To say that Kyungsoo was embarrassed the next morning was an understatement.  Remarkably, his hangover didn’t seem to be too bad, though it still prevented any rigorous hand-to-hand combat, and he instead took Miran down to the shooting range to oversee her getting in some proper practice with her pistol.  Miran found it a bit surprising that he was able to put up with loud noises, though she did notice him wincing even with the ear protectors as she shot.

He took her out for coffee afterwards.

“I want to apologise for last night,” he said, not meeting her eye as he sat opposite her in the little shop with a glass of water.  Miran chewed on her bottom lip, unsure of the best way to respond.  “I should have handled myself better.”

Miran sipped at her coffee.  “You were upset and you got drunk.  I don’t think it’s that abnormal.”

A faint smile graced Kyungsoo’s expression.  “Still.  You shouldn’t have had to deal with it.  Thank you for making sure I got home safely.”

Surprised, Miran kept the burning hot coffee in for a few moments before swallowing it.  “You remember that much?”

“No, I don’t.  The security guards at my building asked me this morning who the girlfriend dropping me off was,” he admitted, “so I saw you in the security tapes.  One of them said he thought he recognised you from somewhere.  Most likely the shooting competitions.  That was why they were so interested in you.”

Miran blushed, suddenly realising that she’d mistaken the security guard’s curiosity the previous night as him hitting on her, which had made her very curt and defensive and eager to get out of the building as soon as possible.  She’d practically deserted Kyungsoo in the foyer with the man and scarpered back to the taxi.

Kyungsoo must have noticed her cheeks reddening, because he pulled a wan smile at her as he took a gulp of water.  “You do shoot extraordinarily well.”  And then his face dropped.  Miran didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that he was probably comparing her to Hyeri in his mind and that it was making him depressed again.

“Sir,” she said, “it’s really not your fault that you didn’t know Hyeri was…”

“I’m her team leader.  I still should have done,” he mumbled, now staring at his mostly empty glass.  “It’s my job to make sure everybody’s healthy and capable and to find out about these kinds of things.”  He shook himself, and then his brooding demeanour was gone and he was smiling properly.  Miran was astounded he managed it with the headache he must have.

“How are you doing, anyway?  You’ve got even more work on your plate than before because of all this.  It can’t be easy when you’re still pretty new.”

It was like he’d unlocked a wardrobe door that was threatening to burst under pressure from the amount of stuff that had been shoved inside it.  Miran let out a long sigh.

“I feel completely overwhelmed,” she admitted.  “And I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

Kyungsoo looked concerned at the way she deflated.  “Is there any way I can help?” he asked.  “I’m sure it’s possible to shift some of the less pressing tasks away to somebody else.  Or I could ask Key or Yeri to take over handling Scout and Klutz for you.  We can’t have you overworked and it’s my responsibility to make sure that you’re not doing too much—”

“Scout is the only person keeping me sane,” Miran mumbled.  “I’d much rather stick by him.  It’s unfair to switch handlers too many times, too – it gets confusing.  Besides, I still have absolutely no idea if anybody in our cell is trustworthy, let alone anybody in the building.”

Kyungsoo’s brow furrowed as he thought again.  “Maybe it would be a good idea to leave field training by the by for the moment.  It looks like something needs to give.”

Miran stubbornly shook her head.  “I need to be able to protect myself, so it’s important I at least keep up the physical training classes.”

“I’ll see about delaying the field training exercises until you’re more relaxed and have more time on your hands, then,” he offered.  “I know you haven’t been out on field training yet, but at least that wouldn’t cause any extra pressure.”

It was a good point, and one that Miran had completely forgotten about.  If she was going to have to start taking days off here and there or sacrifice what little time she had at the weekends to parachute train or simulate being stuck and hunted behind enemy lines, the pressure she was under was only going to mount, and then she’d probably crack and go insane.

“That would be good,” she said gratefully.  “Thank you, sir.”

“Only doing my job,” he said softly before returning to his water.

Silence fell between them.  It wasn’t an uncomfortable one – probably because both of them weren’t given very much to small talk – and Miran used the opportunity to mull things over.  Part of the problem was that she and her little team of Chanyeol and Soojung had so little experience, not just in tracking down double agents, but also in being agents themselves at all.  None of them knew the people they were working with all that well, and they also collectively lacked the experience and knowledge that came merely from being in the building for a long time and seeing people come and go.  It was something that she and Chanyeol had discussed down in the bunker, but they needed somebody more experienced on their team – an old-hand, so to speak.  The trouble was that Miran had absolutely no idea who she could trust, other than Shin Hyesung, and he was incredibly busy.  The information she so far had on her own team members made her want to believe she could put her faith in all of them, with the exception of Woohyun (at least until she knew why he’d been deleting security videos), but then the thing with Hyeri had happened and it had set her trust back one giant step.  Likewise, with Chanyeol and Soojung.  Soojung was in Changmin’s division and while most of the people she worked with seemed relatively trustworthy, Changmin himself had been pretty shady about passing over security tapes and the not-quite-up-to-the-mark security on the night of Sehun’s death was a big black mark, as far as anybody was concerned.  It didn’t particularly help Kyungsoo’s case either that he was partially responsible for the security lapse, in Miran’s opinion, but Soojung and Chanyeol had both pointed out that Kyungsoo had helped with the instructions rather than the implementation of security regarding those who had gone in and out of the building since he’d spent most of that evening in the hospital, and so the problem of not having enough trackers to go round lay still with Changmin rather than him.

“There is one thing you could help me with,” she said abruptly, as thinking about Soojung reminded her of it.  “One of my friends is concerned that confidential files are being leaked to the gover