#synthvtic

❛    solve this for me?       before we go.      i  can   but    . . . don't  want  to  anymore.  ❜

“I hurt a friend.”

She doesn’t do her job to avoid harming those around her. In fact, she knows that collateral damage is unavoidable in her field. The slight sympathy she had shown in this one case had clearly gotten the better of her. He had been an old friend. One who had admittedly been tangled up in a complicated case involving fraud, smuggling and addiction – so much of it that she could smell the cocaine under his nose. Nonetheless, he had been a friend. One of the very few she had, and one she hadn’t planned to out. To see him locked behind bars due to her putting the pieces of the puzzle together wasn’t something she could hold her chin up for.

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.”

With thin arms perched on her knees, she blows another plume of smoke out from between her lips, considering to offer the young boy a drag from the cigarette but deciding against it. It’s strange how sorrow results in conversations she had never pictured. She doesn’t know the young man, nor does she really want to, but here she is, sitting rather pathetically on the side of the street, vaguely mourning what would definitely be the loss of an important relationship. She’s grateful for his unexpected company, but she isn’t one to wallow in her sorrows.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done.” Putting the cigarette out with the heel of her shoe, she pushes herself up to a standing position. “Aight kid,” The harsh bite is back in her tone, and she narrows her eyes in his direction. “What did you really want out of this? Money? A quick fuck? Or am I supposed to believe you’re some fucking saint in disguise?”

Trina had no faith in the goodness of humanity, she’s seen too many of them rot in hell and back.

it’s like he’s trying to pick at vices between his fingers, just scraping the skin of it and biting down with teeth whenever he got frustrated. he’s sick of this backward world, where some people walk towards their past and the ones without a future keep on walking forward. it would’ve been funny, if it weren’t so terribly sad, and if jungkook didn’t feel like he was one of those people. just walking forward, into some future he knows doesn’t exist for him. he guesses he’ll die before he’s thirty five. if he’s lucky, maybe he’ll live until forty. and that’s just the way it works, for people like him. so maybe he’s a little bitter, or a bit too pessimistic for someone his age. seventeen and cynical, with a trashy mouth spitting out shit before he can even begin to recycle his thoughts.

and because he hates smokers, he doesn’t look down at her to watch her. not even a glance. his neck is stiff and so is his back. his hands are in his pockets, fiddling with whatever loose change he had. here’s a thought; maybe you aren’t as strong as you thought you’d be. maybe you’re going to swallow yourself whole and leave nothing but the ache of your beating heart. they might kill you or you might kill yourself. either way, the ending is always the same; death.

then he looks at her with some curiosity, because he hadn’t expected something like that to come out of her mouth. and there’s nothing joking about it either. she’s dead serious. jungkook can only look at her, some strange expression fixed on his face, like he’s confused but also intrigued. then he wonders if she’s got vices to pick between her fingers too, or maybe underneath her nails where it’s never easy to wash out the blood.

         A green folder with a red label was thrown across the table to the end where the Lieutenant was sitting in a meeting that lasted the past two hours. “It’s been moved under your name now, Lieutenant General.” Minwoo looked up to the woman who was talking to him then picked the file to have a look at the first page, a large red rectangle stamp across the page covered parts of the writing on the paper. He leaned back in his seat, a sigh leaving his lungs. 

                                                                             “Lieutenant!”

         The man in uniform stood up and saluted the woman before forcing his body to carry its weight out of the soundproof room under the gazes of his superiors and other officials. It was a burden. Whenever a case like this was assigned to him, it meant the issues presented were only the tip of the iceberg they are trying to keep hidden. In the past, they always had him tailed, because he had a history of letting the subjects of investigation free. Today, the situation was different, he was running the whole department of special operations. He had to be sly with his ways if he was going to help her.

                                                                                 Jinah!

         “No birth date, no family history, no data on any relatives or origins. If that file didn’t scream fishy in the same boldness of the red stamp then I wonder how can anyone be so blind”, he thought. 

       “This is the footage, sir.” The soldier announced as he stepped for Minwoo to watch even though he did not need to since the screens covered half of the wall. It was the umpteenth time Minwoo watched the videos, and it made him sick, but he had to mask how he felt. “We’ll start from there. I want a detailed report on all the patrol on that day and the footage from the surrounding areas. It might take us somewhere.”  @synthvtic

She’s in a neighbourhood she shouldn’t be in. The houses are too big, the cameras pan too far. In the past three weeks she’s learned that being caught on camera is perhaps the worst mistake she could make. They had access to all security footage, whether private property or government owned. She’s not sure how they managed, but it was the only explanation behind their constant following in her shadows. The only reason she’s still free is due to the fact that They’ve already caused enough of a ruckus this week in an attempt to catch her. More violent attacks will lead to the destruction of their secrecy when the public and media begins to put two and two together. For once, things seemed to be looking up. Jinah however had very little hope in how long her luck would last.

It’s exactly why she’s been whipping rocks at the lens of every security camera she spots. The visible ones were easy targets, but it’s due to the hidden ones that she’s ducking around every corner, hat casting shadows over her features. With head down she scurries along the sidewalk, attempting to map her every move. This wasn’t intentional – getting lost was never intentional. She has yet to learn enough landmarks to lead her around Seoul with ease, but usually this doesn’t happen. She doesn’t typically stray far from the makeshift residence her only trusted companion had readied for her. It was sheer carelessness that led her into unmarked territory. Streets she didn’t know, faces she didn’t want to see.

Faces including the one whom her shoulder had brushed too roughly. The impact knocked Jinah off balance but she’s quick to regain her posture by gripping a hand around the stranger’s arm. Her realization sinks in a second too late and she hastily lets go to shove her hands into her pockets. Her throat’s already growing dry, but she knows she has to play it off as naturally as possible. Avoid all attention, attempt to divert any suspicion. Two other things she had learned. (She’d learned quite a lot in the span of a few days.)

“I can see why. I’m assuming the residents here have been here for a while, and why would anyone want to give up something like this?” She’s mastered the art of a natural laugh, and one rolls off her tongue with slight force. Keeping a steady tone and calm demeanor is excruciatingly painful when one lives under constant fear. “Big place, but kind of intimidating. Do you live around here? Maybe you can help me, I kind of stumbled in accidentally and have been walking in circles since.” She’s making casual conversation but behind tinted sunglasses she’s taking the time to scrutinize the woman before her.

Friend or foe? As of now, it was safe to assume the latter. False security was never a good option.

Haeri had to turn and glance while spinning to take a look at said neighborhood that no one would want to give up on. She’d do it, in a heartbeat. It was too big, too quiet, too disapproving of many things and eyes could be watching you even when you weren’t expecting to be seen. She would know, she’s caused enough chaos in this neighborhood as a kid to know that. Most of them weren’t happy when she came back, they seriously hold grudges too. Must be because of what she said, ah yeah, that they never fucking moved out of their houses. 

“Kinda boring if you ask me, I’d rather see the world than be stuck here, but that’s not why I said that, it’s because you literally didn’t see me coming and you’re walking, they don’t walk. Unless it’s to walk their pets, which sometimes it’s the maids who do that you know, I wonder how they even keep healthy, can’t be healthy.” She purses her mouth to stop the rest of her rambling, which would have held no importance whatsoever to where she had to get. She had a point to get to right? She started with the fact that the girl was walking, oh yeah, she did. 

“Sorry, sorry, I do that, talk a lot, it’s why they see me coming before they even so much as brush you know shoulders,” That she’s rubbing where she bumped against the other as she grins, sheepish. It’s a lie, it’s not why they avoid her like the plague it’s because of what she says when she talks. They’ve learned their lessons from taking shit about her mother or her family, or her, or anything that’s related to why she was sent away for that reason. “But you said you were lost? Happened to me all the time when I was a kid, I hated staying in though so you’ve hit the right person, I know even the creepiest shortcuts.” 

        “Why?” The question is meant to come off as hostile, but the fear in her widened eyes is enough to give away her vulnerability. She grips the sad excuse of a weapon with both hands with stop the quivering of her limbs whilst scanning her surroundings for a possible route of escape already. “Who are you? Did they send you? What do you want?”

He’s no connoisseur of self-preservation, but he’s not an idiot, either. So, when the young woman flourishes her weapon, small and deceptively harmless as it were, his hands are immediately up and out in an all-too recognizable ‘self-surrender’, ‘easy-there’ gesture. He’s seen enough of those movies and television shows by now to know what these kinds of people are capable of; but, frankly, he half-sort-of wishes that those very same shows would sometimes teach more of the ‘handling of’ than the ‘horrors of’.

“Hey, hey—no need for that!” Jae finds himself spitting out rather calmly in spite of the instant surplus of fear and adrenaline coursing through his veins, “I’d just like to talk!”

    ‘Why?’

That’s a good question—a very good question. It’s in that very millisecond that he wonders why he’s decided to approach the clearly not-all-there individual traipsing about in the public water fountain, barefoot and scavenging for the glitters making up the bottom of the pools. After all, it doesn’t sound a whole lot like him to take time out of his day to ensure that a perfect stranger was at the very least okay, even if they clearly weren’t.

He takes a breath, slow and steady; keeping his open-faced palms as still and as threat-free as possible. While still mulling over her preceding remark, Jae’s mind begins to fill with unlikely successful scenarios. He thinks about springing forward and knocking her back into the fountain, ensuing a ‘fight for your life’ struggle. He thinks about kicking the knife straight from her grasp. Thinks about this and that, but doesn’t ever stop once to notice that her nerves are just as threadbare, anxious, and fearful as his.

  ‘Who are you? Did they send you? What do you want?’

Somewhere behind him, a pair of dated lovebirds stop in their tracks at the scene that befalls them, but only for as long as it takes for the male to wrap his arm around his partner’s shoulder and steer her in another direction. And, in the corner of his eye, Jae can see a young woman in a group of four others conspicuously lift her cellphone’s front camera to an eyelevel precision. Sure, there’s an audience, but it’s a silent menagerie. If he’s hurt here (or, if he’s pathetic enough to be subdued by a flimsy-looking woman holding a goddamn pocketknife, worse) there’s no guarantee of a helpful reaction.