The simply named Security Management, or SM as the employees called it, had the appearance of a mere software company with its average-sized office building on a nondescript corner of a regular commercial district in Seoul. The men and women who entered and exited the building carried briefcases and wore Western clothes. They talked about conferences and meetings with clients. They went overseas on business and were always busy. Their lives seemed ordinary.

However, these people were far from ordinary.

A tall, slender man stood on the corner in front of SM. Winter in Seoul was always an icy blast of snow and wind, but that didn’t stop him from enjoying a cigarette. He pulled the collar of his black wool coat up higher and on the cigarette between his leather gloved fingers.

“Shim Changmin.”

He froze on the spot. That voice. He hadn’t heard that voice in months, not after everything that happened. He tasted the menthol one last time before dropping the finished cigarette under the heel of his shoe, trying not to act surprised. He really shouldn’t have been – after all, Jung Yunho was the best at SM for a reason – but Changmin couldn’t deny that he thought he would never see his partner again, not when he had received such a, well, personal mission. He his heel.

Yunho looked the way he had exactly four months and twenty-three days ago: solemn, focused, immaculate. He wore a suit like a second skin, and Changmin had never seen an inch of scruff on him in all the years that he had known him.

“Long time no see,” Changmin greeted with a nod. He looked up into the morning sky as the sun creeped up over the cityscape. “What brings you back?”

“Mission completed.”

Changmin raised a single eyebrow but didn’t turn to Yunho. Despite years of training from experts on sophisticated methods to control facial expressions, he couldn’t contain his shock. “Well, that’s good,” he said, still staring at the skyscrapers around them. He loved Seoul in the mornings.