When he boarded the plane to Seoul, Yoongi sat down with a thud, pushed his bag under his seat, and closed his eyes. Before his next job, he would take a week off just to sleep. Being a waiter was fucking exhausting. He would never do this again.

Unfortunately, flights within the same country did not have a first or business class, so when the plane was filling with chatting people, he pulled out his ear plugs to drown out the rumble. It was still more comfortable than a four-hour train ride back to the capital. He deserved that after the strain of the last moths.

When the vehicle moved towards the runway and got ready for take-off, he was already drifting off, and the great feeling of being pressed into the seat made him grin softly. Finally back to Seoul, back to his bed. Well, technically not his bed, but more his mattress for the time being. But it was what came closest to a home. He slept peacefully through the flight.

><

"The tracker has been planted successfully," Ms. Kim said relieved when she put down the phone, and everyone of their four-men team stopped what they were doing and came over to watch her activate the tracking on her computer.

A small red dot was moving away from Gimpo Airport towards the city. Now they had to wait where the red dot would come to a rest.

"Where did out man put the button?" Choi asked her, his eyes trained on the monitor.

"Apparently he carries a handbag, so the agent slipped it into the outer pocket," Ms. Kim replied.

"Good, that should buy us some time," their team leader said while nodding absently. "Keep watch," he instructed her then and left towards the elevators, undoubtedly to inform the chief about their progress and ask for an opinion on how to proceed.

"How will we extract the device?" Jimin asked Ms. Kim once they were alone with only Choi's partner flipping quietly through a file. Jimin could not remember his name for the life of him. He always stood back quietly behind Choi, so he was not very memorable.

"I do not know, but we must find a way," she said serious.

Ten silent minutes later, their team leader was back with the news that they were not allowed to bug the apartment of their target. Judged by his dark look, he had had a disagreement over that with the chief, but Jimin silently supported the decision. By what he had read about the man, the smallest disruption would make him vanish. If he found a camera or a transmitter in his apartment, he would probably be gone less than an hour later, maybe even slip into a new identity, and they would be left with years of work and a pile of files that could be trashed.

A little more than twenty minutes after they started to trace him, the red dot had come to a standstill. After another tense hour it had still not moved, so they decided to take a look at the location.

Against Jimin's expectations the Hawk's home was not in Gangnam-gu but in the east of Mapo-gu in a very ordinary apartment block for singles. When Choi's partner came back from his quick exploration tour, he showed them a picture of the bell signs. One of them indeed read Ahn Jaehoon. After years of walking in the dark, this was the first major achievement of the force, and Jimin could feel his spirits soaring. They had him.

Even Superintendent Choi seemed to be in a good mood when he announced that he and his partner would start the surveillance now and sent him and Ms. Kim back to the bureau to crosscheck the name Ahn Jaehoon with the address. It was the first time that Choi seemed to see him as a real part of their Department. Maybe if Jimin was helpful and they could solve this case, he would no longer receive glares from his senior, and would that not be nice.

It took them half an hour back to the office, one minute to cross-check the name, and almost four hours to coax the resident information out of the real estate office and cross-check all the other names on the bell signs because they had drawn a negative on Ahn Jaehoon.

After the fifth hour, they found out that the real owner of the apartment lived in Shandong province in China, working abroad, so Ahn was most likely just subleasing his place. That could mean his real address was somewhere completely different or even nonexistent, so the good mood of their first success was slightly dampened. Still, Ms. Kim tried to cheer him up with the fact that they were the first mission in years to acquire the hitman's address, and that made Jimin optimistic that they could succeed if they played their cards well.

><

Still half-asleep from a good night's rest Yoongi was loading the coffee machine. The coffee was dry. One of the disadvantages of always being available was that the food in his fridge tended to become old and the coffee dry. But oh well, if he would always get 10M when his tofu molded, then he would be a rich man. He snorted at the thought. He was a rich man. Even with the organization taking one third of every kill, he was a billionaire. He just did not feel like it.

Before he had become a hitman, he might have called his current lifestyle sparse and disagreeable, now he considered it efficient. His apartment was perfectly used and did not hold any unnecessary stuff. Apart from the built-in kitchenette there was the table with the tablet PC, the printer, and the shredder, a commode and a rail with hangers, a regular mattress with a white blanket, and two giant whiteboards that took all of the wall opposite of the door. The only thing that could give away something about his tastes were the liquors on the shelfs above the kitchenette, little trophies he brought from the regions he visited for jobs.

Thus, twenty square meters were more than enough to hold his belongings. It was a normal size for the center of Seoul. And also the reason he did not feel rich. He lived in a normal apartment like a normal guy with normal bills to pay. But with being part of an organization came the liabilities and the rules he had to obey. To make it short: he would rather get a bullet into his brain at one of his jobs than a signature under his letter of resignation to move to his villa on Jeju.

The intense beeping sound of his smartphone pulled him out of his melancholic thoughts, and he went back to the leather handbag he had left in the small hallway that connected the apartment door with the living space and the tiny bathroom.

Choreographer.

The Choreographer was the one who scheduled the jobs depending on the availability and specialties of the organization's hitmen. The man was quite energetic and always on his way to another appointment or checking on mission results to report back to the superiors and make the money flow. He was one of those with a regular income, an operator. The hitmen were the only ones who got payed for what they brought home. But Yoongi liked it that way. It was clean and simple: No hit, no money. Big hit, big money.

He opened the SMS.

B-job for H 130911. V at -0 1400

For an outsider this text would make absolutely no sense, but for him it was as clear as reading the newspaper. There were three different types of kills: A, B, C. A were the 'atomic' kills, a massacre with much blood or torture, simply gore. This one was not his terrain although he had heard that they paid well. B were the 'bullet' kills. As a sniper this was his specialty, and he had almost sighed happily when he had seen the big B at the beginning of the text. And C was 'chemical', a hit like that on Lee, mostly silent kills with poison or a potassium chloride injection.

The number that followed was his identification number. H 130911. They had not only made him tattoo it on the last rib, but it was also carved into his rib bone underneath, so he could always be identified. Yoongi had to admit that this was definitely less troublesome for the organization as well as for him in case of an ugly scenario.

The H stood for 'hitman'. The other two were O for 'operator' and T for 'technician'. The numbers seemed random. At least he never had found out their meaning. They were just numbers in the system, easier to handle than names or aliases and safer in case of a whistleblower.

V was one of their technicians who was specialized in databases and hacking. Basically, he was a guy in a dark cellar surrounded by screens, searching for the needed information and giving the hitmen access to whatever secured database or system they needed to look into. He was a little strange but one hell of talented.

And last, the digit with the minus told him about the days he would have to wait to get the information and the time of the meeting. So, he would have to visit V today at two in the afternoon. It was already twelve, because he had decided to ignore his alarm and sleep in, but it seemed like the organization needed his service again. And who would say no to a sniper job?

After a twenty-minute taxi ride, Yoongi went down the stairs to a basement in the backyard of a shabby apartment block and pressed the old bell push. He was ten minutes early.

A sleepy V in blue-striped pajamas opened the door and looked at him in confusion. The man's feet were hidden in white, plushy slippers. Yes, he definitely was something special. The brown hair dangled over his forehead in a greasy mess and he stared at Yoongi slightly openmouthed. It looked dumb, honestly.

After some seconds of silence, that threatened to become a minute, Yoongi gave up their stare-off. "I'm here to get the info on my next job," he growled and looked up at the younger.

"Ah, yeah. Come in," the tech's deep soothing voice invited him. "Want some coffee?"

Coffee was what every employee of the organization seemed to live off, and Yoongi was not opposed to V's strong brew, but today he just wanted the information and go home again to chill on his balcony. He needed a rest and the weather was great. "No thanks, just the intel," he said flatly.

The tech took his sweet time and made him wait surrounded by computers, servers, cables, and screens, breathing the warm and dusty air inside the small basement apartment. In a way the small dark room was cozy, but Yoongi would not want to live here.

"ID?" the other finally asked and turned around on his gaming chair. By now, V should be able to recall Yoongi's ID in his sleep, but the tech always made a point of sticking to procedure. It was very relatable.

Yoongi simply grabbed the hem of his shirt and lifted it up to show his tattoo. Then he watched amused how the technician swallowed as he stared at the bared skin. It was so obvious that V was desperate, and Yoongi just loved to play with him.

"Can't read it?" he asked the staring man in an oblivious tune while he seemingly unintentional lifted the shirt a little higher and stepped closer, so that he came within the other's reach.

The knuckles of the hacker's hands turned white when he held onto the armrests tighter. Yoongi could see how he fought with the urge to touch, but at the same time feared to get his hands broken if he dared to do so. Yoongi could barely suppress the evil smile that tugged on the corners of his mouth. Should he go a little further today? How long could the man withstand him in his underfed state?

Slowly, he pressed one leg between V's knees and leaned closer to place his hand around the man's thick neck. "You should get me what I need, or I might become impatient," he growled and squeezed the hacker's throat.

After being rewarded with a heavy shiver and a barely suppressed moan, he stepped back again. The tech's eyes were unfocused.

"Now," Yoongi commanded, back to his business self.

"Ye-yes," the man stuttered and turned around to his screens. Yoongi had contemplated sleeping with V. The guy was undoubtedly attractive and gay. But he was not sure whether intern revision would like that, so he had refrained. It was a pity. For the younger more than for him, because it did not look like the tech had the chance to go out often.

The green bar for downloading the encrypted zip-folder flickered over the screen, then another one that took a little longer for un-zipping and decrypting the data to one of the hundreds of black flash drives V stored inside of a drawer. Yoongi never had understood why it took a third man to give him the info, but it was organization procedure, so he would do a damn complaining about it. Keeping his head low never had failed him.

"Job's got a deadline, so check the readme," the tech told him while he handed him the flash. It looked like V had himself under control again.

Deadline jobs were paid better, Yoongi thought and took the device to turn around leave, but the deep voice held him back. "Suga! The Face said to warn you. Had triad men on his back over the last days."

The Face, O 130612, was one of the operators who had direct contact to potential customers. He was a handsome, tall man with perfect manners. On the outside. For Yoongi, who had been his flatmate for some weeks after he had joined the organization, he was a dorky guy who told bad old man jokes all day long. The reason Yoongi lived alone was that he had almost killed the other when he had tormented his nerves for several hours on a bad day. The organization had decided it was better to separate them, in fact to separate Yoongi from anyone, and he had gladly accepted. Now he had to do his laundry and cooking by himself, but at least he had his much-appreciated silence.

"I'll be on my toes," he answered and finally left. His sunny balcony was waiting for him.

>><<