I am lying on my back in the middle of the woods. This place is exactly how it was the last time I visited. A soft sigh escapes my lips as I snuggle into my wool blanket.

“Hey,” a voice says. I look to my left. Jungkook is standing above me, holding two steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

“Get up or I’ll pour these on you,” he grins. I roll my eyes and grab one of the cups from him.

“So rude,” I laugh. “Did you make sure the marshmallows-,”

“-dissolved in your hot chocolate? Yeah, you only reminded me about a million times. I don’t know why you think it tastes better that way.”

“It does!”

A smirk appears on his face. “Alright, then let’s see.” He takes a large gulp of his hot chocolate, and then leans over and kisses me. My face heats up as I set down my glass and try to deepen the kiss- but not before Jungkook teasingly pulls away.

“Hey, it’s your turn!” he chuckles. “I want to see if your marshmallow concoction really does taste better.”

Blushing, I quickly sip some of my drink and kiss Jungkook on the lips. He tangles his fingers through my hair as he runs his tongue over my lips.

“Hm. That was pretty good.” Jungkook turns around. “What do you think, Marcus?”

And to my horror, Marcus emerges from the darkness behind Jungkook. His eyes are hollow and his face is bloodless; as he gets closer, I see that his clothes are stained with blood gushing down from a wound in his head.

“Marcus!” I shriek, shooting up. “No-,”

“Why couldn’t you stop him, Ami?” Marcus asks in a slow, mournful voice that is his but is not- it is deeper and laced with a grating undertone that puts my nerves on edge. Suddenly the expression on Jungkook’s face twists into a cold, demonic sneer as he pulls a gun out of his pocket and shoots Marcus multiple times in the chest. Marcus drops dead to the ground and Jungkook turns to me next.

“You liar,” he hisses, striding towards me, and I try to sprint away but the trees seem to keep repeating themselves as I run and I realize that I am going nowhere, I am running in an infinite loop, and Jungkook is getting closer and closer to me and there is a strange clanging sound in the air, punctuated with shouts and screams-

“No!” I gasp, my eyes flying open.

“Rise and shine, pumpkin!” Joshua hollers as he bangs two pans from the kitchen together. “You’re going to be late on your first day, Mimi!”

“Jesus christ!” I gasp, tumbling out of my bed. “Joshua, what-,”

“You weren’t getting up, so I had to,” he shrugs. “The head is cooking breakfast for you right now... which means that you should probably go pick something up at Starbucks instead before you go.”

“Yeah, who gave everyone food poisoning when he tried baking a cake for Mimi’s birthday?” an angry voice calls from the kitchen. “Shut up and get her up.”

I scowl. “Stop barging into my apartment. It’s an invasion of privacy.”

“You should be thanking us,” Joshua scoffs. “You’ve literally been talking about this stupid summer internship with this network security company. Seriously, I didn’t even think you were capable of human emotions before-,”

“It’s not just some network security company,” I say tartly. “It’s Sentrix. Do you know how big Sentrix is? And you had no idea how many professors I had to beg to get this-,”

“Yeah, yeah. Well, it’s already 7. If you don’t hurry, you’ll be late.”

“Hey!” Kyungsoo races into my room and sticks a piece of French toast in my mouth. “You need energy.”

“Thanks,” I mumble between the French toast.

“Is it good? She thinks it’s good. See? Did you hear that, Joshua?” Kyungsoo snarls.

Joshua rolls his eyes. “I didn’t hear her say it was good.”

“Stop it,” I say, cutting in. “I’m leaving. Bye.”

“Gotcha. Good luck, Mimi.” Joshua thumps me on the back and I nearly go tumbling to the ground.

Kyungsoo waits until Joshua has left the room before he tells me in a low voice, “Good luck. Make sure you take extra precautions. We don’t want any... issues.”

I nod gravely. The 4 Flames’ NYC headquarters is on Wall Street, but I’ll be in Times Square. I don’t think that anything will happen. Besides, I’ve kept my cover for 4 years. New York City is the perfect place for obscurity.

“Alright. I’ll see you. And hey.” Kyungsoo flicks my forehead. “I’m proud of you.”

My lips curve up into a small smile. “Thank you.”  

    Ami Hwang is dead.

    4 years ago, she was killed with her friends Marcus Johnson, Preet Chopra, Annabelle Lim, and Lina Nguyen. They were caught in some gang violence. It was purely accidental. Not their fault. Wrong place, wrong time.

    The 4 Flames is convinced that she is dead, too. A dozen of their members saw a Seven Stars agent shoot her at point-blank range. No one could have recovered if they lost that much blood.

    The girl making her way to the Sentrix offices right now is Mihae Kim, a 20-year-old Information Science major at Columbia University. Mihae- also known as Mimi- moved to New York City from Chicago 4 years ago and is the winner of the Fulton & Park scholarship award. She enjoys mixed martial arts and the occasional Starbucks green tea.

    Hello. I’m Mimi.

You don’t know me.

 I stride through the throng of people moving on the sidewalks in Times Square. Above me, an enormous TV screen displays Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room, concernedly discussing something with a correspondent. The words, Martial Law Reinstated In Tibet Following Third Rebellion, blare beneath him. Shots of Chinese soldiers wielding guns and other heavy weaponry play near the side of the screen. My stomach clenches.

    Yohan is probably making millions off of that.

    But that doesn’t concern me.

    The Sentrix office that I will be working in is located on the 10th floor of a towering skyscraper. A pert, chic woman dressed in an expensive Gucci 3-piece suit meets me at the receptionist’s desk and firmly shakes my hand.

    “Fei Wang,” she says. “Nice to meet you.”

“Mihae Kim. Likewise.”

“We’ll get you started right away.” Fei leads me through the rows of wide cubicles in the office and sets me up at a computer next to the window. I get a spectacular view of New York City- far up, but not so far up that I can’t see individual people milling around and conducting their business. It’s nice.

“For the time being, you’ll just be sorting through our database of clients and transferring their authentication codes and client numbers to an Excel spreadsheet. I’ll be honest- it’s not fun stuff. But as soon as you finish we’ll move you to something better.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. I sit down and get to work. Over these next few hours, I learn something very important:

Fei was right. This isn’t fun. Actually, it .

Despite the fact that I recognize a lot of the clients- they are some of the biggest companies in the United States- the process of typing out all their information and copying it over to different databases is tedious and boring. It requires little to no thought at all; which means that my mind begins to wander to other places that I’d rather not visit.

Specifically, my dream last night.

It’s been awhile since I’ve had that dream. During my first year here, I used to have it every night. My dorm mate requested a room change because I was screaming so much. I don’t blame her. Thankfully, the university allowed me to transfer to off-campus housing, so I moved in next to Joshua and Kyungsoo, which they’d been telling me to do since we got here.

And now here we all are.

I pull out my phone and check the time. 9:42 AM. Great, only 2 more hours until lunch-

“I hope you’re checking verification codes on that phone,” someone drawls behind me.

My eyes widen. A tall, handsome man with razor-sharp features is peering down at me, a slight smirk on his face. Behind him, a swarm of secretaries and assistants are giving me judgemental glares.

I coolly respond, “I was checking the time.”

“Pretty sure there’s a clock on your computer screen,” the man muses. “I wonder why you didn’t check there?”

“My screen is completely taken up by spreadsheets,” I say- and then add a hasty “sir.”

The man narrows his eyes. “Who is she?” he asks a woman standing next to him.

“The new intern, sir,” she informs him.

“All new personnel are supposed to be run through me.”

“I sent you her file,” someone else says tersely. Fei shoves through the crowd of assistants and scowls at the man. “Unfortunately, you never read anything I send you.”

The man’s smirk grows even wider. “Oh, Fei! How wonderful! I missed you in Bali- you really should’ve come!”

“Unlike you, I have work to do,” she growls. “Why don’t you stop intimidating interns and go do your job for once? Mihae, just keep working and ignore him.”

“Ah, so that’s your name.” The man holds out his hand with a flourish. “Nice to meet you, Mihae. My name is Kris Wu.”

“Nice to meet you,” I say tonelessly, shaking his hand twice and then turning back to my computer.

“Good job, Mihae,” Fei says, sounding quite satisfied. Kris gives her an indignant scoff.

“Mihae, you should have lunch with me,” he says. “I’m meeting a potential client today. You should come watch.”

“Wha- why would she want to be there?” Fei protests. “It’s her first day. You’ll just confuse her-,”

“Oh please, Fei, just because you’re socially inept doesn’t mean that other people are.”

“I’m not socially inept!” Fei slams her fist down on my table. My eyebrows shoot up. I thought this woman was composed and dignified. These two are bickering like an old married couple. Who does that?

“You know what?” Fei says, crossing her arms. “Mihae and I will both be there. Socially inept- you little-,”

“Great!” Kris sneers. “It’s a date, then. I’ll meet you two at noon.”

He ambles off, his squadron of PAs close behind him, leaving Fei fuming and me confused.

“Who is he?” I ask her.

“The person I hate most in the world,” Fei says between gritted teeth. I cough, and she adds off-handedly, “Also the CFO of the company.”

“Seriously?” I ask, my eyebrows shooting up. “He’s so young.”

“He’s my age!” Fei angrily bursts out. “We were in the same class at Princeton. And now he’s the CFO and I’m just the head of the IT department- like that's some small thing- and he thinks he’s so much better because he works on the business side and I’ve hated him ever since I met him!”

There is a short pause. I look at Fei as she glares in Kris’ direction.

Then I clear my throat. “Right. I’m getting back to work.”

“Yeah, yeah... go ahead and do that,” Fei says absentmindedly. “I’ll come meet you at noon. Oh, and good work and all...,”

Great. I’ve just learned another very important thing:

This place is full of weirdos.

Joshua and Kyungsoo would have a ball here.

A/N: YEEE here is it! Sorry I haven't been updating I'm in India rn! 

BTW I made a Twitter! Hit me up at @nutellarubi

So college apps came out and I've been working on them 24/7 x(( essays are soooo tedious. I HATE WORD LIMITS -_- I'm doing a 1 college per update thing- so I have to finish the essays for one college and only then I'll let myself work on my fanfics LOLOL. 

I feel really sad right now someone cheer me up