The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 1: Shot!

Gi Tae-ung had been shot.

Solid, steady, unmutable Tae-ung- grimaced and staggered back against the wall behind him, clutching at his side when the bullet hit him. He slid down the wall with his hand pressed to his ribs, his face ashen. A fine sheen of sweat broke out over his forehead, and he toppled over like a rag doll, boneless. Go Hae-ri caught him as he fell, and Kim Se-hun shot the perpetrator point blank between the eyes, his expression like stone.

Gi Tae-ung had been shot, and it was Cha Dal-geon's fault.

Cha Dal-geon had found a lead on the Blue Shark case. Naturally, he had devised a clever scheme to follow up on it. Go Hae-ri, however, proved surprisingly stubborn about agreeing to help.

"An abandoned warehouse?" she had said incredulously when he told her the plan. "No way, Dal-geonssi. It's not a good idea. Do you have any idea how exposed that leaves us if something goes wrong?"

"Nonsense. Everything will be fine."

"Maybe if we had a SWAT team to back us up," she said doubtfully.

"No SWAT," Cha Dal-geon said quickly. "They're too noisy and we don't know which of them we can trust."

"It's SWAT. Do you know how extensive the background checks they do on those guys are?"

"About as extensive as the ones they do on NIS agents, I imagine," Dal-geon said. "And Pinnochio still got through, remember?"

She sighed. "I take your point."

"So you'll help?"

"No. I still don't like it, Bruce Chan. It's too risky."

"You always say that, and you always go along in the end," Dal-geon said dismissively.

"I mean it, Cha Dal-geon. I'm not going to be part of this. And I don't want you asking the Vagabond team to help you, either. Lord knows I've learned by this point that there's nothing I can do to prevent you from doing exactly as you please, so if you want to risk your own damn neck, fine, but I don't want you dragging them into this."

Cha Dal-geon had not listened. Go Hae-ri was intractable, however, and he'd been unable to change her mind about the whole thing. Therefore, he waited until she was stuck in a meeting with the Director and approached the team behind her back.

Kong Hwa-sook was the first to agree. Pinnochio's death had changed her. She was harder now, angrier. She was more inclined to give into her latent reckless streak now that she had a personal grudge against Edward Park.

Once he had Hwa-sook on board, Kim Se-hun soon followed. He was motivated in equal parts by the desire to protect Snow White and to impress her, so he practically volunteered for the task once he found out she'd agreed to be part of the plan.

Gi Tae-ung was less easily persuaded. When Cha Dal-geon approached him, he gave him a measuring look. "What did the boss say?"

"Eh," Dal-geon said evasively. "What Go Hae-ri doesn't know can't hurt her."

"You're lying," Tae-ung said, unimpressed. "You already asked her and she said no, didn't she?"

Dal-geon considered lying, but decided there really was no point. Tae-ung could be tiresomely perceptive sometimes. "That is a reasonable synopsis of the conversation, yes."

"Hm."

"That's a 'no,' then?" Dal-geon prompted.

Tae-ung sighed. "No, I'll come. You're going to do it anyway, and you'll need someone to protect your civilian ass."