In The Dark (SNOWDROP)

"excuse me"

❄︎ — chapter 5 — ❄︎

This was too much for Jang Hanna to handle.

She was sitting at the second desk in Lee Kangmu's office. After an extremely awkward conversation, he'd given her all the evidence and information the ANSP had on Haegeumseong 1, including the list of suspects, which no one, not even the Black Tiger, had been able to narrow down significantly.

Haegeumseong 1's work was impressive. His list of alleged actions went back to before Hanna was born. It seemed impossible to her that one man could have been a spy for so long without getting caught. Haegeumseong 1 had had several close brushes with the ANSP and other counterespionage organizations, but he'd escaped every time.

An Invisible Man, indeed.

Even further than espionage, though, Haegeumseong 1 was a prolific killer. His victims included former North Korean statesmen, soldiers, government workers, and civilians who'd defected, either to the South or another country, as well as secret agents and police who'd tried to catch him. There was also a good amount of notably anti-communist critics, reporters, and journalists found dead, with the faceless Haegeumseong 1 as the primary suspect for their murders.

Hanna flipped through all the gruesome photographs and graphic descriptions of crimes that made up the case file about Haegeumseong 1. Between her and the deputy chief sitting not far away, there was silence, but it wasn't a comfortable kind of silence. She was hypersensitive to his presence, like he was a nuclear bomb that could go off at any moment. A couple times she'd glanced up from the papers to see him watching her intently, but he'd always dropped his eyes back to his own work. Neither spoke a word, or even moved much, for the four hours they spent like that.

"It's evening," Kangmu said, after an eternity of tense silence. "We need to assign a few agents to check Eun Yeongu's location."

Hanna closed one of the suspect files of Haegeumseong 1 that she'd been reading. She had a small headache from absorbing all the information she could possibly find on the North Korean spy in the past few hours. Some fresh air might do her some good.

"I'll go," she said, standing up and slinging her pack over her shoulder.

"Alone?" Kangmu asked.

Hanna almost asked him sarcastically if he thought she couldn't find one guy by herself, but she restrained that urge. "I'll take Lim Sooho with me."

She left the office before Kangmu could approve or object to that proposition.

"Sooho-ya," Hanna said, walking up behind her younger cousin. "You up for a mission?"

"Mission?" Lim Sooho echoed. "This late in the day?"

"It won't take too long," Hanna promised. "I'll let you drive."

Sooho grinned, immediately standing up. "Bad idea, noona."

❄︎ — ❄︎ — ❄︎ — ❄︎ — ❄︎

Sooho wasn't the worst driver Hanna had ever seen, but he was pretty damn close.

To start off, he almost ran over Kim Seungjun while pulling out of the parking lot.