The Sun to my Moon

Chapter 19: Sudden death

Cha Dal-geon didn't sleep well that night. He was up late, turning Go Hae-ri's new evidence over in his mind with what they'd discovered about the foster care system and weighing it all against everything else they knew about Edward Park. He was confident the team had those aspects well in hand, now that the critical connections had been established. Since the next steps would doubtless involve more tedious research, he was content to let them lead on that front. He would take any new information into consideration and apply it to the big picture, of course, but for the present, he intended to focus his own mind on the puzzle of Edward Park's fixation on Kim Sun-young.

For the first time in a long while, Dal-geon stayed in the NIS attic all night. Hae-ri didn't like it when he slept there. It always caused her to worry that he was sinking too deeply into his own mind and losing touch with reality. He didn't understand why she believed this would be the case any more in the attic than in his apartment, but he knew that no amount of logical argument on this point would sway her opinion on the matter. To him, the location was of less importance than the subject of his thoughts. When he had something he needed to think about deeply, he naturally withdrew from others in order to concentrate without interruption. The appeal of the NIS attic was that it was quiet, and when he wanted to focus, it was more convenient to spend the night there than to waste time driving across town to his apartment. He had been making a conscious effort of late not to add unnecessarily to Hae-ri's burden of worry, however, so he hadn't been spending quite so much time in the attic. This night, though, he had been caught up in his thoughts and had lost track of time. By the time he'd realized how late it was, it really did seem pointless to go back to his apartment, so he'd settled on his makeshift cot for a cat nap.

He woke at seven, his eyes gritty from the lack of sleep and his back stiff from sleeping on the hard surface of the less than ideally cushioned cot. He stretched, brushed his teeth in the tiny bathroom at the head of the stairs, and then headed down to the NIS gym in the basement to shower, hoping he had a clean suit in his locker. If he got himself cleaned up well enough, maybe Hae-ri wouldn't notice that he'd spent the night at the NIS again.

Dal-geon had to reevaluate this once he arrived in the gym, however. Hae-ri was there, working out, and since she was between him and the men's locker room, the chances of her not noticing that he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday went pretty much straight down to zero the minute his foot crossed the threshold.

In lieu of a regular workout on the treadmill or weight machines, she was training in some kind of martial arts with a partner. Kickboxing, or karate, or some combination of the two. With a little wrestling thrown in. It wasn't a real fight, of course-the combatants took care to pull back the weight of their blows before making contact with their opponent's flesh.

Dal-geon stopped dead when he saw them, transfixed by the sight. Hae-ri wore capri length black workout pants as well as a tank top and sports bra, and her feet were bare. Her hair was tied back in a long ponytail. She had an expression of fierce concentration on her face, and he wondered if there was anything she did in life with less than one hundred percent worth of effort.

It made sense that Hae-ri would choose a training partner larger than herself, since any physical confrontation she was likely to get into in the course of her job was likely to involve an opponent over a head taller than her and who outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She acquitted herself well, though, despite her opponent's larger size. He may have been bigger, but she was smart and quick; she was holding her own in their mock battle.

Despite the physical disparity between the two combatants, they were fairly well matched. What Hae-ri lacked in size, she made up for in intensity. She was agile and lightning quick, striking swiftly and decisively whenever the opportunity presented itself. She fought smart, patiently drawing her opponent into more and more reckless attacks, tiring him out. She knew she would lose the fight if she allowed herself to get trapped in a situation where the outcome relied on a straight match of size and strength, but she was confident enough in her stamina to know she could outlast her opponent if it came down to endurance at the end.