TR | MW [✔]

04.

Wonwoo opened his eyes. Instead of staring up at a grey ceiling, a light buzzed above his head. The overly bright room made him wince each time he woke up, it was too white, too clean. He shuffled, then curled forward in pain. No longer sharp and stabbing, a dull ache throbbed in his side. Sometimes it felt far away and he could ignore it, other times it demanded his attention until he called the nurse and she drowned it with morphine. He'd been in prison for six days and in the hospital for seven, not a record he was proud of.

He'd been stabbed. Wonwoo didn't know by whom. The doctors were worried about infection, not from the stab wound, but the broken glass in his thigh.

Wonwoo had failed in his mission and could have lost his life in the process.

He saw the inspector pass by the window and braced himself. The door opened. Inspector Ji stepped inside and fiddled with his mustache. He hummed as he glared at Wonwoo, then clutched his brow. He was in his sixties, but his hair was brown, not a single grey. Wonwoo knew he dyed it, some days he could smell the peroxide when he spoke, not from the hair on his head, but the furry slug on his top lip.

He pressed his lips together in a grim smile. "That didn't go as planned."

Wonwoo averted his gaze. "I wanna see my sister."

"You can't."

"Why not?"

Ji gestured to the window, and the officer stood outside. "You're still undercover."

"It's pointless. I wasn't getting anywhere, and now all I want to do is go home, get better, and see my sister."

"What about Kim Mingyu?"

"What about him!"

Ji flared his nostrils. "We know he's planning something."

"Do we?"

"Yeah," Ji rushed forward and collapsed on the bedside chair. "All his old gang members have reappeared. Hovering around the city like a bad smell."

"Then let them do something incriminating when he gets out, and arrest him."

"Let him do something incriminating? Did you not read the file I gave you about him?"

Wonwoo lowered his gaze and didn't reply.

"He went down for murder, but he did a whole lot worse. Selling illegal firearms to gangs, and complex explosives to terrorists. He's a danger to society, we need to be one step ahead."

"I can't do it, I'm not your man."

Ji pointed at Wonwoo's side. "That's taken all the fight out of you."

"Yeah, it has. I don't wanna fight anymore."

"I know you can do it, Wonwoo," Ji mumbled, then he edged closer, "And you owe me, remember."

Wonwoo bit his lip and frowned. The door swung open, and Inspector Lee stepped inside. Her salt and pepper frizzy hair was tied back, and her lashes were coated with black mascara. She looked at Ji, then at Wonwoo.

"You ready to go back inside?"

"No."

"Knew you didn't have it in you."

Wonwoo gave her a venomous glare. "You try getting stabbed, see how you feel."

"It's barely a scratch," she argued.

Wonwoo closed his eyes. "Someone trapped me in a storage room and stabbed me. I can't go back there. I just can't."

"Did you blow your cover?" Ji asked.