and Sung Gyu’s job was to clip that flower from the bud before it blooms. But here he was, listening to the probability of his batch mates, his class of 2001 being used as lab rats by a psychopath, and he also knew that among them would be-

Sung Gyu felt Jieun’s eyes on him. He knew what she was thinking, if the way she gripped his arm was any indication. She wanted to stop him, but she also knew there was no stopping to him now.

“Where does this information come from?” Sung gyu asked Howon, who once again changed the slide on the screen.

“Lee Jaehyun is currently employed at JJ Pharmecuticals, who is testing a new vaccination that could help reduce mortality from sudden cardiac arrest. Jaehyun was a part of this project until recently but was immediately dismissed for mysterious reasons”

“Mysterious reasons?” Jieun’s brows furrowed. 

“Yes'' Howon moved on to the next slide. “This actually comes from insider informants from JJ Pharmaceuticals. In the guise of supporting the development of the vaccine, Jaehyun has been working independently on RJ71’s contender. To avoid scandals and legal issues, JJ pharmaceuticals dismissed him without pressing charges, which is a mistake because during his time at JJ, Jaehyun has managed to build his own laboratory, secretly procured equipment through JJ and now has a fully functioning biological weapon of mass destruction sitting inside his laboratory in Chungnam-Do”

Jieun narrowed her eyes and glanced at him. “But why don’t we catch him at his lab, then?”

Sung Gyu knew the answer to this. “Jaehyun wouldn’t have put up the lab in the middle of nowhere. He needs his security net. Jaehyun isn’t going to die alone. He’d take a lot of lives with him”

“Hyung’s right” Howon changed the slide again, now showing a small building made up entirely of abandoned containers. It wasn’t built just anywhere. In the surrounding were small village houses, a water stream heading into a vast, luscious green paddyfield. The moment he’s ambushed in his laboratory, he’s going to target killing not just a hundred people. He’s targeting the slow, painful deaths of thousands and thousands of unknown civilians. It wasn’t a risk that ROKA was about to take.

“So the plan is to take him down at the reunion?”

“That’s our safest bet” Howon nodded.

“Sung Gyu and Sung Gyu alone?” 

There was the usual panic stricken look in Jieun’s eyes as she glanced between him and the screen before them.

“We would send back up…when needed” Howon assured them.

“But Sung Gyu would be going alone?”

“Noona…” Sung Gyu sighed, reaching for her hand. “I’m trained for this, I’ve handled tougher assignments-,”

Jieun abruptly stood up, dropping his hand, pushing him away from her.

“But nobody as dangerous as this!” 

“Noona-,”

“No” Jieun stepped away from the screen, from both of them.  There were flames in her eyes. “I can’t, no, I won’t let that happen”

Sunggyu hung his head, burying his hands in his hair. He knew his sister wouldn’t let him take this, he knew how she felt. Jieun had come closer to losing her brother more times than he could count, and there was an even stronger reason why she’d been pushing him, endlessly, to make him retire. But Sung Gyu couldn’t stop and run away just yet. There was no chance that Sung Gyu would stop and run away at all. He was in a predicament that Jieun would never begin to understand.

“Noona” Howon’s sigh on the screen was audible. “Hyung can’t reject assignments just like that, you know this right?”

“And I won’t” Sung Gyu interjected, raising his head. “This is my job. This is what I do, noona”

“Even at the expense of your life?” Jieun shot back.

“I already understood the risks when I started”

Jieun ignored him and turned back to Howon. “Did you know that Sung gyu is having heavy nosebleeds?”

Howon looked over at Sung Gyu, who only rolled his eyes, turning away. “It's not a big deal-,”

“And he has trouble breathing, his eyes won’t stop tearing. This man is sick because of that bloody chemical he deals with every single day and you want me to just-!”

“Noona…” Sung Gyu climbed up on his feet. “Listen, I told you it was nothing-,”

“Is it true?” Howon wanted to know.

Sung Gyu’s been keeping all of this to himself, never realising that his sister had a pair of hawk eyes. The unit provided specialised healthcare for the soldiers, but that also meant testing, treatments, extended medical leaves, not having any assignments, not getting paid and even worse, learning the truth, solidifying the fact that the very weapon that’s been his lifeline for the past few years was also slowly killing him.

Sung gyu pressed the back of his hand to his eyes and tried to recollect his thoughts. True, his eyes were sore and teary. True, he had nosebleeds that lasted for hours and a pain in his head that felt like his skull was being ripped apart. But what could he do? Kim Sung Gyu was the best assassin ROKA had who handled RJ71 better than anyone else. He had to make a small sacrifice for that glory. And it wasn’t only that he was doing this for.

“Sung Gyu hyung-?”

“Okay, fine” He sighed, finally yielding. “This is going to be the last one” He looked to his sister. “Happy now?”

“Sung Gyu…”

“You’re going to come for the checkups after that” Howon was saying on the other side. There was an edge to his tone when he spoke. “Seriously, hyung. Do you know how many times you skipped your health checkups? Geez, you goddamn workaholics”

Jieun reached out and grabbed him by his shoulder. “Last one, Kim Sung Gyu, do you hear me?”

“Ah, you’re giving me a headache” He pressed a hand to his head and turned back to his employee. “Send me the details to my phone”

“Done”

His phone beeped at the same time, vibrating in his pant pocket, which was followed by another vibration. 

“And that would be Grey Wolf. He’d be coming down to get the money in about…ten minutes?”

“Thanks”

With that, the screen with Howon went blank, leaving just his sister and himself in the empty, quiet control room. For years, this has been their lifeline; for his sister who lost her job during her pregnancy, their sickly parents who refuse to leave their comfort in Jeonju, to Sung Gyu’s baby nephew and niece who didn’t have a father figure in their lives except for their uncle, and to himself, who had no other way to make a living. Jieun gazed up at him, her eyes filled with  tears. When would this ever end? Jieun asked him that time when he narrowly escaped death and returned home with a gaping bullet hole in his arm. 

‘When would this ever end? She seemed to be asking him this now. But he had no answer for her.

“I’m heading out for a while,” He told her instead, making his way towards his basement apartment. Jieun followed after him and paused at the foot of his door. 

“Sunggyu-ah”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry if I acted out, back then”

Sunggyu paused in the middle of the staircase, gripping the handrail. 

“It’s okay” he hurried his way to the bottom of the stairs. 

“And Gyu, can you buy those Christmas cookies when you come back? Yoonho adores them”

Sung Gyu looked up at his sister from the doorway and smiled. There was nobody in this whole world who knew him better than Kim Jieun.