I'm undercover
in your feelings

THE SILVER BULLET, CENTRAL SEOUL

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

Baekhyun stood at the door of the suite, unsure whether or not to enter. The door was open, but not wide enough to signify that the tenant invited people in without permission. Baekhyun had been notified that he was needed, but he was still new to how things worked with the racers—it had been much easier working with the wolves, Baekhyun found himself thinking. As the name suggested, the wolf pack—or the bikers—were much less specific about rules and conditions and such.

Not that Baekhyun refused to follow rules, of course. He would comply to any demands that would keep his head attached to his shoulders, and he didn't exactly have a great history with disobeying direct orders. In fact, doing that very thing was what had forced him to go into hiding in the first place.

Thankfully, he didn't have to wait much longer before he was called. Jungkook, who had been passing by in front of the door, spotted him and invited him to enter.

"You asked for me?" Baekhyun asked, as Jungkook led him into an open atrium. The ceiling had a gaping square hole in the center, through which tangled vines dangled, letting in mottled sunrays from the outside. Around it were a couple of armchairs, and a coffee table with a tabletop designed like a chessboard, with two chairs on either side. This was where Jungkook asked Baekhyun to sit, before taking the seat opposite him.

"Yes," the manager said, leaning back in his chair with a calm expression, probably to indicate that what he wanted to talk about was a harmless topic, and that it probably wasn't. "Something important has come up—something I need you to take care of on your own."

Baekhyun bristled inwardly, but showed no reaction. He settled comfortably into his chair, trying to look as compliant as he could, knowing that the opposite could get him in serious trouble. He had no idea what Jungkook was capable of, though he had heard of the time he had locked twenty people into a barn with lit dynamite.

"Do you remember Vernon's assignment?" Jungkook asked.

"Yes." All Baekhyun actually knew about the assignment was that Vernon had to look after a new recruit in the bikers—watching for trouble, he had called it—and that this recruit was a girl, and that Vernon had become attached to her in a way he wasn't supposed to be. He wondered how much Jungkook knew about that. "What about it?"

Jungkook slipped his phone out of his pocket, dialing a number. He set it on speaker, so Baekhyun could hear every ring resonate through the open-air atrium, and set it down on the table between them. The blond watched it with mild interest, curious about where this was going.

It wasn't long before the call was picked up, and Baekhyun leaned forward in interest. "Jungkook?" Vernon spoke.

Not a surprise. Jungkook had been talking about Vernon's assignment, so it wasn't surprising that it was him who picked up the phone. Jungkook leaned closer to make his voice clearer.

"Vernon," he said. "What are the developments in the Hwang case?" Hwang, Baekhyun noted. Now he had a name.

"Uh—" Vernon hesitated, and Baekhyun felt a spark of pleasure, aware that he knew the reason behind it. That he knew and Jungkook didn't. "There was a car crash, as you know, a couple of days ago. Hyojong's brother, Yoongi... he didn't make it."

Baekhyun frowned before he realized he was doing it. He had never been especially close to Yoongi, but the news was so sudden and unexpected that it made waves in the ocean of his unruffled thoughts.

"I know," Jungkook said, and Baekhyun bit the inside of his lip. He acted detached most of the time, but seeing it on someone else, especially when that someone else was in a position of power, irked him. "What about the girl?"

"She's fine." Baekhyun noted the thinly-veiled relief in Vernon's voice, and his mood switched back to amusement. "Hwang—her father, I mean—wanted to shift her to a trauma center, but I convinced him to get her into rehab in the same city, since there are no major injuries, and seeing someone die like that—"

"Hansol," Jungkook said. The word was dry, but had a firm implication hidden in the interruption.

Vernon went silent for a few seconds, then spoke again. "Yeah," he muttered, a little lower than before, but there was no defiance in his voice. Like a rebuked puppy. "What do you want me to do?"

"Bring her here," Jungkook said. "Give her a few months in the rehabilitation center, but make sure she's in Seoul before the year is over. Her father will agree to any demands, so don't worry about convincing him."

Baekhyun raised an eyebrow. "But—" Vernon broke off, but not before Baekhyun noticed the slight alarm in his voice. "Taeyong would recognize her. From pictures."

"Taeyong will keep quiet about it," Jungkook said. "He values safety before family—" At this, he glanced at Baekhyun— "and no one else besides the two of us has any idea who she is or where she comes from, and we'll keep it that way. Bring her to Seoul, and I'll take care of the rest."

Baekhyun had long guessed that he was supposed to stay quiet throughout the phone call, and that Vernon had no idea that he was listening in, but he was tempted to speak up, just to ask why. He didn't know the exact nature of Jungkook and Vernon's relationship, but he had a feeling that Vernon wasn't going to speak up about the jobs he had to do.

He understood that. He understood owing someone your life.

"What then?" Vernon asked, surprising Baekhyun. "She comes to Seoul. What happens after?"

"You recruit her, of course," Jungkook said drily. "No better way to keep her safe than to keep her close. And besides," he said, with a hint of smile that was more of a sneer, "she's good."

"Okay," Vernon sounded doubtful. "It might be harder to fend off the others, and they'd know something's up if I show up out of the blue."

"You don't have to hold the others off," Jungkook replied. "As I said, they don't know anything. They get new recruits all the time. In fact, get everyone to help you recruit her, and if they're curious, they might dig for information, but they'll be satiated with her biker history and lay off the rest."

"Okay," Vernon said, sounding tired. "Is that all?"

"No. I'll be gone for a few months."

Baekhyun looked up in surprise. "A few months?" Vernon echoed in disbelief. "Why?"

"Preparations," Jungkook said smoothly. "If she got Hyojong's brother killed, the bikers will be after her, which means that the bikers will be after me. It's better if I drop off the radar for a while. And, anyway, I have some business I need to take care of."

"Where will you be?"

"Right here in Seoul," he answered. "If anyone asks where I am, tell them you have no idea. You can tell Jennie, but make sure no one knows."

"Why?"

"Can't afford rats in our rows," Jungkook said smoothly. "I might have to call you away a few times, and you'll take over the deals for some time. I trust you'll be able to take care of this."

"Yes," Vernon affirmed, almost immediately, like a trained soldier, but there was doubt in his tone.

"Good," Jungkook said softly, then clicked off.

Baekhyun stayed silent for a few moments, letting the information sink in. Jungkook seemed uninterested in his reaction, slipping the phone back into his pocket. There was a lot that had been unveiled during the conversation, but a lot had been left buried, too.

What more do I know? Baekhyun asked himself. There was a girl on Jungkook's watch, who used to be a part of the bikers for a little over a year but got in a car crash, killing the brother of the head of the wolves. Now, they were after her. Baekhyun knew the mysterious Hwang girl was nothing but a figure of suspicion, but apparently Vernon's assignment involved her father, too—which was unexpected.

So, she was just someone who needed to be protected. For whose protection Jungkook was probably being paid for. But something seemed amiss. What other 'past' did they need to hide? Why could they not tell the others? Baekhyun had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to her.

But it had nothing to do with him, and would only land him in trouble, so he wasn't going to do anything about that.

"Alright," he said breezily, crossing his legs and looking at Jungkook over his glasses. "Now that I have the backstory, what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to be my eyes," Jungkook said simply. His eyes were flat, dark and bottomless, and looking into them was like staring down the edge of a cliff into chaos. "Pretend you know nothing about her, and that you're not an informant or even a part of the underworld. Befriend her. Get to know everything there is to know about her past and herself—weaknesses, emotional pressure points, everything. I want you to get under her skin."

Baekhyun was quiet for a moment as he digested the instructions. Certainly, it was an intriguing mission, not unlike things he had done before, but very different in motive from most of them. "Don't you already know everything there is to know about her?"

"It may seem so, but there are risks I can't afford to take," Jungkook replied. "If she knows something—even the smallest things that could be of help to me, I can't let them slide. She might not even realize how much she knows, and I want you to squeeze every bit of information from her you can. Be the wolf in sheep's clothing, the cruelest you can. Bleed her dry from a million papercuts. I don't care. I just need her alive."

Baekhyun didn't respond, mainly because he didn't know how. He was beginning to feel iffy about the job, and also about how much Jungkook knew. Did the manager know about him working with other people? He couldn't help but wonder if this was some trick to bleed him instead, from a knife to the back.

"Why me?" he asked with difficulty, having trouble keeping his tone steady. "Why not Vernon? He can lie just as well, and might even get more than just friendship from her."

"Simple." Jungkook tilted his chin, just a little, enough to indicate a point was going to be proven. "He's not removed enough."

Baekhyun blinked.

"Didn't you hear the way he said there were no major injuries?" Jungkook asked, shaking his head slightly. There was a hint of a smile crossed with a sneer on his lips. "No. The last thing I need is empathy in my hands. Any worry she'll see from him would be genuine, and I don't want that becoming worse than it already is. Vernon does what he's told, and I don't want that to change because of a target. No," he said, levelling his gaze at Baekhyun like the point of a sword, "I want you to do this, and no one else."

Baekhyun couldn't help responding with a quip. "What makes you think I won't feel empathy?"

"You have too much on the line." Jungkook shrugged. "Vernon is hung up over the past, but one can move on from that. But you... you have your whole future hanging in the balance."

Baekhyun didn't look away from his heavy gaze, but he suspected it had more to do with Jungkook's eyes trapping his in place than a show of boldness from his side. "Alright," he said softly, then uncrossed his legs, leaning forward. "What do you want me to do?"