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Yoo Sangah has never hated someone so much. You’d think that would make it easier to kill them.
“What is this shit?” Han Sooyoung sighs, shoving the book back in its place on the shelf. “Lady, this isn’t the sort of stuff I care about. Haruki Murakami? Do I look like a normie to you?”
Yoo Sangah. Has never. Hated. Someone. So much.
“So, how was the first day?” Kim Dokja asks, when she returns back to base—also known as a cheap, rundown apartment that never fixes its plumbing—that evening. “She dropped by today, didn’t she?”
“Mm.” Yoo Sangah sets her bag down and sinks into the couch, staring up at the cracked ceiling. “I can’t do it, Dokja-ssi,” she eventually says, after a long period of just inhaling and exhaling. “I think I hate her too much.”
Kim Dokja stares at her. “Shouldn’t that… make things easier?”
“Only the end part. If I spend a minute more in her presence—”
“Ah. I see.”
“I can take on the next two jobs after this,” Yoo Sangah offers. “But this… I really don’t think I’ll be able to…” To keep myself from just shooting her in the library in the middle of everyone else, she means to say, but finds herself too tired to bother.
Kim Dokja frowns. “I’m sorry, Sangah-ssi, I’m trying to get data on our next mark right now too. Yoo Joonghyuk, you know. Is another few days alright? We can exchange from there.”
A few days? Yoo Sangah’s not sure she can bear another second. But she just nods, because it’s as good as she’s going to get, and as long as she sucks it up and does her job well, those few days will have passed before she realizes. Maybe she had just gotten unlucky today, and tomorrow Han Sooyoung will be a little more bearable?
Yesterday Han Sooyoung had been wearing a ratty purple hoodie and ripped jeans; today she wears a worn t-shirt and cuffed shorts. In the week before that she had cycled between some jackets, sweatshirts, and other nondescript articles of clothing.
Yoo Sangah observes her a bit more when she enters the library again. Something about her general appearance…
“You’re back,” she greets, throwing on a smile. “I thought you didn’t like what I recommended yesterday?”
“Eh, well, s’not like there are any other libraries near my place,” Han Sooyoung says. “And I had something to do yesterday so I had to leave early. Got anything else for me? That’s not Murakami or some other pretentious shit?”
Yoo Sangah’s smile threatens to crumble. Somehow she keeps it up and says, “How about over here?”
Han Sooyoung dutifully follows her to a shelf near the back of the library, where there are less people and security cameras around. Frankly it’s the perfect time to kill her right then and there, but there’s an order to how they do things around here as semi-professional assassins, and Yoo Sangah doesn’t want to get blood on the books anyway. “These,” she says, gesturing to a selection of books she’d personally arranged just shortly after she’d been hired. “I had a feeling they might interest you more.”
“Mmh…” Han Sooyoung plucks a random book out, raises an eyebrow at the cover art, and thumbs through the pages. Then her cheeks flush in sudden color. “What the—this is—”
“Not to your liking either?” Yoo Sangah mocks. Sorry, asks.
“Uh, lady, this is lesbian porn,” Han Sooyoung hisses, glancing behind her.
“Yes, I know.”
“You…” Han Sooyoung stares at her, then at the book, then at her own self. “Geez. Is it something I’m wearing?”
Yoo Sangah shrugs. “I had a feeling,” she repeats. “You’re free to browse whatever catches your eye and check out a maximum of—”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s all on the card, right?”
Yoo Sangah returns to her spot behind the library counter, watching Han Sooyoung flip through book after book on the shelf, her face getting progressively redder the more pages she reads. Eventually she trudges over to the counter with a small stack of the books, shoving them onto the surface. “Hey, quick question,” she huffs, as Yoo Sangah silently checks the books out and records it on Han Sooyoung’s library card. “Have you read any of these yourself?”
Yoo Sangah only smiles and hands the books over. “Thank you for visiting. Please enjoy the books.”
“I—I’ll tell you what I think of ‘em, okay?” Han Sooyoung stammers, staring down at the pile in her arms. “You recommended them after all, so they better not be that bad. I can’t deal with trashy romance novels most of the time, but then, these are…” Then she looks like she realizes she’d said too much, because she curses under her breath and snaps, “Bye!” before dashing out.
Kim Dokja is poring over their documents and data when Yoo Sangah returns that night—by that she means he’s scrolling through his phone on the couch. “Welcome back. Dinner’s almost done,” he says, only glancing up at her for a moment before returning to his phone.
“Thank you.” She takes a seat by their kitchen counter. “Don’t worry about switching jobs anymore. I think I’ll be fine after all.”
That gets his attention. “Don’t—huh?”
“I’ll let you know how it goes,” she adds, and leaves it at that.
There are more things to observe about Han Sooyoung than Yoo Sangah had previously assessed from the initial data. Sometimes, before her shift at the library starts, she tails her mark on a busy day, always keeping a safe distance away, and watches as Han Sooyoung meets with editors and agents, signs the odd contract or autograph, or goes to some events for other authors. For some reason Yoo Sangah finds the way she settles in different skins fascinating—calm and composed when speaking with her superiors or colleagues, careful and on her guard when at those big events she clearly doesn’t enjoy. Yoo Sangah lingers at the edges and in the shadows, watching and waiting, trying to find the biggest chink in her armor, the weakest spot she can afford to take advantage of.
It isn’t that there are none, but perhaps for once Yoo Sangah just finds it a little harder than usual to find them.
“Some of them weren’t too bad, actually,” Han Sooyoung tells her, a little over a week later. “I mean, some were pretty boring and contrived too, yeah, but I’m just surprised there were others that were decent.”
“Thank you for returning them on time,” Yoo Sangah says.
“Oh, come on. Haven’t you read any of these? You’re the one who recommended them!”
“Would you like to see more of the same genre?” Yoo Sangah offers.
Han Sooyoung scowls but seems to seriously think about it for a moment before sighing and shaking her head. “I need reference material for my next book. Do you have any stories on regression?”
They do. Han Sooyoung gathers a small pile and sets them atop a table close to the counter. She spends the rest of the day there, sometimes reading, sometimes typing on her phone, sometimes slumping on the table and taking 20-minute naps before returning to the books again.
Yoo Sangah watches.
When night falls and the library has emptied except for the two of them, Yoo Sangah steps out from behind the counter and leans against the edge of the table. Han Sooyoung’s nodding off, eyes bleary and unfocused on the book in front of her, and when devoid of her usual frown, her face looks a little softer than usual.
It would be easy to kill her, Yoo Sangah thinks. No one else is here, and the security cameras in the library are pitifully easy to manipulate with Kim Dokja’s help anyway. There is a knife strapped to the inside of her thigh under her skirt, and another one tucked away in the inside pocket of her jacket. It would be easy. It would be quick.
“It’s late,” Yoo Sangah says instead. “We’re closing up.”
“Oh… really?” Han Sooyoung blinks and checks the time on her phone, then sighs and leans back against her seat. “Man, I didn’t realize. Okay, I’ll be on my way. Wait, can I borrow these? I didn’t get to finish them today.”
“Of course.”
Yoo Sangah takes the books to the counter while Han Sooyoung follows behind her, stretching her arms over her head and yawning loudly. “I’m not even that into this kind of story,” she mumbles. “The idea for it just suddenly popped into my head one day, so I went with it, but… ugh, if it doesn’t work out, I dunno what I’m going to do.”
“You’re an author?” Yoo Sangah asks, well aware of the six different webnovels Han Sooyoung has under her name.
As expected, Han Sooyoung grins and puffs her chest out, her hands on her hips. “Yeah! Han Sooyoung! You ever heard of me? I’m pretty damn well-known online. But if you don’t read webnovels, then forget it. You’re not my target audience anyway.”
Yoo Sangah’s smile feels like stone on her face. “I see. That’s interesting.”
“Knew you didn’t know me,” Han Sooyoung grunts, stuffing her hands back in her hoodie pockets. “Whatever. See ya, lady.”
Yoo Sangah watches her walk out the glass doors. She tells herself she had held back for the sake of the nearby books.
Han Sooyoung starts visiting the library more often, entering at noon and staying there all the way until closing time. The books she checks out vary every time—after regression stories she looks at futuristic ones, then fantasy ones, and even some romance again—and without fail she brings them to her now-usual table, sits there, and reads until she conks out with her face flat on the pages.
Yoo Sangah watches.
Han Sooyoung makes it easy to kill her. Even outside the library she avoids places crowded with people, often taking detours in alleyways, and usually distracted with earphones plugged in or scrolling through her phone. If Kim Dokja were the one assigned to her instead, Han Sooyoung would almost certainly have been buried six feet under by now, and the two of them would be walking away several hundred millions of won richer for their efforts.
But something always keeps Yoo Sangah from sinking a knife between her ribs or shooting her dead—the books would be bloodied, the body would be difficult to hide, the location is too open, the time isn’t right, the time isn’t right, the time isn’t right. The gun is heavy in its holster, and each time Yoo Sangah lets Han Sooyoung walk away alive it only seems to get heavier and heavier.
One rainy night Han Sooyoung is there again, fast asleep on the table, her laptop open in front of her and the pages of a book folded under her cheek. (Once again, Yoo Sangah has never hated someone so much.) She only wakes up when Yoo Sangah knocks lightly on the table, the library keys clinking softly against each other in her other hand. “Han Sooyoung-ssi,” she calls. “We’re closing up.”
“Ah, are you…” She blinks and yawns, then sits up with a heavy sigh, glaring at the laptop before her. “Damn it, I was supposed to work more today, but I fell asleep…”
“Is that your next book?” Yoo Sangah asks, once again well aware of exactly what is written on the laptop screen.
Han Sooyoung brightens and nods. “Yeah! I’ve been talking with my editor and he says this one’s really got potential. My last work was kind of a mess, actually,” she adds, grumbling. “Too all over the place, not thought out well enough. It appealed to those who didn’t really think much while reading, but the reception overall wasn’t great. So I have to make up for it with this one. But I really think I’m going somewhere with this whole regression thing!” She grins, not even looking at Yoo Sangah anymore, typing hurriedly away on her laptop. “Just a bit more and I’ll be able to start serializing. Hey, you better read it when it comes out, okay? You definitely won’t be looking down on webnovel authors after this one!”
Ridiculous, Yoo Sangah thinks. If things go right, then you won’t even be alive long enough to get more than a few chapters of that up, if at all.
But she’s never seen Han Sooyoung smile like this before—no mischief nor malice, just bright eyes and a big smile and so much hope for her own future. Something twists and curls in Yoo Sangah’s gut.
“It’s late,” Yoo Sangah says. “Be safe going home.”
Han Sooyoung deflates at the obvious conversation-ender, but just huffs and gathers the books in her arms. “Thanks a lot, lady.”
“Yoo Sangah.”
“…Huh?”
“That’s my name,” Yoo Sangah says. “Please use it from now on.”
Han Sooyoung stares at her for a moment, then shrugs, turning away. The tips of her ears are a dainty pink. “Uh, o-okay? I mean, I knew your name! It’s on your ID and stuff! Uh, whatever! I’m out of here, bye!”
She makes to speed out onto the streets, but doubles back and grabs her umbrella out of the stand. The rain isn’t too hard, but she is carrying a stack of books. “You… don’t have an umbrella?” she asks, when she turns around to see Yoo Sangah still standing at the doorway.
Yoo Sangah shakes her head. “I’m fine. I’ll wait for the rain to stop.” Kim Dokja is busy tailing his own mark right now, and will be back home late as well. She vaguely hopes he had remembered to bring an umbrella, unlike her.
Han Sooyoung frowns. “It might take a while. Want me to walk you to… I dunno, the station? Or a convenience store, at least?” She blinks. “Have you… had dinner yet? I haven’t. Do you wanna… maybe?”
The invitation is so terribly made that Han Sooyoung looks embarrassed beyond belief, if the red on her cheeks is any indication. Yoo Sangah smiles, and she opens her mouth to say no, I’m fine, please go without me, but for some reason what leaves her lips instead is, “I’d love to.”
Han Sooyoung heaves a sigh of relief. “Okay, great! I know a good café near here. Not really dinner material, but any other restaurants are too far. A-Anyway, let’s just go!”
They walk to the supposed café, Han Sooyoung chattering on about random things Yoo Sangah does her best to pay attention to but ultimately fails because what is she doing right now? A café isn’t even a good place to kill someone without being discovered. She is doing absolutely nothing to help with the job. Kim Dokja would be throttling her right now if he knew what she was doing—well, alright, probably not throttling, he’s a bit too nice for that, but he would definitely be losing hair trying to understand the process her thoughts underwent that led to this outcome. Yoo Sangah knows for a fact she herself hardly understands why she had said yes.
Her mind is spinning fast enough that she’s starting to get dizzy. She looks down at Han Sooyoung and watches her instead, more out of habit than anything, and finds her thoughts slowing down to a calm.
If Han Sooyoung trusts her more, then that will only make it easier for Yoo Sangah to kill her. She tells herself that, repeats it over and over in her head, and pretends she feels at all convinced.
“Are you having coffee? At night?” Han Sooyoung asks, squinting at the iced Americano Yoo Sangah orders. “Don’t tell me you work a night shift somewhere else too.”
Yoo Sangah shakes her head. “It tastes good.”
“It’s bitter.”
“Is it?” Yoo Sangah takes a sip from the straw, then holds it out towards Han Sooyoung. “Would you like some?”
Han Sooyoung flushes and scowls. “N-No, thanks! I, uh, I’ll have a peach smoothie!”
The food is good, though Yoo Sangah isn’t very hungry—she watches Han Sooyoung dig in her pasta instead, and it’s strange just how different she seems here, with Yoo Sangah, than everywhere else. She never smiles when speaking to her colleagues or when attending big events, and she always looks more uncomfortable than anything, and after watching for so long it’s easy to tell how much Han Sooyoung… relaxes, for lack of a better word, when in the library or just like right now.
“What?” Han Sooyoung asks, and Yoo Sangah blinks; she hadn’t noticed her careful, secret watching, usually gone unnoticed by even the most attentive people, had turned into outright staring. “I got sauce on my face or something?”
“Ah, no. It’s nothing.” Yoo Sangah pauses, trying to arrange the words in her head to form a coherent sentence, then asks, “Why did you invite me out?”
“Huh?” Han Sooyoung frowns, a now-familiar blush beginning to creep up her neck. She shakes her head as if to get rid of it before answering. “Well, I mean, it’s raining, and… you don’t have an umbrella… and look at you!” she exclaims, waving a hand in the air. “You look like you’re the type who gets sick if you’re out in the rain for even a second, alright? So, you know, I’m just doing my part here! It’s like paying back for all the books you recommended.”
Yoo Sangah hums. “That’s my job.”
“I. Yeah. I know. Just—” Han Sooyoung sighs, sounding terribly aggrieved. “Don’t make this so hard on me, damn it, just take the coffee and go.”
Even after their dinner the rain hasn’t stopped, and there aren’t any leftover umbrellas in the café stand for Yoo Sangah to steal—not that she would have, despite Han Sooyoung’s egging—and they stand under the café awning for a minute, looking out onto the city streets. Traffic clogs, people rush around, umbrella heads bob up and down. Perhaps under more normal circumstances, Yoo Sangah would be tailing Han Sooyoung right now, all the way to her house, blending right in with the rest of the crowd. On a rainy day like this, everyone would be too busy trying to get out of the rain to notice a dead body in an alleyway.
On a rainy day like this, Yoo Sangah thinks, glancing at the girl standing beside her, it would be nice to stay inside and sleep with someone warm.
“Still hasn’t stopped,” Han Sooyoung mumbles. She turns to look at Yoo Sangah, twisting the umbrella handle nervously in one hand. “Café’s gonna close soon, so you can’t just stay here. Do you wanna, maybe—I don’t know. Wait it out at my place?”
“Oh? Where do you live?” Yoo Sangah asks, like she doesn’t know Han Sooyoung’s complete address.
She’s been to this—place a few times. It would be an exaggeration to call it a mansion, but it would also be an insult to call it a flat, with its three bedrooms and general lavishness.
Picking the electronic lock had been impossible, so she’d snuck in a window instead while Han Sooyoung was away at some other event, Kim Dokja keeping an eye on her to alert Yoo Sangah when she would leave, and observed the place from there in case she’d need to know the layout for a quick enter-and-escape in the future. It was… messy, then, the kitchen piled high with dirty dishes and take-out boxes, and out of the three bedrooms, only one was in use, and it was littered with what looked like rejected manuscripts and torn, empty letter envelopes. Yoo Sangah pilfered some money from the basement—why there was money in the basement until now she does not know—and used that to buy Lee Gilyoung his favorite snacks.
Somehow entering through the front door gives the place a completely different feeling, though, moreso when they barely go five minutes in the entryway before they’re kissing against the wall.
There are no questions, no pretenses, only Han Sooyoung’s hands tangling in her hair and Yoo Sangah reaching down to move the hidden knife strapped to her thigh into one of her jacket pockets instead. Their lips slide together, wet and warm and a mix of bitter and sweet, tastes like library books and lies, and Yoo Sangah isn’t thinking when she reaches up to cup Han Sooyoung’s cheeks and pull her still yet closer. I’m sorry, she keeps thinking, I’m sorry, because this is both real and not, both sincere yet but an illusion, ready to fade at a moment’s notice, ready to disappear come morning light, but she kisses her anyway, lets Han Sooyoung tug at her clothes, closes her eyes and pretends nothing else matters.
“You don’t waste time,” Han Sooyoung gasps, when they separate for breath. Her lips are plush pink and swollen and Yoo Sangah can’t resist reaching down to swipe her thumb over a bead of saliva.
Yoo Sangah smiles. “I could say the same for you,” she says, and kisses her again.
She had known Han Sooyoung was attractive for a while now, but she hadn’t realized she was beautiful, especially when Yoo Sangah looks down at her spread out and shaking on her bed, the promise of her name on her lips. Yoo Sangah thinks she could touch Han Sooyoung everywhere, trace the lines of her bare shoulders and tense throat and sharp shoulderblades over and over, again and again, and still find something new to adore.
The knife is heavy in her jacket. She takes it off and forgets, forgets, forgets.
Afterwards they lie under the sheets together, the room dark but for the city lights from outside the window, Han Sooyoung’s face buried in the crook of Yoo Sangah’s neck. She curls her fingers in dark black strands of hair, listens to Han Sooyoung’s even breathing, watches how her lashes just barely brush against her cheeks.
“I know who you are.”
Yoo Sangah freezes.
“There was cash missing in my basement,” Han Sooyoung continues, not even bothering to open her eyes, “and I thought I saw someone who looked like you following me from behind the other day. This isn’t really the first time someone’s tried to rob me, you know.”
“Sooyoung-ssi,” Yoo Sangah says, softly, but she can’t think of anything else to say. Some five minutes ago, Han Sooyoung’s name was all she needed.
“You can get whatever you want. I don’t care.” Han Sooyoung presses closer, sighs heavily, her breath warm against Yoo Sangah’s neck. “And if you’re going to kill me, I don’t care either. Just one request—keep me alive until I finish serializing, okay? I don’t give a shit what comes after. I just need to… I need to do this for myself first.”
Yoo Sangah says nothing, but she strokes Han Sooyoung’s hair until she falls asleep for real again.
She’s gone by sunrise.
“Dokja-ssi.”
“I think I know where this is going,” Kim Dokja says. He’s feeding scraps of meat from his leftover lunch to a stray cat that had wandered in their apartment one day, and he’s taken to calling it Biyoo. “You need me to take over?”
Yoo Sangah is silent for a long while. Biyoo meows. In one of the bedrooms, Lee Gilyoung is hurriedly dressing to prepare to go to the park with Kim Dokja, to play with the other child he met recently.
“No,” she says, eventually. “I can handle this.”
“Where are you taking me?” Han Sooyoung asks, toying with a lollipop stick in her mouth. “Definitely not to some isolated area so you can kill me and hide the body no problem, right?”
“Maybe next time.” Yoo Sangah takes Han Sooyoung’s free hand in her own, joining their fingers together, and admires how quickly Han Sooyoung’s face goes red before rounding the corner and pointing over at the park. “Over here. I want you to meet someone.”
Han Sooyoung frowns, looking skeptical, but follows. Kim Dokja is sitting on a bench and idly scrolling through his phone when they near him, and he looks up, not a smidgen of surprise on his expression. “Oh, it’s you,” is all he says, offering a wan smile in return for Han Sooyoung’s confused expression. “Han Sooyoung-ssi, am I right? It’s nice to meet you.”
“Uh, you’re… you’re…” Han Sooyoung turns to stare at Yoo Sangah. “This isn’t your boyf—”
“Who are you?” Lee Gilyoung, sitting beside Kim Dokja, pipes up.
Han Sooyoung’s face goes through what looks like seven different stages of distress. “This isn’t your husba—”
“This is my coworker,” Yoo Sangah gently interrupts. “And his… younger… friend. In any case, do you know why I’ve brought you here, Sooyoung-ssi?”
“Coworker…” Han Sooyoung looks between the two of them for several seconds before making a little oh of realization. “So you don’t have the guts to kill me after all, Yoo Sangah, and you’re going to get your coworker to do the dirty work for you? Sheesh, for a killer, you’re kind of a softie. We fucked once. If anything, that should give you more incentive to just shoot me dead already.”
Contrary to her confident tone, though, the hand in Yoo Sangah’s grip is beginning to tremble ever so slightly, and Han Sooyoung’s eyes keep darting back and forth, clearly searching for any guns or weapons. Yoo Sangah smiles, and for once it comes so terribly easy, her chest aching with a feeling she knows the word for but refuses to voice aloud.
She squeezes Han Sooyoung’s hand. “It’s for a job interview.”
There is a long pause. Han Sooyoung stares at her again. Then, “I’m sorry, what?”
Kim Dokja shakes his head, looking resigned. Lee Gilyoung looks confused, but his attention quickly shifts to something else as he tugs on Kim Dokja’s sleeve. “Ah, hyung! There, there, that’s the girl who bullied me! Can’t you go tell her off?”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Kim Dokja says blandly.
Yoo Sangah turns to look at Lee Gilyoung’s… friend; she’s maybe a year older than him, and she’s holding the hand of someone who must be her father. She makes a face when her eyes meet Lee Gilyoung’s and pulls at the man’s hand, tugging him down to furiously whisper something in his ear. Something about the man’s stern face and coiffed hair stirs Yoo Sangah’s memories, and only when she turns back to stare at an embarrassed-looking Kim Dokja does she realize who that is.
“You could have told me, you know,” Han Sooyoung is berating. “I would have worn a suit or something! Do I really look like I would wear a sweater to a job interview? Hey, Sangah, are you listening to me!”
Yoo Sangah dutifully ignores the little leap in her chest at the casual use of her name and turns to look at Han Sooyoung again. “No need to worry, Sooyoung,” she returns, just to see Han Sooyoung’s eyes widen and cheeks pinken. “We already have our next target.”