Siwon slowly turned his head to look at me. His eyes were inquiring at me, speaking volumes, but I simply kept still, fatigued, holding my breath. To those who knew him, and Siwon certainly did, Yunho was never meant to be threatening or authoritative. 

"Sorry, did I interrupt you two?" 

It was written all over his face. Siwon was dialing down his confusion and a part of me believed he wasn't opposed to letting it show. Then again, he had no choice in the matter of being caught off guard. A wave of stupid realization crashed onto his face. 

"Were you about to get lucky?" Yunho's voice was tauntingly inquisitive. The room hung in furtive silence. His hands were at his sides. There was no time for gestures to cue ease. "We're the only ones here." His neck tilted as it cued to me, with a look of approval--"I swear that was a good trap, wasn't it?" 

~

The eve before, I was crying wretched tears in the bathroom of the same hotel room. The shower had been no safe haven for deducing the day's thoughts and decisions, but a moral boiler room. I sat there, at the foot of the steamed glass. Yunho came in to see me clutching my robe. I barely looked up. It would be the second time he would ask, "Will you do this for me?" 

He was asking me as if it was personal, as if it was impossible. It was both, and I was being crushed by it, unable to tell the lines apart. I gripped onto the terrycloth as I let out what sounded like a miserable, stifled protest. "I can't." 

"It's loyalty," his voice echoed off the marble. "You're either loyal to me, or loyal to him." 

"And what are you?" I heard my voice overtake his as I finally looked up at him. His face was in obscurity, like I was looking through the foggy glass. He didn't respond for what felt like a gap of years in the steam and fog. I beat him to it. "I will do anything you ask of me but this." I closed my eyes. There was no sentence to finish. I imagined he was still presiding over me, much as he always did, silence still hanging. I clutched my robe tighter, my joints aching. I opened my eyes and looked into his, offering up the only expression that existed--doubt. 

"I'm your senior," he stated. "I out-rank you. I've given you all the information I know. Now will you do this for me?" He asked again, after he dropped my name, along with his voice. 

~

Now, Siwon turned back around to me, his mouth gaping open. "What the hell is this?" 

"We don't want to hurt you," I said uneasily. If we were not standing in the same room with a betrayer, then my own voice was betraying me. I made my gun modestly known. Yunho cocked his head towards the wall. I stifled a deeply troubling sigh and left the room as he ordered. I slipped into the adjoining room, placed the gun onto the table like a pair of keys, and wiped my lipstick off. It was sweet respite. I put in my earpiece and sat next to the wall. I flipped on the visual of the hotel room, with the two figures in black and white. 

"She's right, we don't want to hurt you. So just answer our questions and we'll be done with it, agree?" Yunho held a nod at Siwon, coaxing him to comply. 

The fall in Siwon's eyes was all the sign of compliance we needed. The other part--the strange perplexity in his eyes, I imagined accommodating to Yunho's strange role as authoritative was haunting. His shoulders dropped subtly as he propped himself forward and began releasing his necktie. His eyes s over to me. "As indelicate as this is," his low voice incriminated me. "She wanted me to meet her here, Yunho. I swear. I didn't know you guys were dating." 

His eyes narrowed, revealing a spark of subdued confusion, then a stark realization took over as fast as the spark had faded out. Now he was gauging the man sitting before him. His head slowly tilted to the side, a dangerous type of peculiarity, the type that could kill misunderstanding. 

"...Isn't that why you're here?" Then something humbled and troubled him. "No...it's not." 

The unexpected silence that followed was a frantic effort to silently regroup. Yunho finally opened his mouth. His words were cold, provoking. "We found a mole." It was an ugly word, even through the earpiece. 

He fell back into the sofa in shock. "Well, who?" 

Yunho did not take his eyes off him. 

Siwon's subdued look of confusion turned into a scoff. "You're not serious?" 

Yunho held his ground, standing silent. 

Siwon strained out a sigh. His head tilted to the side as if he was already starting to unravel. "You have no idea what the hell you're talking about. I assume the chain of command went down to you, instead of you going up to them?" He waited for a moment as if he wanted Yunho to respond, but then replaced it with something else. "You don't understand a thing, do you?" 

"Try me." 

"It'll be the death of me." 

"That I understand perfectly." He sighed, and his shoulders dropped. "Look, the best way this will go is if you confess and tell me everything. Then you can come back with us." 

"I'll have to come back with you anyway." 

"So confess." 

His tie loosened, he shook his head. "No, this is different. It's not a simple story." 

I caught his eyes glance at the sliding glass door of the large veranda, completely ajar. The soft night breeze was ferociously teasing the curtains, drawing a gust of wind in, though everything was exposed. The breeze carried in quickly. My hair got loose and unraveled, snaking around and over my face. I put my arm up on the edge of the table, gently grasping the edge with my fingers. There I sat, watching like a useless spectator. 

"Then start with the story," Yunho firmly stated, a twinge of impatience in his voice. He crossed his arms. "Once upon a time, a sworn agent wanted to take two payrolls instead of one and became a double agent, a traitor, is that the one?" 

I heard him breathe a laugh, a pathetic one. "Traitor?" His eyes shot over at me again, "and what do you call this? Just because you're wearing a white dress means you're innocent in this?" 

"I'm not!" I blurted. Lines of loyalty were fraying and getting caught up in the wind. Yunho looked over at me. I needed no reprimand to keep my distance and my mouth closed. 

"The question is, are you?" For Yunho, nothing could overrule his ingrained loyalty and good natured spirit, except for being on the cusp of finding the truth. And he would milk it. 

I made an almost inaudible sound, pushing my rebel hair away and clawed at my scalp. 

Our colleague didn't answer. 

"It's come down to two choices," Yunho explained, "zip-tie, or body bag?" 

I could barely stand to hear anymore, and we had just started.