At nearly one AM in the midnight, the temperature hit a new mark of minus two degrees. It wasn’t snowing anymore but the wind was impossibly chilling to the point that exposure to that temperature for too long could for certain result in hypothermia, blue limbs and frostbites. It was why they had to abandon their plans to camp on top of the building and relocate into Sunggyu’s vehicle with the heaters on, where he also set up his K14. As he had to operate the rifle from inside the car, Eunji had to take over the driving seat. There was something crazily intimate about her driving the vehicle that he’d driven since he started off as an assassin, like he was revealing bits and pieces of his secretive life to her; not too much, but just enough.

“How is our target now?” 

Sunggyu glanced at Eunji who was tracing Jaehyun’s whereabouts on his phone.

“He’s taking awfully too long to move on from one place to the other”

“He’s given up taunting me” Sunggyu laughed as he peeped through the scope. “He’s always been such a weakling”

“Makes me wonder why I even started dating him” Eunji muttered into the quietness that followed. Sung Gyu glanced back at her, the heaviness of that guilt weighing him down. But Eunji was smiling albeit sadly, her eyes set on the screen.

“I guess I searched for you as much as I could, then settled for the man that I thought was the closest to being you. You know, your first love sets your standards in such a way that you keep searching for him in every man you meet after”

Sunggyu tightened his hand around the foregrip, turning away. “I didn’t think…people did that” he sighed. “Besides I’m not even that great”

“Oppa, you have no idea,” Eunji laughed. “And it’s not like I’m perfect either”

“But you are,” Sunggyu muttered, mostly to himself. She heard him, nonetheless. She reached over and rubbed his arm.

“Don’t think about it now, oppa. What happened in the past doesn’t change what the future entails. I’ve found you, and that’s enough”

Future. Sung Gyu winced at the very mention of that. Part of the reason why he intentionally kept away from her, he realised, were the future possibilities. The truth of the matter was that he didn’t have one, at least not a future as long as she would want him to give her. It was how he consciously accepted, despite knowing what it was, that his health was compromised to the point it wasn’t leaving him with so much time. Even if he did, the possibilities were endless, one worse than the next. He didn’t know what would happen once his treatments start and he wouldn’t have a job. And it could be a sickness that would eventually kill him. How could Sung Gyu bring the woman he loved into a life like that? He knew he had to tell her all of this before things could get worse for him. He just didn’t know how to.

“Oppa?” Eunji’s quiet voice interjected his train of thoughts. 

“Hm?”

“I think our target is on the move”

He glanced back at her. “Is he still in the parking lot?”

“Yes, he is still in parking lot”

“Then we could catch him there” Sung Gyu moved across the centre control and started the car. “Can you drive us there, Ji?”

It’s been so long since Sung Gyu last called her this nickname. A smile appeared on her lips as she pulled on her seat belt.

“Okay, hold on tight!”

Eunji maneovered the jeep slowly through the parking lot until it came close enough for Sung Gyu to see but far enough to be hidden. Sung Gyu wasn’t much of a close-range sniper so this was going to be a challenge for him. On the other hand there was Eunji, who, despite her display of bravado in a moment of passion, was still probably horrified of killing someone.

Sung Gyu took a look out from his scope, and true to her words, Jaehyun was at the back of the vehicle, loading his things inside. He had only about thirty seconds to think and execute. Sung Gyu set up the gun, took his aim, located the target and pulled the trigger. The sound was a quick, sudden crack, almost unrecognizable for a gun. In that silence of the night, it was loud enough, so was the sound that Jaehyun made; a distant, painful cry. After that, for a moment, its complete silence.

Sung Gyu moved to slowly withdraw the rifle and attached the safety pin back on. He turned and deposited it into its carrier on the back seat. All through this, from Eunji it was complete, ghostly silence. He turned to her. She was frozen in her seat, her eyes unmoving, lips trembling, hands grasping the steering wheel. Sung Gyu knew she wouldn’t be able to handle it, nobody could unless they were trained for it like he was.

“Eunji-ah, sweetheart…”

“Did-did you just-?” She could barely bring her words out. Sung Gyu shook his head, moved across the console and pulled her into his embrace.

“I didn’t kill him”

A moment passed, then two. Then Eunji broke down into quiet cries. “Oh god, oh my god….”

“Ssh…it’s okay, it’s okay,” He caressed the back of her head and ran his fingers through her hair. “I know, I know…and I would never, not in front of you”

Eunji nodded, nodded and nodded before she pulled away from him. He leaned in and kissed her gently on her head. 

“Stay here now, okay? I will check on him and come””

With this, he reached into the back seat and grabbed the blanket that he kept their for long nights,and from the cabiole, a pair of ziplock ties. He pulled his gloves back on and climbed out of his car.

When he reached him on the other end of the parking lot, Jaehyun was on the ground, trembling and holding his bleeding left leg, breathing out clouds of smoke in irregular intervals. When he saw Sung gyu closing up on him, an angry scowl appeared on his lips. 

“You crazy er!”

“Hey” Sung Gyu crouched down on the ground and helped the man up to his feet. Perhaps by the shock of that pain, Jaehyun actually complied. Sung Gyu opened the back door of his car and helped him into the seat.

“Could have taken your aim right and ing killed me!”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Sung Gyu smiled and proceeded to take off his belt. “I’m a killer. But with principles”

He wrapped his belt around Jaehyun’s thigh and tightened it to put enough pressure to stop the bleeding. Then he laid the blanket over his lap.

“You’re a one crazy er, aren’t you”

Sung Gyu shrugged. “Hand”

“What the for?”

He sighed and forcefully grabbed them both. Jaehyun had wrapped up the wound on his arm with a piece of cloth that’s soaked crimson. But he could still move his fingers although they have swollen a bit. He would live, his limbs would survive. Principles. Morals. Tonight was definitely one of his proudest work.

Sung Gyu unmuted the earpiece and ignored Howon barking in his ear. 

“Hyung, I swear to god-!”

“I’ve got him” Sung Gyu took Jaehyun’s right wrist and slapped a zip tie around it. Then he looped it with another, which he locked up to the  handle over the door.

“Is he down?”

“No” He patted his prisoner on his good arm. “He’s just a bluffer. I confiscated his weapons, made him immobile a little bit. He’s in his car, you can track him. He’s all yours”

It took a second for Howon to register everything that he was told. When he did, he burst out in laughter. 

“Hyung, you’re crazy!”

“No, I’m just good. Send in an ambulance, he wants to save a limb…” Sung Gyu glanced down at Jaehyun’s bleeding leg. “Or two”

“You’re out of your mind, you know that?”

Sung Gyu tried to small, which he ideally shouldn’t after having shot a man in multiple occasions. He pursed his lips and turned away.

“Noona, I hope I made you proud”

On her end of the line, Jieun was in stitches. “Just get home in one piece, Gyu”

Sung Gyu put off the line on the end of his two supervisors and looked down at Jaehyun. He was completely defeated, if the fact that he wasn’t even fighting said anything. Sung Gyu almost felt bad for him. Almost.

He squeezed his shoulder and gave him a smile. “Your weapon was a bluff, wasn’t it?”

Jaehyun said nothing and stared ahead.

“You know, you could be a good man if you tried. Just stick to making vaccines for cardiac arrests, Jaehyun. Do something good with your life”

“ off!” 

Sung Gyu sighed. “I just spared your life. I could have killed you if I wanted to. But there are things people do for ones they care about. Now,” he held out his hand. “Keys?”

“On the back door”

Sung Gyu closed Jaehyun’s side of the door, went around the back and closed the back door as well. With the keys in his hands, he opened the driver’s side of the car and put the key into the ignition. Jaehyun would freeze to death before the ambulance arrived if he left him like this. Sung Gyu shook his head at his own ridiculousness. Its the first time he was doing so much for one of his targets. Maybe its because he’s a former batch mate, someone that he worked with. Or because of Eunji, or because its christmas. In the end he just figured that it took a dying man to understand another dying man’s pain.

Sung Gyu reached into the centre console and the heater. As for an added touch, the radio, tuned in to a midnight channel and soon, christmas music started to play.

“That’s more like it”

It was when he was about to climb out of that car that Sung Gyu noticed them; a soft, pink and white knitted scarf. It was hers. With a warming heart, Sung Gyu took it in his hands. It was the closing of a chapter, just like that.

“I’ll take this with me, Jaehyun-Ssi” Sung Gyu finally closed the door on the first target that he kept alive. “Stay warm!”

Until Sung Gyu had really closed off the mission tonight, he didn’t realise how absolutely exhausted he was. He pressed Eunji’s soft knitted scarf to his chest, his beating heart, and thought about the final show down of his brief life as an assassin. It wasn’t good. He never really enjoyed it. But it went well while it lasted. It at least gave him an opportunity to straighten out his life, paid all his bills, earned enough to take care of his parents, his sister and her children. Most importantly, it brought him back to the start and end of everything, the love of his life.

Eunji was standing outside his car, leaning on its side when he approached her. There was a question in her eyes, to which he answered in his words. 

“He would live”

Eunji nodded and burst into tears before she pulled him into her arms.

It was comfort. It was home. He didn’t realise how much he needed this and craved for it until now. Sung Gyu’s hands were trembling by an overwhelming rush of emotions; end of an era, the start of something terrifying and new. He felt her lips planting quick, soft kisses on the side of his head before he pulled away from her.

“I got this”

Eunji’s eyes fell on the scarf in his hands. Gently, he started to wrap it around her neck, covering her shoulders and over her hair. As he did, his eyes blurred, his lungs started to burn. It was truly the end of a time for him. He was dying. But Eunji’s smile at that moment was all the conviction he needed to fight to live.

When she reached up and gathered his face in her hands, Sung Gyu let her. He let her plant soft, warm kisses on his lips and tell him that she loved him uncountable times. His hands came around her before he dropped his face into her shoulder. Home. He thought, closing his eyes, letting the exhaustion finally take over him. He was home, where he could finally die in peace.

“Oppa?” Eunji’s voice called him. But it was in a distance as if she was calling through clouds. Things were getting extremely bright for him, and suddenly, very, very dark.

His body became powerless, his chest heavy and his head feeling light. His weight began to wear him down, a feeling that wasn’t all too unfamiliar. Soon, he was starting to fall.

Oh god, oppa? Sung Gyu oppa?

It was like she was calling him from heaven, somewhere in a distance, somewhere up above. He didn’t realise it was what it felt like to die. So sudden, so peaceful. So…satisfying.

Eunji, I’m dying. It was the last thing he remember he told her. In his voice or in his dreams, he couldn’t really remember. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.