“Where is it!” She screamed out loudly.

All the others came rushing out of the kitchen to see Haneul looking like she was on the verge of tears, which she really was. They had never seen Haneul in such a state and never imagined she’d be the type of person to be like this so they were all temporarily in shock. “Where is it!” She screamed again and started to sob and her knees started to wobble.

“Where is what?” Jaeseop ran over and caught Haneul by her arms just in time before she collapsed. Kevin wasn’t long to follow.

“What’s wrong Haneul?” Kevin said as his arms wrapped around her waist to gently lower her to sit on the floor, “What’s missing?” He said as he gently touched her wet right cheek with his left hand.

“My pocket watch.” Haneul sobbed relentlessly, “Hanbi unnie’s pocket watch! It’s my most important possession and now it’s gone!” She said through her sobs. Everyone seemed to watch, amazed, at the fact that Haneul could muster this much emotion in one go. Nobody had ever seen her like this. Hwayoung had never heard that she could even act like this.

“Okay, okay. Calm down.” Kevin said as he gentle her left cheek with the back of his left hand, “Tell me what the pocket watch looks like.”

Haneul continued to sob but calmed down slightly, “It has a worn out etching of a tiger lily on the outside of the lid, it looks vintage and the clock hands are frozen on 4:40:28.” She slowly said in between sobs. Then Dongho finally seemed to realise that that was the pocket watch he had thrown out earlier.

“Andwae…” Dongho whispered, and in a room that was only filled with Haneul’s soft sobbing, Dongho’s words were heard loud and clear.

“Why?” Kiseop asked with a confused expression on his face, “What’s wrong now?”

Dongho set off running for the door, “Today’s rubbish collection day!” He shouted out at them.

Haneul stared at him puzzled for a bit then quickly caught on. “You don’t mean…” She paled and scrambled up, undid her apron and pulled it off in one swift motion and ran out the door after him. There was a moment of disorientation in the room until suddenly Kevin, Hwayoung and Jaeseop all sprinted out the door following Haneul and Dongho.

Haneul and Dongho stopped in front of the lifts waiting for a lift to come up. Haneul frustratingly stared at the numbers. 2, 3, 4… Haneul grew frustrated at waiting for it and decided that waiting until it reached 15 was just too long. She dashed for the stairwells. She heard Dongho calling out for her to wait for him, but she just couldn’t. Even if she would have no idea what to do once she got down there, she just knew to run. She didn’t care if her logic was telling her to wait for Dongho and ask him what to do, her instincts were telling her to run. And sometimes, an agent just knew, that their gut feeling was to be trusted even over their logic.

“Noona please slow down!” Haneul, obviously, didn’t slow down so then Dongho decided to give up trying to catch up. “Hard rubbish by the way!”

Soon she found even her own running speed too slow for her so she hopped over the edge of the railing of the stairs when she was no longer in Dongho’s view. Very quickly she made it down to the bottom and ran into the foyer. She ran up to the front desk where there was a woman who looked quite distraughtwith a mad looking girl running up towards her.

“Take the money!” She screamed at Haneul obviously in fright. “Just leave me alone!”

“No, calm down. I don’t want money. I just want to take a look through the hard rubbish.” Haneul finally started to pant, even her secret agent-levelled fitness unable to catch up with her.

“But all the rubbish was just collected. 3 minutes or so ago, in fact. If you’re lucky the truck might just be leaving now, but I doubt that.” The woman said and frowned slightly.

“What?” Haneul screamed at her and the woman looked frightened again. “Where did it go?”

“To the rubbish collection dump obviously.” The woman rolled her eyes.

“Which direction?” Haneul said in an unintentionally scary voice.

“Just up the road towards the bridge.” The woman said and her lips nervously. Haneul nodded and took straight off. Dongho arrived down just in time to see Haneul bolting out the door and groaned that he’d have to continue running.

Meanwhile, Haneul had caught sight of a truck which had stopped at a red light. She hoped with her fingers crossed (metaphorically) that that was the right truck. She grabbed a bicycle and hopped onto it and started pedalling hard, all in one fluid motion.

The traffic was starting up again and Haneul started to panic. She spotted a bridge with a set of stairs leading up it 200m in front of the truck’s current position and 220m in front of her current position. She pushed herself to pedal even faster whilst at the same time swerving left and right to avoid pedestrians. She got to the base of the bridge just as the truck was 70m away. She ran up the stairs on the side of the bridge and the truck was just 50m away.

40. 35. 30. 25. 20. 15. 10. And she jumped. For a second she felt like she was on the cliffy coasts of Canada bungee jumping again, except she had to remind herself that if she timed it wrongly there would be no rope to pull her back up out of safety and she would be crushed by the traffic. Luckily though, Haneul had timed it well and landed on a couple of soft bags of what she assumed were old clothes or something of the sort. She pulled herself up into a standing position and made it to the side of the truck. She used the side of the truck as a handle to stay upright and crab walked near it towards the front of the truck.

When the truck stopped at another red light again, Haneul quickly risked a knock on the truck window. The truck driver looked annoyed as he turned around but almost had a heart attack when he saw a beautiful girl hanging there. Haneul motioned for him to roll down the window and he did exactly that.

“Would you mind stopping somewhere just quickly?” Haneul lay her (awkward) charm on thick. The man just dazedly nodded for two reasons. One, a girl seemed to have just fallen out of the sky and two, a pretty young lady was asking him to stop and who was he to oblige?

He quickly pulled over at the nearest place he could and Haneul climbed down. “What were you doing in there, young miss?” The man crossed his arms and frowned, although not too seriously as he didn’t want to scare this girl.

“I’m sorry about that.” Haneul bowed 90 degrees down to him in apology, “But I was wondering if I could take a look through the hard rubbish for today for that apartment just down that way?” Haneul pointed down, “The one you last collected from.”

“And why should I do that?” He asked gruffly.

“Because my friend accidentally threw out one of my treasures and I really need to get it back.” Haneul quickly blinked her eyes a bit and moistened them a bit. “It’s the last present my late sister gave to me.” She said with real tears in her eyes this time and a wobbling voice, because it really was the truth.

The man looked at Haneul on the verge of tears and sighed and softened slightly. He still spoke in a stern voice though, “Fine. I’m only giving you 5 minutes though because it’s your lucky day and there wasn’t much hard rubbish today.”

Haneul gasped gratefully and nodded her head. He quickly led her to the compartment of the truck that was for collecting hard rubbish. She attempted to look through it in darkness when the man brought a torch over to her. “Better?”

“Yeah. Better. Thanks.” Haneul smiled at him politely and resumed searching.

Thanks to the torch she found it pretty quickly and she quickly retrieved it from the pile. After she pulled it out she sighed in relief. “Thank you for much for your help ahjusshi.” She bowed down low to him thankfully.

“Ah, no problem. Can’t let a pretty young lady lose her pocket watch, can I?” He chuckled.

“Thank you so much.” Haneul laughed, “When I debut one day you can say that you helped that girl get her most precious item back.” She waved at him and turned around to leave when she realised something. She looked around a bit and whilst she did know her way back as she was mentally mapping out her way whilst she was in the back of the truck, she might stink on her way back. Her mental map then told her that someone she knew well would be nearby so she made her way in the direction of a familiar apartment complex.

She walked into the foyer of the apartment and was conscious about her smell. She walked past a lovey dovey couple who covered their noses at her smell and she cringed.

“Such a pretty girl but she obviously doesn’t take enough care of her hygiene.” The girl tutted, “What a waste.” Haneul sighed at these comments but just approached the elevators like nothing bothered her.

Whilst she was in the elevator, she mentally prepared herself for what would happen once she did see that person. She reminded herself to dart out of the way otherwise he’d probably strangle her like he once did when she was 5.

Once she arrived at floor 16, she made her way over to the familiar door with metal numbers ‘06’ looking like they were about to fall off the door. She shook her head. It was a nice apartment, but having 6 rough boys stay inside it tended to mess things up a little.

Haneul took a deep breath and pressed the button for the doorbell. The laughter coming from inside before she had rang the doorbell ceased and she heard a husky voice calling out for someone to open the door. Haneul heard soft footsteps come to the door and a unique but familiar voice call out, “Who is it?” as they opened the door. When the door had opened enough of a crack for the person to peer outside and take a look, Haneul heard a loud shout of delight.