A Bullet to the Heart, ₗₑₑ Fₑₗᵢₓ

20.

⇝ ⇝ ⇝ Seoul's home base was a lot larger than the London home base. Despite London being a bigger city, it was a lot less populated than Seoul. I meant bigger in terms of there being too many people looking at me as I walked with that same government official. I still hadn't learned his name and I doubt there was any point of it now. I was fully geared up, and walking down corridors painted in white.

I was in contrast to the echoing hallways, dressed in complete blackness, barely any of my face showing. For the third time since I got to Korea, I was fully loaded up with face paint, a helmet, safety goggles which I could easily look through and more bulletproof protection. I felt way more intimidating than the government goon next to me, he was small and dressed in a suit, a smile playing on his face as we walked past more nerds.

I had a dedicated room here and it was pleasant, nicer than the one in London. It was greater, it had carpet that warmed up my feet when staying in there. A window that showered the room in natural light - made me feel more motivated to do my job whereas in London, I was dying for a small break. Korea had something special in their work attitude, everyone I had met was driven to do a good job. Everyone except the government goon beside me since he loves drinking.

I had been here for 1 week already - I had met a plethora of different people, men and women of all different sizes and they all knew about missions like this. I felt for the first time that I was back with my squadron at home, despite the language barrier, it was easy to understand one another when we objectively had the same goal. We spent the whole week making the plan on how to capture the people responsible for the cyberattacks and the recent physical attacks.

I learned from the nerds in London, that there were at least 11 people who needed to be arrested. The nerds in London had a breakthrough and managed to find the information on each other culprits on the dark web. We were expecting 7 men to meet up and 4 women. We were outnumbered, but they were obviously out-skilled, they had no idea we were coming.

I was fully geared up, from head to toe, with all the necessary equipment. After meticulously planning every detail for an entire week, the moment had finally arrived to execute my duties and bring this project to its conclusion for the ultimate assessment. I was ready for it to finish, draw up the conclusion and then retire. 

I think.

 I still hadn't planned enough for that but I was going in that general direction.

My phone started ringing as I sat in the main room, waiting for instructions from my team to clear out. It was my personal phone, Yongbok was calling. I answered quickly, worried that something happened while I was gone. I waited for him to say something, to panic but there was nothing on the other side. For a second, even the silence made my mind run in panic.

"Hey, how are things? It's been so long since we talked," He complained, his whining almost puppy-like.

I chuckled in relief, "Things are good, the mission is happening tonight so this will be the only call for today,"

"Ugh, but we haven't talked all week!"

"I know, I'm sorry, I've been busy with the planning."

He hummed in acknowledgement, "How did things go? Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I thought it might be a bit harder but most of the people I'm working with understand English to some degree and then some others don't but it was easy enough,"

"Are you required to know other languages for this job?" He asked and I nodded before I realised I had to answer.

"In the inner circle, yes, but if you're just training to be a normal soldier under the army branch, it's not a requirement," I said to him.

"What languages do you know then?"

"Well, I know some Arabic and Afrikaans, but I'm not fluent in them," I told him, thinking of all the languages I know, "I'm fluent in French and Spanish, and I started learning a little bit of Swedish when I had a mission there,"

"That's quite impressive, do you use them?"

"Mostly on missions, but I started learning Swedish because I fell in love with the nature there," I said to him, "I would love to live in Sweden at some point,"

He hummed again, and it was like I could sense his brain working through the later years of his life and the thought of living in Sweden. I wondered how Felix wanted to live out his retirement in years to come, would he want to remain in Korea or go explore the world, would he settle down in a beautiful country with me?

"How about you? Did you grow up learning Korean?"

"Huh? Oh no, I learnt Korean when I came to Korea a few years ago," He chuckled and I could sense the embarrassment he felt through the giggle.

"That's cute," I told him, "You must've been worried about becoming an idol and learning a language at the same time,"

"It was hard, I almost failed to be a part of Stray Kids because of it," He said, his tone melancholy.

"That sucks, but your hard work clearly paid off," I tried to encourage him.

The government goon entered the room I was sitting in, the squadron of Korean soldiers behind him. He nodded at me, telling me it was time to make a start to the place we needed to head to. I nodded back at him, feeling the weight of the impending mission settling over me. 

As I tried to focus on the phone call in front of me, I couldn't shake the question from my mind: How was I going to say goodbye to him?

"Hey Yongbok, I have to go," I say to him, my voice almost turning into a whisper, I was afraid to say goodbye.

"Okay..." He paused for a few seconds, no doubt not knowing what to say like me, "Just...be careful,"

"Of course, I promised you I was coming back," I said to him, intending to keep that promise.

"Okay, well, call me as soon as you finish so I know you're okay," He said quickly and I laughed.

"Don't worry about me Yongbok, see you by the end of this week," I said and then quickly added, "Also, call me if anything happens, even if you think it's not worth it, your safety comes first,"

"Hmm, see you later Koby,"

I hung up the phone, feeling a sense of emptiness wash over me. It was an odd sensation as if I had been subconsciously expecting to hear "I love you" before ending the call. However, I knew that our new relationship hadn't yet reached that stage. In fact, I was sure our relationship was no where near that point and I was fine with that, but a small sense of impending disaster was tugging at my heart strings. I just wanted him to know that I at least liked him more than anything in this world. 

I didn't think about it for too long and followed the squadron out of the home base and into the back of a black van.

All vans like this one were a sleek black since it's a pretty common colour for the government, and most likely had bulletproof windows and hard-to-breach doors. The drive to the area we were going to was about 40 minutes. It was still going to be day by the time we arrived but we needed the daylight to talk to locals and spread some quiet awareness, as well as set up everything so we could surround them and arrest the dark web users effectively.

Things were going to go smoothly, they had to.