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Romance is dead.
And soon her soulmate will be too.
Yizhuo grinds her teeth as she works on picking the lock to the shoddy door she’s in front of, thankfully not as well patrolled as the rest of the compound. A guard unit passing by only every five minutes, a world of time as far as her skills are concerned. She sends up a silent thanks that the blueprints stolen months ago were actually accurate.
“Not done yet?”
Aeri’s loud chirping in her earpiece makes her wince.
“Coming up on two minutes. You’re losing your touch.”
Nice of you to say from the safety of your little ivory tech tower. Is what she wants to say, but there’s really no time. And besides, Aeri is right. It’s almost been two minutes, and usually a lock this basic would only have taken her one. Even less, thirty seconds.
But none of that matters when all she can think about is Jimin being dead. Specifically, about herself killing Jimin. The white-hot rage makes her fingers clumsy, and she loses another ten seconds.
“I’m in.”
“Finally.”
Yizhuo can almost hear Aeri rolling her eyes, the crunch of Aeri’s lollipop between her teeth.
She’s too busy trying to find her bearings in the dark to snap back with anything witty in return. Her right hand meets the wall tentatively, fingers brushing over what seems like a light switch as she inches her foot forward, making sure not to run into anything unexpected.
“Stop it you two.”
She forgot Minjeong was even on the channel. Not unexpected.
Minjeong with her talent for staying invisible when needed. Able to slip in unawares and steal anything in the world. Money, jewels, information, hearts. The blueprints to this very building Yizhuo is trying to break into.
This isn’t the type of mission Minjeong would usually be privy to, one that requires more a show of force than anything else. But today, she’s stuck playing watch, ready to run interference with a distraction if it comes down to that. Normally Yizhuo’s role. Or Jimin’s. Her chest tightens.
Yizhuo won’t let it get that far.
“Have you found the chute?”
Aeri’s voice sharpens her focus back on the mission.
The space she’s in isn’t big. It doesn’t take much time for the edge of her fingertips to find the edge, metal cold against her hand.
“Yes, now what?”
“In you go.”
Yizhuo is sure she’s heard wrong. She can hear Minjeong’s barely suppressed laughter, the snort that comes out unexpectedly.
“Excuse me?”
“What, we worked so hard to sneak you in through a random back entrance, and you thought you were just going to walk through the front door?”
Yizhuo feels a headache starting to form.
“Proverbially speaking of course. Since Minjeong is watching the front door that’s so heavily guarded you can’t get within 200 meters without being noticed.”
Aeri is definitely rolling her eyes now.
“No, up the chute is the only way.”
“Really? The trash chute?”
Yizhuo cannot think of anything less appealing. Even with the chute cracked open just a sliver, the smell is overwhelming. She can’t imagine being inside. With the smell amplified tenfold just by proxy of being in a solidly enclosed space. She can already feel the claustrophobia starting to take hold.
“There are patrols roaming every floor. You’re going to the twelfth. You’d never make it.”
“I could have.”
“No way. You’re not that good. Even Jimin—”
Aeri trails off before finishing, and Yizhuo feels the betrayal sticking to the inside of her mouth. She had bitten hard enough on her lip to draw blood, the taste of iron heavy and cloying.
“Fine. The trash chute it is.”
The trash chute is hell.
She isn’t exactly a large human being by any means, and even then it’s a tight squeeze. Her back aching as it’s pressed up against one wall, her legs folded up with her feet bracing the opposite wall. Inching her way upwards in a horrible imitation of a crab walk vertically. Progress is slow to say the least.
“Only ten more floors to go.”
Yizhuo feels slightly murderous at hearing how enthusiastic Aeri sounds.
“Shut up, I’m trying to concentrate.”
“On what—”
She mutes her earpiece.
Ha. Take that.
The silence is only nice for the first minute. But then she starts thinking. Something Yizhuo has been trying to avoid. Because thinking means remembering. And remembering means Jimin.
But Jimin is why she’s here. Why they’re all here.
If only Yizhuo could hold on to the good memories. Jimin plucking her off the streets (literally!) with the offer of a warm place to sleep and a meal. She had been so eager to accept after weeks of scrounging for scraps in other people’s trash.
Jimin being the first to show her how to use her body as a weapon, first in combat, then in seduction. The third time sparring Jimin had broken her wrist by accident, and it was Jimin that cried as she helped bandage it. Yizhuo had felt lucky with Jimin cradling her hand gently, wondering what it would feel like to intertwine fingers. She was too chicken to try and find out.
Yizhuo hadn’t known what to do during her first kiss, but it didn’t matter because Jimin’s lips were cold, chapped, and it was snowing prettily at midnight in Osaka after her first kill. The body was still warm, the blood a grotesque vision of abstract art against the white.
If choosing to remember Jimin as she was instead of as she is now is a crime, then Yizhuo is most assuredly guilty.
But anything is better than replaying over and over again the dark shadow she had caught slipping out in the middle of the night. Jimin? She had called from the bed, still half-asleep and dreaming. In her head, Yizhuo pictures Jimin hesitating. She likes to believe it.
Yizhuo needs to hold on to the fact that Jimin is a traitor, that she knows exactly what she’s doing. That Jimin’s hesitation was nothing more than steeling her resolve to drive the stake of betrayal deeper into Yizhuo’s heart.
Because if she lets herself think that Jimin could possibly still love her even a little bit, it’d make it that much harder for Yizhuo to drive the knife into hers.
And Yizhuo intends to. Bleed her dry.
Yizhuo isn’t by nature a violent person.
It’s not her fault that killing tends to be messy. Especially with the way she likes to do it, her weapon of choice being knives, daggers, any sort of blade really. There’s something so personal about the blade sliding into flesh.
The first time she was surprised by how hard it was, how much force she had to use to kill. The movies had always made it look easy, a quick stab and suddenly poof! a human life gone. Yizhuo supposes she could have specialized in firearms, something Jimin is much better at. There’s no point in prolonging their suffering, Jimin reasoned.
But Yizhuo would rather it hurt.
So each time she can remind herself that she chose this.
It feels like she’s been climbing forever.
Long enough to overthink everything.
So that the initial feeling that she had when her team was first given the mission by The Institute to kill Jimin comes back. (Her team in name only, they will always be Jimin’s.) Disgust. That The Institute would rather have Jimin dead than give her a chance to explain. So much for being their best and brightest. At herself for agreeing to do it.
But what else was she to do?
Before Yizhuo would have asked Jimin.
Now Jimin is gone.
Abandoned all of them.
And soon she’ll be gone gone.
“Fucking shit, Yizhuo.”
It’s the first words Aeri hisses into her ear after she turns comms back on.
“We thought you might be dead.”
Minjeong’s voice is tinged with worry. She sounds small. The guilt makes her chest ache. She wanted quiet, to be alone in her thoughts, but not at the expense of Minjeong’s anxiety.
“It’ll take more than this to kill me, don’t worry.”
She tries to sound reassuring. Shit. She was never good at this, Jimin was the one who was comforting, kind and warm in contrast to Yizhuo’s sharp edges.
“Are you sure? Thought the smell alone would be enough to take you out.”
Aeri snickers.
Yizhuo holds her tongue.
“Am I almost there?”
“Based on your location tracker, looks like you’re around the eighth floor now.”
Yizhuo groans. A lifetime away. She’s not sure whether she wants to get there faster or slower considering what’s waiting for her at the end. Jimin. It’s been six months since she’s seen her. Six months since Jimin joined the resistance plotting to overthrow The Institute.
A dumb decision.
One that she would regret. That’s what their handler had told them. Well, not exactly. One that they would make her regret. Is closer to what was said. ‘They’ being Yizhuo. And Aeri. And Minjeong. Jimin’s co-operatives. Her team. Her friends.
But even then, it’s Yizhuo that will come away with the most regret.
Jimin told her she loved her once.
It was after a mission fuck-up. An assassination attempt gone wrong. There wasn’t supposed to be a sniper on the roof. Not as far as they knew anyways. The first bullet had caught her in the shoulder. The second in her chest. So Jimin had done what she needed to in order to get Yizhuo out. Burned it all down. The entire building up in flames in an instant, the ensuing chaos giving Yizhuo enough cover to escape.
Four civilian casualties.
That’s what it had cost.
Their entire team had been suspended for two months. Jimin for four. Yizhuo thinks about it every day.
It’s the only instance Jimin had used the word love, when Yizhuo was on the edge of losing consciousness, blacking out from the pain on the shitty threadbare carpet the color of dirt. Jimin hastily sterilizing her wound with a healthy dose of vodka from the hotel minibar, fingers digging to get the bullet out. Half delirious, Yizhuo had asked Jimin whether she could feel her heart. She was sure that the asshole had hit it or at least something important close to it.
I love you, Yizhuo.
She passed out before she could say it back.
They didn’t speak of it again, and Jimin didn’t acknowledge it later when Yizhuo woke up in the hospital back at base.
Maybe Jimin is only allowed to love her if she is dying.
“X marks the spot, princess.”
Aeri’s voice sounds uncharacteristically gentle, a far cry from her usual harping in their ear during missions. Maybe Yizhuo isn’t the only one overthinking what completing this mission will mean.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Jimin should be in the room at the end of the hall.” The pep returns to Aeri’s voice. “That’s at least if our intel is correct.”
Minjeong whines in protest.
“Hey, I’m 100% positive. I’ve been scoping out the building for weeks.”
Yizhuo shakes her head in exasperation though neither of them can see her. Now that she’s here, the decision she made last night looms much larger. She asks the question that she already knows the answer to anyways.
“Remind me where we’re meeting up for the checkpoint?”
Aeri reels off the address, one of their safe houses further outside of Seoul. Yizhuo feels her heart beating in her chest, the sound roaring in her ears, and suddenly the urge to vomit her guts out makes her dizzy. Now or never.
“Okay, I’ll see you two there. If I don’t make it within three hours, assume the worst and go back to base like we agreed in a week.”
“What do you mean—” Aeri’s voice rises in a screech, Yizhuo’s decision likely dawning on her, at the same time Minjeong says her name. “ —we’ll send in an extraction team within ten minutes if you need it.”
“Yizhuo, don’t—”
Yizhuo doesn’t hear the rest after she takes out her earpiece and grinds it to pieces with her boot against the wall. She feels a flash of guilt. Aeri and Minjeong only want to help, want her to know that she’s not alone even though she’s the one squeezed in a trash chute while the two of them are off-site. But Yizhuo needs to do this alone.
Facing Jimin.
There are only two guards in the hallway. Almost too easy.
Yizhuo is fast enough that both drop without much of a sound besides a gurgle from one of them choking on their own blood after the knife is driven into his neck. Thank god the trash room is situated right next to Jimin’s suite. She’s not as confident she would have fared as well running down the hall. Not like she can effectively dodge bullets. At least not from machine gun spray.
Poor things.
She eyes the now unclaimed guns for a few moments before she decides to leave them.
If she’s going to kill Jimin, it will have to be painstakingly by hand.
The door opens quietly under the guidance of the master key card Aeri had pre-programmed for her, and Yizhuo holds her breath, half-expecting Jimin to be in her path immediately, ready to strike.
Instead, she hears music. Conspicuously cheerful for the soundtrack to anoint Jimin’s death.
Yizhuo finds Jimin in the bedroom.
She’s sprawled on the settee at the window, one leg tucked beneath her, backlit by the full force of an afternoon sun, cutting her profile so sharp in silhouette that Yizhuo can make out Jimin’s eyelashes. A drink in hand as if she’s waiting for a Parisian rendezvous instead of Yizhuo.
It’s impossible that she doesn’t hear Yizhuo come in, but Jimin takes her time turning to face her nevertheless, getting up slowly. All while Yizhuo forces herself to stand there and hate her.
The look on Jimin’s face is razor-sharp, expectant.
“Why?”
It comes out as a dying gasp, all the fight suddenly leaving Yizhuo’s body when she sees Jimin. Devastating and beautiful all at once.
“It had to be done.” Jimin replies simply, voice even with no hint of remorse. “I had no choice.”
“There’s always a choice.”
Yizhuo bites down on the cliche and grinds it between her teeth. She can feel the anger bubbling up. The instinct to hurt and keep on hurting coursing through her in a tidal wave of emotions that breaks through the walls she’s built ever since that night.
Since the picture-perfect image of Jimin walking away.
“And you chose to leave.”
Jimin tries to defend herself.
Yizhuo doesn’t wait to hear it.
Three strides, and she’s there flush up next to Jimin, close enough to feel the heat of high noon on her body, probably having sat in the window seat for hours, maybe reading one of those mystery novels she likes so much. She can smell the faint hint of citrus in Jimin’s hair, the same brand she’s always used. A heady anticipation that she would have when she used to come up behind Jimin to nuzzle the back of her neck.
The small hitch in Jimin’s breath that gives away her betrayal.
Because Yizhuo is wrong.
And Jimin hasn’t defended herself at all.
There’s so much blood.
Without any resistance from Jimin, the knife had gone in easily. Yizhuo had driven it into the abdomen and twisted upwards. Jimin folds neatly into her arms like she’s asking Yizhuo to hold her close, hand reaching up to caress her cheek. Yizhuo freezes at Jimin’s touch, fingers tracing her jaw, thumb brushing her cheekbones.
A shuddering breath.
It takes a moment for her to realize.
Jimin is dying.
Which is precisely when Yizhuo discovers she’s made a terrible mistake.
“Take it, Yizhuo.”
Yizhuo stares, not quite comprehending what exactly Jimin has pressed into the palm of her hand. Jimin’s nails are painted black, the thumb starting to chip already. Her fingers automatically curl to hold Jimin’s hand.
A USB drive.
“Give it to Aeri. She’ll know how to crack it.”
Jimin’s tone is urgent, but Yizhuo can barely focus, her head swimming with the stain of red that is soaking into the white of Jimin’s dress.
“Yizhuo.”
The sting of Jimin’s nails digging into her hand brings her back.
“You need to finish them. The Institute.”
Jimin winces, clutching her side where the knife Yizhuo has stabbed her with is.
“Everything’s on here. You’ll know what to do.”
She replies dumbly.
“You’re dying, Jimin.”
“I was always meant to.” Jimin’s stare bores into her. “Me, the martyr. You, the new face of the rebellion.”
No. No.
Understanding dawns on her.
“You let me kill you.”
Jimin’s smile is crooked and sad.
“I’ve always said your face could launch a war.”
There’s an air of pretense Jimin tries to put on even now, acting as if it’s normal to be flirting with Yizhuo at a time like this.
“Now’s your chance, baobei.”
It’s Jimin’s quiet endearment that breaks her down.
“Jimin—”
Dying in your lover’s arms is supposed to be beautiful and tragic and deeply poetic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yizhuo watches the light go out of Jimin’s eyes helplessly before she can get the words out. Blink. And she’s gone. Somehow Jimin feels heavier in her arms when dead.
“—I love you.”
This time it’s Jimin that doesn’t respond.
It’s a rainy day when Yizhuo falls in love with Jimin.
Their mission had been postponed due to the weather, a grab and snatch of an important package, canceled when the helicopter hadn’t landed. Wayward flight plans and such.
Yizhuo had come home to Jimin attempting to make dinner. Key word, attempting. She distinctly remembers something being on fire that wasn’t meant to be. Jimin took one look at the scandalized look on her face before handing her the knife wordlessly.
A nice sharp blade.
She wielded the knife expertly, chopping all their vegetables for dinner. With Jimin teasing her all the while.
It had amused Yizhuo greatly.
That Jimin could nail someone in the chest with a throwing dagger from thirty yards away but couldn’t figure out how to slice an onion without nicking her finger.
The bandaid was blue with cartoon sharks and had felt a little like love.