Save My Love (SinRin)

Chapter 22: The Storm Is Not Over

They reached the company building after only half of their usual travel time. They were escorted straight to their practice room that was emptied of trainees moments after Joon's phone call with the CEO. They settled themselves and their modest belongings in one corner where a sofa and some floor foam puzzle mats were laid.

After several minutes of much-needed silence, the youngest member joined them, still uninformed of the details of Sowon's ill-fated shower. Yerin recounted to her what transpired, carefully withholding some superhuman fractions of the story. She did not wear her usual perkiness but everyone found it strange that she was the least traumatized by the event.

"I'm going out to order lunch." Joon announced after giving the girls small pillows.

"Don't take too long eonnie." Eunha suddenly felt a sliver of fear being apart from the foreign friend.

"I'll be back soon. You try to rest." She put all her effort to form a warm comforting smile. "Oh and if you don't mind, let's not tell family and friends about the incident just yet so it does not go out to the media and alarm the fans. You know what could possibly happen if they knew." Yewon clarified Joon's intentional disarray of Korean words.

"We already thought you'd say that." Although unusual, none of the girls have been on their phones since the incident and that made Joon confident in their words. "We already know the drill, thanks to your constant reminding, eonnie." Yerin answered.

Joon headed to another conference room while placing an order through phone. In the other room, she was met by her superior and a telephone at the middle of a long desolate table.

"I have all the team leaders [TL] on conference call right now. Let's start."

"Team leaders give me everything you've got on the situation. Sec 1." Joon's demeanor changed from caring to fierce.

"You are right about the snake. It's an albino rattlesnake, a very rare species especially here. We've IDed only three possible origins and none of them are here in Seoul. We are still waiting for our field correspondents to verify if the locations had a missing or stolen reptile of the same kind. I know you are troubled by the color of the snake. But we are hoping it is not related to that."

"The rarity of the species is already suspicious but its color's striking congruity with all the notes is hard to believe as coincidence. Let's hope I'm mistaken. Sec 2."

"We could not find any other possible entry but the bathroom's exhaust. When our client is ready for debriefing, maybe she could tell you what she remembers. Other than that, we've turned the apartment upside down, we found nothing. No bugs either, and CCTV did not catch anything."

"Survey the whole building specially the apartments above, below and beside the clients'. And put everything back into place."

"Consider it done. And by the way, we ran Pinky's fingerprints through our local and Asian databases, and we couldn't find any match. Our counterparts in Anaheim are already on the FBI database this very moment. The partial report is on the desk. We couldn't securely deliver it to you in the apartment last night." Sec 2 TL forcibly cleared his throat before ending his report. "That's all I have for now."

"Hmm? Ah... Okay, I saw it. Thank you. Sec 3?" Joon almost broke a sweat to his friend's denouncement.

"We are not part of the investigation team. We are here with you in the building for surveillance and emergency response. Please always keep your location known."

"Sec 4."

"We are on standby for land and aerial response. We are currently still processing the footages from the pursuit and we will send a separate report."